Other Edens

S.P. Somtow’s newest collection exploresfive alternate visions of paradise. In A Different Eden, an old woman in Ephesus is visited by a zealous, conflicted St. Paul, seeking her endorsement for anew religion he’s creating — and forcing her to re-make the painful choices of her young womanhood. A Lap Dance with the Lobster Lady thrusts us into an E.C. Comics-like word of love, death, and freakshows; Vanilla Blood takes the genre of court transcript to savage and erotic heights as it strips away the respectability of a Southern small town to reveal an orgiastic vampire world seething beneath the surface. Vampires figure in Beloved Disciple as well, a story penned for an anthologist who asked Somtow to “offend as many people as possible” — yet in the end provides profoundly religious insights. In the world fantasy award-winning story The Bird Catcher, S. P. Somtow adapts the true story of the Chinese serial killer Si Ui, who lived in a Thai village during the post-war era of military dictatorship in Thailand, into a dark idyll where nothing is as it seems. “He can drive the chill bone-deep!” — Dean R. Koontz

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