A quiet night in a pub is shattered by the arrival of a sword-wielding fugitive, in Colin Barrett's collection of stories, while a funeral party teeters on the edge of the next world; a shooting prompts a policewoman to confront the banality of her own existence; and an aspiring writer grapples with his father's diagnosis and wreaks havoc on his mentor's life.

"Gritty…. The stories often veer off in surprising narrative and stylistic directions…. Barrett's voice, though bolstered by Irish tradition, is entirely his own."—New Yorker