Well-regarded British author never-before-published in US Sales figures for previous three books (3500, 5000, 7500 respectively) are combined UK/Canadian sales Stories with striking universal settings—all seem to exist in primitive no-man's-land (i.e. not defined by country) Author has also worked in prisons and drug rehab facilities Work has attractive sensibility: combines the whimsy and visual sensuousness of someone like Marquez with the quirky, comic take on magic realism you see in, say, Rushdie or Angela Carter, and has some of Carter's feminism ... but at least in this book, less gore. Imagine The Passion of New Eve meets 100 Years of Solitude meets Haroun & the Sea of Stories Stories are short and easy to excerpt.