Destroy All Monsters and Other Stories - (The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction) by Greg Hrbek (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, Greg Hrbek's Destroy All Monsters, and Other Stories is a collection that explores what it means to be human--and inhuman. These ten stories have won an array of honors--and whether set in the historical past or in a speculative future, each is wildly imaginative and shockingly real.
In "Sagittarius," selected for The Best American Short Stories, a mother and father search a dark forest for their missing newborn, who is either a child with profound birth defects or a miraculous creature. In "False Positive," a ghostly girl visits her biological father ten years after being aborted in utero. In "Bereavement," a marriage is falling apart following a child's accidental death, but a combination of myth and technology provides hope for a second life. Fantastic, horrific, painfully familiar, these stories are the work of a consummate storyteller.

Review Quotes

"Hrbek . . . is a master at voices. He brings the reader into the universe of his troubled characters, whose imagined "monsters" and elaborate constructions of reality may not be so different from one's own. He is a writer to watch."--Sue Russell, Library Journal

"Hrbek's writing is crisp and often lyrical, and these stories complement each other nicely. . . . Destroy All Monsters is most definitely worth the read."--Necessary Fiction Blog-- (2/6/2012 12:00:00 AM)

"Mr. Hrbek's writing is often lovely and sparse--almost poetic."--Michael Adelberg, New York Journal of Books-- (9/1/2011 12:00:00 AM)

"Reading Destroy All Monsters is an eye-opening experience about human beings, especially parents and children. Despite odd creatures and curiosities, the reader must find deeper meanings and locate the monsters to confront who or what they are exactly."--Joshua Myers, Curled Up with a Good Book-- (3/23/2012 12:00:00 AM)

"Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, Hrbek's first collection subtly and masterfully merges the everyday and the mythic, poetic, futuristic, and seemingly impossible."--Jonathan Fullmer, Booklist -- (9/1/2011 12:00:00 AM)

"Each story in this spellbinding collection hovers on the threshold of the impossible, the place where our most basic fears and desires as mothers and fathers and children get turned into something so new and startling the sight of it can change you forever. These are dark stories, but at the heart of their darkness there is perfect, irresistible radiance." --Kathryn Davis, author of The Thin Place -- (3/1/2011 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

Greg Hrbek is the author of The Hindenburg Crashes Nightly, which won the James Jones First Novel Award. His short stories have appeared in Harper's Magazine, Conjunctions, and Black Warrior Review and have been short-listed for the O. Henry Prize and the Bridport Prize. He lives in Saratoga Springs, New York.