Fantasy Kit - by Adam McOmber (Paperback)

About the Book

"Adam McOmber could be describing Fantasy Kit as a whole with these lines: "This is my house. The one I've been telling you about...You think: I know that house...But I can assure you you're wrong about that. You've never seen my house." In reading Fantasy Kit, I felt like a visitor to a strange theme park constructed of smoke and clay, lust and the uncanny, wickedness and tenderness. Here readers are ushered into mazes and caverns, paradises and pleasure gardens; whisked to Neverland, Mars, ancient Rome, and a cornfield in Ohio. Throughout, McOmber writes with singular imagination and delight. These stories bewitch.- Michelle Ross" -- Back cover.

Book Synopsis

"Adam McOmber could be describing Fantasy Kit as a whole with these lines: "This is my house. The one I've been telling you about...You think: I know that house...But I can assure you you're wrong about that. You've never seen my house." In reading Fantasy Kit, I felt like a visitor to a strange theme park constructed of smoke and clay, lust and the uncanny, wickedness and tenderness. Here readers are ushered into mazes and caverns, paradises and pleasure gardens; whisked to Neverland, Mars, ancient Rome, and a cornfield in Ohio. Throughout, McOmber writes with singular imagination and delight. These stories bewitch."

-Michelle Ross

"Adam McOmber's stories are the work of an architect and master illusionist. He constructs fairy tales that twist into labyrinths, labyrinths that open up gloriously into new myths-and always, as if just under the page, is the thump and flow of blood, the pulsing, hidden desire of the human heart."

-James Tadd Adcox

"Evocative, inventive, disquieting, thrilling, sensual-here, to borrow a phrase, is story in all its occult guises. If, after you read the first story in Jackson's The Lottery, Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, or Carter's The Bloody Chamber, you couldn't stop until you'd finished the book, I have good news: You've found your next page turner. The stories in Fantasy Kit may be short, but their effects are potent. Prepare for exquisite pleasures on every page."

-Gabriel Blackwell

Review Quotes

"Adam McOmber could be describing Fantasy Kit as a whole with these lines: 'This is my house. The one I've been telling you about...You think: I know that house...But I can assure you you're wrong about that. You've never seen my house.' In reading Fantasy Kit, I felt like a visitor to a strange theme park constructed of smoke and clay, lust and the uncanny, wickedness and tenderness. Here readers are ushered into mazes and caverns, paradises and pleasure gardens; whisked to Neverland, Mars, ancient Rome, and a cornfield in Ohio. Throughout, McOmber writes with singular imagination and delight. These stories bewitch." --Michelle Ross

"Adam McOmber's stories are the work of an architect and master illusionist. He constructs fairy tales that twist into labyrinths, labyrinths that open up gloriously into new myths--and always, as if just under the page, is the thump and flow of blood, the pulsing, hidden desire of the human heart." --James Tadd Adcox

"Evocative, inventive, disquieting, thrilling, sensual--here, to borrow a phrase, is story in all its occult guises. If, after you read the first story in Jackson's The Lottery, Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, or Carter's The Bloody Chamber, you couldn't stop until you'd finished the book, I have good news: You've found your next page turner. The stories in Fantasy Kit may be short, but their effects are potent. Prepare for exquisite pleasures on every page." --Gabriel Blackwell

About the Author

Adam McOmber is the author of three novels The White Forest (Touchstone), Jesus and John (Lethe), and The Ghost Finders (JournalStone) as well as two collections of short fiction This New & Poisonous Air and My House Gathers Desires (BOA Editions). His short fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, Diagram and numerous other magazines and journals. He teaches in the MFA Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts where he is also the editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Hunger Mountain.