The Correct Response - by Manfred Gabriel (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A zombie learns to pass for a living human being. College friends decide to play a child's game that turns out to be anything but child-like. A man builds a box to keep his loneliness. Two department store elves share a drink on Christmas Eve and discover presents aren't always neatly wrapped beneath the tree. In The Correct Response, Manfred Gabriel artfully blends the fantastic and the real, culminating in surreal but heartfelt tales of longing, love, and loss against the backdrop of modern America.

Review Quotes

"Manfred Gabriel has created a short-story collection with characters so real they might just grab you by the shirt collar. Vivid scenes, intriguing plots, and spot-on dialogue are other hallmarks of the author's craft. Crack open The Correct Response and enjoy this smorgasbord of nineteen delicious tales. The pages will be turning well past midnight."

-Jim Guhl, author of South of Luck, Midwest Book Award Winner

"The stories in Manfred Gabriel's The Correct Response perform a subtle blur of lush Midwestern settings and speculative fantasy with characters as real to life as tobacco juice, all haunted by the question we've feared to put to our own selves: Has anything ever made you happy? They will gnaw at you long after you put The Correct Response down."

-Steve Fox, author of Sometimes Creek, Rick Bass Montana Prize Winner

"Manfred Gabriel's stories are the best kind of imaginative-his vivid, haunting and authentic storytelling shows us the deeper truths about human nature while offering the chance to look past the world we see every day to reveal a new, fathomless one-which maybe has been there all along."

-Nikki Kallio, author of Finding the Bones