David Daniel is a beachcomber, and these stories are the small, unexpected treasures he has found in the tidal coves of the imagination and put on display for our delight. A young boy's crush on his lonely aunt, a machine that apparently has no other purpose than its beauty, a hit man obsessed with the New York theater, an old woman who sells clouds, a 400-pound dreamer in a creative writing class, a woman's imagined lover come to life: we get these and much more. Empathy, irony, darkness, whimsy, loneliness, and wonder are all here. As is a bracing dash of the absurd. You'll reach the last page and wish there were more. -Ailish O'Davoren, author of The Hills of Tipperary