Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler--hailed by The New Yorker as a virtuoso of waking dreams--comes a dazzling collection of darkly comic stories united by their obsession with obsession. nRemarkable ... Not just brilliant but prescient. --The New York Times Book Review n n In Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser transports us to unknown universes that uncannily resemble our own. n nThe collection is divided into three parts that fit seamlessly together as a whole. It opens with a bang, as Cat 'n' Mouse reimagines the deadly ritual between cartoon rivals in a comedy of dynamite and anvils--a masterly prologue that sets the stage for the alluring, very grown-up twists that follow. n nPart one, Vanishing Acts, features stories of risk and escape: a lonely woman disappears without a trace; a high school boy becomes entangled with his best friend's troubled sister; and a group of teenagers play a treacherous game that pushes them deep into the kingdom of forbidden things. n nExcess reigns in the vivid, haunting places of Part two's Impossible Architectures, where domes enclose whole cities, and a king's master miniaturist creates objects so tiny that soon his entire world is invisible. n nFinally, Heretical Histories presents startling alternatives to the remembered past. A Precursor of the Cinema proposes a new, enigmatic form of illusion. And in the astonishing The Wizard of West Orange a famous inventor sets out to simulate the sense of touch--but success brings disturbing consequences. n nSensual, mysterious, Dangerous Laughter is a mesmerizing journey through brilliantly realized labyrinths of mortal pleasures that stretch the boundaries of the ordinary world to their limits--and occasionally beyond.n