New gothic short fiction from California author Margaret Elysia Garcia.

This collection of stories takes readers on a journey south of Los Angeles, away from Hollywood and the beaches, away from the tropes of gangsters and drugs, and into the towns beyond where the promise of California dreaming never quite grafted onto the suburban landscape. The people of these stories grasp hard onto customs and landmarks, which disappear by bulldozer or earthquake. They are left wandering, trying to find a center that isn't there. A place of both subtle magic and ghosts and ugly architecture. A place not good enough to stay, not bad enough to leave. A place where commerce stands in for culture, and authentic people try to find small tracts of real life in the cracks, all in the shadow of Disneyland.

Margaret Elysia Garcia's is a hauntingly beautiful new voice in American literature. These stories . . . come together with a kind of magic leaving me inspired and oddly elated.-- Ariel Gore, author of The End of Eve

Fiction.