Unfinished World, The

Hailed as a "master of the fantastic" (Roxanne Gay), Amber Sparks dazzles with a bewitching breakthrough collection that affirms her singular talent for rendering the apocalyptic and otherworldly hauntingly familiar. With a wild imagination matched only by its intelligence and heart, Sparks's work is weird and wonderful, utterly hypnotic. In The Unfinished World she illuminates the human urge for a brief encounter with the extraordinary, traveling to the lost places of the world -- from crumbling mansions and ravaged battlefields to wanton Hollywood film sets and icy space stations. Blending fantasy and lore with brutality and sorrow, Sparks is a master alchemist of the uncanny. In "The Cemetery for Lost Faces," peculiar orphans translate their grief into taxidermy, artfully arresting the passage of time. In "Thirteen Ways of Destroying a Painting," a lover seeks to save her troubled partner by repeatedly traveling back in time, while in "And the World Was Crowded with Things that Mean