Invisibilia

Tom Howardsaward-winning debut short story collection, Fierce Pretty Things, won accoladesfor blending raw emotion with surreal forays into the supernatural andmetaphysical. With his second collection, Invisibilia, Howard takes the readeron a mesmerizing ride through a haunting, haunted landscape of children,drifters, soldiers, lovers, and ghosts, and the unseen forces that shape theirlives.Two sisters andtheir parents slowly disappear, each in their own way, after a universe-shakingdecision; a young solder returns broken from Vietnam to his hometown, where hemust follow a set of mystifying instructions as part of a peculiar homecoming ritual;the father of an emotionally estranged teen tries to reconnect with his sonthrough the wonder of nature and the spectacle of a bloody, nightmarish parade;a sweet but disfigured actor, renowned for the monsters he once played, seeksone final, redemptive role at the end of his career; and otherworldlyscavengers haunt a citys rooftops, feeding on the memories and the stories ofthe dead. In these deftlycrafted narratives, Tom Howard opens a window into a world thats at timeswildly strange, funny, sad, and absurd, but always achingly, helplessly human.