In the title novella, Cotman imagines a group of near-immortals living in Pittsburgh in an uneasy truce with Lord Decay. Their truce is threatened when one of them takes pity on a young woman who knows their secret. In "e;Among the Zoologists,"e; a game writer on their way to a convention falls in with a group of rogue Darwinists whose baggage contains a great mystery. A volleyball tournament devolves into nightmare and chaos in "e;Mine."e; In Cotman's hands, the conventions of genres from fairytales to Victorian literature to epic fantasy and horror give shape to marvelously new stories.