Available for the first time in a single volume, Francesca Lia Blocks luminous saga of interwoven lives will send the senses into wild overdrive. These five postmodern fairy tales chronicle the thin line between fear and desire, pain and pleasure, cutting loose and holding on in a world where everyone is vulnerable to the most excruciatingly beautiful and dangerous angel of all: love. Ms. Blocks far-ranging free association has been controlled and shaped . . . with sensual characters. The language is inventive Californian hip, but the patterns are compactly folkloristic and the theme is transcendent. The New York Times Book Review Magic is everywhere in Blocks lyrical and resonant fables, which always point back to the primacy of family, friends, love, location, food and music. At once modern and mythic, her series deserves as much space as it can command of daydream nations shrinking bookshelves. The Village Voice Blocks extravagantly imaginative setting and finely honed perspectives remind the reader that there is magic everywhere.