"I read Ron Carlson's stories again and again. I read them to my friends at dinner parties and over the phone. I even read one to my dad. I think 'A Note on the Type' might be the best story in the English language" -- Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness

Prepare to be amused, moved, disturbed. These dozen stories by a master of idiosyncrasy visit a world where wit has heft, charm has shadow, and human beings act out all the complicated nuances of love.

In the title story a young man waiting in the Hotel Eden discovers as others have that Eden is not a permanent domicile. In "Zanduce at Second," a baseball player turned killer-by-accident undergoes a surprising transformation. We root for escaped felon Ray ("A Note on the Type") as he carves his name on a culvert wall. We drive the sweltering summer streets of Phoenix as a nineteen-year-old narrator goes through an unsettling sexual awakening ("Oxygen"). In these and other stories, whether his characters are getting sabotaged by nightcaps or encountering nudists on a rafting trip, Carlson takes us to a generous array of places in a new way. Finally, in "The Chromium Hook," he takes us to a lovers' lane where he solves an ancient mystery.