These stories take the reader on journeys realist and absurd, meta-fictional and post-modern. Motel Girl is peopled by the colorful, the transcendent, the sane and insane—by egoists, self-deprecators, demons and drunks, by the well-meaning, and by monsters. From a Muscovite torn between the affections of her live-in bear and her boyfriend to a corporate bureaucrat who discovers the secret to immortality in a decrepit art museum, from a vengeful adolescent motel clerk to a legal proofreader poisoned on a subway platform, these short stories play by rules that might seem unorthodox to some, refreshing to others. This collection is proof that the form is alive and well—and breaking new ground—in the first decade of the 21st century.

Motel Girl amounts to an exploration of the contemporary laws of romance, longing and sex, of how the computerized, branded universe is now fully integrated into the fabric of our thought and behavior. Join in the journey, a frenetic and disarming joy ride. Taken as a whole, these stories create a new paradigm for the American short story, an expansion in narrative reach, creative power, and experimentation.