This is a lovely book of short stories; most I was categorize as fantasy, with maybe one that I would categorize as science fiction.

'Alfred' - An old man appears on a park bench - who is he, really?

'Cassandra's Photographs' - What would you do if you thought your future wasn't a matter of choice, and if you thought your fate was shown to you, would you wait for it?

'Ever After' - So, what really happens to fairy tale princesses, do they really live happily ever after?

'Tourists' - I've always been intrigued by Tarot cards.

'Midnight News' - Think about all the possibilities if a random person was selected to decide the fate of the world based solely on their own experiences.

'Preliminary Notes on the Jang' - What if you discovered a completely new tribe in the middle of Los Angeles?

'A Traveller at Passover' - What happens when a daughter is invited back home after a long time away.

'Infinite Riches' - What if El Dorado really existed?

'Death is Different' - This story is connected to Tourists - a neat, if irrational, place to visit!

'Breadcrumbs and Stones' - A mixing of the horrors of the Holocaust with Hansel and Gretel.

'The Woman in the Painting' - When a woman - no, a being - becomes whatever we want it to be.

'Daily Voices' - I'll always think of this story as 'Push the Button' - what if life was organized for you in 30 second increments?

'A Game of Cards' - Set in the same land as Tourists and Death is Different, be careful when you play with cards.

'Split Light' - If one man had answered one question differently, what would the world be like today?

The author writes an afterword for each story - I really enjoyed them. Somewhere in about the middle of the book, she describes the theme of the book as the ways in which magic makes itself felt in the mundane world - she's right on with that.

I really enjoyed most of the stories; probably only one, or at most two, that weren't up to the same standard, in my opinion, as all the rest. I would have liked for it to be longer! I'll definitely seek out more of Goldstein's works. ( )

Goldstein is a very good writer, and an innovator. Many of these stories are suggestive of the New Wave push for literary standards in sci-fi and fantasy, but without a lot of the swagger. I also get the impression she's more at home in the short story format than in the novel format; this is a much better offering than her ambition but unsteady "Dark Cities Underground," and a bit better than her (I believe award-winning) short novel for the young adult market, "The Red Magician" ( )