The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories

Described by Michael Dirda in The Washington Post as “sexy, eery and addictive”, the fiction of Jonathan Carroll occurs at the point where the ordinary becomes extraordinary, the commonplace becomes unsettling, and yet where we nonetheless always recognize the stories being told because they are always about ourselves and what happens in our deepest, sometimes darkest hearts. Always better known as a novelist—readers first experienced Carroll’s elegant, eloquent, wondrous, terrible and often surreal fiction in his classic debut The Land of Laughs, which he followed with Bones of the Moon, Sleeping in Flame, A Child Across the Sky, and others—Carroll has also created a compelling and deeply moving body of short fiction. Perhaps more eclectic and slant-wise than some of his novels, stories like World Fantasy Award winning “Friend’s Best Man” and Pushcart Prize and Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire honouree “Home on the Rain” stand amongst his very best work. The Woman Who Married a Cloud: Collected Stories is the best and most complete collection of Jonathan Carroll’s fiction ever published. It collects 37 stories written across a thirty year long career, a number appearing here in print for the first time, in a single landmark volume that stands as the perfect introduction to this unique and wonderful writer.