When the town's most-hated banker is beheaded by a wire staked in the snow behind the Cackleberry Club cafe, Suzanne, with most of her customers on the prime suspect list, must serve up the real killer.

Ten short stories explore human relationships, moments of change, and unspoken truths.

"We're comparing the world's most bizarre parallel events! Did you know that the Eiffel Tower was presented at the 1889 World's Fair, the same year that Nintendo was founded? Or that the last beheading by guillotine in France occurred in 1977--the same year that Star Wars was released? It might feel like you're in a time warp, but it's all true!"--Cover.

"Here are eighteen stories of astonishing range and precision. A housewife drinks alone in her Connecticut living room. A guillotine glimmers above a sleepy town green. A pre-recorded customer service message sends a caller into a reverie of unspeakable yearning. With the deft touch and funhouse-mirror perspectives for which he has won countless admirers, Steven Millhauser gives us the towns, marriages, and families of a quintessential American lifestyle...

After a summer of tagging sharks off the west coast of Florida, Sabina, Maribel, and Luke have a new assignment: searching for "survivor trees" that are resistant to the disease that is destroying the state's citrus trees; the search takes them to the remote mangrove islands of Sanibel Island, where they discover Spanish oranges, a grave, an immense saltwater crocodile, a reclusive woman who believes that the ghost of a dead king, beheaded by Spanish...

"Chief Public Prosecutor Sigurd Halvorsrud's wife is found dead in front of the fireplace in the family living room. The cause of death: she has been brutally decapitated. Her husband, who witnessed the grisly murder and is himself covered in blood, immediately falls under suspicion, though he claims his wife's killer was Ståle Salvesen, a man he'd prosecuted years before. Detective Inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen is called in to lead the investigation...

"This mystery mingles Choctaw culture, science, and murder and features Lieutenant Sam Chitto of the Oklahoma Choctaw Nation Tribal Police, who considers himself a man of principal. He's a man of the Law--the letter of the Law--and he's a man of his word. But he's at a breaking point, ready to quit the force. His father's murder is ten-years cold, his young wife's premature death haunts him, and tribal police in Oklahoma are being prevented from ensuring...

"Bookseller Delaney Nichols meets a woman who believes she is Mary, Queen of Scots, reborn. When the Cracked Spine is royally threatened, she must do all she can to save the shop. Heading back to work the day after she returns from her European honeymoon, Delaney Nichols is excited to get back to the Cracked Spine. But as she disembarks the bus and hurries toward the shop she and another woman collide, sending a stack of books the woman is carrying...

"Part memoir, part travelogue, part love letter to the people who live and work on a magical street in Paris. Elaine Sciolino, the former Paris bureau chief for the New York Times, invites us on a tour of her favorite Parisian street, offering an homage to street life and the pleasures of Parisian living. 'I can never be sad on the rue des Martyrs,' Sciolino explains, as she celebrates the neighborhood's rich history and vibrant lives. While many...