Prepare to be amused, moved, and disturbed. With these twelve exceptional tales, Ron Carlson takes readers to 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 many others have — that Eden is not a permanent domicile. In Zanduce at Second, a baseball player turned kille by accident undergoes a surprising transformation. We root for escaped felon Ray in A Note on the Type and drive through the sweltering summer streets of Phoenix as a nineteen-year-old narrator goes through an unsettling sexual awakening in Oxygen. Carlson's work has always made a difference. Whether his characters are getting sabotaged by nightcaps or encountering nudists on a rafting trip, he takes us to a generous array of places in a new way.