A better angel

In this beautiful, inventive collection of stories, Chris Adrian treads the terrain of human suffering--illness, regret, mourning, sympathy--in the most unusual ways.

A bereaved twin starts a friendship with a homicidal fifth grader in the hope that she can somehow lead him back to his dead brother.

A boy tries to contact the spirit of his dead father and finds himself talking to the Devil instead.

A ne'er-do-well pediatrician returns home to take care of his dying father, all the while under the scrutiny of an easily disappointed heavenly agent.

With A Better Angel's cast of living and dead characters, at once otherworldly and painfully human, Adrian has created a haunting work of spectral beauty and wit. The stories in A Better Angel, some of which have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, and McSweeney's, demonstrate more of Chris Adrian's endless inventiveness and wit, and they confirm his growing reputation as an unusual literary voice of darkly magical comic tales.