Fabulous

The characters in the eight clever stories collected for this offbeat volume include estate agents, window washers, and pest controllers, all of whom have the souls of gods and legendary beings from myths and folktales. In “Orpheus,” a music hall singer named Oz is devastated to discover that his wife Eurydice’s essence has been trapped in the underworld, leaving her comatose body aboveground. The title character of “Piper” is a bus-driving exterminator who abducts a town’s children to become his traveling commune of performing “folkies” after the parents refuse to pay him for remedying their rat infestation. In “Pasiphae,” Minos is a refugee-exploiting business manager and his consort gives birth to a bull-like son spawned from her liaison with a short-order cook nicknamed Toro. “Joseph” and “Mary Magdalene” both present characters from the Bible in inventive modern scenarios. Hallett (Peculiar Ground) forges novel situations for her quirky characters, and each retelling works well as a modern story in its own right. This collection shows how classic themes continue to inform the fiction of today. (Jan.)