Bad Houses

This adventurous and offbeat collection from Stintzi (My Volcano) blends fantastical motifs and myths with comic stories of contemporary life. In “Dumb House,” the narrator is alarmed by his roommate’s severe shift in attitude and appearance when she becomes a mime, acting out invisible walls within their apartment to box herself in. Other entries are more eerie, like “Blueness,” in which the narrator is distraught by mysterious noises in their apartment and learns their landlord’s daughter had recently attempted suicide. A little girl tries to befriend a band of pumpkin patch trolls in “The Troll Patch,” and the orphaned boy at the center of “Grampa’s Bag of Bubonic’s Brood” hopes the Jesus action figure he carries with him will absolve his and his grandfather’s serious wrongdoings. In “Midas’s Hairdresser,” a queer chain-smoking stylist for the mythical King Midas savors the gold she earns in exchange for keeping his innermost secrets. Stintzi exhibits a flair for fearlessly bizarre character sketches and macabre scenes. Fans of Kelly Link ought to snatch this up. (Sept.)

Correction: A previous version of this review misdescribed the plot of the story “Blueness.”