Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead

In this wideranging, assured debut fiction collection, stories skitter sideways across literary and genre fiction categories, using the toolbox of genres like science fiction and fantasy to grapple with issues of identity, family, gender, and politics. DeNiro is frequently funny, surreal, or slapstick, but his stories also connect with readers emotionally in unexpected and surprising ways. Even in the oddest of DeNiro’s stories, his characters are real people grappling with real relationships, real heartbreaks, the small, cruel, pinprick absurdities of a universe which is larger and stranger than most writers ever realize.