Disfigured inside and out, the characters in Punishing Ugly Children are ill-made for anything but the crooked paths they follow. By turns bleak and amusing, these twenty stories are darkly seductive and compelling. A broken skull reshapes a man's entire consciousness. The daughter of a boxer cheers the final rounds at the end of the world. A high school student uses arson to level the skewed results of a physics exam. Even the fleeting grace of one last win eludes a degenerate gambler. Punishing Ugly Children is a powerful debut collection of unforgettable short stories.