In her third short story collection, Poppy Z. Brite finds fresh ways of exploring territory both familiar and strange. Here you'll meet the Devil and his giant cat last seen in the pages of Bulgakov, the gourmand coroner of New Orleans, the mad-genius chef who can't stand to have his cheese list criticized, and an assortment of Crescent City characters who also appear in Brite's novels The Value of X and Liquor. First and foremost, Poppy Z. Brite is a New Orleans writer. Dissatisfied with much of her early work about her home city, she has begun to explore a way of writing about it that bypasses the cliches and approaches the city's true heart: the hard-working, hard-partying cooks; the ways in which race, class, and sexual orientation do and don't matter; the love of bottom feeders, be they crustaceans or politicos; the million little juxtapositions of sacred and profane, bizarre and mundane, sublime and ridiculous that make up the everyday life of New Orleans. Some of these stories are set elsewhere, but Brite always returns home in the end. Brite's short fiction has been praised by a diverse assortment of writers: Harlan Ellison, Peter Straub, Neil Gaiman, Dan Simmons, Dennis Cooper, Andrei Codrescu. In this collection you'll find her strongest work yet. Book jacket.