The October Country

The October Country is many places: A picturesque Mexican village, where death is a tourist attraction; a city beneath a city where drowned lovers are silently reunited; a carnival midway where a tiny man's most cherished fantasy can be fulfilled night after night; and a strange house where a normal boy is lovingly raised by a family of vampires and shape-changers. Each of these nineteen stories is a wonder, ranging from "The Emissary" (where a dog brings his bed-ridden young master all the sensations of the outside world) to "Jack-in-the Box" (about a housebound boy who doesn't suspect there is an outside world at all).