In these eleven strange, funny, and unnerving stories, animals become the litmus test of our deepest fears and longings. A headstrong young woman in Africa is lured by the freedom of the monkeys in the trees in “Miss Waldron’s Red Colobus”; a boy plays chilling games with his pet rabbit in “Slim’s Last Ride”; an artist restoring dioramas in a natural history museum is haunted by a stuffed black bear in “Preservation”; a zoo worker, cautiously washing down an elephant, considers the odd, grim fragments of his co-workers lives in “Animal Crackers”. Snake or dog, cat, buffalo or turkey, the animals in Hannah Tinti’s stories hold up a disturbing mirror to the human beings around them.