Partners and Strangers by Michael Don

Dark, enigmatic, and sometimes comic, the stories in Partners and Strangers unite intimate anxieties with public dangers. Its characters embody grief, deviance, and the repressed: In "Yoav Feinberg's Last Year at Home," a teenager's pain over his father's death becomes unpredictably intertwined with an obsession with a cable man. In "A Home for an Eggplant," the specter of a Craigslist killer provides a backdrop for a couple's struggle with fertility. In "The Best Delivery Service," the narrator and his sister, living together after their parents' disappearance, obsessively order items through a hotline that promises delivery of anything one can imagine. The collection highlights a contemporary age characterized by loneliness and alienation.