Description: Praise for Vampires in the Lemon Grove " Vampires in the Lemon Grove shows Ms. Russell more in control of her craft than everMs. Russell deftly combines elements of the weird and supernatural with acute psychological realism; elements of the gothic with dry, contemporary humor. From apparent influences as disparate as George Saunders, Saki, Stephen King, Carson McCullers and Joy Williams, she has fashioned a quirky, textured voice that is thoroughly her own: lyrical and funny, fantastical and meditativeUnderscores her fecund and constantly surprising storytelling giftsIn these tales Ms. Russell combines careful research with minutely imagined details and a wonderfully vital sleight of hand to create narratives that possess both the resonance of myth and the immediacy of something new." -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "Hilarious, exquisite, first-rateIt's hard not to reflect on the origins of this wildly talented young writer's ideasA grim, stupendous magic is at work in these storiesHer work has a velocity and trajectory that is little less than dazzling and a tough, enveloping, exhilarating voice that cannot be equaled." -Joy Williams, The New York Times Book Review "One of the most innovative, inspired short-story collections in the past decade Vampires in the Lemon Grove is flawless and magnificent, and there's absolutely no living author quite like Karen Russell." - NPR "Astonishing Vampires in the Lemon Grove stands out as Russell's best bookwith prose so alive it practically backflips off the pageOne of Russell's seemingly endless gifts as a writer is that her invented worlds shed new light on the one in which we live." -San Francisco Chronicle "Beautiful tales Vampires in the Lemon Grove should cement Russell's reputation as one of the most remarkable fantasists writing today." - Washington Post "Each story is more inventive than the last, juxtaposing mundane human experiences and profound questions about consciousness, love, and mortality, with a hint of the supernaturalAs Russell's imagination soars, so does our joy in reading this collection." -Oprah.com "Karen Russell's imagination is one again on full, Technicolor, mind-bending display If Vampires in the Lemon Grove is an indicator of the future, Russell's stories will be seizing our imaginations-and nibbling at the edges of our nightmares-for years to come." - Miami Herald "Wildly inventivewondrously strange and moving." - Reader's Digest "Witty, and wise, and brimming with vitalityIn Russell's stories, malice strolls with morality, horror tangos with humor, and the spirits of Franz Kafka and Flannery O'Connor meet with unexpected comityWith a voice that could spring from an unleashed demon-or an angel on amphetamines-Russell fills this exuberant collection with life's radiance and shadows, enhanced by the possibility of redemption." - Richmond Times-Dispatch "Karen Russell's stories defy definition. They are at once warm and sinister, a bubblebath with a shark fin lurking underneath the sudsfiction that expands the possible, gorgeous prose forged in the fires of dark beauty and wistful longing." - The Millions "Like Russell's previous work, Vampires in the Lemon Grove presents a writer with a seemingly infinite imagination and a tremendous appreciation for the possibilities of language, particularly its ability to extract beauty from the darkest places and situationsHer originality is relentless." -SouthFlorida.com "An eight-tale adrenaline-delivery system packed with long-married, problem-beset monsters, abandoned children whose lives are in dire peril, teens with creepy sixth senses, and masseuses with inexplicable healing powersDarkly inventive, demonically driven narratives set in the author's inimitable imaginative disturbia." - Elle "Exquisitely peculiar Vampires trades in the mythological waters of the Florida Everglades for eight new, but still darkly fantastical and dangerous worlds that constantly remind the reader that monsters and violence are always around the corner, and in ourselves." - Wall Street Journal "Reading Vampires in the Lemon Grove is like taking off on a round-the-universe trip, each story a new adventure where the usual rules don't applyWhat Russell is doing doesn't yet have a name. And that is why her work is so wonderful." -Kirkus.com "In these stories, familiar human emotions leap into relief against backdrops of almost Tim Burton-like weirdnessHer stories are as robust as can be. But they also look like something internal flipped out: us." - New York "A master of magical realismMs. Russell is at her best alternating between the wildly fantastical and the utterly banal, especially when she finds a way to fuse the two togetherThere is an exuberance to her descriptive abilities, a kind of ludic writerly joy in the process that translates to a readerly thrill in the results." - New York Observer "Delightfully weirdmoving." - Esquire "Russell's tales flirt with the fantastical, but are rooted in darker realitiesEven as she transforms the everyday into a wriggling bestiary, replete with colorful hallucinations and ghosts, her most haunting bits rely on the depiction of human impulses." - Mother Jones "PowerfulRussell pulls the rug out on our imagination, creating perplexing, surreal scenarios that bump into the common reality that most of us take for granted." - Minneapolis Star Tribune "Karen Russell casts another spell with her otherworldly collection of storiesIs she a Southern Gothicist? A parabolist? A moralist? Do her stories

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