Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 278 p. Audience: General/trade. HARRY

Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 278 p. Audience: General/trade. HARRY GAINESBOROUGH, ex-writer of children s books, just wants to be left alone. But the world several worlds, actually won t let him. Raymond Story, escaped from Harwood Psychiatric (and now married to Emily, a catatonic girl that Raymond declares is the Frozen Princess) has enlisted some of his fellow patients and is intent on saving the world with Harry s help. Nonsense, of course. But a Ralewing (a nasty sort of flying sting ray that Harry invented for his book) appears to have eaten the paint from the roof of Harry s car; the ruthless executive of a large pharmaceutical company bears an unsettling resemblance to Zod Wallop s evil Lord Draining, and a hotel in Florida could be about to host the end of the world. The novel is widely regarded as a "bittersweet fable" of magical realism. It uses the internal world of the fictional Zod Wallop to examine how people use stories to process unbearable loss and isolation. By the end, Harry must decide whether to remain in his self-imposed exile of despair or embrace the "unbelievable" to find a way back to living.