From provincial Cuba in 1910 -- where a gaggle of needlework-producing middle-aged Spanish sisters, spurred by a bon vivant relative and the end of the world announced by the arrival of Halley's Comet, abdicate their chastity and open one of Cuba's leading brothels -- to New York in the 1980's -- where a Cuban refugee working as a security guard at a 42nd Street Wendy's falls in love with a homicidal woman who turns out to be the Mona Lisa herself, on display at the Metropolitan Museum -- these stories take us throughout Arenas's entire career, from his recently rediscovered debut (which got him a job at the Biblioteca Nacional in Havana) to stories written shortly before his death. In vibrant translations by Dolores Koch, Arenas's friend and literary executor, these stories are the perfect introduction to a magnificent and important writer.