The Hotel Eden: Stories

Read The Hotel Eden: Stories Storyline:

Prepare to be amused, moved, disturbed. These dozen stories by a master
of idiosyncrasy visit a world where wit has heft, charm has shadow,
and human beings act out all the complicated nuances of love. In the title story a young man waiting in the Hotel Eden
discovers, as others have, that Eden is not a permanent domicile. In
"Zanduce at Second," a baseball player turned killer-by-accident
undergoes a surprising transformation. We root for escaped felon Ray
("A Note on the Type") as he carves his name on a culvert wall. We
drive the sweltering summer streets of Phoenix as a nineteen-year-old
narrator goes through an unsettling sexual awakening ("Oxygen"). In
these and other stories, whether his characters are getting sabotaged
by nightcaps or encountering nudists on a rafting trip, Carlson takes
us to a generous array of places in a new way. Finally, in "The
Chromium Hook," he takes us to a lovers' lane where he solves an
ancient mystery.