With dark humor and wit, Joan Bird’s The Stand-alone Chest carries the reader through five short, twisted tales. A woman cursed by her estranged cousin, a haunted production of Hamlet, a journalist who witnesses the tragic death of a friend, a father’s ghostly son, and a hellish courtroom trial—this riveting collection is simply compelling. Bird’s narrators serve as wry, bold guides through deliciously eerie storyscapes in which you feel the dark shadow, the unexplainable, the chill at the nape most of us have written off as inconsequential figment. But Bird lets these sensations roam, gives vivid shape to the cool crossings over, and follows them all the way down to the wonderfully impossible. And the author’s formidable knowledge of literature, history, and the sciences allows her to conjure up hilarious and morbid allusions. Intellectual and addictive, these stories will not leave you with an easy ending, but they will continue to haunt you long after you have read the final page.