Cary Fagan began his career writing short stories before moving on to novels as well as numerous books for children. Yet he has never given up his love for the story form. Here are ten new stories whose characters are funny, serious, peculiar, and absorbing — as only Cary Fagan can write them.

In “The Floating Wife,” a woman looks back on the life of her husband, a retired judge whom she left after he refused to give up on his dream of being a magician.

In “Shit Box,” a young man exiled from the downtown arts scene adjusts to life in a suburban community of new immigrants.

A widow moves to New York to confront her late husband’s mistress in “The Brooklyn Revenge.”

In “My Life among the Apes,” a bank manager in a bad situation turns to his childhood obsession with Jane Goodall for inspiration.

“Lost at Sea” tells of a young couple who visit a furniture maker in searching for their true course.

A humble young waiter realizes his dream on an unusual New Year’s Eve in “The Little Underworld of Edison Wiese.”

Covering a wide range of human experience with humour and grace, My Life among the Apes is a testament to Cary Fagan’s mastery of his craft.

Cary Fagan is the author of eight previous novels and five books of short stories, including The Student, Great Adventures for the Faint of Heart, and A Bird's Eye. He has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Writers' Trust Fiction Award, the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, and has won the Toronto Book Award and the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction. He is also an acclaimed writer of books for children, having won the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, the IODE Jean Throop Book Award, a Mr. Christie Silver Medal, the Joan Betty Stuchner—Oy Vey!—Funniest Children's Book Award, and the Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People. Fagan's work has been translated into French, Italian, German, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Chinese, Korean and Persian. He still lives in his hometown of Toronto.

Cary Fagan's profile page

• Winner, Wilfrid Laurier Common Reading Program
• Long-listed, Scotiabank Giller Prize

“Fagan writes plausible tales told from the perspective of believable and relatable narrators. In other words, if short stories are your thing and more notably even if they’re not, you can’t go wrong here.”

opinionless.com

“The reading of these tales is a pleasurable experience and a reminder of what the sinews of short fiction are all about.”

National Post

“[Fagan] is gifted with a subtle, but still frequently unsettling, touch. His stories, which frequently consider Jewish identity, explore notions of pleasure and joy, displacement, and alienation as naturally occurring phenomena in his characters’ lives … In smooth, graceful prose, Fagan exposes the reader to men who chart their own unusual paths, rejecting societal definitions of success and failure.”

canlit.ca

“The volume’s 10 stories are, without exception, splendid yarns, told with the practised ease of a natural storyteller.”

Quill and Quire

“There is humour in these stories, pathos and great yarn telling. Remarkable narrative gifts. Thank you Mr. Fagan for such a fabulous Christmas/Hanukkah/birthday present.”

Toronto Star