Outside Too Long

Eleven previously-published stories, collected here for the first time, and seven new ones, from one of the decade's most successful short story writers. Personal disaster preys on the unsheltered and the dispossessed, in a world where connecting with the nearest stranger may be the only hope of living to fight another day--Russian backpackers adrift in Italy; West Africans thriving in the slums of Guinea; a chicken farmer and his wife gone lost in the Mojave; even the boy in the...
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Eleven previously-published stories, collected here for the first time, and seven new ones, from one of the decade's most successful short story writers. Personal disaster preys on the unsheltered and the dispossessed, in a world where connecting with the nearest stranger may be the only hope of living to fight another day--Russian backpackers adrift in Italy; West Africans thriving in the slums of Guinea; a chicken farmer and his wife gone lost in the Mojave; even the boy in the mountains of Colombia, with visions of his father's body being eaten by its soul, in the closing story, "We Are All Together in the End." As always, Tucker's mastery of character, dialog, and environment as villain combine to create a thoroughly original portrait of the human condition. For the outsider in all of us.