Fox Tooth Heart

McManus (Bitter Milk) invites readers on an eccentric journey through Southern, Southwestern, and Middle America in this collection of wildly inventive short stories. Though they’re set in America, they exist in a meticulously crafted world, quite different than our own: a world in which rock stars communicate with elephants (“Elephant Sanctuary”) and clones of ex-presidents convene (“Gateway to the Ozarks”). In “Cult Heroes,” a teenage mountain biker seeking to emancipate himself from his parents attempts to bike the Grand Canyon. In “The Ninety-Fifth Percentile,” a Porche takes center stage in a young boy’s coming of age in Houston. Yet the stories are most memorable not when they contain outlandish plots but when McManus delves into the minds of his characters, allowing readers to experience their anxieties, delusions, fantasies, and fears. Though the stories can blend together, McManus’s prose is clear, a winning contrast to his askew narratives. (Nov.)