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Two boys discover that the title of their stop-motion animated film about Vietnam has been taken by director Stanley Kubrick. A 150-year-old woman on the run from the government is tracked down by the company who extended her life. A military contractor carrying his robot son in a gym bag struggles to find his way out of the Nigerian delta during a bloody civil war. The wife of an up-and-coming politician grieves his infidelity by prowling rooftops with a sniper rifle. Following his celebrated debut collection, Super Flat Times, Matthew Derby delivers a disturbing new set of stories that plunges us into a lonely heartland of misfits, outcasts, and would-be assassins who lurk in the shadows, searching for connection and meaning in all the wrong places.

“Artful social parody in a towering hypercontemporary mode, superbly scored for a chorus of wind-up cuckoos bleakly coming unwound.”
—Kirkus Reviews