The innovative and dazzling short stories collected in Josh Russell's King of the Animals explore love and heartbreak, growing up and growing old, cities and suburbs, the fantastic and the everyday.

A teenager and his family seek asylum in an Atlanta IKEA after their split-level is burned down because his father made fun of an autocrat's bad grammar. A man remembers how seeing a snapshot of his sister naked changed his life-and hers too. A talking doll fails her spelling test, and a king made of sugar and flour watches Fox News and smokes dope with the neighbor kid. A college student ponders the philosophical implications of a poetry-fueled one-night stand, and a father worries he's the reason his adult child hoards dogs.

Ranging from pithy flash fiction to slow-burn stories meant to be savored, King of the Animals entwines the extraordinary with the commonplace, leaving us to wonder why we ever thought them separate.