Tales from the Eternal Cafe, author Janet Hamill’s debut short story collection, offers a thrilling, unwinding trail of tales that excite and mystify; drift then deliver a powerful punch that readers will devour. Like Karen Russell, George Saunders, José Luis Borges and Isabel Allende, Janet Hamill’s writing lures readers willingly into a labyrinth of surprise and suspense, with humor lurking just on the other side of pathos; a tear just moments away from bright, well-deserved laughter.

The seventeen crisp stories included in Tales from the Eternal Cafe offer a plethora of fascinating characters and scenarios: a brief memoir from Baudelaire’s publisher; a letter from a writer who knows he is going mad; an exasperated Italian film director unable to inspire Europe’s most famous actor during the shooting of a brothel scene.

The book includes an introduction by the author’s lifelong friend, singer-songwriter-poet-author Patti Smith, whose book Just Kids, received the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2010.