When X Equals Marylou collects stories about photographers, balding men, ghost chasers, doppelgangers, bibliophiles, and dystopian subversives, to name but a few. It's a mix not only of characters, but of time, and of worlds—moving from Russia to Hungary to Canada, from small towns to big cities to the interior of dreams, from suburbia to welfare offices to oman interrogations to Alcoholics Anonymous to the Library of Alexandria.

This new collection, from the author of Doggone, is a kind of beguiling miscellany, with each story opening another door, offering another glimpse, all in the hope that readers come away not so much with the experience of having read one book, but many. After all, it's what a book of stories should be; a scattering of perception rather than a coherence.