The first novel to appear in English by one of the most talked-about and critically acclaimed writers of new Mexican fiction. From a psychoanalyst's couch, the narrator looks back on her bizarre childhood--in which she was born with an abnormality in her eye into a family intent on fixing it. In a world without the time and space for innocence, the narrator intimately recalls her younger self--a fierce and discerning girl open to life's pleasures...

Eighteen-year-old Lena Mattacascar sets out for Scree, a weird place inhabited by Peculiars, seeking the father who left when she was young, but on the way she meets young librarian Jimson Quiggley and handsome marshall Thomas Saltre, who complicate her plans.

Provides information on bizarre phenomenon involving the human body, including a man with blue skin, a man who eats live frogs to cure his coughs, and a man who can charge lightbulbs with his ears.

"These stories are an extra peek at Auggie, a boy born with extreme facial abnormalities, before he started at Beecher Prep and during his first year there. Readers get to see him through the eyes of Julian, the bully; Christopher, Auggie's oldest friend; and Charlotte, Auggie's new friend at school"--

"Kept locked inside the house by her father, 7-year-old Chloe lives in fear and fascination of the outside world, where Abnormals create a constant threat -- or so she believes. When a mysterious stranger offers her a glimpse of what's really happening outside, Chloe soon finds that while the truth isn't so simple, the danger is very real." --