Magic for Beginners
The special spirit of this collection of strange and often disturbing short stories is nicely captured by Shelley Jackson's cover illustration, a strange updating of Da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine. The title story brilliantly centers around a cult TV show -- Buffy, The Vampire Slayer meets The Footage -- its fan circle and its intersections with the kind of mundane reality where you can be a teenage kid whose dad writes horror stories and whose aunt leaves you a Las Vegas wedding chapel.