What Burns - Dale Peck

The first collection of short fiction from Lambda Award-winning novelist Dale Peck spans twenty-five years of writing, including two O. Henry award-winners and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. The stories in What Burns examine the extremes of desire against a backdrop of family, class, and mortality. In Bliss, a young man befriends the convicted felon who murdered his mother when he was only a child. In Not Even Camping Is Like Camping Anymore, a teenage boy fends off the advances of a five-year-old his mother babysits. And in Dues, a man discovers that everything he owns is borrowed from someone else--including his time on earth. Walking the tightrope between tenderness and violence that has defined Peck's work since the publication of his first novel, Martin and John , through his most recent, Night Soil , What Burns reveals Peck's mastery of the short form.