These stories, set in both real and unreal locales, arouse more faraway yearnings. All sooner or later come round to the subject of love, but none finds it anywhere we might ordinarily have expected. Bedlam lurks everywhere, from the streets to the afterlife,and every point of view is nagged by glimpses of every other. Thank god for a resilient lyricism, a hint of better music playing not too far off. This electronic edition includes two published pieces that didn't appear in the original edition and a new introduction by the author

Naples is an urban hive that has suffered many an earthquake over the centuries. The next such shakeup provides Domini with his premise. An American family, Jay and Barbara Lulucita and their five children, are something like innocents abroad. In the naive belief that they can help, they come to this crime-riddled and quake-broken city, which in recent years has also suffered another upheaval, namely, the impact of the illegal immigrants pouring in from Africa. There’s a child faith-healer, rather a New Age version of the classic Catholic figure. There’s an unnerving NATO officer, forever in the same outfit yet forever in disguise. Earthquake I.D. renders an Italy complex and exact

A collection of stories set in Oregon’s Willamette Valley — many of the protagonists having moved west to start their lives anew

Movieola is a collection of linked short stories that delights and exploits the language and paraphernalia of industrial Hollywood. The collection delves into a night at the movies, featuring all the familiar types — the rom-com, the action-adventure, the superhero and the spy — but the narratives are still under construction, and every story line is an opportunity for the unimaginable twist. Motive and identity are constantly shifting in these short stories that offer both narrative and anti-narrative, while the stunted shoptalk of the movie business struggles to keep up. With the wit of Steve Erickson’s Zeroville and the inventive spirit of Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics, John Domini offers a collection at once comical and moving, carefully suspended between a game of language and a celebration of American film

A wild, fragmented portrait of the late 70s and the punk scene with a rich and diverse cast of characters including an idealistic editor of a political rag, a pony-riding Boston Brahmin intent on finding herself and shedding her husband, an up-and-coming punkster who fancies evenings at the Knights of Columbus Ladies Auxiliary, an editorial assistant named Topsy Otaka, and more