"I've always thought of myself as a reader first and a writer second," author Kelly Link wrote in Locus. "I think the more you read, the more perverse your taste becomes--the more refined." Link's highly acclaimed short story collection Stranger Things Happen is evidence of that highly refined taste, a collection of eleven "strange and tantalizing" tales, as Booklist's Bonnie Johnston described the stories. Johnston further characterized Link's stories as "contemporary fiction with a fairy tale ambience."

"When we go down into the world of Kelly Link, we go way down," wrote SciFi.com contributor John Clute. For Clute, Link is a hard writer to categorize. "It's very nearly impossible to describe Link's work in terms of the old categories: SF, fantasy, horror, supernatural, gothic," Clute maintained. "Like her peers . . . , she knows intimately the genres of old . . . ; she knows them, loves them clearly, and uses them with...