Here are twelve stunning new short stories by the incomparable Jill McCorkle. Peopled with characters brilliantly like us -- flawed, clueless, endearing -- these stories are also animaled with all manner of mammal, bird, fish, reptile, also flawed and endearing. Jill McCorkle asks, what don't humans share with the so-called lesser species?

Looking for the answer, she takes us back to her longtime fictional home town, Fulton, North Carolina, to meet a broad range of characters wrangling with the double-edged sword that life offers hominids. The voices with which McCorkle tells their stories crackle with wit, but also with a deeper -- and more forgiving -- wisdom than ever before.

In "Billy Goats," the grown-up narrator remembers the pack behavior of Fulton's seventh graders, "too old for kick the can and too young to make out." The single mother employed by a philandering veterinarian in "Dogs" confesses, "If I were a dog I would have been put down by now." In "Snakes," a seasoned wife sees what might have been a snake in the grass and decides to step over it. And, in the exquisite final story, "Fish," a grieving daughter remembers her father's empathy for the ugliest of all fishes.
(from the publisher)

Contents:
- Billy Goats
- Snipe
- Chickens
- Hominids
- Cats
- Dogs
- Toads
- Monkeys
- Snakes
- Turtles
- Starlings
- Fish