Often set in Western border states, these stories will pique, entertain, and occasionally shock you. As they grapple with love and death, a motley collection of modern desperados--poets, blacksmiths, a red mule, dangerous old ladies, lion hunters, and even perhaps a ghost--manage to find sparkles in the dark and a few crazy moments of grace.

SUSAN LOWELL is the author of nineteen books for adults and children, including The Three Little Javelinas, now a southwestern children's classic, and Ganado Red: A Novella and Stories, which won the Milkweed Editions National Fiction Award. Her short stories have appeared in the Southern Review, American Fiction, and the online Saturday Evening Post. A fourth-generation Arizonan born in Chihuahua, Mexico, she divides her time between Tucson and a ranch on the border.