The highly anticipated follow-up to Alexander MacLeod's critically acclaimed debut, Animal Person is a wry and perfectly-observed collection of short stories about intimacy, family and the struggle to connect Animal Person is a collection of startling juxtapositions. Criminals and bystanders, siblings and strangers, infants, adolescents, young parents, and the elderly, mammals, reptiles and fish: unexpected encounters occur and every meeting is an opportunity for recognition or rejection. An empty-nest couple, separated after years of coexisting, find themselves pulled into the dreams of their silent, gazing rabbit; a mysterious passenger in search of his missing suitcase roams through the caverns of a 1970s LA airport; a piano recital goes wildly astray; and a great-aunt refuses to apologise as she struggles to find a place for everything in the tight space of her senior's apartment. In the adjoining motel room, a serial killer plans his next move; and a petty argument between two sisters is interrupted by an unexpected visitor. The eight stories in Animal Person are filled with wonder and yearning as MacLeod captures the fleeting intensities that shape all of our lives. MacLeod is a master of the short story form, and this is a collection that beats with raw emotion and shimmers with the complexity of our shared human experience. 'Exquisite...expertly paced and finely observed' New York Times 'Excellent... The eight stories, composed in crystalline prose, glimmer and gleam with yearning and loss' Eithne Farry, Daily Mail 'Tender, funny and ever-surprising' Lynn Coady

AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NOTABLE BOOK OF 2012
IRISH TIMES BOOK-TO-READ FOR 2012
ATLANTIC BOOK AWARD WINNER
FINALIST FOR THE GILLER PRIZE AND THE FRANK O'CONNOR AWARD
A " GLOBE & MAIL, QUILL & QUIRE, " AND AMAZON.CA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
"Engrossing, thrilling and ultimately satisfying: each story has the weight of a novel." --"The Economist"
"This was the day after Mike Tyson bit off Evander Holyfield's ear. You remember that. It was a moment in history - not like Kennedy or the planes flying into the World Trade Center - not up at that level. This was something much lower, more like Ben Johnson, back when his eyes were that thick, yellow color and he tested positive in Seoul after breaking the world-record in the hundred. You might not know exactly where you were standing or exactly what you were doing when you first heard about Tyson or about Ben, but when the news came down, I bet it stuck with you. When Tyson bit off Holyfield's ear, that cut right through the everyday clutter." --from "Miracle Mile"

Two runners race a cargo train through the darkness of a rat-infested tunnel beneath the Detroit River. A drugstore bicycle courier crosses a forbidden threshold in an attempt to save a life and a young swimmer conquers her fear of water only to discover she's caught in far more dangerous currents. An auto-worker who loses his family in a car accident is forced to reconsider his relationship with the internal combustion engine.

Alexander MacLeod is a writer of "ferocious intelligence" and "ferocious physicality" (CTV). "Light Lifting," his celebrated first collection, offers us a suite of darkly urban and unflinching elegies that explore the depths of the psyche and channel the subconscious hopes and terrors that motivate us all. These are elemental stories of work and its bonds, of tragedy and tragedy barely averted, but also of beauty, love and fragile understanding.