The Mountie at Niagara Falls and Other Brief Stories

Fiction. Illustrations by Francesco Gallé. THE MOUNTIE AT NIAGARA FALLS is an astonishingly absurd and humorous collection of brief stories. Ranging in length from fifty to seven hundred words, these vital and sudden fictional forays transport the reader to worlds both big and small: a land where green goats roam, voodoo dolls inflict crushing migraine headaches, a typographer from South Porcupine kills a potential love affair with a discussion of sans serif type, a benevolent judge imparts clemency on an admittedly violent man, and the road of experience turns this way and that for a truffle-snuffing boar and a talking cat. These brief tales are alternately fantastic, humorous, menacing, contemplative, absurd, hallucinatory, violent, confessional, and always provocative.

A master of the miniature, Sal Difalco's micro- fictions achieve a wry resonance that longer efforts often miss. They are simultaneously concrete and whimsical, ranging from a woman with the head of a fish, to ballroom dancing lessons, to a pair of thieves in Brian Mulroney masks. Each story is as sharp as a slap. An eloquent and exciting read.--Grant Buday, author of Dragonflies and Rootbound

Salvatore Difalco's stories are small miracles: fresh, literate, startling, and a bit off-kilter, like something seen in a dream or out of the corner of your eye.--Stephen Osborne, Geist

Salvatore Difalco's THE MOUNTIE AT NIAGRA FALLS has more stories in it than I can count. More than 100 in 142 pages. They are intense narrative chunks, full of incident, frequently spliced with zingers and twists, emboldended with absurdity, on occasion sad. It's the full-meal deal, rapid fire. I don't know what to compare it to, except John Lennon and Spike Milligan.--Underground Book Club, (Michael Bryson's blog)