Secret Life is the definitive collection by a young writer widelyregarded as one of the best fantasists in the world. Jeff VanderMeer hashandpicked these 23 stories (three written exclusively for this collection),which reflect a diversity of approaches to key questions about the humancondition: mortality, love, obsession and creativity -- all shot throughwith dark humor and irony. Secret Life represents the author's continuingeffort to stretch the narrative boundaries of fiction while still entertainingthe reader. Yet all of these stories are related thematically: transformationand what it means to be human -- and the reader too will be transformed,into one of the faithful, a confirmed believer in the short fiction of JeffVanderMeer.