Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders (P.S. Series) » (Reprint)

Novelist Neil Gaiman has sent a British businessman tumbling into a fantastic underworld and had a devil and angel comically conspiring to thwart the Apocalypse. He found his biggest success, though, in Death, Dreams and Destruction -- and the four other similarly named siblings who controlled the reins of the human race's emotional impulses in his graphic-novel series The Sandman, a wholesale rejuvenation of graphic fiction that had everyone from Tori Amos to Norman Mailer spinning with, yes, Delirium.

A mysterious circus terrifies an audience for one extraordinary performance before disappearing into the night. . . .

In a Hugo Award–winning story, a great detective must solve a most unsettling royal murder in a strangely altered Victorian England. . . .

Two teenage boys crash a party and meet the girls of their dreams—and nightmares. . . .

These marvelous creations and more showcase the unparalleled invention and storytelling brilliance—as well as the terrifyingly dark and entertaining sense of humor—of the incomparable Neil Gaiman. By turns delightful, disturbing, and diverting, Fragile Things is a gift of literary enchantment from one of the most original writers of our time.

The New York Times - Dave Itzkoff

… as he recounts the origins of each work in the book, it becomes clear that just about everything Gaiman comes into contact with inspires him to write: the invitation of a friend or editor will usually do the trick, but so will a Tori Amos album, a Frank Frazetta painting, the screenplay for "The Matrix" or a photograph of a sock monkey. He is as comfortable performing the act of conjuring in a New York hotel room between recording sessions for an audiobook as he is in a waiting room at a dodgy train station in the south of London.