Introduction by Amal El-Mohtar Allosaurus Burgers 57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides We Are the Cloud Conspicuous Plumage Shattered Sidewalks of the Human Heart Shucked The Beasts We Want to Be Calved When Your Child Strays from God Things with Beards Ghosts of Home The Heat of Us: Notes Towards an Oral History Angel, Monster, Man Sun in an Empty Room

A beast shaped like a man exits a freight train in New York. He barely knows why he is there or from where he came. He has one goal this night, and that is to survive one more day in a world of hostility ruled by conspiracy and malice. He is Reborn, driven by hunger, his need to kill the human herd, and by fear of the masters of this city. His only choice is fealty, the initiation simple: travel to a foreign land, and pay a hermit for his past. But in the spiderweb of politics nothing is easy, nothing is straightforward. Once you are a pawn of the system there is no way back. The only chance for freedom is the other side of the board, in a game played for the planet.Of Beasts and Men is a standalone novel. It is part of the Last Lullabies universe.

Examines the relationship of man and animals through the centuries, revealing the steps taken toward the protection of furred and feathered creatures in the United States.

"What you feel first is the simplicity-of sentences, of tone, of description-but then before you know it, complexity has crept in on every level, and by the end of each of these stories you are left marveling at the layers of life history and humanity Curtis Smith has evoked. Beasts and Men, compressed, poetic, poignant, and compassionate, contains some of the best very short fiction I have read in a very long time." -Robin Black, author of If I loved you, I would tell you this

Breaks new ground in fairy-tale studies by offering male writers a chance to reflect on their relationships to fairy tales.