Vampires in the Lemon Grove

A new short story collection from Karen Russell is a joy. Her fascination with injecting fantasy and metaphysical characters into mundane situations and high drama family structures is a joy. There is something of the daydreaming child, thinking up the stories that lift her out of her surroundings about Karen Russell. With elements of dystopia, oodles of humour and a lightness of touch, these short stories make a phenomenal collection.

On Strong Beach, an awkward teen with a terrible haircut has a reversal of fortune when he finds artefacts from the future lining a seagulls' nest. By the Hox River in Nebraska, a window fuels both family pride and deadly revenge. In a godforsaken barn in what they suspect is Kentucky, Presidents Eisenhower, John Adams and Rutherford B. Hayes are bemused to find themselves reincarnated as horses. And in the collection's title story, Clyde and Magreb - he a traditional capes-and-coffins vampire, she the more progressive variety - settle in an Italian lemon grove in the hope that its ripe fruit will keep their thirst for blood at bay.

It's Karen Russell's imagination and her sense of humour that make these stories a masterful display of her natural ability to spin a yarn.