The Taste of Penny

"Jeff Parker's stories are mysterious, heartfelt, and utterly captivating. In the Taste of Penny he casually flexes a Voltron-like combo of writerly gifts: Ron Carlson's mastery of voice, Elmore Leonard's uncanny ear for dialogue, and Raymond Carver's spare wit. This collection contains some of the most absorbing and brightly imaginative stories I've come across in some time."

"Whether moose legs or tongue tips or sperm counts or pennies lodged into a throat, Parker disassembles us so compellingly that we no longer wish to be whole. His inventiveness revises the world as we know it with audacious wit."

"Here we have characters in Russia messing up in hilarious ways; taking care of a cheating girlfriend's pet bird; failing miserably at roadside tests in front of cops; spraying indoor centipedes with cheap cologne. Has my life ever been this bad? Nope. Have I ever felt like such a foreigner in an already-strange land? Not even close. Do I wish that I'd written these stories? Absolutely. I'm jealous. The Taste of Penny's the best ride at a spectacular carnival."

"These stories are haunting and constantly surprising."

"Jeff Parker is a writer who understands that voice is the doorway to all true beauty in fiction. Tight, wry, dark, and deeply funny---he is a master of the hyper-compressed sentence that explodes with more meaning and nuance than should be possible."---George Saunders, author of Pastoralia and In Persuasion Nation

Jeff Parker is the author of the novel Ovenman (Tin House). His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in American Short Fiction, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Indiana Review, Ploughshares, Tin House, The Walrus, and others. He teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto.