Proper Imposters

In Proper Imposters, four contemporary authors explore the vices and virtues of deception and how it manifests in ways personal, psychological, propulsive, and profound. An accountant at a pencil manufacturing company investigates a series of ominous events behind the facade of the mysterious company where he works; from their deathbeds, fictionalized versions of Nikolai Gogol and Edgar Allen Poe look back on their lives and remember an epic, transformational, and ahistorical road trip they took together as young men; a young woman is startled into action trying to execute “a simple plan” of escape involving cash, a sleep-over by her college roommate and the bold seduction of a boy she has decided to lose her virginity to; and, a reclusive night-shift worker tries a daring weight-loss experiment only to find himself pursued by a stalker no one else can see. Montiel Figueiras, Parker, Bhuvaneswar, and Ockert are devotees and virtuosos of the form, and each novella is lyrically rich in its prose and swift in its plotting. Together, the novellas startle with the consequences of seeing and being seen.