His keeper, unfortunately, has neither sympathy nor time for exploring the source of these dreams. So Rodney forms an alliance with his researcher's young daughter, Pippa, and the two happily investigate mouse narratives together until the terrible day when "Flowers for Algernon," by Daniel Keyes, breaks their hearts.

Mining the dark underbelly of folklore and classic fiction seems to be Palwick's stock in trade, to judge from this group of strange, touching and generally downbeat stories. "Gestella" chronicles the marriage of a European werewolf and an immature American academic. "Ever After" is another take on Cinderella, this time from the point of view of the godmother, who is emphatically not a fairy. "The Old World" reveals what happens to Earth's most devout conspiracy theorists when humankind experiences a radical evolutionary shift ... and ends up a benevolent, universally nurturing species.

The stories in this collection cover a wide range of subjects and genres. Palwick creates a convincing near-future Nevada in "Going after Bobo," in which a boy tries to rescue his lost cat. "The Fate of Mice" and "Jo's Hair" hover near the borders of metafiction, while "Elephant" is a dark, psychological fantasy. Monster stories and reimagined fairy tales fill out the rest of the book. Finally, Palwick closes with "GI Jesus," a bittersweet novella about faith, death and miracles that was a finalist for the 1997 World Fantasy Award.

A potent brew of mystery and heartache

The 11 stories in this collection are deeply emotional pieces of work, for Palwick sculpts her characters with such care that they and their problems—be they the problems of a werewolf, a vampire or Jo March from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women—are entirely believable. They are about people—women, mostly—trapped by economics, circumstance and, frequently, men; people seeking and usually failing to escape the traps that make up their lives. Palwick's characters start out in a bad place, as often as not, only to find themselves forced by crisis to look beyond their immediate pain to confront the eventual certainty of death.

The overall tone of The Fate of Mice is therefore somber, with its meditations on human cruelty and mortality, its moments of shocking brutality and its turns of plain bad luck. Within this palette of gray, the weaker stories tend to vanish—"Elephant" is interesting but lacks the impact of other pieces, and "Stormdusk" seems, ever so slightly, to miss its mark. This is not a book of tidy resolutions and simple answers; its stories are gracefully knotted, densely lyrical ... and intensely demanding.

That said, this collection is not entirely without cheer: The zombie story, "Beautiful Stuff"—while less intricate in its construction than its fellows—rings with sincerity and sweetness. Palwick's narrative voice is full of ironies and side jokes, even within the grimmest of tales, that do break up the gloom. Her closing piece, "GI Jesus," is both uplifting and uproariously funny, and it offers a few delightful surprises.

Chilly, haunting and at times deeply disturbing, The Fate of Mice is a book that invites quiet contemplation, one whose images and characters cut deep, leaving their traces on readers for a considerable time to come.