“As Tonia watched the world slide by, strapped in her seat in the car, she felt another presence always, slightly to the right and behind, almost leaning against her, a pressure, an existence that was intimately reliable. This is good, she would think, and then there’d be an echo, ‘I like it too.’ The other voice always liked motion, and it soothed them both, to be lifted, to be carried, to be rocked, to be bathed. Tonia eventually called the other voice Vivian. Vivian was the ghost in her head, the sly voice next to her heart.”

You find you’re just one of many copies being generated by a 3-D printer, or hear that the earth is the subject of a rather cheerful invasion. Whatever the trouble, you still have to find your way . . .

Playful, sober, profound and profane, the characters in Karen Heuler’s stories may build bridges that no one else wants, or join up with a vengeful doll to fight the evil that men do, or remark upon the incursions of a worm that can change time. No matter what impossible event transpires, they face it. Rise up, they seem to say; rise up and meet the unexpected and the unacceptable, and make them yours.