Book excerpt: A new collection of stories from the Pushcart Prize-winning author of The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure. Glittering with mischief and perversity, Jack Pendarvis’s latest collection of short fiction introduces readers to a world of losers poised on the brink of all sorts of disaster – a world only a wink and a nod away from our own. In the title novella a fundamentalist teenager must single-handedly confront the horrors of a spiritual quest filled with secular humanists, an apocalyptic folk artist, and a couple of movie stars. The other stories deal poignantly with – among other things – a young millionaire pretending to be a detective, Alabamians getting violent in a New York bar, the good folks who invented diarrhea-inducing chewing gum, a man who becomes an impromptu drug mule, magnetic healers, and a candidate making a sad speech for office. Underlying each comedic gem and neurotic twist is an intelligence and empathy rarely found in modern satire. Like the best guidebooks, Your Body is Changing will invite you in with its zany humor and indict you with its moving truths.