Book excerpt: A collection of stories that are, by turns, intense, visionary, mysterious and humorous, touching matters as diverse as spontaneous human combustion, dentists mysteriously disappearing from a town that appears on no maps, a former drug dealer searching for her long-lost home and missing dog, a murderer setting in motion The Plan. In the title story, Lynerkim's Dance, a contract assassin plagued by visions of a giant comet striking earth, seeks to unravel his father's disappearance and fiery death, while carrying out a deadly assignment during which he himself becomes the target.