Aurora Baldealis - Meg Pokrass;Jeff Friedman

"Bald men flare like matchsticks, lighting up the caves around them," Jeff Friedman and Meg Pokrass write in Aurora Baldealis, a collection of fabulist micro stories in which two master storytellers imagine a universe where bald men are mirrors for other bald men, where an angel can break or mend a heart, where the Northern lights glow in the memory of all the beautiful, lost souls wandering this world.

The veil of the ordinary world is lifted in these stories: A woman belly dances and sells pyramids to the Pharaohs on Sappho Avenue; a mother harvests juicy tomatoes on a space station near the moon; and a son wears special glasses that cause him to see his mother everywhere. Friedman and Pokrass's Aurora Baldealis is a match for the Northern Lights.