VAMPIRES IN THE LEMON GROVE - Karen Russel

A dejected teenager discovers that the universe is communicating with him through talismanic objects left behind in a seagull's nest. A community of girls held captive in a silk factory slowly transmute into human silkworms, spinning delicate threads from their own bellies, and escape by seizing the means of production for their own revolutionary ends. A massage therapist discovers she has the power to heal by manipulating the tattoos on a war veteran's lower torso. When a group of boys stumble upon a mutilated scarecrow bearing an uncanny resemblance to the missing classmate they used to torment, an ordinary tale of high school bullying becomes a sinister fantasy of guilt and atonement. In a family's disastrous quest for land in the American West, the monster is the human hunger for acquisition, and the victim is all we hold dear. And in the collection's marvelous title story-an unforgettable parable of addiction and appetite, mortal terror and mortal love-two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove try helplessly to slake their thirst for blood.