The title story of Julie Roorda’s sixth book made me smile: the deadpan narrator explains the difficulty of maintaining the well-being of your pet African clawed frog and the life lessons it can teach your child when it doesn’t get what it needs. The next story involves a shy young man on a bus who sees an image of himself on the tablet of a woman sitting near him; in the photo they are clearly together, yet he is certain he has never seen her before. The one after that takes us on a Valentine’s Day Haunted Tour through Toronto. Plus 30 more similarly unhinged stories.

One of the most beguiling attributes of the short-story genre is its malleability. These stories are shape-shifters, tugging and testing the elasticity of the form in ways that often subvert readerly expectations.