A spinster in love with a tobacco-smoking ghost. A lonely one-eyed monster who wanders the desert. A Medieval saint who delights in her “miraculous ruine.” In Little Fortified Stories, award-winning writer Barbara Black conjures a microcosm of characters that defy convention. In these very short stories, curious worlds are encapsulated like a series of snow globes, swirling with deep emotion and teeming with strangeness. Inspired by art, music, alcoholic spirits, and what Black calls “authentic fabrications” from her own ancestry, these eclectic tales are told with an eye to the absurd. Buzzing with hypnotic intensity, Little Fortified Stories presents a world in which everything is theatre and the regular rules don’t apply.