Kevin Brockmeier Books in Order

Howie receives a mysterious guide instead of the joke book he ordered through school. Its map reveals magical names that transport him around his hometown, drawing him and his friends into the secrets hidden beneath familiar streets.

Stories combine ordinary loss and anxiety with impossible events, including a descending sky that mirrors a failing marriage. Children, caretakers, and believers struggle to understand love and separation as familiar realities become strange without losing their emotional weight.

In an afterlife city, the dead remain as long as someone living remembers them. As its population mysteriously dwindles, a researcher stranded in Antarctica struggles to survive, connecting two worlds through memory and the bonds between people.

After his seven-year-old daughter disappears, writer Christopher retreats into imagined worlds where she still lives. His stories explore possible futures for Celia and the grief of his wife, neighbors, and others affected by her loss.

Seventh grader Dwayne discovers hidden messages in the grooves of ordinary products. Following their calls for help leads him toward a businessman with a sinister scheme, turning everyday objects into clues in an increasingly strange mystery.

An isolated woman imagines escaping into the sky while a pastor encounters a troubling temptation in this speculative story collection. Fantastical situations emerge from overlooked corners of daily life, revealing longing and uncertainty beneath seemingly ordinary experiences.

Human pain suddenly becomes visible as glowing light from wounds and injuries. A journal of a husband’s love notes passes among six people, connecting their lives as this inexplicable transformation exposes suffering that was once private.

Brockmeier revisits his seventh-grade year in a memoir told through his younger self. Friendships, embarrassment, school mishaps, and the hope of reinventing himself reveal the uncertainty of adolescence and the distance between childhood experience and adult memory.

One hundred brief ghost stories explore what follows death through haunting trees, dangerous shadows, missed love, and unexpected messengers. Their shifting moods examine the fears, attachments, and absurdities that persist when the familiar world opens onto an uncertain afterlife.