The fantastic has always been at the edges of Heather O'Neill's work. In her bestselling novels, Lullabies for Little Criminals and The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, she transforms the shabbiest streets of Montreal with her beautiful, freewheeling metaphors. She describes the smallest of things--a stray cat or a secondhand coat--with an intensity that makes them otherworldly.

In Daydreams of Angels, O'Neill's first collection of short stories, she gives free rein to her imaginative gifts. In "Swan Lake for Beginners," generations of Nureyev clones live out their lives in a grand Soviet experiment. In "The Holy Dove Parade," a teenage cult follower writes a letter to explain the motivation behind her crime. And in another tale, a grandmother reveals where babies come from: the beach, where young mothers-to-be hunt for infants in the surf. Each of these beguiling stories twists the beloved narratives of childhood--fairy tales, fables, Bible parables--to uncover the deepest truths of family life.