~65,000 WORDS
©2014
Freehand Books

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Longlisted for the 2014 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award

In his confident debut, Greg Bechtel offers ten magnetically charged stories about the impossible-turned-possible — secrets, paranoia, sex, conspiracies, and magic — as he effortlessly shatters the boundaries between speculative and literary fiction.

Boundary Problems vibrates on the edge of meaning, as carjackers, accidental gunrunners, and small-town cabbies struggle to wring meaning from the strange events that overtake them. Bechtel’s worlds of mystery and magic constantly challenge his characters’ pursuit of logical explanations. These compelling tales blur lines and push boundaries — into the surreal, into the playful, into the irresistible energy of uncertainty.

“Each of Greg Bechtel’s stories is a perfect little puzzle-box: one marvels at their perfect geometries while anticipating that dazzling moment where every piece slots flush. These finely-crafted, emotionally resonant tales will stay with me a long, long time.” — Craig Davidson, author of Cataract City and Rust and Bone

“Here is beauty and strangeness on every page. In these finely written stories, people meet, connect for a moment in time, then vanish like quantum particles. Sometimes, in the best tradition of Philip K. Dick,  reality itself seems to be unraveling. But Bechtel is too canny to restrict himself to any genre conventions—these are stories about how we live now, and he’s figured out that we’re all leading science fictional lives.” —Daryl Gregory, author of Pandemonium and Unpossible

“Where magic meets physics, Bechtel writes in the dynamic margins of possibility.  Boundary Problems is a mind-bending vacation from the ordinary.” — Saleema Nawaz, author of Bone and Bread and Mother Superior

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