Valley of the Dogs, Dark Stories

Dark Stories for Readers with Surreal, Realistic, and Deep TastesSilver Medal Winner of the 2021 Reader's Favorite International Contest for Best Adult Anthology

An Indie B.R.A.G.Medallion Honoree, 2021

9.25 overall Evaluation at BookLife, Publishers Weekly

Hollywood and Broadway are icons of the American Dream. But what happens to those who feed off that dream? Just as drug cartels have many underlings, who must get paid along the journey to the addicts, so do the characters who need to be nourished by the luminaries who make up this star-studded world above us. James Musgrave's collection of eleven stories, in many ways, addresses the theme of 'star power,' but in a way that satirizes the stereotypical 'Hollywood endings' in very unique and literary ways. This collection has a remedy for the past year's traumas caused by a worldwide pandemic.

Award-winning short fiction author, Jacob M. Appel says, 'With the publication of Valley of the Dogs, Jim Musgrave joins the ranks of George Saunders, Steven Millhauser, and Kevin Brockmeier at the heart of the modern American short story's second great renaissance.'

'If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.'

― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood