The imaginative and refreshingly original debut short story collection by the bestselling author of Nothing to See Here

In Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, Kevin Wilson’s characters inhabit a world that moves seamlessly between the real and the imagined, the mundane and the fantastic. ‘Grand Stand-In’ is narrated by an employee of the Nuclear Family Supplemental Provider-a company that supplies ‘stand-ins’ for families with deceased, ill, or just plain mean grandparents. And in ‘Blowing Up on the Spot’, a young man works sorting tiles at a Scrabble factory after his parents have spontaneously combusted.

Laced with humour and pathos, the wonderfully inventive stories in Tunneling to the Center of the Earth explore the relationship between loss and death and the many ways we try to cope with both.

Kevin Wilson is the author of the novels Nothing to See Here, The Family Fang and Perfect Little World, as well as the story collections Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, and Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine. He lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, with his wife and two sons.