"His wasn't a world war. It was one of the smaller wars, but just as deadly as any other. "Wars are like snakes," his first commanding officer said to him. "Some of the little ones " "can be even worse than the monsters."" --from "Veterans" Franklin fears his family is in danger from a fellow veteran he saved during the war. A young boy entranced by opera despite being born into the rock-and- roll generation finds himself playing the lead roll in a present-day tragedy. Travel agents happily lost in the paperwork of other people's adventures break away for an impromptu trip without-to their horror-a destination. Pitch-perfect and unpredictable, these stories cover a wide terrain of voices, plot, and imagery. Rachael Ingalls's richly drawn characters slip from the ordinary into the surreal with an elegance that can only come from a master of the form. Mostly set in the United States, the stories in "Times Like These" are available for the first time