Rick Moody offers a stunningly diverse trio of stories:

The Albertine Notes presents a cataclysmic vision of New York City after the levelling of fifty square blocks of Manhattan by a suitcase bomb. Four million have died. Albertine, the street name for the buzz of a lifetime, is a mind-altering drug through which survivors seek solace in the past.

K&K concerns lonely young Ellie Knight-Cameron, office manager at insurance agency Kolodny & Kolodny, where the office suggestion box is yielding unpleasant messages that escalate to a scary pitch.

And at the centre of The Omega Force is a buffoonish former government official in rocky recovery. Dr Jamie Van Deusen is determined to protect his habitat - its golf courses (and Bloody Marys) and pizza places (and beers) from dark-complected foreign nationals. His patriotism and wild imagination are mainly fuelled by a fall off the wagon . . .