Where I found it: Netgalley! 

Why I picked it up: I adore short stories, but don't read them often enough, so when this collection came out, I snatched it right up (even if it took a loooong time to get to it). 

What’s It All About? There are eight stories in this collection, and the one thing they have in common is that each one is surreal in some way. In the first story, which the book is named for, we meet Red Ziggy, an alien who runs the only Latvian restaurant in Lummings, Alabama. Then, there is the mom whose young daughter is dying in "Invasive Species". She has to find a way to let her daughter go, or a way to go with her. In "Resurrection Bakeoff" people are coming back from the dead, and the main character worries that his dead mistress and dying wife will finally meet. The final story, "Shell Game with Organs", centers on a man whose dying girlfriend asks for his kidney after a month of dating. 

My thoughts: I have a penchant for darker stories, ambiguous endings, and absurd situations, and Jacob Appel delivered on all counts. The characters in the stories find themselves in such bizarre situations (such as having a girlfriend of one month ask for an organ; or trading tutoring for a cab ride so that the driver can meet a girl he met twice), that it's impossible not to feel empathy for them. As bizarre as the situations are, they are entirely plausible and almost unavoidable by the time the story starts. The endings of the stories are possibly my favorite part, as the stories fade to black just before the final action. But don't think that these are ambiguous endings, the reader knows what happens without having to be told explicitly (except for "Measures of Sorrow"). Besides the first story, they are all too realistic (though I don't discount the presence of aliens on Earth), with the surrealness of watching the action through a rainy window. Several of the endings surprised me, which is always fun. 

Genre: short story, surrealism
Themes: too many to mention
Recommended For:  lovers of the strange

Review will post at https://tichwi.ninja/book-review-39-miracles-and-conundrums-of-the-secondary-planets/ on 2.21.23