FROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR hailed by The New Yorker as "a virtuoso of wak- ing dreams" comes a dazzling new collection of darkly comic stories united by their obsession with ob-session. In Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser transports us to unknown universes that uncannily resemble our own. The collection is divided into three parts that fit seamlessly together as a whole. It opens with a bang, as "Cat 'n' Mouse" reimagines the deadly ritual between cartoon rivals in a comedy of dynamite and anvils a masterly prologue that sets the stage for the alluring, very grown-up twists that follow. Part One, "Vanishing Acts," features stories of risk and escape: a lonely woman disappears without a trace; a high school boy becomes entangled with his best friend's troubled sister; and a group of teenagers play a treacherous game that pushes them deep into "the kingdom of forbidden things. Excess reigns in the vivid, haunting places of Part Two's "Impossible Architectures," where domes enclose whole cities, and a king's master miniaturist creates objects so tiny that soon his entire world is invisible. Finally, "Heretical Histories" presents startling alternatives to the remembered past. "A Precursor of the Cinema" proposes a new, enigmatic form of illu-sion. And in the astonishing "The Wizard of West Orange" a famous inventor sets out to simulate the sense of touch-but success brings disturbing conse-quences. Sensual, mysterious, Dangerous Laughter is a mesmerizing journey through brilliantly realized laby: rinths of mortal pleasures that stretch the boundaries of the ordinary world to their limits-and occasionally beyond