The dog is missing. The tap water has suddenly and inexplicably developed a salty taste. The baby has managed its way around the obstacle. The girls wish to leave the playpen. The pirates will soon come ashore. Trouble takes many forms in Rob Walsh's debut collection of stories, from the seemingly banal to the absurd and fantastic, complicating the lives of his characters and inciting a electric turbulence that ambulates these sixteen stories into new and unexpected territory. "Very seldom anymore do I come across a book that makes me feel like everything-anything-is possible. Troublers does. Walsh's tautly ele-gant language renders a world at once iconic and strange, one in which every action and sentiment seems lovingly considered, mercilessly dissected, and expertly defamiliarized. A terrific first book, Troublers points to a new way of doing literature." -Brian Evenson, author of Windeye "Walsh's stories are so odd and wonderful that they seem to have been treasured from some heretofore nonexistent Eastern European country that should now, finally, be properly celebrated." -Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances "In Troublers, Rob Walsh entertains marvelous, profound little dances which never fail to twirl you somewhere you've never been. In his world, 'heartless betrayal is both the engine of modern television and a kind of stainless upholstery to which no ethical principal can stick.' But inside Troublers' beautifully rendered exterior lies a heart so pure. 'Let's poke the thing!?' as Walsh directs." -Terese Svoboda, author of Bohemian Girl "This hilarious collection may likely be the most honest portrait of hu-man behavior you will ever read. Using the fantastic as pitch and the sinister as yaw, each story steers you on a hovering journey over the bumbling, spellbinding fields of all that we lose and fail to understand." -Alissa Nutting, author of Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls "Troublers wields a pace of the impending. Declarative, modest, wry. Like Faulkner, Walsh layers and interlaces, envelopes us in heat and dryness and longing." -J.A. Tyler, author of Colony Collapse