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 elegant 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