Hoaxes and Other Stories

A small-time celebrity keeps dying. A Bigfoot hunter and his grandson give presentations on the elusive beast. A disgruntled office drone reaches his breaking point and quits, in the middle of a zip-line trust fall.   The characters populating Brian DiNuzzo’s debut short story collection may be eccentrics, but at their core they are struggling to get through life, dealing with unmanageable bosses and tedious jobs, and trying to maintain their interpersonal and romantic relationships. These are people seeking to improve their circumstances, people striving for utopia but willing to accept much less. Frustrated and weary, downtrodden and misguided, they still hold out for the dim light of hope.   DiNuzzo navigates ordinary settings—Southern California, South Philadelphia, suburban and city streets, office buildings, derelict apartment complexes, the public library, the airport, the shopping mall—with quirky characters and odd situations. These stories ask us to wonder how falsehoods pervade private life. Through his twelve distinct tales, DiNuzzo asks: What’s real? What’s fake? Does it matter?