A little desert town gets a sexual charge from a crash-landed alien. A dysfunctional family tries to summit Everest with "discount Sherpas" and yakloads of emotional baggage. A teen messiah emerges from a game of 3-on-3. The stories in John Henry Fleming's Songs for the Deaf, the first story collection by the "marvelously inventive" and "winningly satiric" author of The Legend of the Barefoot Mailman, put an intimate and modern spin on the American tall tale. Stories in the collection have appeared in McSweeney's, North American Review, Atticus Review, 100% Pure Florida Fiction, and elsewhere.

A story of big dreams and lost shoes, The Legend of the Barefoot Mailman examines how truth becomes fiction in a joyful and hilarious satire of Florida tourism. Josef Steinmetz is a young immigrant seeking fortune in 1880s South Florida. Earl Shank is a small-town postmaster with an entrepreneurial spirit. When fate delivers Josef like an errant letter into Earl's hands, their disastrous lives become the stuff of legend. Originally published in 1995, this 20th Anniversary electronic reprint features a new forward by the ghost of fictional New York Times Reporter, John Thomas. "Winningly satiric" ~Paula Friedman, The New York Times Book Review "An engrossing and highly entertaining tale...The author is a gifted storyteller whose rich style and language provide genuinely treasured moments for all readers." —David A. Berona, Library Journal "A marvelously piquant satire on the American Dream taken to ludicrous extremes...Fleming's insights into...