The ending is the "money note" of the short story, as the critic Louis Menand says, "the High C of the composition." Each of the eighteen stories in WHATEVER HAPPENS, PROBABLY WILL reaches for that high note, delivering an emotional impact that Edgar Allen Poe claimed was the true purpose of the short form. T. D. Johnston, winner of the International Book Award for Best Short Fiction and editor of this collection - which also includes a number of award-winning stories - calls this "the singular effect."

Beginning from places familiar and real, these stories slip into the deeper end of the imagination on their way to delivering,  with attitude, on that promise of singular effect. The slip may be air-brushed with a sly and teasing wink, as in "The Closer," or it may come after a slow burn, as in "Three Buses, Waiting." It may dangle until slashed across the end pages in bolder strokes, as in "The Red Eye Home," or run head-long into a gut-punch, as in "The Man Inside." And often the stories pivot on those things which are whispered and unseen, the shadows which haunt at the margins of the characters' lives - and our own.