Several of the book's 11 stories are set in Elk Tooth, a two-bit town of three bars and 80 residents, many with mouth-clogging names: Gilbert Wolfscale, Hard Winter Ulph, Wiregrass Cokendall.

ECONOMIST: New fiction

All he had discovered was a piece of ape-like skull, a tooth and, some way away, a bit of humanoid femur, which he believed came from the same individual.

ECONOMIST: How man has learned, through history, about his habitat

"Your honor, last night I bit down on something, and I have an abscess in my tooth, " Muhammad said, according to the court transcript.

CNN: Muhammad blames toothache for lawyer switch