A short story collection that’s full of fantasy and SF twists and turns.

Many of these 24 tales by Dinsmoor present the reader with a fantastical or supernatural element that takes the story to unexpected places. In “Seeds of Destruction,” 70-something Earl, who’s a former grain-store manager and Public Works department head, receives a box of seeds in the mail and decides to plant them; the U.S. Department of Agriculture gets involved when the resulting plants start running amok and spewing acid. Next, in “Security” a man agrees to a free security system installation and finds himself a prisoner of his own home, rattling the fence and pleading for “someone, even a stranger, to come by and rescue me.” In “The House in the Cul-de-Sac,” Mike and his friend Chuckie break into what they think is an abandoned house, but get caught by the owner, leading to a twisty game of blame. “Mangia Funghi” tells the story of  a woman who forages for mushrooms and finds some that give her a soul-freeing high, but have side effects that affect her dinner guests. This compilation is appealingly unpredictable throughout. However, it can feel somewhat disjointed as the stories shift from SF and speculative fiction to more straightforward historical fiction, such as “A Dog’s Life.” In that story, Dinsmoor truly shows his skill when it comes to dark and graphic detail, as when the narrator tells of his dying pet: “His whole body was convulsing, his left eyeball was protruding nearly a half inch from its socket, and his tongue was sticking out the side of his mouth, as if taunting him.” Still, it’s the twist endings that will keep any readers engaged, whether they’re frightening, depressing, or downright comical.

A somewhat scattered but consistently surprising set of tales.

Dinsmoor (The Yoga Divas and Other Stories, 2010) recounts his stint in rehab for alcoholism in this new memoir.

In 2011, the author, a 53-year-old yoga instructor and freelance writer, checked himself in for a monthlong program of sobriety at the Wetlands Rehabilitation Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. Convinced that he needed to quit drinking by a concerned cabal of friends and family, Dinsmoor was finally willing to seek professional help to curb a habit that had grown worse over the decades: “Time was when a six pack or a small bottle of wine would put me under, but now it took about twice that.” Life in rehab bore a strange resemblance to life back in elementary school: the center was segregated by gender, patients were monitored around the clock, and petty grievances took on inflated importance. Even a certain juvenile sense of humor arose: Dinsmoor remembers how one rehab technician admonished her patients after discovering a crude drawing of genitalia on a sign-in sheet: “From a distance, all I could see was a squiggle, but I was pretty sure I knew what it was.” His planned stay of 28 days ended up stretching to three months, and he recounts his adventures along the road to recovery, including going into withdrawal when he was taken off Ativan, accusing his roommate of secretly using cocaine, and having to bunk with the most active drug dealer in the compound. Through it all, the author tells his tale with an eye for the absurd and the humor of a man who thinks he’s the only sane cuckoo in the nest. He’s a confident writer with a practiced comic timing, and although his story isn’t particularly dramatic or traumatic, it offers welcome insight into the rehabilitation industry and the sorts of characters found therein. The most intriguing conclusion readers may draw from his experience is that despite the fraternity of sponsors and support groups, recovery is ultimately a solitary pursuit. As people fade in and out, fall off the wagon, or disappear, one is reminded that the only person who can keep a patient sober is the patient himself.

A funny, rambling account of addiction and recovery.

A writer for the Chucklehead, a comedy troupe based in New York City in the 1980s and ’90s, shares fictionalized first-person short stories about that experience.

A student humor magazine editor at Dartmouth, Dinsmoor was working in medical publishing in New York City in the 1980s when he joined the Chucklehead comedy troupe, which experienced a measure of good press and popularity in its day, including a Vogue article entitled “They’ll Take Manhattan.” The collection’s 18 short stories feature an often overly imbibing Rob (Dinsmoor uses pseudonyms for other troupe members) in various high jinks: rehearsing/videotaping sketches (with one sketch represented in full), panicking about losing videotapes, etc. The last third of the collection describes events after the troupe’s unraveling, which began when Rob’s girlfriend/soon-to-be-wife wanted to move to the Boston area. These remaining stories include Rob driving some of the troupe in his “Death Car” to a member’s wedding in Atlantic City and his traveling to Hollywood for the long-time-coming nuptials of troupe member Angie, who on several occasions flirted with Rob, and her boyfriend, the troupe’s musical director, in the mid-1990s. The collection concludes with an elegiac reunion at the funeral of a troupe member who died of AIDS. Dinsmoor (The Yoga Diva and Other Stories, 2011) has a knack for creating slice-of-life moments and droll endings. “Already they were covered with fresh posters still wet with glue,” Dinsmoor notes at the end of the “Raid on the East Village,” a saga about the troupe risking arrest to put up some very short-lived promotional flyers. Some readers may wish for more real-life details, especially regarding the AIDS tragedy and Dinsmoor’s apparently now-ex wife. Still, Dinsmoor has sketched out impressive impressionistic testimony to 1980s creative and partying spirit as well as its sober aftermath.

Wry reminiscences of the joys and struggles of being a young comedy artist in the 1980s.