The Doll's Alphabet by Camilla Grudova

A collection of dark, surreal short stories that fuse grotesque body horror and wry black humor to probe the strange inner lives of women, children and the inanimate objects that haunt them. The prose moves from domestic uncanny—dolls, mannequins and disappointed mothers—to hallucinatory transformations and social satire, exploring identity, violence, consumer culture and the fragility of intimacy in vivid, often unsettling images. Inventive, unsettling and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, the stories unsettle familiar comforts while cutting sharply into emotional truth.