The Stories: 
"Lechonito the Holy lnnocent"
"The Mystery Sleeper of Balite Drive"
"The Traveling Salesman and the Split Woman"
"Balikbayan"
"Gotita de Dragon"

Nick Joaquin, novelist, playwright, poet, journalist, historian, and biographer, is widely regarded as the greatest Filipino writer in English of the twentieth century. He has produced a body of work "unmatched in richness and range by any of his contemporaries." He was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts, and the National Artist Award for
Literature, the highest recognition given by the state to an artist, for his "rare excellence and significant contribution to literature."

Here, in this collection of five short stories for both young and old, the great master uses both his whimsy and his sense of the gothic to re-imagine Philippine folktales.

"The stories in this collection are an exhilarating mixture of mythical fantasy and folklore and fairy tale, superstition and legend, science fiction, mystery, and divine intervention. They are told with the same combination of depth and amusement that appears in all of Nick Joaquin's prose. We can't help by sympathize with is characters--man, woman, creature, child, talking animal, ar animated object--and feel distressed whey they are mistaken or flawed. Sometimes fate deals them a terrible blow...though thankfully, they recover or receive absolution, reform or transform, and the ending turns out to be much better than expected." From the Introduction by Cyan Abad-Jugo, educator and author of Salingkit