Meet Lea Tillim, aka Cadaver Dimples, Star of Morgues and Emergency Rooms. Scarecrow thin, with a sharp crew cut and a dead face, Lea’s a girl with a talent. She can think you into a heart attack if you cross her–or, if she’s feeling kind, just a bad case of indigestion. She has only one friend in the world, her cat, Tule. You see, a girl like Lea can’t be too careful whom she shows her talent to. In her experience it only leads to troubles and tragedies.

Now it’s led her to Jack Konar, who’s secretly building something strange and wonderful in an abandoned section of the local Sears and Roebuck. According to Jack, it’s all part of a master plan to rescue the Chosen from this godforsaken planet. But the agents of the Evil Ones–cleverly disguised as ordinary people and sometimes even cats–are trying to stop him. Jack needs a girl with Lea’s special talents. It would all sound just too crazy for words if the most dangerous and unexpected thing of all hadn’t happened. After years of the best poker face grief could buy, Lea finds herself slowly coming back to life . . . and falling in love with the savior of the world.

"The standup comedy of Fintushel's stage work echoes through his debut novel, a highly original, seriously skewed take on kabbalistic lore, like a shofar on Yom Kippur. Lea Tillim, a 16-year-old runaway, has a psychic 'talent' that allows her to kill anyone who gets in her way. She begins to blossom after she rescues Jack 'the Yid' Konar, a smalltime drug dealer who also happens to be 'the Chosen of the Chosen of the Chosen.' The Yid has constructed a mystical spaceship — complete with a Fleshpot and the Holy of Holies — to transport the select few to the true Ish-ra-el. As Lea aids Jack on his quest, she gets stoned, receives epiphanies, is chased by the mob, is befriended by an adorably whiny minyan, helps foil the Evil One and his marquetry ladies and teams with an unlikely multitude from various religious persuasions. Though Lea's voice wanders from infatuated teen to world-weary kvetch, this uneven coming-of-age story is a virtual cornucopia of strange delights." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

If the world ended tomorrow and your soul was ready and your loins were sated, next you’d need a good yarn and a hard laugh. That’s Eliot Fintushel’s brilliant Breakfast with the Ones You Love. A deft, hilarious, and lovable apocalyptic tale that mashes the hardboiled, the nightmarish and the absurdly mundane like some new pharmaceutical with side effects that are equal parts joy, terror and wisdom. Not a bad way to go.—Patrick O’Leary , author of The Impossible Bird

"Wild, wonderful, crazy...like Howard Waldrop, R. A. Lafferty, Avram Davidson, and T. C. Boyle, Fintushel is a one off; and Breakfast with the Ones You Love reads like P. J. Wodehouse (on speed) collaborating with Isaac Bashevis Singer, Harlan Ellison, Woody Allen, and Barry N. Malzberg. "—Jack Dann, author of The Memory Cathedral and The Rebel: An Imagined Life of James Dean

"Eliot Fintushel and his nifty stories have been an ongoing joy for me for years."—Harlan Ellison

“Breakfast with the Ones You Love has the comedic timing of a pro.... delightfully wacky.”—Denver Post

Meet Lea Tillem: a 16-year-old runaway whose boyfriend believes it is his job to call down a sacred spaceship. But it is this world that Lea has to worry about, which includes being courted by the Russian Mafia, her strange landlady, and that is just the beginning.

Eliot Fintushel has published short stories in Asimov's, Analog, Strange Horizons, Amazing Stories, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Crank!, and in the anthologies Jewish Sci-Fi Stories for Kids, Jewish Detective Stories for Kids, Nalo Hopkinson's Mojo: Conjure Stories, and Polyphony 4. His fiction has appeared in the annual anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction several times. He has been nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Award and the Nebula Award, and has twice won the National Endowment for the Arts Solo Performer Award.