A woman returns to her former home to take her children, but they have disappeared, and instead, she sees her ex-husband's parents dancing in the garden, naked and screaming like wild animals. A man and his daughter roam the neighborhood, breaking into houses and stealing personal items, and when they are finally caught, the situation escalates in unimaginable ways. An old woman is insidiously threatened by her neighbors - or does she no longer have any neighbors at all? Seven Empty Houses dissects our fears and the collective nightmares of our time, making us doubt what we call normality. No matter how much we resist it, in these masterfully laconic tales, we come disturbingly close to the uncanny. Samanta Schweblin is a virtuoso of disturbance. She guides us through seven b.