A golf pro claims he was abducted by aliens before the big local tournament, though townspeople figure he finally fell off the wagon. A line cook comes face-to-face with something from his worst nightmare only to be mocked mercilessly by his peers. A beer league hockey player worries he didn't do enough to help a former teammate-and wonders if it was the man or his old pair of skates that was haunted. In these 20 stories, the mundane and the menacing meet over a pint at the local rink on the darkest night of the year, or around a midsummer bonfire beneath the stars on the shores of a deep forbidden lake.

"Where the Pavement Turns to Sand is a collection of working class, everyday heartbreaks and bad decisions. In a refreshing rural Canadian setting, the characters in these slice of life tales stumble through divorce, debt, bad sex, and boring jobs, but also curling robots, aliens, jackalopes, wendigo, lots of legs wet with urine, and (maybe) sasquatches with an unexpected whimsy. What makes it work is Birnie's signature dark humor and conversational style that makes every story feel like it was your neighbor telling it to you over a beer around a campfire, or at the rink. Surprising, entertaining, grimy and weird."

-Meagan Lucas, author of Songbirds and Stray Dogs and Here in the Dark, Editor in Chief of Reckon Review.