Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo Interviews, Faux-Lectures, QuasiLetters, 'Found' Texts and Other Fraudulent Artifacts edited by David Shields and Matthew Vollmer Norton, 12.99[pounds sterling], pp. 363, ISBN 97830393341959

Despite its playfully obfuscating title, the rationale behind this anthology is pretty straightforward. A 'fake' is a fictional text that purports to be--or, perhaps more accurately, is presented in the guise of--a nonfictional document. Of course, there's noth ing new about stories of this type: the epistolary novel has been around for centuries. However, as the editors point out in their introduction (itself a kind of fake, being presented as a 'how to' guide), ours is an age awash with different types of written communication, from texts, blogs and emails to marketing mailshots, application forms and end-of-year-reports. Any writer inclined to fake it, therefore, has a wide variety of formats to choose from.

And the 40 contributors to this volume certainly make use of the full gamut. There are stories here based upon improbable Twitter feeds (Kari Anne Roy's 'Chaucer Tweets the South by Southwest Festival') and embarrassing misdirected emails (Robin Hemley's...