"The tents are leaky. The troupers are weary. The carnival limps into town and sets up for another show. To the public, the carnival means exciting performers. To Nick Coster, those performers are 'mugs and grifters and riffraff - all under one tent.' Nick should know. He puts the show together"--Container.

Mermaids rarely cry, but when they do, tears bubble from their eyes, like tiny transparent balloons.

Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a man could fall so low. There's no way in hell, he vows, that anything like that will ever happen to him. And since Stan is clever and ambitious and not without a useful streak of ruthlessness, soon enough he's going places. Onstage he plays the mentalist with a cute assistant (before long his harried wife), then he graduates to full-blown spiritualist, catering to the needs of the rich...