''''The Garden of Bad Dreams'''' is a seductive collection of short stories from Christopher Hope: a conjurer of strange places and displaced people.From the story of the entertainer who is compelled to collect small people, to the monk who pushes away a mountain from his monastery, we are confronted with characters who could have been plucked from a fairy tale and yet are very much part of our own world.Transporting us from the Malaysian highlands to an Ex - Servicemen's Estate in Badminton, from a zoo in the midst of a civil war to a forested hillside in central Serbia, ''''The Garden of Bad Dreams'''' is a constantly surprising, highly addictive mixture of the absurd and the darkly familiar. It is a masterful collection.