The mind of Neil Gaiman is a fertile place of gods, monsters, aliens, magic lingering in ordinary places and a sense that the world is a much wilder, stranger place than we think it is. 
 And all those things come up in "Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances," Gaiman's third collection of his short stories and poems -- while these stories can be as different from each other as humanly possible (an ode to David Bowie, a few twisted fairy tales, a historical story about a Scottish dwarf with revenge on his mind), they share a sense of magic and cosmic wonderment, misting through his elegant, versatile prose. 
 Among the tales here: 
 * "Black Dog," a story set a few years after "American Gods." Shadow is wandering through England on his way back to the US, when he meets a kindly couple who allow him to stay in their home. But the specter of a faerie dog brings death, mystery, and an ancient magic that could be fatal even to an American god... 
 * A Scottish dwarf asks a former reaver to help him find a certain cave, supposedly filled with magical gold. As the two men journey to the Misty Isle, the dwarf gradually reveals his true reason for being there. 
 * A haunting look at the old age of Sherlock Holmes, reflecting on the decay of the British empire and solving one final mystery. 
 * A timid young artist hears that his first teenage girlfriend has been in contact with some of the people he knows... and the problem is, he made her up. 
 * Jemima Glorfindel Petula Ramsey's questionnaire, and exactly what happened to her fake-tan-loving sister Nerys. Hint: it involves floating, glowing, claims of godhood and dark chocolate. 
 * A year's worth of mini-stories, involving ghosts, pirates, genies, preteen soldiers, vicious ducks, a brazier, a homeless kid, a mysterious string of bizarre deliveries, disagreeing parents, igloos made of books, Australian fires and what they create, and a magical ring that keeps coming back. 
 * A handful of poems, about chairs, landladies, Saint Columba, a witch who "hid her life in a box made of dirt," and the evil fairy from "Sleeping Beauty." 
 * A flea market seller who has a strange story of time travel, interdimensional rooms, ancient empires, tiny statuettes and a boy named Farfal The Unfortunate. 
 * Obediah Polkinghorn, the Uninventor, who has the ability to alter reality so that certain inventions (flying cars, jetpacks, the Wispamuzak) never come into existence, and what he does when he finished uninventing forever. 
 * "Nothing O'Clock," a Dr. Who fanfic (does it count as a fanfic if it's professionally published, and is by a man who has written actual episodes?), where the Doctor and Amy arrive on Earth... only to discover that it is devoid of humans, after being officially sold to the Kin. How to fix it? Go back to when it was first sold by an unwitting family! 
 * A pair of fairy tales retold in Gaiman's sensibilities -- an update of "Diamonds and Toads" set in a bleak, dreary urban environment, and "The Sleeper and the Spindle," a sort of mash-up of "Snow White" and "Sleeping Beauty," starring a queen who decides to rescue a legendary sleeping princess with the help of her dwarf sidekicks. 
 * And several other stories that linger on the fringes -- a "lunar labyrinth" that grants wishes to people who successfully navigate it, a love letter, a mother lamenting her son's horrifying death at sea, a pleasantly unimpressive mother who knows of interesting "adventures," a man struggling to remember the name of a great author, a guy who learns of the madness that comes from visiting Jerusalem, a spooky little story about the terrifying Click-Clacks, and a mythic sci-fi ode to David Bowie. 
 Many authors are commonly called "magical," but Neil Gaiman deserves the label more than most -- he has a special knack for unpredictability that few authors can even approach. Not only can anything happen in his collections of short stories, but you have no idea what KIND of "anything" will flow from the wellspring of his mind. There's no obvious pattern, no overarching theme that might restrict his imagination. 
 And that is one of the best aspects of "Trigger Warning." In this collection, Gaiman deftly leaps from the macabre to the whimsical, the gloriously weird to the dramatic, the haunting to the magical. No matter how mundane the setting, he can draw back a veil and reveal something that was hidden from our eyes, whether it's dark magic ("Black Dog," "About Cassandra"), personal tragedy and drama ("Down To A Sunless Sea," "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains") or just the strangeness of the world we live in which we otherwise might not notice ("Jerusalem"). 
 And his writing is no less versatile. While every story is written in a crisp, shimmering style that is very recognizably his, he drifts around through different kinds of stories -- one is told through a questionnaire, another is an overheard monologue, and some are just conversations. What unites them is the glimmering clarity of his writing, full of beautiful similes ("His hair framed his face like a wolf-grey halo") and snappy cleverness ("And pterodactyls have been extinct for fifty million years." "If you say so, dear. Your father never really talked about it"). 
 Neil Gaiman at his best is on display in "Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances" -- a collage of shorter pieces, ranging from darkly enchanting novellas to magical little puffs of whimsy. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy, but a few of them can be found here.