Each story in Barret’s collection of eight short stories is to be savored and, taken together, they constitute a rare and nourishing feast of secret insights about women. Having the gift of voice, Barrett writes each story in the... Read More

The first of a trilogy, Mandalay’s Child follows the Lal family through the turbulent events of 1941-1947. In 1941, Devi Lal, the patriarch of the family, is a successful physician in Burma. As the eldest son in a Brahmin family in the... Read More

The people in these stories are not happy in their skins: they are too old, or too rich, or too beautiful or too working class… On the other hand, no one really does anything so it is difficult to feel particularly sympathetic. And the... Read More

In the preface to this pleasing collection of short stories, culled from magazines printed in 1998, Tony Early fires a shot across the bow. The target: anyone who presumes from the title that what follows is a batch of condescending,... Read More

In Paul Weber’s world of no particular place or time, cigarettes are illegal, but they aren’t the only thing missing. Waldrop’s novel is a catastrophic account of the future political state given certain conditions. While the... Read More

Banish the California glitz. Clear the memories of Rodeo Drive, the Top of the Mark, the Seventeen-Mile Drive and the Ahwahnee Lodge. Prepare for a collection of twenty-four stories that get at the real California through the talents of... Read More

Within the first few paragraphs of each of the author’s short stories, a character will emerge that makes the reader either yearn for the tale to be longer or smile in recognition of a friend, family member or even one’s self. Such... Read More

In a back-cover paragraph on Dieguez’s background, readers learn that the first-time novelist does not share her heroine’s hirsute propensity. But Dieguez does seem to weave plenty of her own experiences into her tale of the bearded... Read More