Mackaman’s tales strike deep emotional chords; some are laugh-out-loud funny. Henry Mackaman passed away from bacterial meningitis at the age of twenty-one, one credit away from graduating with a double major in economics and creative... Read More

The stories in Richard Wiley’s new collection all take place in the same city among characters who share connections. They are creatively mixed and span decades and tones. "Tacoma Stories" is a compelling whole formed of memorable... Read More

Mia Couto’s Rain and Other Stories is reminiscent of centuries-old legends told and retold from one generation to the next. They read like stories designed to preserve a culture’s history, traditions, and way of life. These stories,... Read More

Pervasive in their record of vanishment, "The Middle Ground"’s surprising stories are linked by memory and loss. From ephemeral ice crystals to a sister who disappears, from the illusion of a movie career that never launches to a man... Read More

Chuck Caruso’s "The Meaning of Blood" promises a descent into a netherworld of blood and perversity, and it delivers on this as well as something even more heinous: the idea that ordinary people crave blood and perversity just as much... Read More

In an early piece in this book of short, connected stories, Caroline Bock establishes a daughter’s reverence for her father: “let me recall the days when I picked tomatoes beside my Pop, and ate one or two directly from the vine at... Read More

Maureen Aitken’s "The Patron Saint of Lost Girls" pretends to be a collection of short stories but is not. Instead, advantages of both short-story and novel formats are fused into a mutation which is neither. By the time this... Read More

Drawing inspiration from the most existentially bored quarters of the sweater-set crowd, the short stories of Virginia Pye’s "Shelf Life of Happiness" are unsettling, sighing laments. They organize church fundraisers and clean their... Read More