By Elizabeth Mayer • Death and loss and decay pervade the stories of Joy Williams’s collection Escapes. If a character is not facing the immediacy of their own death, often they are mourning the loss of someone close to them. Yet…
By Chaya Bhuvaneswar • The display is brightly lit, and arranged on a carpet of that fierce emerald-green artificial grass used by greengrocers and undertakers. Round the edges on open shells, is a border of raw scallops, the pearly flesh dulling,…
Here’s a quick look at some of the great fiction out this week. Happy pub day to all! Camille Acker, Training School for Negro Girls “The lives of the girls and women featured in these stories are rendered with…
Carlos Ortega roaming Africa was a ridiculous proposition, which was why everyone who heard the idea savored its deliciousness. For all his thirty-nine years, Carlos had prowled the same few blocks east of the interstate, and to conceive of him…
This was how it came to pass that on a windy Friday evening in Malindi, Kenya, fighting out of the red corner, at 143 pounds, all the way from Austin, Texas, USA, came Carlos Ortega, in shackles and a loin…
And so it went for two rounds, three rounds: Carlos relaxing Hassan’s shoulders, lifting his elbows, adjusting his right foot this way or that, all without laying a finger on the panting butcher. Once, he looked back to Felix, worried…
In the afternoon, Carlos and Felix were scheduled to train at the facilities of The Butcher. On the ride downtown, the men the sole passengers in a twelve-seat van, Felix relaxed into his headphone-protected daze. Carlos, meanwhile, felt as if…
Carlos Ortega roaming Africa was a ridiculous proposition, which was why everyone who heard the idea savored its deliciousness. For all his thirty-nine years, Carlos had prowled the same few blocks east of the interstate, and to conceive of him…
Warnings From the Future is a debut collection of ten short stories by Ethan Chatagnier, published by Acre Books. Chatagnier is clearly interested in playing with form in his work, and a number of these stories allow the form and…
Here’s a quick look at some of the great books out this week. Happy pub day to all! Elliot Ackerman, Waiting for Eden Knopf From Kirkus Reviews: “Wounded terribly in Iraq three years ago, a soldier awaits his death…
