Everything Happens as It Does – Albena Stambolova
The stories of a handful of comingling lives unspool with the beguiling sense of fatedness that overtakes all events once they’ve happened the way they’ve happened to happen.
Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail – Kelly Luce
I would happily suggest that Luce contributes as much to the contemporary renaissance of the short story in her first work as Russell, Aimee Bender, and George Saunders have with their recent masterpieces.
They Dragged Them Through the Streets – Hilary Plum
The message these mourners and friends struggled so desperately to express echoes emptily. It’s almost as if their pain had never been.
Very Recent History – Choire Sicha
Sicha makes us remember those intense moments and the tangles of our lives, both emotional and financial, which is how Very Recent History gets under our skins.
Whispering Bodies – Jesse Michaels
His undoing is also that of punk rock
I’d characterize Mira Corpora as a seduction. It heightens the pulse and warps the mind with the allure and cliffhangers of a sexy action flick.
Awake to both the subtly human and bitterly hysterical faces of contemporary life
Under This Terrible Sun – Carlos Busqued
Stoner culture and noir, when both are at their best, are experiments in mood and atmospherics.
The Currency of Paper – Alex Kovacs
The Currency of Paper is certainly a novel of ideas, albeit in a more literal sense.
Whether the book does succeed in being comforting or in making its readers happy — depends perhaps upon the reader’s tolerance for Schadenfreude