The insightful and provocative stories in Tom Paine's collection spring from a series of seismic events that rocked the post-millennium world. News headlines from the last decade-the fall of Baghdad, the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the BP oil spill-not only inspire the settings but also raise ethical questions that percolate throughout this ominous and timely work. A stark reminder of the challenges and resultant anxiety facing a global society, "A Boy's Book of Nervous Breakdowns" depicts the simultaneously dreamlike and brutally real experience of witnessing contemporary political and...
The insightful and provocative stories in Tom Paine's collection spring from a series of seismic events that rocked the post-millennium world. News he...
A darkly insightful evocation of the post-industrial era, Joy, PA tells the story of a family teetering on the precipice of ruin. The Augenbaughs live in a broken and decaying town where the last vestiges of country-club wealth run up against the terrible realities of working-class poverty. Abigail, a fervent believer in the apocalyptic teachings of a radio preacher, is desperate to save her son from Judgment Day as she readies herself for the Rapture-due to arrive in just a few days. Her husband, Burns, has moved to the basement to live out his days in a medicated stupor, unable to cope with...
A darkly insightful evocation of the post-industrial era, Joy, PA tells the story of a family teetering on the precipice of ruin. The Augenbaughs live...
The stories in History of Art examine the definitive, yet paradoxical, preoccupations of humankind-namely art-making and war-and the emotions that underpin both: passion and sentimentality, obsession and delusion, ambition and insecurity, fear and envy. Luongo casts the infamous, famous, and unknown in these sublime vignettes, from Marie Antoinette and John Lennon to the designers of fictional typefaces and the painted soldiers in Stanley Spencer's Great War Memorial. Drawing each work together through the dichotomy of art and war, Luongo also presents a mother who leaves her family so that...
The stories in History of Art examine the definitive, yet paradoxical, preoccupations of humankind-namely art-making and war-and the emotions that und...
For as long Daniella has been married to Joel, they've received phone calls at odd hours, and late at night. Daniella knows the caller as Liesel, Joel's first wife, a woman whose sudden departure devastated her husband. After years of disruptive, long-distance phone calls, Liesel rings to tell Joel she's letting Idzia, the seventeen-year-old daughter he has never met, visit for the summer. Daniella and Joel prepare for Idzia's arrival, but when Joel goes to pick her up from the airport, Idzia isn't there. Back at home, the phone calls suddenly stop, and Joel and Daniella become haunted by...
For as long Daniella has been married to Joel, they've received phone calls at odd hours, and late at night. Daniella knows the caller as Liesel, J...
Meghan Kenny's debut collection, Love Is No Small Thing, gives readers an assembly of keenly drawn characters each navigating the world looking for an understanding of love in its many forms and complexities--be it romantic, parental, elusive, or eternal. A father may teach his teenage son "Hearts break easy," but as Kenny's characters discover, knowing an important truth about love is no substitute for experiencing it.
In the title story, a woman learns of her boyfriend's infidelity on Halloween night and contemplates lost years, concealments, and the difficulty...
Meghan Kenny's debut collection, Love Is No Small Thing, gives readers an assembly of keenly drawn characters each navigating the world l...
"The stories in Lee Upton's Visitations remind me of those by the great Edith Pearlman: swift, rueful, erudite, moving, and full of wisdom. And very, very funny. I laughed, hard, while reading these stories, often at things that can't be printed on the cover of a book. Which is just one of the many reasons why you should look inside."--Brock Clarke, author of The Happiest People in the World
"In these gorgeous stories Lee Upton writes with wicked wit and wild imagination. Her work is full of beautiful sentences and the best kind of surprises: unexpected swerves, uneasy alliances,...
"The stories in Lee Upton's Visitations remind me of those by the great Edith Pearlman: swift, rueful, erudite, moving, and full of wisdom. And ver...
The four protagonists in Matthew Baker's collection Hybrid Creatures are preoccupied with the idea of connection--how to connect with strangers, how to connect with family, how to connect with friends, and what makes a connection sincere. A young hacker attempts to track down his vanished mentor; a boy is equally torn between his mother's and father's families; a composer takes a spontaneous trip to Nashville in the wake of his husband's death and gets stuck on a roof with a hipster philosopher; and an elderly businessman searches for his wife at a dinner party on a remote mountain....
The four protagonists in Matthew Baker's collection Hybrid Creatures are preoccupied with the idea of connection--how to connect with strang...
