Mending: New and Selected Stories / by Sallie Bingham

Although a middle-aged woman's life is consumed by doctor's appointments which do little more than offer emotional reassurance, it's the only way she can receive intimacy, and, in effect, the only way to "mend" her damaged soul. Two sisters, the eldest one which escaped the downtrodden family farm years ago and the younger one that didn't, talk about what's to be done with it now that their mother's succumbed to cancer. Ignoring her younger sister Shirley's emotional bond to the plot of land which she's been a part of all her life, the elder Miriam spares no tact in talking up her intentions of selling it all to the realtors, even envisioning her plan for the perfect cottage community. On another dying family farm, a capricious widow, still grieving the loss of her teenage daughter as well as her husband, hires a family of Haitian refugees against the will of her semi-bigoted land manager. Amid obvious discomfiture and through nearly impregnable language and cultural barriers, the more subtle admonitions of each's feelings about the other steadily bridge the communication gap, ultimately augmenting the perpetually tenuous social situation and initiating a serendipitous kind of connection.

Born and raised on a farm in Kentucky, literature professor, author, poet and playwright Sallie Bingham has spent much of her life in New York City, amid frequent trips to New Mexico, and has been married three times. Her stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and Southwest Review and been featured in several anthologies and collections like this one which includes 5 new stories as well as sampling of her earlier work. Perhaps classified as a mildly feminist author with a realistic voice similar to Joyce Carol Oates or Margaret Atwood, Bingham also has something of Chekhov in her prose, a steady, astute in-the-moment type of voice, economically deconstructing the scene in any given situation and presenting a masterfully dissected arrangement of people and feelings. With striking swiftness, the reader gets to know the principal characters--who they are, where they've been and (to some degree) what they'll do next--in a manner that's at once abrupt and palpable. It's a fun experience, worthy of its praise. (FIC BINGHAM)

Gigantic / by Marc Nesbitt

A black laborer and his partner work are hired at the home of a wealthy white Southern businessman only to find out that their "job" is to pose as a human lawn ornament during an especially odd party. Things get even more strange when the man's daughter's sexual misadventures turn violent. Then a downtrodden mattress salesman in his thirties witnesses an especially gruesome car accident up close, a shocking event sending him spiraling toward a new revelation concerning his relationship with his father. A young man has kept his imaginary girlfriend from childhood throughout his life only to find out how unstable his "companion" becomes when he betrays her. When sanitation worker is summoned to pick up roadkill on an isolated highway only to endure a life-threatening incident which terrorizes him to his core.

Nesbitt's little collection of short stories, while very different, is as thoroughly engrossing as it is peculiar. His sentences, descriptions and metaphors, especially his metaphors, are something to behold. Or at least something to take note of. "We stand there watching the quiet between our faces." "Snow drops in bright white pieces like the stars are crumbling." 'Her hand jerks like a leather spider." "The train whispers something about distance." It's not hard to see why some of the literary world's more eclectic figures have praised the work immensely. It's an arresting worldview that Nesbitt imbues, an uncommonly vague yet poetically engendering place where troubled, bemused and disenfranchised young men dwell in a sort-of demented whirlpool of outcomes. And while nearly all of the protagonists are unnamed, you get the sense of that being the intended objective of the author: it's an everyman's kind of insane world. (FIC NESBITT)

Delta Blues / Carolyn Haines, ed.; w/ stories by James Lee Burke, John Grisham, Charlaine Harris, et. al. & introduction by Morgan Freeman

"Delta soil is deep and rich. Down here things grow." (i)

Anyone who has even a vague concept on blues music and its origins will know that its heart and soul is in the deep south, particularly Mississippi and particularly the delta region (a small sliver of land adjacent to the Mississippi River in the NW part of the state). Ironically it's also a place not far from the starting points of some very, very good writers like John Grisham, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams and on and on. With stories by John Grisham among others and introduced by actor Morgan Freeman, also from the Delta, this compilation "from writers aching to sing you the blues" captures the heart and soul of the region, its culture and its music as it tells of people and places where feeling a little blue can produce some fantastic and even revolutionary rhythms. This collection, very similar to the "[place] Noir" series of books published by Akashic, all involve, some directly some indirectly, the blues. Many are crime briefs while others delve even deeper matters like the famous "crossroads" story about Robert Johnson and the devil. Some are contemporary tales while others are historical pieces like Beth Henley's "What His Hands Have Been Waiting For" set in 1927 and which has a group of ruffians confronting a starving family during the great flood. All of them evoke the mood and ethos, as well as the language of the soul, of the Delta region and its people who've been forged through a rough life and hard times with their own brand of musical therapy. (FIC DELTA)

Every Place Noir ("Akashic Noir Series" short story mystery anthologies)

Ever wonder about what's going on beneath the surface in your town. Now you can get the best of underworld drama going on pretty much wherever with indie publisher Akashic's highly successful Noir series, each book an anthology comprised of thrilling mystery and crime fiction shorts set in prominent cities and locales from around the world. Beginning with it's award-winning 2004 book Brooklyn Noir, the series has promptly put out over 40 subsequent original noir mystery anthologies. Each book is comprised of brand new crime shorts, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within each city, country or region with places ranging from Portland, Ore. to Moscow and from Mumbai (India) to Haiti. Orange County (CA) & Indian Country, USA are just some of the latest places to be showcased within the currently available collection with many more on the way. Don't forget to checkout for Lone Star Noir set to debut this fall.

Moral Disorder / by Margaret Atwood

Toronto native Margaret Atwood is not only one of Canadian literature's best authors, she's become something of a worldwide phenomenon duringher three-to-four decades long tenure as a truly recognizable talent. As a poet, novelist and short story writer, her insightful, sardonic voice is at once mysterious and lucid, her prose and arrangement of words an evocative display of brilliant art. Her 2006 semi-autobiographical novel (written in short story form) Moral Disorder is no exception to her long line of superior work. A thinkpiece and generational purview of life, love, fate and existence, the book reflects Atwood's one-of-a-kind take on the western tradition.

The initial, uneventful but precursory tale lays the framework which the rest will follow. Nell & Tig are an elderly couple at first seen discussing some sobering news over breakfast--it seems some Middle Eastern terrorist have murdered several war hostages--and though they're evidently concerned about it, the pair are visibly and emotionally distant, their own lives too much encumbered by their own misunderstood concerns and weighted anxieties. While this relatively subdued scene resonates mostly the external turmoil of the encircling world, that's exactly what the world internally is like for Nell--a mentally exhausted attitude of despondency and hapless emotion towards her life and the people in it.

The accompanying stories and episodes present a swirl Nell's life, both past and present, looking back on her childhood and young adulthood, her tentative teenage relationships and first job as a freelance editor. Things are fastforwarded to when Nell meets Oona, a life-wearied woman with two children and married to Tig; Nell soon after becomes the "second wife" amid fluctuating reactions. Nell's world is one of incohesion and relational dissonance, evoking a life bonded together by an isolated, soulless web of "moral disorder". Swooping back and forth in time and soberly assessing everything from fashion to children to social upheaval and inflation, Atwood's stories are as absorbing as they are dismal, extracting a gripping morbidity with both empathy and remote interest. (FIC ATWOOD)

Hardly Knew Her: Stories / by Laura Lippman

Laura Lippman's long entertained readers with her mystery novels featuring Baltimore PI Tess Monaghan. Her loyal fans will be sure to enjoy her first published collection of short stories, brief, flighty episodes as inventive and sassy as the plots and entanglements she depicts in her novels. Initially, Lippman observes a versatile collection of women getting into all sorts of drama, schemes and mayhem; from murder-accessory babysitters, drug deals gone wrong and retiree-aged adult entertainers, even a high profile working girl who, in addition to her soccer mom commitments, is currently embroiled in a treacherous cat-and-mouse game involving a deathrow inmate.

The rest of the book follows similar, if slightly more pragmatic, suit. Stories focus on murders, scams, betrayals and fiendish plots all perpetrated by sly, world-savvy women eager to see wrongs righted, rights returned and scales evened. From sleek, classy career women to housewives and normal teenage girls; the characters all have a knack for getting themselves into scrapes involving some the criminal elements most detestable characters. Feminism is a clear, well-represented theme in this book in which women seek revenge on their male counterparts, either through devious underhanded dealings, clever manipulations and well-conceived acts of sudden violence. Lippman brings reality to her characters, most of which are sympathetic on at least one leve. Most maintain some type of integrity and endings to most of the tales are even-handed, characters and circumstances fitting tightly into each story's context.

New Christmas Fiction

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The Gift: A Novel / by Cecilia Ahern

Hard-nosed workaholic Lou Steffen doesn’t have time for sentimental Christmas festivities until Gabe, a mysterious homeless man, subtly teaches Lou what truly matters and how precious the gift of Christmas really is.

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The Christmas Dog / by Melody Carlson
Betty Kowalski is feeling more alone and wretched than usual this Christmas with the lack of friends or relatives to celebrate with and her neighbor’s home renovations driving her up a wall. But when a cute dog shows up on her doorstep one night, she gets quite an unexpected Christmas surprise.
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The Christmas List / by Richard Paul Evans
One day just before Christmas, James Kier reads his own obituary in his hometown newspaper. At first he thinks it must be a joke until certain events prompt him to take the situation seriously.
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Home In Time For Christmas / by Heather Graham
Melody Tarleton never expected to become close with a strange hitchhiker she almost runs over with her car. But a peculiar brand of Christmas magic soon helps her discover a love which transcends all boundaries.
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The Memory Quilt: A Christmas Story for our Times / by T.D. Jakes
It’s Christmas time in Chicago and Lela, a single woman down on her luck, finds solace in her church’s Virgin Mary themed bible study and soon begins to look life through with new eyes.

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A Christmas Blizzard / Garrison Keillor
Wealthy loner James Sparrow intends to spend Christmas in Hawaii until he’s abruptly summoned to his North Dakota hometown where his Aunt is deathly ill. Permanently detoured after a blizzard leaves him stranded at his childhood home, James is suddenly confronted by ghosts from his boyhood past.

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A Wish For Christmas: A Cape Light Novel / by Thomas Kinkade & Katherine Spencer
This season the people of Cape Light confront their past while looking hesitantly toward the future: David is a war veteran returning home after the death of his mother, Jack has remarried and now must try and to reach out to his new stepdaughter, and crabby old Lillian Warwick may feel independent but circumstances soon force her to reach out to those she would otherwise shun
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Celebrate Native American Heritage Month: New Native American Fiction

People of the Thunder / W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear
Three wanderers--the prophet Old White, a noble warrior named Trader and a mysterious shaman woman, Two Petals--travel across the North A
merican Southeast before it was ever America and long before it was ever civilized, striving to establish peace in a desparately savage land. The territory they cross is controlled by the Sky Hand tribe, ruled by the cunning and ruthless Chief Flying Hawk and his evil nephew Smoke Shield. Together this awkward, but curiously powerful trio must bring down Flying Hawk and Smoke Shield who themselves are bent on wiping out all but their own kind.

The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories, 1978-2008 / by Louise Erdrich
Erdrich, whose willowy novels and stories have mirrored her own Midwest-Native American heritage, has compiled a new collection of some of her most personal stories and essays. As expected, most of her protagonists are female and Indian, or Indian hybrids (Chipewa, Cherokee, Ottawa, etc. mixed with French & German ancestries) and their circumstances are embedded with varying degrees ambiguity over the fact. Some laugh, some cry and some simply ignore the constrasts present between their daily lives and the heritage of their ancestors, aspects of modern life overshadowing any semblance of customs and traditions their forefathers once shared even as Indian lore and mysticism crop up in the backs of their minds during things like thunderstorms, traffic jams, TV news and their children's gadgets.


The Reason For Crows: A Kateri Tekakwitha Story / by Diane Glancy
The real life Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680, birth-name Kahenta), daughter to a Mohawk warrior during the period when the Europeans were infil
trating the Native tribes of North America, is rehashed in this extraordinary tale of two cultures colliding and a young girl's passion in the midst of violence, pestilence and death. Nearly blind after the smallpox has wiped out most of her camp and nearly killed all of her family, a young, still-ailing Kateri is pitied by a Jesuit priest, Jacques de Lambervilles who cares for her at the mission. After nursing her back to health and reading the scripture to her, Kateri is converted to Christianity and begins a life of chastity and penitence, wholly devoted to her faith until her death at 24. Today, Kateri Tekakwitha has been venerated as a Saint among Jesuit catholics and several churches, even a summer camp in Maine, bear her name.


Runner / by Thomas Perry
Runner is Thomas Perry's sixth Jane Whitefield novel following Jane, a Native American female and skilled Indian guide with a knack for
"disappearing" who aids people who themselves need hiding. Currently Jane's living in upstate New York, married to a surgeon and keeping her own, other calling pretty much under wraps. Sure enough, though, action finds Jane in the form of Christine Monahan, a pregnant woman on the run from her abusive husband and another, more grisly assortment of shady characters seemingly bent on hunting her down. Soon both women are fleeing cross-country as Jane works fast, doing what she does best, pairing her neo-mystical Native American talents with her own tech-savvy, identity-falsifying skills to help Christine and her baby ultimately find safety.


War Dances / by Sherman Alexie
Alexie, himself a member of the Spokane tribe of the Pacific Northwest, is the award-winning author of Smoke Signals and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. Much of his fiction has been labeled as a com
edically scathing characterization of the plight of Native Americans, his penetrating voice expertly mixing humor with anger and tragedy with comedy. His newest collection of short stories, War Dances, confronts family life through various ordinary characters, each flawed in their own unique ways yet appealing in a quite real, naturalistic sense. In his title story "War Dances", a dying man reflects back on the death of his own alcoholic father while in "The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless", a married clothing salesman slowly falls out of love with his wife after she bears him three children. While all of his stories may not connect the same, the collection as a whole presents a "spiritedly provocative array of tragic comedies"*.

*Booklist

On the Couch: Great American Stories About Therapy / by Erica Cates

 Everybody's got problems. From the mightiest patriarch to the lowliest peasant, almost everyone can identify with the inescapability of life's ups and downs; and, subsequently, the comfort and emotional release a sensitive ear can bring when things are at their worst. While not all the stories in On the Couch deal with the woes of existence, they all confront the nature of talk therapy and its truly purposeful--though controversial--use as an antidote to mental and emotional dilemmas. Among such other literary notables along with the likes of John Updike and Amy Bloom, stories in this unique anthology center on the "behind closed doors" atmosphere of counselors and their patients. So whether you veiw talk therapy as some do: a universal cure for mental illness. Or even if you render the realm of psychology and psychotherapy as a profession of glorified hand-holders, this book is a win-win with its intriguing stories on, well, other people's "issues". (SSC ON)

Fragile Things / by Neil Gaiman

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Hardened rationalists desperately needing to broaden their imaginations should look no further. Where else could ever be found such a mind-blowing—and mind-bending—array of manifold literary vignettes? A mystery carnival vanishing into the night sky, a Friday night party where two friends are introduced to some “out-of-this-world” girls, Beowulf transplanted into the modern-day, a mimicked acceptance speech following a VooDoo ceremony, a clan of quirky pedestrian zombies and a side of Sherlock Holmes you’ve never seen. Such is the world of Neil Gaiman and his eclectic blend of tales, poems and filler sketches in this, his third collection of short stories.

As inventive as any Sci-Fi/Fantasy author—now or otherwise—and yet incomparably fanciful with his brilliant wit and darkly humorous angle, this volume lets the reader in on a generous sample (though certainly not the whole) of Gaiman’s world of enchantment and storytelling. Less distinct, perhaps than more long-revered stalwarts like Ray Bradbury or Philip K. Dick, Gaiman may not connect with all readers the same way. His writing isn't as spelled-out and storylines--though never failing to convey continuity--often derive from multiple perspectives. Veterans of the genre along with a good many novices won't be able to miss a good thing when they see it though.

The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction / by Tim O'Brien

Tim O'brien was an Army lieutenant during the Vietnam War. An infantry platoon leader, he was in on his fair share of up-close-and-personal enemy encounters as well as the often contradictory nature of "true" war stories. Among his other books, 'Things They Carried'--though fictional--re-creates the essence of a wartime atmosphere with unequaled clarity.



"A true war story is never moral." (p. 45)

A girl dancing in a bombed out village. Chamber music in the darkest, most isolated jungle. Boredom in the midst of gunfire. Not having the courage to run away from your fear. A man's death caused by his lieutenant's preoccupation with a girl thousands of miles off. Perhaps not the most characteristic depictions of the Vietnam War but "true" all the same. From the pages of this book, it's hard to believe there aren't more political assassinations. The most fervent nationalist angle could never reconcile the idiocy of going off somewhere, not to fight or employ 'diplomacy by other means', but to encounter death at such a level that ". . . you slip out of your own skin, like molting, shedding your own history and your own future, leaving behind everything you ever were or wanted or believed in." (p.212). It's not even as if Obrien's world, reconstructed within loosely linked vignettes of personally prevaricated reminisces, carries that much of an 'anti-war' sentiment. The book is more an observational blend of the disturbingly nondescript events which--dreadful as they were--reinvent the commonplace incidents that happen(ed) within a combat atmosphere. (FIC OBRIEN)