With chapters named for the days of the week in Street Angel and with specific dates in a given week in Adult Onset, these two novels seem to make ideal reading companions. Ultimately, much of literary fiction is preoccupied with time. Whether it is Molly Bloom's day in James Joyce's
“Bad coffee can only keep you company for so long at four a.m. in a bus depot.” Caitlin Press, 2014 All of the characters in Janine Alyson Young’s debut collection seem as though they would immediately recognize the truth of that. They all seem to have a spot
Like his first novel, Touch, The Lobster Kings showcases Alexi Zentner’s penchant for storytelling. Knopf Canada, 2014 Readers who learn that this novel is a retelling of Shakespeare’s tragedy "King Lear" might expect the tale to distance readers, with the original story centuries old and memories of stilted
Though each segment could be read as a standalone, each is So Much a Part of the Landscape that Polly Dugan's work is best read all-in-a-burst. Little Brown & Company, 2014 More trust is required on the reader's part than, say, with Carrie Snyder's more prominently linked The Juliet
With book in hand, readers will know this is a collection of short fiction marketed as horror stories. But that's a broad stroke; Dracula and The Stand are both frightening tales. In the hands of Susie Moloney, a horror story sometimes means gruesome and moist: "Brains and cranial fluid seeped
