Book Review
The Stark Beauty of Last Things
by Elaine Chiew
Céline Keating’s lush, elegiac novel "The Stark Beauty of Last Things" limns Montauk in stunning prose and highlights loss, the transience of home, and the impermanence of human affections. Revolving around a prized land parcel...
Book Review
House Parties
by Elaine Chiew
In the short stories of Lynn Levin’s wry, tragicomic collection "House Parties", some people struggle; others behave badly. In “Tell Us About Your Experience,” an office worker who’s sick of filling out satisfaction surveys...
Book Review
Instructions for the Drowning
by Elaine Chiew
In Steven Heighton’s masterful posthumously published story collection "Instructions for the Drowning", men’s psyches are on display. These layered and intricate stories balloon out their denouéments until they are taut....
Book Review
Patterns of Orbit
by Elaine Chiew
"Patterns of Orbit" is Chloe N. Clark’s inimitable collection of short stories and flash fiction, in which mysterious events abound. Herein, lakeside waves churn and tear up docks; a food scientist creates fruit that tastes of another...
Book Review
This Side of the Divide
by Elaine Chiew
The twenty-three fabulist and fantasy stories collected in "This Side of the Divide" involve cowboys, the desert, coyotes, and arroyos; they remake old legends through uncommon lore in a gesture that counters cultural erasure. In the...
Book Review
You Are Here
by Elaine Chiew
Cynthia Flood’s short story collection "You Are Here" seethes with political menace that’s seen through focused personal dramas. These stories defy categorization; they are wonderful, layered, powerful, and imbued with clear senses...
Book Review
The Family Izquierdo
by Elaine Chiew
Rubén Degollado’s resonant novel "The Family Izquierdo" maps three generations within a Mexican family on the Texas side of the Rio Grande. A family tree orients the reader among the book’s large, mixed ensemble, whose members are...
Book Review
Castles from Cobwebs
by Elaine Chiew
J. A. Mensah’s "Castles from Cobwebs" is a haunting coming-of-age tale. Imani is a Ghanaian orphan who was left on a castle incline in Northumbria. Picked up by the reverend mother of a convent, Imani is raised there, experiencing...