“Next round’s on me, guys.” Charlie Bishop bellied his way to the bar and leaned on it, signaling the bartender. “Boys, I’m cashed.” Jean dug in her purse. “Charlie!” she yelled, sticking some bills under the napkin dispenser. “I gotta go! Pickin’ up Jasmine!” She...
An elderly woman wearing a soft apron sits in the porch swing of a lilac Victorian house. The early May breeze through the mountains lifts a wisp of her gray hair from the long braid at her back. She brushes it aside absentmindedly as she loses herself in the fading...
Although I’m not generally a non-fiction reader, Robin Meloy Goldsby’s Piano Girl–more a collection of snapshots than straight up memoir–is a bright and fascinating peek into the life of a professional piano player. Beginning with Goldby’s teenage...
Joshua Ferris’ second novel, The Unnamed, is a book best read by daylight. It’s a book that has to be read piecemeal, chunked into digestible bites, partially because of the disturbing plot, partially because of the purple prose. Tim Farnsworth is a lawyer at a firm...
The ferry pulled into the harbor at dawn, and they watched the sun rise behind the cliffs. The craggy bluffs of Santorini towered over them, exposing layers of black, white, and gray earth, all streaked with dark red, as if sprinkled with powdered blood. She outlined...
“Elvis died on my birthday. My fourteenth. We lived in Delavan then. My mom worked at the club on the lake.” Stirring wretched coffee with a fork while a tinny radio played something that must have been relevant to the assertion, fifty-seven year old Alonzo Johnson...
