In “An Aura Surrounds That Night,” the novella that closes Tara Lynn Masih’s haunting new collection How We Disappear, Yellow Rose, a psychic, becomes a mentor to a grief-stricken girl named Mercy whom she suspects of having mystical gifts of her own. “You’ll never be able to look at this world the same way again, after this…

When I first visited the Basque Country, a region in northern Spain, I felt very close to the sea, as close as you can get while still keeping both feet on dry land. Kirmen Uribe’s Bilbao-New York-Bilbao gives readers a taste of this sea, as well as an intimacy with the lives connected to it.…

Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-Jim, translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang, is, at its core, a story about learning how to accept what one cannot change. This theme finds expression in the narrator’s relationship with her daughter. Readers could interpret the narrator, who remains nameless throughout, as eternally pessimistic. She says, early on,…

How many ways can a human being disappear? Existentially: in the uncaring maw of an anonymizing city. Sensually: being completely disconnected from other humans. Noirishly: disappearing from sight. Physically: taken away, made not-human, by some vast and uncaring system. All these possibilities are explored in Perhat Tursun’s novel from Xinjiang, The Backstreets. Tursun started writing The Backstreets in…

Each of the nineteen sharply faceted stories comprising In the Between: 21st Century Short Stories, edited by Brice Particelli, differently takes up the theme of being misunderstood. In this state — disregarded, disrespected, dissed — you’re not the person you’ve been mistaken for, but you’re not quite yourself either. You’re in the between. Anchoring the collection are powerful stories…

Between 1989 and 1998, Icelandic-Canadian writer Kristjana Gunnars penned five short novels that traveled fluently through genres — philosophy, literary theory, criticism, memoir, fiction, poetry, even nature writing — and anticipated autofiction before the genre was defined. Published originally and exclusively in Canada, Gunnars’ quintet has been published a single volume: The Scent of Light.…

It’s the early twentieth century, and a young woman named Temerity West is working as an agent for the British imperial government. A young man, Kostya Nikto, is an NKVD officer under Stalin. In Constant Nobody, the award-winning novel from Canadian writer Michelle Butler Hallett, these two characters’ lives intertwine in unexpected ways that are…

Safe Places, Kerry Dolan’s debut story collection, explores the oddities of human bonds and longings. Set in various places from the city to the remote countryside, these stories evoke entire worlds. Though their settings vary, human responses — sometimes gentle, other times monstrous — form the heart of this collection. A fundamental aspect of human…

A flash fiction is like a snow globe. A writer creates a miniature world and gives it a good shake, setting glittering bits into motion. These flakes of action whirl and settle, inspiring a jolt of wonderment in the reader, who eagerly awaits the next surprising inversion. For most of us, the world shrank drastically…

One description of Ashleigh Bell Pedersen’s debut novel, The Crocodile Bride, might begin: Sunshine Turner lives in the town of Fingertip. Without knowing more than this, a reader can’t help but consider the metaphoric possibilities. Sunshine: a joy, a light to cure the darkness, a vital ingredient to life. Turner: someone who changes course or…

Warnings of human traffickers abound on Facebook. One post might say that a man was sitting alone in his car by a particular mall, and was perhaps scouting for victims. Be careful in this park, another will read. Someone was handing out flyers, probably an excuse to get within grabbing distance. Innocuous actions become signs…

Set on a remote island off the coast of Scotland, Emma Seckel’s debut The Wild Hunt unfolds within a magical frame that’s hitched to the island’s specific geography. In this stirring and atmospheric historical novel, the setting plays a dominant role. The island’s coastline of harsh cliffs appears out of the fog like the answer…