This debut finds itself suspended between reality and perception. Why We Never Talk About Sugar is a collection equal parts science and superstition, an experiment with fact and fabrication that constitutes a sensory literary formula. Through the collision of what we know and what we believe, a magnetic energy is released. In the hands of…

Two-way propositions: in the first example, the prepositional phrase describes a destination. In the second, it describes a location. German indicates this distinction through the use of cases (Wohin/where to? Wo/ Where at?) These are the opening lines of Joanna Walsh’s chapbook, Hauptbahnhof, published this summer by 3:AM Press. It is a woman’s soliloquy, seemingly…

If Thor Garcia’s Only Fools Die of Heartbreak, his latest short fiction collection, had somehow been published in the 19th Century, it would have given Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn a run for their money as the most controversial and banned book in the nation. Even as recently as the 1960’s, the book would have undoubtedly…

We’ve seen our share of unlikable narrators, but Christiana Spens’s Adrian, a high-up politician with a taste for sex and money, is something special. Death of a Ladies’ Man, a darkly humorous novella, first serialized on the 3 A.M. Magazine website and then published by its press, follows Adrian and his family members’ lives through…

Divine intervention is hardly a blessing for Lilah and Sam in Amanda Leduc’s The Miracles of Ordinary Men, and a belief in uplifting, heavenly intercessions is but one of the expectations that Leduc bucks in this ambitious novel. Questioning our wants is not simply a thematic concern in the novel, but one that manifests itself…

Gabe Durham’s Fun Camp tours readers through the confusion and passion of youth over the course of one week spent at a summer camp dedicated to encouraging its visitors to become new fun creatures free from the bonds of who they were before. Bad behavior is valued in the proper context set down by the camp, although…

Given that the story is named after and relies on the features of something that seems like a myth, a soldier bear named Wojtek, Bernie Hafeli’s Bear Season is bound to be gloriously odd. Part of its oddity comes from a difficulty to situate the story; Bear Season happens at the boundaries between Poland and…

Jonathan Callahan’s The Consummation of Dirk is aptly described as innovative fiction, as it puts on display the author’s virtuoso abilities as both a prose stylist and structural experimentalist. These twelve fictions demonstrate Callahan’s impressive critical intelligence because they show how ultimately all worthy writing is aware of its context, engaging with influences rather than…

Any writer who becomes interested in America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the political and psychological complexities of a post 9/11 world, is taking on an important creative challenge. The range—the breadth and depth of concerns that she must know intimately—is daunting. Consider the multiple perspectives at play. The question of agency, of…

The narrators and characters found within Curtis Smith’s Beasts & Men are equal parts desperate and muted, all sharing the same quiet, worn-out acceptance of what life is for them, and what it is likely to be. It’s through this common thread of disenfranchisement that Smith builds his newest collection of short stories. Whether looking…

She had this crusty, warm light buzzing around her, insistently telling her what it felt like to be all by your little old lonesome so damn assuming self. This is how author Sarah Gerkensmeyer describes the lonely woman who becomes the third wife of a godless polygamist in the story “Careless Daughters,” but really, it…

Entertaining Strangers opens with a brief Prelude describing a fire which happened seventy-five years before. Both the Prelude, and the novel itself which is set in 1997, are narrated by Jules, who in 1997 seems to be a relatively young woman. So far, so confusing… In the first chapter, Jules sits down for a minute,…