From Publishers Weekly These seven gentle tales set in Minnesota and North Dakota and all written during the 1970s treat fans of novelist Hassler (A Green Journey; Jemmy) to the earliest fruits of his talent. Some are folksy portraits of small-town characters, while others are drier and more plot driven. Both the title story and "Resident Priest" feature crusty, 74-year-old Father Fogarty, a pastor who's leaving his parish after 23 years. In "Chief Larson," a seven-year-old Indian boy, known (rather improbably) only as "chief" on the reservation, rebels in a small but telling way against his white adoptive family. "Good News in Culver Bend" tracks two city reporters who travel to a small town and discover "the heart of Christmas." "Chase" and "Christopher, Moony, and the Birds" show how frustrated residents of small towns seek solace. The former, so brief it's nearly a prose poem, hints at Hassler's own adolescent discovery of his talent for fiction; the latter follows a lonely 50-year-old college professor as he goes on a consolatory walk with a student's awkward wife and child, watching "birds on family outings, hopping and halting on the grass." The cleverest story, "Yesterday's Garbage," follows a "garbologist" who finds the truth about a murder in a trash bin, and is then led to commit one himself. The publisher plans to issue Hassler's later short fiction in three more volumes, starting in the year 2000. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

In this wonderful collection of award winning stories Peter Ohren continues to explore the lives of the characters he brought us in his second novel How It Is With Miracles (iUniverse, 2005). The stories, set in the struggling farming community of Deckerville, expose the dreams and disappointments of the people there. The author has a sympathetic grasp of the pathos of small town folk trying to cope with modern life: global competition, failing farms, love and loss, and the struggle with faith. In reading about his farmers, clerks, mechanics, shop owners and parish priests one has the feeling of an entire way of life coming into view, a way of life that may well be on the verge of extinction. These are people we know, our neighbors and friends. These are people whose joys and sorrows we can identify with and share. Deckerville is a must read book.

The settings for a lot of Jerome Johnson stories seem to take place on a gravel side road somewhere. They are absurd, comical, creative and just to the left of surreal.

Tales of the East and West.

This collection brings together the two-part short story which originally appeared in Heat #1 and Heat #2 -- "The Prisoner's Release" -- with three entirely new tales set in the world of Argaea.* "Inside the Cage" takes place at the Jackal's Staff where a young cougar seeks to escape his life of prostitution.* "The Prisoner's Release" previously appeared in Heat #1 and Heat #2 and tells the story of how Volle met Streak.* "Home Again" picks up just after "The Prisoner's Release" when Volle and Streak have returned Ferrenis and fills in some details leading up to their ill-fated return to Tephos in "Pendant of Fortune." * Finally we return to the Jackal's Staff in "For Love or Family", this time through the eyes of a patron trying to balance the way he feels against the duties of his station.

A collection of horror short stories by Ian Madison Keller centered around a very furry apocalypse. Read about a park ranger who needs to escape from intelligent forest creatures out for her blood, a house cat who must decide between revenge or helping her friends, a girl trying to remember who she is with the help of her ghost dog, a vampire who steals the wrong artifact and ends up in over her head, and a half-bat girl out to solve a series of brutal murders. Collection includes The Fluffpocalypse, Escape from the Wild, Survivors of the Holocene, So That They May Rule, Clary's Asylum, Romancing the Tombstone, and Poppy and the Great Expo.

This book puts the short story at the heart of contemporary postcolonial studies and questions what postcolonial literary criticism may be. Focusing on short fiction between 1975 and today – the period in which critical theory came to determine postcolonial studies – it argues for a sophisticated critique exemplified by the ambiguity of the form.