As always, the Contributors’ Notes on the stories are fascinating, and writers will be encouraged to learn that one of the...
Plenty of great stories, but lighter on discovery and revelation than some previous annuals.
For the reader whose consumption of short stories doesn’t extend much beyond this yearly collection, the latest delivers the goods. With novelist Strout (The Burgess Boys, 2013, etc.) serving as guest editor and making the final selection, the collection includes a number of writers widely regarded as masters of the form: Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore, George Saunders and Junot Díaz among them. Almost half of these stories originally appeared in either the New Yorker or Granta. Strout explains that voice was the dominant criterion in her selection: “Arguably, authorial voice is more important in a short story than in a longer piece of fiction. The ride is quicker, the response heightened, and less space is available in which to absorb patches of soggy writing or gratuitous detail.” One of the quickest rides that generates the strongest response is “The Chair” by David Means, a first-person narration (as many of these stories are) by a father who can’t be trusted to know himself, let alone do best by his son, as he finds himself “having to reestablish my command, or better yet, my guidance—a towering figure in his little mind....” Quite a few of these stories concern the essence of storytelling: “Stories are about things that don’t happen. They could happen, but they don’t. But they could” (Steven Millhauser, “A Voice in the Night”); “I’m Paul Harvey, and now you know the rest of the story” (Callan Wink, “Breatharians”).
As always, the Contributors’ Notes on the stories are fascinating, and writers will be encouraged to learn that one of the best stories here—“Horned Men” by Karl Taro Greenfeld—was rejected by some 50 publications before making it to print.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-55482-2
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
The romantic doings of the likable characters are more interesting than the mediocre mystery.
A bike shop owner and her book club pals keep solving mysteries in ways that somehow don’t endear them to the police (Murder on Cape Cod, 2018, etc.).
Mackenzie Almeida, the proprietor of Mac’s Bikes in the touristy Cape Cod town of Westham, is dating Tim Brunelle, the caring and handsome owner of an artisanal bakery, who wants to get married and start a family. That’s not something independent neat freak Mac is ready to do. She enjoys living in her tiny house with Belle, her talkative parrot, for company. When Mac and her best friend, Gin, come across the dead body of wealthy Beverly Ruchart outside Gin’s taffy shop, Mac’s romantic problems get put on the back burner, especially since Gin is a suspect. She and her date, Eli Tubin, the widower of Beverly’s daughter, had attended a party at Beverly’s home only the night before. Beverly seems to have died from a heart attack, but an autopsy finds that she was poisoned with antifreeze, some of which has been planted in Gin’s garage. Of course Mac and her cohorts at the book club can’t resist a little sleuthing. They uncover several other plausible suspects: Beverly’s ne’er-do-well grandson, Ron, his Russian girlfriend, and his long-absent father, who has a police record. Although Beverly could be generous, she had a sharp tongue that made her plenty of enemies. Her interest in genealogy and reuniting long-lost parents and children endeared her to Wesley Farnham, for whom she found a son, but not so much to Farnham’s daughter, who misses being an only child. Although Mac turns her findings over to the police, she still attracts the killer’s notice and ends up owing her life to Belle.
The romantic doings of the likable characters are more interesting than the mediocre mystery.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1508-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Shalvis’ latest retains her spark and sizzle.
Piper Manning is determined to sell her family’s property so she can leave her hometown behind, but when her siblings come back with life-changing secrets and her sexy neighbor begins to feel like “The One,” she might have to redo her to-do list.
As children, Piper and her younger siblings, Gavin and Winnie, were sent to live with their grandparents in Wildstone, California, from the Congo after one of Gavin’s friends was killed. Their parents were supposed to meet them later but never made it. Piper wound up being more of a parent than her grandparents, though: “In the end, Piper had done all the raising. It’d taken forever, but now, finally, her brother and sister were off living their own lives.” Piper, the queen of the bullet journal, plans to fix up the family’s lakeside property her grandparents left the three siblings when they died. Selling it will enable her to study to be a physician’s assistant as she’s always wanted. However, just as the goal seems in sight, Gavin and Winnie come home, ostensibly for Piper’s 30th birthday, and then never leave. Turns out, Piper’s brother and sister have recently managed to get into a couple buckets of trouble, and they need some time to reevaluate their options. They aren’t willing to share their problems with Piper, though they’ve been completely open with each other. And Winnie, who’s pregnant, has been very open with Piper’s neighbor Emmitt Reid and his visiting son, Camden, since the baby’s father is Cam’s younger brother, Rowan, who died a few months earlier in a car accident. Everyone has issues to navigate, made more complicated by Gavin and Winnie’s swearing Cam to secrecy just as he and Piper try—and fail—to ignore their attraction to each other. Shalvis keeps the physical and emotional tension high, though the siblings’ refusal to share with Piper becomes tedious and starts to feel childish.
Shalvis’ latest retains her spark and sizzle.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296139-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
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