The Used Marketplace
In his debut short story collection, Gerlitz expertly walks a line between absurdity and reality, as in a tale of a man who enters a beard growing contest but keeps shaving: “After I got done shaving this morning, I became depressed about how little my beard has grown in.” In another story, a man sends a note to his upcoming first date that he will be wearing a dog cone around his head due to unforeseen events. An old man … Read the rest
Lippman fans will be glad to hear that the first two stories in her second collection of short fiction—after Hardly Knew Her (2008)—feature Tess Monaghan, now-retired private investigator and star of a dozen mystery novels. The first, the title story, is about a long con featuring the wise child of a grifter dad; the second is a very Baltimorean story set in a children’s bookstore with an ongoing shoplifting problem. The third story features a couple that insiders will recognize … Read the rest
The work begins with an arresting line: “It was somewhere between my 34th and 39th year when I began to go crazy.” In the 1980s, the author was living with her husband and three children in a yellow-brick house outside Philadelphia. She says that she began to hear conflicting voices in her mind, which she initially interpreted as ordinary thought processes. However, she also felt her love for her children was weakening, and she couldn’t understand why. Later, her spouse … Read the rest
Each of the 50 biographical sketches is five to six paragraphs long, covers the entire life span of the subject, and includes an epigraphic quote attributed to the singer in question. The revelatory and uplifting narratives span many musical genres, including soul, jazz, hip-hop, rap, reggae, punk rock, electronic music, and more. Altogether, they cover 87 years of music history—the singers’ birth dates range from 1894 to 1981—and illuminate the profound impact Black women have made on social, political, and … Read the rest
The text reproduces the lines of the poem verbatim while Crumpton’s vivid, saturated, digital illustrations present contemporary scenes of a young Black boy’s life. The boy, who oozes confidence, cheerfulness, and optimism, is shown introducing readers to his neighborhood and his loving nuclear family. As he grows older, he attends Joe Biden’s inauguration (Biden is not shown in the artwork), where he watches Amanda Gorman deliver the inaugural poem; attends an anti-racist protest with his parents and siblings; excels academically; … Read the rest
Before arriving at the opulent home of disabled television journalist Peter Bright in the Thousand Islands area of Ontario, Tina Gabler had watched her life follow a not-uncommon trajectory for those who came of age in the 1970s. Leaving behind parental expectations in her home city of New York to join counterculture communities in California and Vermont, then escaping to Canada with a draft-evading boyfriend, she settled into the protean life of a self-employed event planner in Toronto. Now, at … Read the rest