Caleb Ross’ stories do not behoove summaries. Let’s just get that out of the way. Let’s also just say that they contain blood drinking, deformity, death, and disfigurement, to varying degrees. These stories swirl like nightmares: a populace of anti-protagonists so wounded that there is generally no hope for their redemption. The reader acts as sponge, absorbing their pain. Making sense of it. As the reader, you are the first man on the scene; as such, you are to perform the tasks the characters themselves are no longer capable of performing: observe, record, and interpret. Seek your own closure. …

“Edgewater was once a pretty normal ‘burb,” writes Drew Ballard, the narrator of Major Inversions. “Now, everyone you meet is in the process of becoming something.” This little seaside town has undergone some growing pains in the past couple of years. It is the suburb of what is becoming a burgeoning film town, the Hollywood of the eastern seaboard: Wilmington, North Carolina. It might not have Hollywood’s platinum sparkle, but movies get made in Wilmington, and everyone wants to get a break in the industry. As such, everyone in Edgewater …

Sheep and Wolves, Jeremy C. Shipp’s short story collection follow-up to his debut 2007 novel, Vacation, is not a quick read. Though only 160 pages, this collection demands an investment deeper than its length would suggest. Wearing the skin of the absurd while hiding the guts of a literary paranormal investigation, the collection defies casual reading and easy categorization. Sheep and Wolves must be approached carefully, chewed slowly, and swallowed cautiously.
The tales, rarely more than 10 pages in length individually, are challenging enough to traditional modes of storytelling that one …

The inherent danger with a politically grounded novel is the potential to read the book as an author’s manifesto. There is a desire for the reader to take a Rhetorical Critic’s stance on the text and interpret every politically-backed statement as the author’s personal belief. And with this danger comes the potential to polarize audiences. Joey Goebel’s third novel, Commonwealth, is weighed by this dynamic, however he has the storytelling chops to move beyond treatise territory and deliver a great story, helped, not hindered, by the political setting.
Commonwealth follows the …

The plot of The Golden Calf, Henry Baum’s second novel, reads like it was born of a dare. “Henry, I dare you to write a novel with a sympathetic Hollywood stalker. Give him a dull life, a dull job, call him Ray. Then turn him into an anti-celebrity missionary disgusted by the wealthy man’s ignorance of the Everyman’s plight. Make him pity Hollywood while simultaneously conscious of the need to help those wrecked by the Hollywood lifestyle. Most importantly, Mr. Baum, make me agree with this man.”
“Sure,” Henry Baum says. …

Justin Nicholes, author of the novel Ash Dogs (Another Sky Press), has set up for himself quite a challenge with this debut offering. His protagonist, former high school football star and current Iraq war veteran, Marcus Green, has returned home from his tour of duty and must assimilate back into domestic life. The novel focuses on Marcus’s attempt at a simple, comfortable existence far removed from the rigors of war, which by design downplays the forward momentum present in most longer fiction works.
Because the novel focuses almost entirely on Marcus’s …

You’ve read this before.
True fact.
In this age of “Going Green”, where recycling is chic, Chuck Palahniuk is the uncrowned King of Fiction. Palahniuk’s latest novel Snuff is nothing new. Sure, the premise might be different—there probably aren’t too many novels out there about washed up porn queens going for the world’s largest gangbang record—and Snuff further cements Palahniuk’s boner for the bizarre. And sure, his sense of humor is still in tactless tact. But if you’ve read any of Palahniuk’s novels before you’ve already read this book.
True fact.
Four characters alternate …