Queen of Spades Michael Shou-Yung Shum What a cracking tale! As soon as I saw the title, I knew I had to read it. Although “Queen of Spades” isn’t my favorite of Pushkin’s stories–that honor goes to his “Little Tragedies”–it’s certainly a classic for a reason. This version, set in a casino in Snoqualmie in […]
Read more "“Queen of Spades” by Michael Shou-Yung Shum"China Girl: And Other Stories Ho Lin “She hates the David Bowie song…How could anyone think of that as a beautiful Chinese girl?” So thinks May Lee, the exotic dancer whose story is told in the eponymous opening story of the collection “China Girl,” whose characters move, often ambiguously, between East and West, belonging to […]
Read more "“China Girl: And Other Stories” by Ho Lin"The Sandbox David Zimmerman A surreptitiously weird book, “The Sandbox” follows the story of Toby Durrant, soldier and screw-up, who ends up in something way over his head while deployed in Iraq. The weirdness begins when Durrant’s convoy comes across the body of a little girl lying in the road. When they stop to investigate, […]
Read more "“The Sandbox” by David Zimmerman"Spoils Brian Van Reet Specialist Cassandra Wigheard is a tough girl from Arkansas who joined the army looking for adventure. What she got was deployment to Iraq and lots of close proximity with aspiring rapists, first from her own comrades in arms, then from the mujahideen who capture her and want to use her as […]
Read more "“Spoils” by Brian Van Reet"When Time is a River Susan Clayton-Goldner In “When Time Is A River,” teenager Brandy wants to be an actress more than anything. But her dream may have been dashed before it was even formed: she has a noticeable scar on her cheek from a childhood accident. Now she’s going through plastic surgeries and trying […]
Read more "“When Time is a River” by Susan Clayton-Goldner"In this collection of tales, in turns lyrical and brutal, Oleg Ermakov, probably Russia’s foremost writer on the Soviet war in Afghanistan, depicts the war from multiple points of view: a boy on a date a couple of days before he heads off to basic training, a raw recruit forced to commit an act he […]
Read more "“Afghan Tales” by Oleg Yermakov"“The New Voices of Fantasy” is an eclectic mixture of diverse fantasy authors, featuring a multitude of subgenres in stories set around the globe. Although the short story format means that the worlds and cultures the authors have created appear only in snippet form, which is not normally my favorite way to experience fantasy, this […]
Read more "“The New Voices of Fantasy”"In “The Hideout,” a Czech engineer writes letters to his wife, Hanichka, from his hiding place in occupied France. In them, he describes how he went to Paris in 1939 without her knowledge in order to chase after another woman, only to be trapped there when the Nazis, who have taken Czechoslovakia, declare him a […]
Read more "“The Hideout” by Egon Hostovsky"So, I’m going to be taking part in a free and discount book promo event on Saturday (links to come as soon as they’re live), and in support of that I’ve made all my own books free or 99c. The Midnight Land Part One, the first book in my epic feminist Slavic fantasy trilogy in […]
Read more "Free and Discount Books All Weekend!"Isadora Duncan was, in her own peculiar way, one of the most influential personalities of the 20th century. Not only did she usher in a new conception of dance, but she embodied the turn-of-the-century ideal of turning life itself into art. Her personal life was at least as theatrical as her performances, and much more […]
Read more "“Isadora” by Amelia Gray"
E. P. Clark: Author, Book Reviewer, and All-Around Literary Handiwoman 