On “For Something to Do” by Elmore Leonard (4943 words) ***

Here's a short story that seems somewhat typical of Leonard's work: the violence, the tough guy focus, the criminal element. Even the fact that this is set in rural Michigan might be seen as emblematic of Leonard's work—bringing together a common setting (Michigan) and the western elements of his early work. Evan has married his sweetheart. The two are expecting guests, but they hope, strangely, that the guests won't show: in fact, they'd be okay with the guests getting in an accident or something else dreadful. The reason soon becomes clear why. Cal (a relative) and Ray (a former boyfriend) are tough guys here to spend time with Evan's wife and not too keen on seeing her poor horse farmer husband. Leonard's work probably works better over a larger page count, where the plots can unfurl in unpredictable complexity. Here, as seems inevitable in so much Leonard fiction, a fight ensues, and we see the parties come to a head, the situation “resolved,” though the degree to which that resolution is permanent, I have to wonder, would be questionable outside the tidy resolution of the story. You can read it here at Harper's Magazine.

On "Expiation" by Edith Wharton (8246 words) ***

This story is somewhat predictable, but the question at its heart is one worth pondering. The focus is on writers and on how they can get their writing to be more popularly successful. The way? Make it controversial. If you can get someone to ban it, you're sure of success. When a writer's attempt to write something in that vein, however, it is given a good review and noted as being quite pleasant, much to the author's chagrin. The story revolves around her attempt to "fix" the book's reception. Read the story here at Project Gutenberg.

On "Dating a Somnambulist" by Kate Folk (849 words) ***

In Kate Folk's world, weird stuff happens. That weird stuff is metaphorical for the angst we feel in regular life over the mundane. This mundane finds its way into lists here of what her sleep-walking boyfriend picks up a night. And yet, despite the trouble, Folk's narrator lives on--there could be worse things in other worlds. Read the story here at Hobart.

On "Breakfast" by John Steinbeck (1169 words) ***

While not one of Steinbeck's best stories, this one still shows much of his great skill. It's essentially the description of a breakfast among hired farmhands. Steinbeck thrusts at readers the sight, the smells, the taste, the sounds of all that is there. Read the story here.

On "Monkey Park" by Madison Smartt Bell (about 7,000 words) ****

This one involves a night of randomness. It centers on a woman and her male friend and her husband. She spends more time with the former than the latter, and there's a feeling of sadness insofar as we know that there's something going on between them that they won't quite acknowledge and can't. There's putting on clown faces, drinking too much, going to a park to play and to look at monkeys involved. Read the story from Hudson Review here at Jstor (you can sign up for a free account and read it online).

On "Pointing East, Where Things Happen" by Donna Baier Stein (3770 words) ***

Is he or isn't he? When a man has an affair, it's hard to trust him ever again--that's the angle in this story, centered on a revival meeting and a mysterious bracelet too small for his wife. Read the story here at Summerset Review.

On "Spring 1933" by Donna Baier Stein (4952 words) ***

What happens when a woman falls in love and then loses everything she thinks she might have. Not good things, apparently. Amber settles for something close to what she wanted and finds instead much worse the heartbreak. Read the story here at VQR.

On "Trouble at the Dance Hall" by Donna Baier Stein (2665 words) ***

The center of this story is a fiddler who is struggling to get by--and who also happens to be a black man in a bar full of white people, some kind, some not so. Read the story here at Green Hills Literary Lantern.

On "Mrs. Manstey's View" by Edith Wharton (4114 words) ***

What makes this fairly formulaic story so special isn't the plot, which is as drear as one would expect from Edith Wharton, or the characters, who are perhaps a bit less uniquely drawn than usual but the writing style, which is beautiful and the portrait of loneliness in its most egregious form and what little hope one clings to. Manstey is an old lady with nothing to live for but a room with a view. Read the story here.

On "The Terrible Old Man" by H. P. Lovecraft (1150 words) ***

"The Terrible Old Man" is a kind of folk tale. It revolves around three men who go looking for treasure--via the robbing of an old man that everyone else is afraid of. They should have known not to pursue their ends. Read the story here.

On "Tweet" by Sabrina Orah Mark (1151 words) ***

Mark is a poet, which is obvious from this piece, which plays with language more than anything else one would expect of a story. It's about following, about religion, about looking for something beautiful, about wanting to be beautiful like that something, about not knowing where to go. It is about life and about social networks. Read the story here at the Collagist.

On "The Tree" by H. P. Lovecraft (1634 words) ***

Two artists vie to build a statue, but in the course of their work, one dies--vaguely becoming a tree. The supernatural effects go on to change the community. Read the story here.

On "The Cats of Ulthar" by H. P. Lovecraft (1350 words) ***

For those who love cats, here's a story about cat revenge. Two townspeople hate cats and murder them at every opportunity, until one day . . . Read the story here.

On "From Beyond" by H. P. Lovecraft (3046 words) ***

Lovecraft here warns of science and philosophy. Those who don't succeed live on in despair; those who do go crazy. The friend in this story is one of the latter, who invents a machine that makes the invisible visible--in such a way that it kills those who use it. One senses a link to ideas of gnosticism, how the physical cannot grasp the nonphysical without becoming utterly impotent. Read the story here.

On "The Other Gods" by H. P. Lovecraft (2037 words) ***

Men scale mountains. In the work of Lovecraft, however, this becomes not an adventure story about men versus the elements or even nature but about men versus the ancient gods who dwell atop those mountains, warning us away. Read the story here.

On "The Unnamable" by H. P. Lovecraft (2951 words) ***

This tale moves Lovecraft's work into the American everyday. Essentially a kind of ghost story, the piece revolves around a man trying to convince his inconvincible scientifically minded friend that a particular house is haunted by "the unnamable." Read the story here.

On "Mama" by Lucia Berlin (13 minutes) ***

In "Mama," Berlin returns to some recurring characters of hers. Carlotta here rehearses stories about Mom for her dying sister Sally, whose relationship with their mom was cut off when she married a Mexican--stories about alcoholism but also about love and sacrifice, some of them embellished. Carlotta may have stayed on Mom's good side, but Sally seems the more forgiving. Listen to Berlin read it here at Soundcloud.

On "And the World Was Crowded with Things That Meant Love" by Amber Sparks (604 words) ***

This tale is about long-distance lovers who exchange gifts. The lyric formulation of words is what saves this listing of presents. Read it here at Matter Press.

On "Macadam" by Lucia Berlin (148 words) ***

This is Berlin doing poetry essentially. The focus of this story is the sound of words--or rather, one word. Read the story here at Biblioklept.

On "Holy Ground" by Jamie Quatro (about 6400 words) ***

In “Holy Ground” a woman decides to literally run away. She's been having an affair of sorts (on the phone) and feels a need somehow to make good. Her husband and kids stay home. She runs to a poorer area down the hill, in another town, where she hopes to live for a week, getting a sense of how others live and helping them. Instead, she finds herself helped of a sort. Read the story here.