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 "A Decent Life" by Peter Meinke (4047 words) *****

This great story from one of Meinke's collections recounts the life of a man who is discovered to be having an affair. The issue: He lives in a totalitarian society, and his wife is the one who reports him. As such, the government's ultimate control of the two lovers means that they can be compelled toward actions that they would not otherwise contemplate, enough that choices about life are altered forever. Read the story here at VQR.

On "The Ore Miner's Wife" by Karl Iagnemma (7006 words) ***

"The Ore Miner's Wife" deals with a woman whose miner husband takes an interest in science. This interest leads her to believe that perhaps he is cheating on her. Perhaps because the story is told from two points of view, thus removing much of the mystery of what's happening, I found this piece less compelling than many of Iagnemma's other stories. Still, the two viewpoints fit with an overall theme of Iagnemma's fiction--the cross-section between love and science. Read the the story here at Virginia Quarterly Review.

On "Serve-and-Volley, Near Vichy" by Greg Jackson (8244 words) ****

"Serve-and-Volley, Near Vichy" does an odd trick of showing how one-time fame can corrupt a person's life. The narrator heads with his girlfriend to visit one of her old friends, who happens to be married to a former tennis star. The star, however, appears to be going mad. He no longer plays tennis and forbids the family from it. And yet, one day, he takes the narrator out to film a tennis match--the star player's most-famous tennis match--an act that will transform the narrator's life in ways sad and harrowing. Read the story here at VQR.

On "The Ghosts We Love" by Brock Clarke (9318 words) *****

A common subject in Brock Clarke's stories is men who have failed to live up to life's potential. Often, this revolves around marriages gone bad, in part because of these failures. In this story, from Clarke's second collection, Carrying the Torch, we see the theme carried across a family. Here, the setting of a lake house is used to full effect, presenting us with eras of the family and its gradual deterioration. Read the story here at Virginia Quarterly Reivew. Or listen to Clarke read it here at Lit-Cast.