by Fielding Dawson — His last collection to appear during his lifetime. “The legendary Dawson has written 20 new stories, collected here in a handsome volumette. ‘Voices wise … deeply human … and searching,’ is what I once wrote, about another book by Dawson. Still true,” wrote Andrei Codrescu.

by Robert Flanagan — In this new collection of stories, Robert Flanagan again works muscular magic — bobbing, jabbing, and weaving with vivid dialogue and lively movements. We come across chiseled characters boxing, acting, attending Catholic grammar school, surviving Marine Corps basic — they grunt, swear, sweat, tell lies, and stumble over truth cloaked in a rueful, gimlet-eyed Irish humor. In my favorite of this collection, a Chautauqua actor makes his way as John L. Sullivan, owning fame, pain and shame, preaching temperance beside Sojourner Truth, reaching for redemption as life and time glide on. Each of these stories is a fine little film, speckled with credible dialogue from nuanced personae, shaded with bittersweet longing and generous humor.

by Loranne Temple — Runner-up for the 2009 Drake Emerging Writer Award. “Loranne Temple’s extraordinarily graceful stories are as inviting as a cool drink on a hot day. And like certain kinds of cool drinks, the stories in Coming To You from the Blue Room are deceptive, revealing their power only after we try to move away from them. A pleasure to read, these stories linger long in the mind.” Erin McGraw, author of The Baby Tree and The Good Life.

by Fielding Dawson — Thirteen stories (twelve new, one renewed) and five collages by Fielding Dawson. The collection opens with a 1975 classic, Dialogue, Dialogue, Monologue, Log and continues with more recent work. This is Fielding’s first posthumous volume, edited by Susan Maldovan.

by Mark Sebastian Jordan — subtitled “A Complete History of the United States, At Least As Much Of It As Can Be recalled Without Actually Looking Anything Up,” this is a comic sweep across a dazed vision of U.S. history as related by a pompous pseudo-academic given to preposterous malapropism.