Yet Dinah and Joe Marino really are happy together. She’s a homicide detective with the LAPD; he’s a psychologist who left the police to open his own clinic. They may not have much of a sex life, but they’re so mindful, attentive, and solicitous of each other that, as Dinah says, “He’s the best part […]
This collection abounds with bad decisions, traumatic events, and ominous conclusions. In an introduction, British writer Stuart Evers observes that “the lives Meyer depicts are small ones; ones lived in the margins of society.” The story “I’m Still Here!” follows a boxer—“a Black Dutchman from Rotterdam with a mashed-up face”—as he endures existential doubt and […]
A group of hunter-gatherers is endangered by murderous timbermen in the Brazilian rainforest. Above the Arctic Circle, an old Inuit woman takes her skeptical, indolent “grandson” to a remote old village (from which oil companies uprooted them) to enact an obscure ritual. Both use ancestral memories to summon help from an advanced extraterrestrial civilization of […]
Harrold is a former butler to King Charles III and the United Kingdom’s “leading expert on etiquette,” according to the jacket description, but he makes a good impression and does well without a ghostwriter. The Crown plays a modest role in the lives of most Britons, but Harrold’s parents were genuine enthusiasts who enjoyed visiting […]
Jovita’s father always told his daughter to use her palabras—her words—and when Jovita grows up, she doesn’t let him down; she writes and speaks about the injustices she sees in her community. As a teacher, she writes about the importance of bilingual and bicultural education. When she becomes a journalist, she uses her words to […]
On September 13, 2022, Iran’s morality police arrested 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini for having too much hair protruding from her hijab (“Members of the Gasht-e Ershad then grabbed Amini and began forcing her into their van”). Three days later, she was dead in Kasra Hospital, another victim of the country’s re-education centers. Photos of Amini in […]
In this deeply personal yet socially illuminating memoir, Maxfield navigates her Jewish American experience, tracing the tension between assimilation and exclusion. She writes: “Here’s what happens when you’re Ashkenazi Jewish. You get put in the ‘White’ box because of the color of your skin. But the self-described ‘real’ white people, the so-called ‘fringe’ groups, don’t […]
This volume is organized into four thematic sections—“Family & Friendship,” “Immigration & Belonging,” “Witness & Activism,” and “Identity & Self-Love”—which pair entries with the prompts that inspired them. Each section opens with a warm and insightful exchange between the co-editors, Shout Mouse founder Crutcher and 21-year-old Shout Mouse author Aakil. Readers will encounter a wide […]
Ramona Sadler’s carefully curated life unravels after the loss of her professorship and her townhouse lands her in a mobile home at the Nearly Heaven RV Park in Jackalope, Texas— similar to the one she grew up in back in Snap Peas, New York. With her academic career in shambles due to apparent budget cuts […]
Knowing that he only gets a few more kid birthdays before the gifts start turning from cool stuff into things like dress shirts and nose-hair trimmers, Greg is determined to make his upcoming celebration something special. Unfortunately, due to a household mishap, his mom forgot to mark his birthday on the family calendar—and his dad […]