Boyles has written stories of surprising range, while maintaining a focus on how human beings—particularly men—are imperiling our planet through careless exploitation and short-term economic goals.

Laynie Jackman darts across the country “taking leave of the dead” by dispersing the belongings of lost loved ones.

Upon discovering his dead twin, Stewart decides to dispose of the body and appropriate Brock’s identity. What could go wrong?

They aim to free chickens from imprisonment in factory farms, in order to give poultry a chance to be themselves, to live free, and to become a hale, post-apocalyptic species.

Saba and Hagos, a young girl and her mute older brother have been displaced from Eritrea during the country’s long War of Independence.

The idea of acceptance, riddled with reluctant connotation, sometimes betrays itself.

Wexelblatt’s Hsi-wei Tales is a wonderful fusion of poetry and prose that captivates and holds nuggets of wisdom far beyond the fortune cookie kind.

However, this slim, powerful volume presents a world so viscerally haunting, readers are likely to pick up both. In each, Koesters balances the music (and often the humor) of her characters’ voices with unflinching portrayals of sexual abuse, religion, stratifications of class and race, and the cultural reverberations of cyclical, endemic violence.