This short story has been sitting on my Kindle forever. I can't even remember how I came across it. I needed a break from STEELHEART, so I dug through my library. Boy am I glad I did.DON'T EAT CAT is surprisingly deep. It starts off hilariously, and I thought I had picked up a comedy. I rarely la...
I can't imagine there being anyone who doesn't remember where they were, what they were doing, who they were with, when they first became aware that the World Trade Centre had been struck by passenger jets being used as fuel-engorged missiles. I had emerged from my bedroom with one of those scotc...
Darkly hilarious and unexpectedly profound, Citizen Vince is an irresistible tale about the price of freedom and the mystery of salvation, by an emerging writer of boundless talent. Eight days before the 1980 presidential election, Vince Camden wakes up at 1: 59 A.M. in a quiet house in Spokane, ...
In this fiendishly clever and darkly funny novel, Jess Walter speaks deeply to the bonds and compromises we make as children -- and the fatal errors we can make at any moment in our lives. While working the weekend night shift, Caroline Mabry, a weary Spokane police detective, encounters a seemi...
A long time ago I spent time in Spokane, Washington, the setting for this marvelously written literary mystery. The small city itself was an interesting place of contrasts, surrounded by a beautiful and dramatic landscape. This was in the 1970's, so I imagine it has changed a great deal. However,...
The air is cool, sky clear, pinpricks of light fierce tonight. Insistent. They don’t twinkle, they burn. The front deck of the cabin overlooks the mountain-rimmed glacial lake, and this is the view that causes most visitors to gasp. But she doesn’t like the front deck as much at night, when light...
When I was negotiating my severance from the newspaper, I really did dream one night that I’d delivered a paper to my own father, and that it contained my mother’s obituary. Of course, any good Freudian would accuse such a dreamer of ginning up his dream to please his therapist (this kind of beha...
If he’d known, Vince would’ve just kept walking. He was deep in thought about this election business, and something about it was making him feel better—or distracted anyway—but now he’s outside Sam’s Pit, and Beth and her friend Angela are waving their hands in the cold air, making points with li...