Category: Fiction
21 review(s) found that match this category.
Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories
Summer 2013
Most writers’ volumes of “new and selected” stories add only two or
three new pieces to twenty or thirty old ones. More than half of Sherman
Alexie’s Blasphemy is new, however, including a few lengthy stories. The success of Alexie’s te...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: Short stories, Native Americans, Humor
All You Can Eat
Spring 2012
In an expensive downtown Spokane condo lives a predator. You wouldn’t guess it from his expensive wine, conservative clothes, classical music, and penchant for nature and historical TV programs, but Darius is part of a group who must drink the bl...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: Mystery novels, Supernatural, Vampire
New & Noteworthy
Winter 2011
Standing Above the
Crowdby James
“Dukes” Donaldson ’79
Aviva Publishing , New York,
2011Donaldson mines
his experiences as a former
Cougar basketball and
NBA star, entrepreneur,
mentor, and community
leader not just to tell his
own st...
Categories: Business, Memoirs, Fiction
Tags: Management, Basketball, Organization, Fantasy, FBI
The Man Who Dammed the Yangtze: A Mathematical Novel
Winter 2011
Ge and
G, mathematicians in northern China
and Oshkosh, Wisconsin, respectively,
navigate parallel academic paths at the
beginning of this unique and challenging
novel by WSU English professor Alex
Kuo. The two characters don’t know each
oth...
Categories: Fiction, Literature
Tags: China, Dams, Revolutions, American West
Murder at Foxbluff Lake
Summer 2011
Cougar fans of all ages will enjoy reading Jesse E. Freels’s first book, Murder at Foxbluff Lake,
a Coug Hawkins mystery. The novel tells the story of Coug, the
teenage son of a WSU football legend, who goes on a camping trip with...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: Mystery novels, Eastern Washington
Legacy of Angels
Fall 2010
The issue of whether to review self-published books resurfaces here at WSM periodically, as it does in many other review venues. The argument against reviewing such books assumes that publication by a commercial publisher promises some standa...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: Self-published books
White Jade and Other Stories
Spring 2009
The seven stories in this collection are delightful. Sometimes funny and even perverse, they show an extravagant imagination, and a very sharp political perspective deepened by their concern for how wars and historical dislocations jam people into...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: Short stories, Asian Americans
Panda Diaries
Summer 2007
In Panda Diaries, Alex Kuo's latest novel, a panda mailman chastises his improbable cohort, Ge, for buying into its pop image. "You're supposed to be in intelligence. You've seen me smoke. If I relied only on that bamboo diet, we'd all be extinct by ...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: China, Asian Americans
Disturbance-Loving Species
Spring 2008
Much has been made of the supposed decline of short fiction in recent years. But Peter Chilson's intelligent, gripping, and emotionally complex new book, Disturbance-Loving Species, winner of the prestigious Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize for fiction...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: Africa
Two Worlds
Spring 2002
As a longtime teacher of multicultural children, Marietta Taylor Barron ('45 Home Econ.) observed the struggles of Mexican-Americans to overcome poverty and prejudice. She was determined to tell their story simply and visually for all youngsters to u...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: Mexican Americans
The Work of Wolves
Fall 2005
Reading Kent Meyers's The Work of Wolves reminded me of a time when I loved horses. To watch them gallop, to see them stoop and eat grass, to feel their breath as they'd nuzzle my hand for oats. To sense in them an innate sovereignty that people in o...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: American West
Windfalls
Winter 2005
To be a mother or an artist? Or both? Anyone interested in women's quest stories that explore these central questions will find Jean Hegland's second novel, Windfalls, to be essential reading. Readers who know the Palouse will enjoy her vivid ...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: Eastern Washington
I Only Smoke on Thursdays
Winter 2003
What would Audrey Hepburn do? Look no further than the timeless class, spirit, and wit of the late actress for tips on dating and living as a modern woman. That's part of the advice of Seattle author Georgie Nickell ('94 Comm.) in her debut novel, I ...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: Dating
Index of Suspicion
Summer 2003
Don't read Index of Suspicion by Robert E. Armstrong until all your pets have had fresh rabies vaccinations. Using his knowledge as a veterinarian—he graduated from WSU's College of Veterinary Medicine in 1962—Armstrong has constructed a complex ...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: Mystery novels
Salt Lick
Spring 2008
Anyone familiar with Brian Ames's three books of short stories—Smoke Follows Beauty, Head Full of Traffic, and Eighty-Sixed—will know that he's a writer of imagination and depth. His stories explore the boundaries between everyday existen...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: Literature
Prisoners of Flight
Summer 2004
In Prisoners of Flight, Sid Gustafson's veterinarian protagonist refers often to angels: "We haven't heard from our angels in a long time. But they're out there . . . waiting somewhere in the sky." Two ex-military pilots, Gustaf...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: Survival
Horses They Rode
Summer 2007
Midway through Sid Gustafson's new novel, Horses They Rode, I found myself put in mind of all the second chances I have had. His take on the reknitting of family, friendship, and one man's tumultuous life is such a story—a tale of second chance...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: Horses
Breederman
Spring 2002
Author Murray Anderson ('50 Dairy Husbandry) weaves his experiences as a herdsman, milk tester, milking machine salesman, artificial inseminator, and fieldsman into a novel that describes the struggle for survival of small farmers in northwest Washin...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: American West
Smoke Follows Beauty
Summer 2003
There's a scene in "The Kanasket Chicken Killings" that illuminates a great deal of what Brian Ames ('85 Political Science) is up to in his collection of short stories, Smoke Follows Beauty. As he's replacing the camshaft of a road grader, mechanic H...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: Short stories
Head Full of Traffic
Winter 2005
If his two latest short story collections are indicative, Brian Ames '85 is a prolific writer of unsettling talent. Releasing both Head Full of Traffic and Eighty-Sixed: A Compendium of the Hapless in 2004, Ames packs 22-plus pieces into each collect...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: Short stories
Eighty-Sixed: A Compendium of the Hapless
Winter 2005
If his two latest short story collections are indicative, Brian Ames ’85 is a prolific writer of unsettling talent. Releasing both Head Full of Traffic and Eighty-Sixed: A Compendium of the Hapless in 2004, Ames packs 22-plus pieces into each colle...
Categories: Fiction
Tags: Short stories