This is not your ordinary short story collection. In his newest work, Daniel Chacón subverts expectation and bends the rules of reality to create stories that are intriguing, hilarious, and deeply rooted in Chicano culture. These stories explore the concept of a wall that reaches beyond our immediate thoughts of a towering physical structure. While Chacón aims to address the partition along the U.S.-Mexico border, he also uses these stories to work through the intangible walls that divide communities and individuals—particularly those who straddle multiple cultures in their daily lives.

Set in El Paso and other Latinx-dominant urban spaces, Kafka in a Skirt is an immersive look into the myriad lives of the characters who inhabit these culturally diverse areas. Chacón masterfully weaves elements of the surreal and fantastic through a shining tapestry of fiction, creating moments of touching realism in contrast with scenes that are fascinatingly unfamiliar. Occasionally teasing the ghosts of Jorge Luis Borges and the Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, this collection disregards boundaries and transports readers into a world merely parallel to our own. Kafka in a Skirt unravels the intricacies of culture, sexuality, love, and loneliness in a collection that shows the personal implications of barriers while remaining hopeful and bright.

Here is Kathryn, "nearly 88, infinity next to infinity, / but infinity curled on itself, a whirlwind / that whipped about the house and was gone, / rain in its wake, a smell of dirt."

Kathryn is near the end of her life and is losing her memories: travels, husbands, a storm of keepsakes. As Gina Franco unleashes that storm and as Kathryn's flood of memories washes over us, we know at once that we are in the hands of a truly gifted poet. "The Keepsake Storm" is the culmination of a verse cycle that probes the depths of the heart—a meditation on the meaning of life in a difficult world. Drawing on a rich tradition of storytelling in Latino literature, Franco explores the transformative power of compassion as she addresses themes of cultural alienation, lost family roots, and the uncertain resiliency of the self. In writing that blends rapture, vision, and mystery, Franco calls on a multiplicity of voices and a prodigious command of forms to explore the underlying rhythms of life, finding poetry even in the imperfect transmissions of e-mail:

"I was happy to get your letter. I had a rough day.
My step-mom had a breakdown and is in a hospitol.
I don't understand all the why's of it. She has paranoia
scetsafrinia. (and I know that is spelled totally
wrong). I don't blame myself I just didn't see it coming."

By reaffirming the power of self-awareness, history, and place, Franco reaches out to all who struggle to find meaning in times of trouble or self-doubt. The Keepsake Storm is a personal journey through many lives that is nothing less than a celebration—and a reassessment—of American consciousness.

Wanderers and writers, gangbangers and lawyers, dreamers and devils. The King of Lighting Fixtures paints an idiosyncratic but honest portrait of Los Angeles, depicting how the city both entrances and confounds. Each story serves as a reflection of Daniel A. Olivas’s grand City of Angels, a “magical metropolis where dreams come true.”

The characters here represent all walks of L.A. life—from Satan’s reluctant Craigslist roommate to a young girl coping with trauma at her brother’s wake—and their tales ebb and flow among various styles, including magical realism, social realism, and speculative fiction. Like a jazz album, they glide and bop, tease and illuminate, sadden and hearten as they navigate effortlessly from meta to fabulist, from flash fiction to longer, more complex narratives.

These are literary sketches of a Los Angeles that will surprise, connect, and disrupt readers wherever they may live.