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Uncommon Weather is an eclectic mix of character-driven stories that delivers a panoramic picture of Alaska— from the cold city streets of Anchorage to picturesque but emotionally treacherous small Alaska towns; from the rough-and-tumble commercial fishing world of the distant Aleutian Islands to a remote river in the Brooks Range, where the vast and unforgiving Arctic wilderness puts romance to a severe test.
 
Richard Chiappone’s characters hail from a wide range of socioeconomic strata, each one attempting to figure out the difficult question of how best to live among others. Odd connections abound. In the seriocomic title story, a lonely middle-aged woman, weary of her austere Alaskan life and her crumbling marriage, picks up a hockey stick and a younger man and tries to brawl her way to some better future. A man diagnosed with an apparently terminal illness is caught up in a catastrophic criminal undertaking masterminded by a precocious seventeen-year-old girl. A young boy, determined to fit in with his edgier peers, goes through a metamorphosis, becoming a strange new creature he’s never seen before. With sometimes hilarious missteps, each character stumbles in and out of predicaments that are by turns tender, heartbreaking, dangerous, and even violent.
 
Told with great empathy and often deeply ironic, wry, and sardonic humor, these stories are a counterpoint to the usual mythos, illuminating an Alaska not usually portrayed in books, on TV, or in movies.

As wryly profound as ever, Glen Pourciau solidifies his reputation as a master of American short fiction with Under, a collection of brief yet meticulously elaborated stories that deconstruct daily living as his characters see it by diving beneath their skin and surveying the electric heat bristling below. He scours their interiors for the granular details of consciousness that accrue to a person's singular point of view, shape patterns of behavior, and culminate in consequential decisions (or equally meaningful inaction). Pourciau's writing thrums with claustrophobic intelligence, untangling the knots of eccentric personalities by observing the trajectory of his subjects' thoughts and tracing them back to the source. Rarely is the root an inciting incident or narrative catalyst, but rather the self-propagating algorithm of paranoia that proves to us we have something to fear precisely because we are afraid. Pourciau's titular story begins with the narrator confessing, "A voice from within is telling me this story. It rises like protruding lumps from nowhere." More often than not, plots that start inside one's head refuse to stay there; soon, psychological disruption asserts itself in the material world, determining a character's lived experience as tangibly as an external force or outside actor. "I've been watching a patch of ground in my backyard that has been upset by something moving up from below," the narrator continues. It's no comfort, actually, that what is emerging never actually emerges; a lack of conclusive evidence means never fully disproving the possibility of the thing, either. "Nothing is buried or rising from below in my backyard. My conscience is clear, guided only by its own instinct," the narrator assures himself to no avail. "This story should be rooted out, destroyed, but talking to it doesn't make it go away. Even when silent, something insidious gnaws within it." Pourciau's ability to illuminate that something insidious is what makes his writing something marvelous. No less instructive or revelatory for their internal accelerants, these stories spotlight the small conflagrations that punctuate even our most ordinary days. In delineating the invisible machinations of each person's mind, they reveal the flammable borders of personal boundaries and the conflicts with colleagues, neighbors, and long-time friends that cast off sparks and set our small lives ablaze.

A humorous and deeply human short story collection that celebrates outsiders, dreamers, and the queer.
 
The award-winning Slovak writer Barbora Hrínová’s short stories paint an intimate portrait of people searching for happiness in a world that feels increasingly unstable and uncertain. Across the eight stories in this volume, we meet a rich cast of ordinary yet unconventional people trying to find their place in a society that often prefers conformity over authenticity. Taking us to such settings as a bustling cafe, a small village shack, a rental flat, or a psychiatric ward, Hrínová captures the texture of everyday life with piercing accuracy and a fresh, original voice.
 
Unicorns is a remarkable debut that resonates across generations. With compassion, wit, and an eye for detail, it shows us that weirdness isn’t rare—it’s a universal human experience.

Independent Publisher’s Book Awards, Silver Medal, Short Story Fiction