Short Story Wednesday: Books from the Book Sale

 

Since I already own so many short story collections and anthologies, not to mention all my husband's short story books, I always plan to avoid those books at the Planned Parenthood book sale. This weekend, on the second day I visited, I got stuck in front of the table of short story collections and bought a lot more of them than I should have.

Below are three of my new short story books. None of them are very long, which is a good thing. 

Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan

Claire Keegan is an Irish writer who has gotten a lot of attention (and awards) for her novels and short story books in the last few years. I have some of her books in eBook format, but have not yet read any of them. So I picked up a paperback edition of her second book of short stories. From the back of the book: "Walk the Blue Fields is an unforgettable array of quietly wrenching stories about despair and desire in modern-day Ireland."

166 pages, 7 stories.

Seasonal Work by Laura Lippman

Laura Lippman is a well-known American mystery author and journalist; she worked for the Baltimore Sun for many years. In 2003, she published the first book in the Tess Monaghan series. Monaghan is a private investigator, based in Baltimore. Lippman has also written a good number of standalone mysteries. I have read two mysteries in the Monaghan series, but none of the standalone books, which I have always thought were about subjects too tense for me. The short stories in this book were written between 2009 and 2020, and Tess Monaghan is in some of them but not all of them, I think. 

322 pages, 11 stories.

The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr

I have read nothing by American author Anthony Doerr. He is the author of All the Light We Cannot See, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Cloud Cuckoo Land. I was interested in this book of short stories because I thought reading them might get me interested in his novels.

218 pages, 8 stories.

Short Story Wednesday: Murder in the Rough

A few weeks ago I featured two stories from Murder at the Foul Line, an anthology of short stories assembled by Otto Penzler  with a basketball theme. Since then, I read some stories from Murder in the Rough:  Original Tales of Bad Shots, Terrible Lies, and Other Deadly Handicaps from Today's Great Writers. These stories focus on golf. The stories were all published for the first time in this anthology in 2006.

These are a few of my favorite stories so far: 

"Welcome to the Real World" by Lawrence Block. 

Kramer is a man of routine. When he retires, he established plans for each day of the week, Monday through Friday. Mondays and Thursdays he has a specific exercise routine; Tuesdays he goes to a batting range; and Wednesdays he practices at a shooting range, keeping three of his own guns at the gun club.  On Fridays he plays golf, practicing different shots at a driving range for most of the day. He likes his routine and sees no reason to change it, until he gives into some good-natured ribbing from a former co-worker, Bellerman, and actually plays a real game of golf. This story has a slow build-up and a great ending.

"The Man Who Didn't Play Golf" by Simon Brett

Leonard Wensam cheats on his wife, Amanda, with another woman every Thursday. He says he is playing golf at the golf club but instead he is meeting his lover. One week, Amanda accidentally finds out about this arrangement. She meets the club professional, who has never heard of her husband.  She then plans her revenge.

"A Good **** Spoiled" by Laura Lippman

This was another variation on a married man using golf as an excuse for being away from home with his mistress. It is very different, humorous, and an excellent story. But I don't want to spoil it by saying any more about the story.

"Unplayable Lies" by William G. Tapply

This was an excellent story, narrated by a young man who often caddies for a member of the Mafia, Big Paulie Mazza. I have never read a book by Tapply but reading this story makes me want to.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed these stories set in the world of golfing, but I think the game of golf, with the setting and the long walks, lends itself to crime stories. There are a lot of mystery novels with a connection to golf. At the end of this book there is a seven page list of golf mysteries.