Tania Casselle

WreckerSummer Wood304 pages, hardcover: $20.Bloomsbury USA, 2011. In her second novel, Wrecker, New Mexico author Summer Wood draws on her personal experience as a foster parent. Wrecker is a bruiser of a boy who “seemed to need to feel his body collide with the physical world to know he existed.” He’s born and mostly raised […]

Then Came the EveningBrian Hart272 pages, hardcover: $25.Bloomsbury USA, 2010. In Brian Hart’s debut novel, a Vietnam veteran, believing his wife died in the fire that destroyed their cabin, goes crazy with rage and remorse, and commits a crime that makes the reader gasp. Bandy, who’s also half-drunk at the time, ends up in jail, […]

Best of the West 2009: New Stories from the Wide Side of the MissouriEdited by James Thomas and D. Seth Horton286 pages, softcover: $19.95.University of Texas Press, 2009. This impressive anthology of contemporary short fiction grounded in the American West showcases 18 stories from emerging writers and literary stars, selected from publications as diverse as […]

Madewell BrownRick Collignon213 pages, hardcover: $23.95.Unbridled Books, 2009. Madewell Brown is the fourth novel in Rick Collignon’s “Guadalupe” series, which is set in an imaginary village in northern New Mexico. But it reads as a stand-alone, even while spiraling back to explore the fate of a character introduced in Perdido, the second in the series. […]