The Advancement of Ignorance: Stories William F. Van Wert This collection of satirical stories by William F. Van Wert uses the life of Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez as a theme upon which to improvise imaginary through irreverent encounters between Cortez and other historical figures, including Erasmus, Martin Luther, and Cervantes. The author's playful use of puns, witty anachronisms and cleverly fractured historical revelations give this book a humorous punch.

Artificial Horizon

Laurence Gonzales
104 pages, $8.95 paper
ISBN 0-933532-52-0

Stories that slice into contemporary America at unusual and enlightening angles. --The Kansas City Star

Beautiful work by the author of Jambeaux and The Last Deal, this collection is worth seeking out for its lively and new vision of contemporary America. --Small Press Review

A first-rate young writer for anyone seeking lively idiom, authentic detail and a fresh point of view. --Edward Abbey

Gonzales' work has appeared in journals such as Poetry, Southern Review and the New York Times.

A Bed of Nails Ron Tanner [Ron Tanner] is fabulously imaginative, experimental, witty, often breathtaking...both male and female voices are handled beautifully, although the prose is what we've come to call "muscular." At first I felt that this was actually two collections, one concerned with life as we know it and one as we fear it will be--but came to believe that the worlds are perfectly married through their askew inventiveness and their witty contemporary language. It's very assured and audacious work. --Janet Burroway, 2002 Judge, Chandra Prize

Body & Blood Philip Russell A quiet fire runs through Philip Russell's Body & Blood. Each story is a flame casting light on the theater of love and loneliness. --Robert Solomon Philip Russell's work is finely tuned to the aberrations of love-the fear and danger and tenderness of it all. Reading these stories is like entering a house with many doors, many windows, all leading to the heart of very human things. --Dalia Pagani

The Curandero

Dan Curley
130 pages, $12.95 cloth
ISBN 0-933532-76-8

Sharp, ironic, beautifully written stories, a bravura performance. --Publishers Weekly

A writer of exceptional polish. The stories that make up The Curandero are certainly among his best. --New York Times Book Review

Should gain new audiences among those of us left who enjoy serious fiction. --Robert Fox, American Book Review

Curley's stories were reprinted regularly in The Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Stories. Curley published four short-story collections, three novels, three children's books and numerous other writings such as essays, plays and poems before his death in 1988.

Difficult Women Alfred Duhrssen By difficult women, the writer doesn't mean hard to seduce but women who are bad tempered, quarrelsome, and treacherous. She: You made me this way. He: That's what a difficult woman would say.

Drive, Dive, Dance, & Fight

Thomas E. Kennedy
152 pages, $14.95
ISBN 1-886157-14-6

Kennedy's characters are full, alive, and each story is rich and deep. He writes with wisdom that turns some of his stories of great sorrow into something triumphant. The title story is worth the book's price. It is funny, gloomy, terrifying and joyful. --Andre Dubus

The American short story is a thriving art form, and no one embodies its vitality, range and depth more energetically than Thomas E. Kennedy. His stories pulse with humor, moral edge and a deep sympathy for the human predicament. --James Carroll

Intense, humorous, sexually charged, emotionally powerful, the stories in Thomas E. Kennedy's Drive, Dive, Dance, & Fight brilliantly mine the hidden recesses of the human heart. Kennedy is a dazzling writer. Literary compelling and profound. --Duff Brenna

Kennedy is the author of 11 books published in the United States and elsewhere, and his work has earned awards such as the O. Henry, Pushcart and European prizes. He currently lives in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Father's Mechanical Universe Steve Heller Father's Mechanical Universe is a marvelously fresh take on the age-old theme of the painfully ambiguous relationship of father and son...Steve Heller, like the legendary Mantle and Maris, swings for the fence, never playing it safe. --Gordon Weaver In Father's Mechanical Universe, the American Dream is a quart low and the Kellerman family has to use all its ingenuity, wit, and love to keep its motor running. Steve Heller has written a touching, elegiac book that races with 120-octane insight. --Brent Spencer

The Man in the Buick and Other Stories Kathleen George George doesn't waste a word as she plunges the reader into her characters' lives with startling intensity, then skillfully reveals as much about them as it is necessary to know . . . These masterfully shaped stories mark George as a writer to watch. --Booklist Kathleen George understands the powerful pull of outlaw love. Her characters are earnest and sensible, but when they fall in love, they throw caution to the wind. They chase ghosts, woo addicts, long for their devout Mexican housemaids, leave their perfect husbands for their neighbor's surly gardeners. "It was an old story," one of the lovers sighs, "but it felt brand new..." These stories too feel new. --Molly Giles

Mustaches and Other Stories

G. W. Clift
94 pages, $14.00 paper
ISBN 1-886157-02-2

Calm and reasonable, very readable, accessible as we say, Clift's stories show plain American folks teetering over the edge of what just might be a great fall. --Jerry Bumpus

Clift has edited Kansas Quarterly, Touchstones and Literary Magazine Review during his career at Kansas State University. His writings have appeared in Salad: A Reader, Vanderbilt Review and Midwest Quarterly Review.

Paper Crown

Tom Hawkins
80 pages, $8.95 cloth
ISBN 0-933532-70-9

Tom Hawkins is a true master of what is perhaps the most difficult of all literary forms, the short-short story. . . . Paper Crown is a book that lovers of short fiction will talk about for years to come. --Fred Chappell

A poet's eye and heart rest wonderfully on these stories--stories which run deep and clear and are a joy to read. --Clyde Edgerton

I don't know anyone writing short fiction these days like Tom Hawkins. . . . His stories are perfect little jewels. --Tom Whalen

Tanks

John Mort
88 pages, $8.95 paper
ISBN 0-933532-55-5

The most vivid and upsetting piece of writing on Vietnam I've ever read. --Peter Meinke

Chilling glimpses of the Vietnam War. These are terrifying but sensitive stories. --Bobbie Ann Mason

Mort is the winner of BkMk's Fiction Award and a Pushcart Foundation Writer's Choice award. He lives in rural Missouri, and his stories have appeared in Missouri Review, The New Yorker and many others. Mort received a master's degree in library science and a master's of fine arts degree in fiction from the University of Iowa in 1976.

Urbane Tales

Raymond Johnson
96 pages, $12.95 cloth
ISBN 0-933532-77-6

Actor-playwright Johnson wrote short stories of sophistication, restraint and elegance. In the last book before his death, he once again demonstrates his quiet wit and language.

"A natural, gifted story teller. I was both charmed and moved by every story in this book and marveled at the skill of the author." --Laurel Speer, Remark

Johnson studied at the University of Chicago and the University of Kansas and has taught English, Swedish and creative writing. He has written a novel and numerous plays, including the prize-winning Love is Like a Prairie Dog, winner of the Green Bay Civic Theater's National Contest.

Modern Interiors

(short fiction and lithographs)

Stephen Gosnell
94 pages, $12.95 paper
ISBN 0-933532-46-6

Gosnell is a painter, printmaker and writer. He teaches in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

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