Short Story Wednesday +: Links to the reviews and more: Juneteenth 2024

Patricia Abbott's regular weekly links

Ambrose Bierce: "A Baffled Ambuscade" and "Two Military Excursions"

Ben Boulden: Three Strikes--You're Dead!: 14 Great Sports Mysteries edited by Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley; The Stark House Anthology edited by Rick Ollerman and Greg Shepard

Brad Bigelow: Knopf's "Borzoi puppies"

Bob Byrne: "The Mother of Invention" by Rex Stout, The Black Cat, August 1913, edited by Herman Umbstaetter

Eric Compton and Tom Simon/Paperback Warrior: "The Dead Remember" by Robert E. Howard, Argosy August 1936, edited by William Dewart

Samuel Delany and Gordon Van Gelder: Science Fiction and the Milford Conferences (discussion begins at ~6:20)

Scott Edelman: Elwin Colman and his collection Dance on Saturday

Martin Edwards on his new anthology, Lessons in Crime: Academic Mysteries

Elizabeth Foxwell: Turning the Tables: The Short Fiction of Helen Nielsen edited by Bill Kelly, Stark House Press 2024; Pulp Champagne: The Short Fiction of Lorenz Heller, Stark House 2024; The Killer Everyone Knew and Other Captain Leopold Stories by Edward D. Hoch, Stark House 2024, and more

Jerry House: "In the Heart of Fire" by Dean R. Koontz, Amazon Original Stories electronic chapbook, 2019

Kate Jackson: Bodies from the Library 2024 

George Kelley: Neither Man Nor Dog by Gerald Kersh; Logical Fantasy: The Many Worlds of John Wyndham by John Wyndham (John Benyon Harris), edited by David Date

Kate Laity: Muriel Spark

Steve Lewis: Bright New Universe by Jack Williamson

Robert Lopresti: "And Now, an Inspiring Story of Tragedy Overcome" by Joseph S. Walker, Three Strikes--You're Dead!: 14 Great Sports Mysteries edited by Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley 

Todd Mason: Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg by Barry N. Malzberg, edited by Robert Friedman & Greg Shepard; Cream of the Crop: Best Mystery & Suspense Stories of Bill Pronzini (both Stark House, 2024) [forthcoming, once I shake my current malady.]

Jeffrey Meyers: Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene (courtesy Paul DiFilippo)

J. Kingston Pierce: Bishop Rider Lives: An Anthology of Retribution, edited by Hector Acosta and Beau Johnson, among other summer books

John O'Neill: Ragged Maps: Stories by Ian R. MacCleod

James Reasoner: "Big Shots Die Young!" (the Manville Moon series) by Richard Deming, Black Mask, July 1940; "Rawhide Bound" by "Peter Howard Morland" (aka "Max Brand" and actually Frederick Faust), Street And Smith's Western Story Magazine, 23 April 1932

Judy Penz Sheluk: editing anthologies

Steven H. Silver: "The Butcher of Darkside Hover" by Jonathan Sean Lyster, Analog: Science Fiction and Fact, October 2022, edited by Trevor Quachri

William Stoddard: The Day's Work by Rudyard Kipling

Kevin Tipple: Mystery Magazine, June 2024, edited by Kerry Carter

"TomCat": "The Sweating Stone" by Edward D. Hoch

Henry Wessells: The influence of Moby Dick upon H. P. Lovecraft, among others.

SSW: "The Widow's Tale" by Richard Bausch, PLOUGHSHARES, Winter 2023-24, edited by Ladette Randolph and (poetry editor) John Skoyles: Short Story Wednesday

"The Widow's Tale" by Richard Bausch is a borderline horror story; one could choose to see nothing supernatural in it, despite such components as the characters' discussion of , and reflections on, afterlife as reality or metaphor, mediums of the spiritual sort, seance and the possibly illusory...or not...spotting by the titular widow of her late husband's shade, or at very least likeness, at a reading given by an acquaintance.

A not quite Chaucerian title (and one not too uncommon among stories and novels), it also hearkens back to Bausch's first contribution to Ploughshares, "The Wife's Tale", in the Winter 1978 issue, which I have not yet read.

It deftly describes the plight of widow Susan Bridge, whose sister Moira reports to her Moira's recurring dream of Susan's late husband Victor trying to tell Moira a message to pass along to Susan, a year after his faral single-car accident. Bridge and her family and friends are largely literary and other sorts of humanities scholars and artists, a milieu Bausch is very much a part of (Susan is a retired history professor, as an example), and Moira's concern that there might be more to her dreams than simple melancholy sparks the events of the story, a witty, humane and verisimilitudinous account of how grief, and the often baffled compassion of those around the bereaved, can and will express themselves, as well as how one takes on the nature (and arguably possible supernature) of existence while coping with mortality and its eventualities.  

It's worth a look.

Most weeks, Patti Abbott gathers the links to this roundelay of reviews; I might gather them, as I occasionally do, this week while she's on vacation.

Short Story Wednesday +: the links to the reviews, 12 June 2024

Patricia Abbott's regular weekly links

Frank Babics: "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce, The San Francisco Examiner, 13 July 1890

Tony Baer: various forms of The Bridge in the Jungle by B. Traven

Brad Bigelow: five short novels/long novellas about the collapse of England

John Boston: Amazing Stories, July 1969, edited by Ted White

Curtis Evans: adaptations of Cornell Woolrich's fiction

Paul Fraser: An Interview with David Redd (1946-2024); "The Man Who Came Early" by Poul Anderson, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1956, edited by "Anthony Boucher"

Michael A. Gonzales: 1980s NYC bookstore culture and its environs

Rich Horton: First Person Peculiar and other writings by T. L. Sherred; "Inside Man" by K. J. Parker; "The Tusks of Extinction" by Ray Nayler

Jerry House: "You Were Perfectly Fine" by Dorothy Parker, The New Yorker, 23 February 1929, edited by Harold Ross

Kate Jackson: "The Way Up to Heaven" by Roald Dahl, The New Yorker, 27 February 1954, edited by Harold Ross; Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, October 1951, edited by Frederic Dannay

Tracy K: stories from Crime Hits Home, edited by S. J. Rozan

George Kelley: The Gist Hunter and Other Stories by Matthew Hughes

James Queally: Thuglit, the hardboiled little magazine edited and published by Todd Robinson and Allison Glasgow

James Reasoner: Casinos, Motels, Gators: Stories by Ben Boulden; Texas Rangers, June 1945, edited by ?G. B. Farnum

Steve Lewis: Spaceman! (aka Galactic Odyssey) by Keith Laumer, as serialized in Worlds of If, May, June and July 1967, edited by Frederik Pohl

Todd Mason: "The Widow's Tale" by Richard Bausch, Ploughshares, Winter 2023-24, edited by Ladette Randolph

Jack Seabrook: "Lonely Place" by C. B. Gilford (as by Douglas Farr), Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, February 1960, edited by William Manners (index) 

Victoria Silverwolf: Fantastic, June 1969, edited by Ted White

Kevin Tipple: Moon Shot: Murder And Mayhem On The Edge Of Space, edited by J. Alan Hartman

"TomCat": three "crossover" stories by Edward D. Hoch

Morgan Wallace: Round Up Magazine and the (Scottish) Fiction Magazine Group