Sometimes, individuals and communities seek change. Other times, change is forced upon them, gradually or in what can seem like a sudden turn of events. Either way, the people affected must make choices about next steps, and about what their futures might look like–choices that can have lasting consequences. This smart, sweeping, and emotionally resonant novel explores how and why such choices are made within two fraught marriages, at a time when forces of transformation are at play in the larger community. 

I’ve long been a fan of escapist entertainment, never more so than in these deeply troubling times. So I was delighted to learn about–and read–Last Night at the Disco, a rollicking and hilarious thrill trip helmed by anti-hero extraordinaire Lynda Boyle. Lynda’s core desire is to leave her New Jersey hometown behind for good and to escape once and for all to New York City. She imagines that, once there, she’ll assume a central place in the East Village poetry scene and party for as many nights as she’d like at her beloved celebrity-magnet disco, Studio 54. These dreams are exceeded only by the size of Lynda’s ego, which is in constant need of feeding.

Although this novel, told entirely from Lynda’s point of view, delivers much-needed escapism, its pleasures are far from simple thanks to its insider perspective on her constant, and often brilliant, scheming. To say that she’s a beauty with brains is a gross understatement. It would be more accurate to say that she’s a beauty with war-room-level strategizing powers, and she deploys these powers ruthlessly.

This inventive, often-hilarious, and sometimes-heartbreaking collection of stories explores pivotal moments and events in the lives of a range of villains from literature and mythology–among them, Captain James Hook of Peter Pan, Claudius of Hamlet, and Mrs. Danvers of Rebecca. The stories consider the full emotional and motivational scope of these characters, often illuminating the personal histories and tragedies that may have engendered their villainy, or, with time, sparked a desire to turn over a new leaf. The result is a nuanced and emotionally engaging immersion in the at-times-fantastical, yet eerily plausible, worlds of the stories. (The book is the winner of the 2020 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction. This press regularly publishes fine collections of short stories and poetry.)

In this riveting pressure cooker of a novel, a man of faith and the city he loves face a force of destruction cloaked in religious righteousness. Through vivid scenes of battle and quiet moments of reflection, the book brings us to the heart of these internal and external struggles and, ultimately, suggests a way toward redemption.

When I finished Nick Kolakowski’s riveting thriller Boise Longpig Hunting Club, I was eager for a sequel. Over the course of that novel, the central characters–bounty hunter Jake Halligan, his gun-running sister, Frankie, and Jake’s fiancée, Janine–became prey in a “Most Dangerous Game”-style hunt orchestrated by a corrupt and powerful billionaire, Ted Baker, who’d blamed the death of his coke-dealing brother on Jake and Frankie’s late father, a former deputy. Though the trio ended up slaughtering their way to freedom, one thing seemed clear by the novel’s conclusion: When you kill a man like Baker, along with his rich and influential fellow hunters, there are bound to be consequences.

Fortunately for readers like me, Kolakowski just released Rattlesnake Rodeo, a gripping sequel that unleashes these consequences with force, pushing Jake and Frankie into uncomfortable new territory, physically and morally.

This wonderfully strange, thought-provoking, and hilarious novel defies simple categorization. Is it a study of the soulless mining of personal data for the greediest of ends? Is it a suspenseful tale of a battle of the wills–one Apollonian, the other Dionysian? Is it an artful melding of poetry and prose? Yes and yes and yes. As disparate as these elements may seem, in the end they add up to an entertaining, enlightening whole.