PICK UP A BOOK ONCE IN A WHILE: "Both Ends Burning"

Since I was a kid I always liked short stories, having fallen in love with them upon picking up "Night Shift" from Stephen King at a Paperback Exchange... You just never know in a medium so small, what direction that brief, but possibly striking piece of fiction may be coming from. Or what it may do. Marci Mangham's "Both Ends Burning" is a hell of a collection of stories so stylistically and character-wise different, that it may leave your head-spinning. You have sick children listening with glee to impossible fantasy stories, heart-broken widowers finding ways to cope, long-distance friendships that ebb and flow. There's stories here that made me laugh out loud, and some that made me strikingly ill at ease, as if I was watching David Cronenberg's "A History of Violence". Miss Mangham's imagination comes from so many different angles, that the anticipation of what the next story could possibly be about is tangible. I highly recommend it. Link for purchase is at the right.