“Throw Like a Girl”
by Jean Thompson
Simon & Schuster, $13
These 12 short stories range from the wickedly funny to the sadly bizarre. An anguished prepubescent threatens to behead her tormenters with a guillotine. An adulteress excels at a community college art class. An aging alcoholic gets caught up in a parade during Mexican Holy Week. You’ll either relate to these stories steeped in irony and alcohol, or you’ll be glad that you don’t.
“There’s a (Slight) Chance
I Might Be Going to Hell: A Novel of Sewer Pipes, Pageant Queens, and Big Trouble”
by Laurie Notaro
Villard, $13.95
Newbies and hard-core fans alike will love “The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club” memoirist Notaro’s first novel. Prepare to laugh, snort and possibly wet your pants while reading this tale.
“Rope Walk”
by Carrie Brown
Pantheon, $24
Sweet Briar professor Brown’s newest novel is a languid summer picnic that marries the senses with the imagination. So understated is her lyrical prose that you will want to read absolutely anything she writes next, whether it’s a new novel or a grocery list. Written from the perspective of 10-year-old Alice one summer in Vermont, “Rope Walk” borrows the best from the worlds of both a child and an adult, carrying the reader, tenderly, through a heart’s first loss.
