Just wanted to highlight two short story collections coming out this month and in July — if you want to check out some other good reads for the beach (but not "beach reading") look at the LA Times list and NY Times list.
Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr, published by Scribner
From South Africa to Nazi-era Germany, Doerr spins expansive tales that belie their short story format. Title story published in McSweeney's #32 (that's the one where all the stories take place in the year 2024).
The Spot by David Means, published by FSG
Title story published in New Yorker, about prostitute that kills her John, then is hunted by her pimp. Lots of vagrants and junkies populating this troll through low-life's alley.
On a side note, I just finished Apparition and Late Fictions by Thomas Lynch, which came out in February of this year. There's only 4 stories and a novella, many of which specialize in lonely divorced characters estranged from their families.
I do admire the graceful way Lynch shifts from a present-tense moment of a stroll through the woods watching out for a fierce dog to telling the entire life of a character (Hunter's Moon), but at times the narration seemed drawn out, particularly with Apparition, in which a Methodist minister recounts his shipwrecked marriage and descent into debauchery with the aid of a renegade priest. The story takes far too many pages to describe the agent who trails and photographs his cheating wife. Still, these stories have a quiet and wise power to them.
