Book cover of Here in the Dark

Book description

Here in the Dark, the first collection from award-winning author Meagan Lucas, is a gritty genre blending wallop of short stories, set mostly in Southern Appalachia, that explore the female experience of lawlessness. In the tradition of Dorothy Allison and Bonnie Jo Campbell, Lucas tackles, with unsettling honesty: poverty, addiction,…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Here in the Dark as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Lucas writes with the intensity of a preacher and the precision of a surgeon. These interconnected stories cut deep into the hidden lives of working-class women in Appalachia, exposing the hard choices and private pains that rarely make headlines. Yet what binds these characters isn’t despair but defiance.

This collection is a gut-punch testament to the grit and grace of survivors.

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December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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