Kit Stokes: 3 books

Ugly Duckels tells the story of Veronica Dean's short unhappy life. An orphan distinguished by a birth-mark covering half her face, she has killed two men (justifiably in her view) before her nineteenth birthday. She contracts to kill a priest in Hawaii to see if God will let her do this thing. David...

I can say little about the range of poems shown in Broken Dreams. Is the glass half-full or half-empty? Some of them are better than others and vice versa. Unlike a novel, poetry can only be described by citing examples. The range of levels may be seen by looking at "The Body Speaks," and "Old Guys Seldom Wear Purple".

The Grand Piano Chase is a riot of unintended consequences in Mudstone Creek, Colorado, a village where most of the men are eccentric and all of the women are smart. Gary Bullock, 29,has been a professional grad student for three years, dawdling over a simple cowboy novel as a thesis requirement in a...