Fiction. Full of what Booklist has described as "breathtaking lyricism, sensuality, and catharsis," A .38 SPECIAL AND A BROKEN HEART reveals the degree of Jonis Agee's prodigious talents. The thirty stories in A .38 SPECIAL AND A BROKEN HEART manage to pack emotional detail and compelling narrative into sagas of people who love, lose, and try again. Honest and biting, gentle and witty, these stories flesh out the bare dramas of most human lives. Persistence and strength, betrayal and forgiveness, weakness and acceptance, life and death--all find themselves played out in this collection. "Spirit resounds in the splendid economy of Agee's deft characterizations and sharp, visceral imagery.... Explores the tangled intersections of love and death"--Publishers Weekly. "Short-short story writing at its best. It deserves to be read, read again, and passed to every story-loving friend on down the road"--Albuquerque Journal.

Author City: LINCOLN, NE USA

onis Agee is the author of four novels, Sweet Eyes, Strange Angels, South of Resurrection, and The Weight of Dreams, four collections of short fiction, Pretend We've Never Met, Bend This Heart, A .38 SPECIAL AND A BROKEN HEART, and TAKING THE WALL, and a book of poetry, Houses. Three of her books--Strange Angels, Bend This Heart, and Sweet Eyes--were named Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times. TAKING THE WALL won the Foreword Magazine Editor's Choice Award and The Weight of Dreams won the Nebraska Book Award. Jonis Agee is a Nebraska native who has lived and taught throughout the Midwest. She is now Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.