Fiction. Winner of the Tartt First Fiction Award, THE BRICK MURDER is a funnily tragic collection of stories that always borders on wondrously correct incorrectness. A manic and angered sub-sub-librarian learns about cultural differences from a manic and angered patron. A junior faculty member gets paid to befriend a senior star philandering poet. Three kids and a rabbi discover the awful truth that God really is a process God. A token black man—Bob the Negro—accomplishes revenge in his work place—at a price. And, a brick plays a momentous part in a tragedy. This collection comes one short of a dozen, but nothing short in its style and reach.

Author City: LEXINGTON, VA USA

Kurt Ayau is an American fiction writer of Cape Verdean heritage. His novel, What the Shadow Told Me, co-written with David Rachels under the pseudonym Kurtis Davidson, won the 2003 Pirate's Alley/Faulkner Society Award and was published in 2005. He lives in Virginia with his wife and two daughters. Kurt José Ayau is an associate professor of English at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia.