Bare Knuckles, Fast Cars, and Fools

Roger G. Russell's fiction comes out fighting in his short story collection "Bare Knuckles, Fast Cars, and Fools."

Vivid scenes, superb characterizations, and a blur of action highlight Russell's stories about the good and bad in ordinary people. To illustrate this, he meticulously builds up heroes and villains engaged in a series of street fights, military combat, and domestic disputes.

A mysterious stranger attempts to come to the rescue of unarmed newlyweds grappling with armed thieves.

A man gets to relive his days of youth in a 1955 hot rod, all things new again until he realizes it's an afterlife fling with the wife he violently left behind.

There's humor and understanding between each shot of a gun or blow of a fist. Understanding may not come to characters as fast as a hot rod's fury-and even then, sometimes these realizations are fleeting.

Love and war. Hate and learning from hard knocks. It's all here in the pages of "Bare Knuckles, Fast Cars, and Fools." Relive the energy of youth and capture the adventure in this engaging collection.