Fiction. Jacob Appel's narratives pull you in from the first entrance of their characters, whether it's a woman picking up her errant grandson from the police station, or two US-Canadian border guards with too much time to kill. The portraits are sharp and perceptive, with a vivid sense of scene. They can also be quietly devastating, as in the love story Counting, or bitterly funny, as in Saluting the Magpie, which is to say that Appel is a writer of versatility and verve. COULROPHOBIA & FATA MORGANA is a collection that renews my faith in storytelling.--David Galef