Guilty Parties - by Laura Argiri (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Small dreams can damn as much as full-blown nightmares, as proven in the short stories Laura Argiri has written in her debut collection, Guilty Parties. Small town life can host the bitterest gossip, and and small-minded folk can offer the cruelest taunts and regrettable deeds. A mother dwells on how broken her only daughter is, and whether her grandchild is all the crueler for it. A man's obsession with bettering his lot in life to impress a woman develops a fascination instead for poisonous snakes. A young wife is confronted by her husband's former boarding school roommate, a demented man whose misogyny has convinced him that she tore a rightful pairing apart. And literary agent lives for decades thinking that she caused a college classmate's suicide, then encounters the woman at a party.

Review Quotes

"A scintillating walk on the dark side." - Lionel Shriver, author of We Need to Talk About Kevin

"Guilty Parties features a cast of characters worthy of Twin Peaks-a stalker, a hoarder, a teenage ghost, a Swedish shaman, high-end male prostitutes, Goebbels's favorite daughter, a madam for a pedophile ring, space aliens living undisturbed for generations in a quaint English village. The touching, disturbing, and often amusing struggles of this uncanny circus of saints and sinners are brought vividly to life by Laura Argiri's gift for gripping prose and riveting storytelling. Anyone who thinks that fiction is a dying art form needs to read this stunning collection. I couldn't wait to see what outrage would happen next!" - Lisa Alther, author of Swan Song and Washed in the Blood

"Laura Argiri's stories gambol about like charming baby velociraptors that suddenly grow up, and proceed to eat you alive." - Lewis Gannett, author of The Living One

"'Original' may be the most overused word in book-blurbing. In the case of Guilty Parties, I'd rather use words like 'fresh, ' 'eccentric, ' 'inventive, ' 'off-center, ' and 'disorienting.' These are love stories, a combination of fantastical and even sinister, set in a South that is at the same time nostalgic, unfamiliar, and shocking. Guilty Parties is not the coziest read, but in the hands of this superior writer, well worth negotiating the variations in mood and tempo." - Ann Arensburg, author of the National Book Award winner, Sister Wolf