literary

"Set within the resilient Great Plains, these stories are marked by the region's people and landscape, and the distinctive way it is both regressive in its politics yet also stumbling toward something better. While not all stories are explicitly set in Oklahoma, the state is almost a character that is neither protagonist nor antagonist, but instead the weird next-door-neighbor you're perhaps too ashamed of to take anywhere. Who is the embarrassing one-you or Oklahoma? Dinah Cox lives in her hometown of Stillwater, Oklahoma, where she teaches in the English department at Oklahoma State University and is an associate editor at Cimarron Review."--.

"While vacationing at the beach with her mother, Sasha Samokhina meets the mysterious Farit Kozhennikov under the most peculiar circumstances. The teenage girl is powerless to refuse when this strange and unusual man with an air of the sinister directs her to perform a task with potentially scandalous consequences. He rewards her effort with a strange golden coin. As the days progress, Sasha carries out other acts for which she receives more coins from Kozhennikov. As summer ends, her domineering mentor directs her to move to a remote village and use her gold to enter the Institute of Special Technologies. Though she does not want to go to this unknown town or school, she also feels it's the only place she should be. Against her mother's wishes, Sasha leaves behind all that is familiar and begins her education. As she quickly discovers, the institute's "special technologies" are unlike anything she has ever encountered. The books are impossible to read, the lessons obscure to the point of maddening, and the work refuses memorization. Using terror and coercion to keep the students in line, the school does not punish them for their transgressions and failures; instead, their families pay a terrible price. Yet despite her fear, Sasha undergoes changes that defy the dictates of matter and time; experiences which are nothing she has ever dreamed of ... and suddenly all she could ever want"--Front jacket flap.

"When she is asked about the inspiration behind her iconic work, renowned poet Fiona Skinner recounts the summer her family spent in a middle-class Connecticut town"--OCLC.

"... a newly commissioned anthology of seventeen ... stories inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper"--Dust jacket.