Hitting the eBook shelves this week was a collection of stories put together by Luca Veste. Containing stories from thirty-eight writers from the US and UK inspired by music. Each story takes its title and inspiration from a song and weaves the words or emotions into a work of crime fiction. In addition to containing a novel’s worth of text, the book also helps a good cause. The royalties from the collection will go to charities in the US and UK to support children’s literacy.
In the UK, National Literacy Trust. (http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/)
In the US, Children’s Literacy Initiative. (http://www.cliontheweb.org/)
There are many excellent stories within the collection deserving of your time. There’s not enough space here to cover them all, but I want to call out a few of the stories that stayed with me after I finished them.
In “Venus in Furs”, Matthew C. Funk takes us on a ride through the roller coaster of love experienced by the Monster of Magazine Street. Hired muscle that has fallen hard for a woman who broke him down. He’s in deep. In love and loyal. Betrayal comes to the party, but he knows what to do. A real man takes his beating, but always gets up.
Ray Banks explores love in “God Only Knows.” A woman in a rough relationship knows inside what matters most. It’s not the scrawny man with a mouth full of insults and blood full of drugs and booze. She knows what important and what she has to do.
Thomas Pluck delivers a story with emotional weight and without neat summation. “Free Bird” is a story of a man and his son, though not always about them together. The father wrestles with bad memories and a hard life. The boy struggles with social pressures and less than satisfying parental emotion. They move along in their lives. Making mistakes. Learning lessons. Feeling pain, bravery and cowardice. There are many truths to be found in the words, but little closure.
