Friday 56 & #BookBeginnings: Man V. Nature

For Book Beginnings:

They let me tend to my husband's burial and settle his affairs, which means that for a few days I get to stay in my house and pretend he is away on business while I stand in the closet and smell his clothes.

- p. 3 (ARC, page may change)
From the short story "Moving On"

For Friday 56:  

Linda walked down the road. It was only half a block to her home with the family-friendly paint, so many locks, the man in the yard. She kept thinking Lewis, Lewis, Lewis. Then a small yellow bird swooped by her on its way from one streetlamp perch to another, and she remembered: Beatrice.
- p. 56
(ARC, page may change)
From the short story "Somebody's Baby"

About Man V. Nature: Stories by Diane Cook: Told with perfect rhythm and unyielding brutality, these stories expose unsuspecting men and women to the realities of nature, the primal instincts of man, and the dark humor and heartbreak of our struggle to not only thrive, but survive. In “Girl on Girl,” a high school freshman goes to disturbing lengths to help an old friend. An insatiable temptress pursues the one man she can’t have in “Meteorologist Dave Santana.” And in the title story, a long fraught friendship comes undone when three buddies get impossibly lost on a lake it is impossible to get lost on. In Diane Cook’s perilous worlds, the quotidian surface conceals an unexpected surreality that illuminates different facets of our curious, troubling, and bewildering behavior.

As entertaining as it is dangerous, this accomplished collection explores the boundary between the wild and the civilized, where nature acts as a catalyst for human drama and lays bare our vulnerabilities, fears, and desires.