Tundra — Mark McNease

Tundra gathers together the best of the author's short stories written over a 20-plus-year span, beginning in 2000 and concluding with the most recent (Paper Hearts) written in 2022. In this collection we meet a dizzying array of characters, each deeply human and often deeply flawed.In Push, we meet a man who has devoted his life to pleasing others, and who now finds himself unable to do any of it over.In The Cat in the Window, we're introduced to a woman whose nemesis is a cat that stares at her from another apartment, daring her to change her life.Memory Box tells the story of a young girl whose father leaves her only memories and a bird's feather.Rough and Tumble (A Dystopian Love Tragedy) tells a tale from a dark future, where two men who have been inseparable for years each decide to make this day their last.And in Stop the Car, three teenagers on an Indiana backroad encounter something extraordinary that will shape them for the rest of their lives.Tundra is a collection of short fiction that cuts close to the human bone, exposing the most hidden parts of ourselves as it reveals us in the characters we encounter on this journey through the pages. We may not always be them, but they are always us: joyful, hesitant, loving, hating, wanting, regretting, and above all, living.