City Lights From the Upside Down by Alex Z. Salinas

In City Lights From the Upside Down, Alex Z. Salinas’ debut collection of short stories, the setting is mostly South Texas – and, infrequently, outer space. Mothers dying or dead, brothers with a taste for revenge, bizarre coffee shop encounters, terrifying dreams, strange alien lights, embers of love blazing and cooling – in these stories, a lot happens, and, sometimes, not much at all. Through precise, raw, and often Christ-haunted language, Salinas builds up characters to bring them to their knees. This book: a rollercoaster in the middle of the Texas desert. (Or is it just a mirage?)