Today’s installment in my favorite story collections for Short Story Month is News from Heaven. Jennifer Haigh is one of our very best writers. (I thought/hoped she would win the Pulitzer Prize and/or National Book Award for her last novel, Heat and Light.)

News from Heaven is a sequel of sorts to her brilliant novel Baker Towers in the form of interrelated stories that help us catch up with key characters and the town itself. Her writing is keenly observed, very smart, and seamlessly smooth; it never calls attention to itself, so you get lost in the lives of her very real characters. Highly recommended, along with the two novels mentioned above and Mrs. Kimble and Faith.