Esquire Ball, Stories from the Great Black Swamp

With a nod to Borges, Kafka, and Daphne du Maurier,Esquire Ball, Stories from the Great Black Swampis a Midwestern gothic collection of thirteen linked stories in which a young female attorney discovers what it takes to succeed.

In this debut collection, set primarily in 1980s Northwest Ohio, ambitious men marry frog wives; a mother-daughter duo trap souls in farmhouse windows; a teenager drowns in a sea of corn; an associate breaks into a client's house to steal a token of remembrance; and a PhD candidate reveals the secrets of the universe while having a threesome with her boyfriend and a tree. Through the lens of magical feminism, and braiding in fairytales and mythology,Esquire Ballexamines the gray side of ethics, the tyranny of ambition, and the collateral damage left in its wake.