Brutal and intoxicating.

Take American gothic + Tarantino + 1 cup of human blood. Liquidise in blender. Result: The great stories of Frank Bill

An astonishingly powerful debut book...It’s a brutal rabbit punch of a book – a shotgun blast in the chest of literature and a crystal meth hit to the reader…Remarkable.

Amazing collection…It’s all overshadowed by a Southern Indiana landscape that proves eerily ideal for guns, hunting, secret meth labs and the casual infliction of terrible pain. 270 pages of gripping and harrowing shitloads of it.

There’s a whiskey-gargling swagger to [Frank Bill’s] Cormac McCarthy-style prose, and each noir tale is savagely addictive.

Good Lord, where in the hell did this guy come from? Hits as hard as an ax handle to the side of the head after you've snorted a nose full of battery acid and eaten a live rattlesnake for breakfast. Seriously, I'm warning you in advance: take your heart medication and strap yourself to your bar stool for one of the wildest damn rides you're ever going to take inside a book.

Dark, grim, and achingly beautiful. Frank Bill is one of the most original and compelling voices in this new generation of crime writers.

Some serious hillbilly-noir that had my ears ringing by the end. Open the first page... and duck.

Alice Munro…can create a whole world in a short story – these stories are only 20 or 30 pages long, but they live in the mind like novels… These are stories about the stories we tell ourselves, and they are first rate

A quiet revelation... Dear Life is full of remarkable moments in ordinary lives and is imbued with an aching sadness

In this superb collection of short stories, the acclaimed Canadian writer shows repeatedly how apparently ordinary lives can be infused with dramatic intensity

A collection of truly beautiful short stories, perfectly crafted in a way that leaves no wanting feeling… Profound, poignant and undeniably powerful, this truly is the short story at its finest

A writer who has refined her remarkable talents over a long lifetime, a writer whose mastery of the craft has reached a level that her nickname, "Canada's Chekhov" feels emptied of all hyperbole… Beautifully written and ambitious in terms of form

[Munro] can create a whole world in a short story... These are stories about the stories we tell ourselves, and they are first rate

[Munro] really is the short story writer to beat... Munro has always been fascinated by those moments that tilt our world on its axis, as though the world really does turn on a kiss, but her brilliance lies in the psychological way that she convinces us of that fact

In crystalline prose, she illuminates her characters' hopes and longings

[Munro] has been compared to Chekhov and I'm only being slightly tongue in cheek when I say that the honour is entirely his. Dear Life is comprised of 13 rich and startling stories, a must read

I haven’t even finished all of Dear Life, but Alice Munro’s stories have lived with me for such a long time and with such quiet passion that I’m barely capable of explaining why

[Munro’s] talent is formidable but she has never been self-seeking: her short stories have a subtle, covert brilliance

These stories won’t give you easy moral comfort, but will stretch you. They’re moral in that they name things as they are

Dear Life is a dazzling portrait of ordinary existence which illustrates how seemingly insignificant meetings and moments can have a monumental impact

This collection is beautiful; full of pure, simple truths that linger long in the mind