Dead Boys » (Bargain)

Richard Lange's stories have appeared in StoryQuarterly, The Sun, The Iowa Review and Best American Mystery Stories 2004. He lives in Los Angeles.

These hard-hitting, deeply felt stories trace men— straight arrows and outlaws, have-it-alls and outcasts— as they take stock of their lives and missteps and struggle to rise above their troubled pasts. A salesman considers his tenuous relationship with his sister after she has been brutally attacked. A house painter looks forward to moving his family out of their seedy neighborhood as he plans his last bank robbery. A drifter finds a chance at love when he delivers news of a barfly's death to the man's estranged daughter.

These are hard-boiled tales of life on the edge in a city where the sun hurts your eyes and dreams die more often than they come true. Full of heart and heartbreak, Dead Boys is the debut of an astonishingly talented new writer.

"The best debut collection we have read all year....you could shelve Lange between Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, and Richard Yates, and no fights would break out....Lange writes with tremendous heart, his characters' inner turmoil as rich and varied as any of the above masters. Dead Boys, we think, will live for a very long time." --E! Online, Tod Goldberg

"Superlative short fiction, and an arresting debut."
—Kirkus Reviews

The New York Times - Marilyn Stasio

Short stories can be little goodies you nibble on while trying to decide which novel to read next. Or as in the case of Dead Boys, a first collection by Richard Lange, they can be as filling as a banquet.