Lunar Savings Time Alex Epstein, 119 pgs, Clockroot Books, clockrootbooks.com, $15

A mere 119 pages and yet this thin volume contains 100 short stories. The shortest is five words, none are over three pages and all are weighty in subject, despite the slightness of language and length. Epstein is drawn back to certain topics again and again: rain, time machines, Greek mythology, One Thousand and One Nights and angels, all in prose that moves from subject to subject, line to line, with such dreamlike associations that they can sometimes feel like a series of nonsequiturs. Don't be fooled: everything is here for a reason.

Epstein touches on the craft of writing too, particularly the anxiety that comes with feeling like one is expected to finish a novel, whether one wants to or not. Many of these pieces feel reminiscent of Kafka's parables or the fictive essays of Borges and both of these writers actually do appear in the stories. Kafka's turn shows us an alternate version of the influential and world-renowned Czech-Jewish writer. This one doesn't die young, but rather he grows old enough to survive the Holocaust, emigrate to Tel Aviv, work in a bank, marry, start a family and die, in obscurity and unpublished, in 1967. If I've spoiled that story for you, not to worry: there are 99 others that are all worth reading. (Richard Rosenbaum)