Little Raw Souls

"All of these 11 stories arrest the reader from their opening paragraphs . . . a collection to be held up as evidence that the short story not only endures but also flourishes." —Booklist, starred review 

"How vividly Steven Schwartz describes his characters and how cunningly he wields the knife edge of suspense. I loved entering each of the worlds he creates—a grandfather fighting for his grandchildren, a man misled by a hippie couple, a woman who falls asleep at the airport, a teacher who holds his class hostage—and I hated to leave." —Margot Livesey 

 I love Steven Schwartz’s characters for the way that, even as they work with such patience and fortitude in the face of radically diminished expectations, at holding up their end, as they understand it—or holding up more than their end—they feel so piercingly the full extent of their failures. Little Raw Souls is one of the most open-hearted and emotionally intelligent story collections I’ve ever read." —Jim Shepard 

"Steven Schwartz is a capacious writer; bucking the trend, a lot happens in these stories. He takes the time and has the skill and graciousness to give each of his stories a full world in which men and women wrestle with their conflicting codes, reaching for the right thing among all of the easy and delectable choices." —Ron Carlson