Chris Adrian at the bookstore tomorrow

One of my favorite prose writers will be at the bookstore tomorrow, November 13 at 7pm. Chris Adrian is the author of Gob's Grief and The Children's Hospital (a staff pick of mine). He'll be reading from his new collection of short stories, A Better Angel. I've read and enjoyed the first three stories "High Speeds," "The Sum of Our Parts," and "Stab," and the collection contains one of my favorite stories of last year, "Why Antichrist?" (It appeared in the "Evil" themed issue of Tin House last year.)

"Why Anitchrist?" is a fresh take on the idea of the Antichrist and the nature of evil in general told in the first person of the Antichrist himself. It also manages to break new ground in exploring the effects of 9/11 on our culture. That story alone makes the collection worth a read.