RYAN LATINI

Organ thieves on online dating sites. Russian blood feuds. Purgatorial rat-races. Armed robbery as a means to impress an exotic dancer. A boy forced to kill a dog and then help the owner look for it. All in the name of love. Ain't love swell? Ryan R. Latini's seven short, fictional narratives dive into misguided attempts at loving, impressing and coping in settings stretching from the New Jersey suburbs to purgatorial landscapes to The Caucasus Mountains. A varied cast of foolish and misdirected men lead these first-person narratives. An architect who needs to feel something after the plane-crash death of his family takes revenge on an air-traffic controller. A monologue from a demon guides a heroin addict to his end. A bus driver in a loveless marriage uses his bus as a stage for his cross-dressing burlesque. A lawn boy tired of being overlooked destroys a miniature world after being leered at by the insidious eyes of an older man. Is redemption an option for these men--are they like sparrows cleansing themselves in a dirt bath? Can the youths in these tales overcome and forge a future, or will their folly haunt them, even in the afterlife?