Two Short Story Collections Well Worth Reading

My interest in reading, and writing, short stories has been growing for years. It started with the five Dancing Priest novels, which provided an outlet for sections that were cut, or exploring ideas that were good in themselves but didn’t fit the larger story. In some cases, they were small spinoffs from that larger story. A few have appeared online; most have not. 

But I found myself becoming increasingly interested in the short form of writing fiction. I’ve written several for the Cultivating Project. Recently, I began participating in a short story writing project, a simple, self-reporting tally every week of stories and word count (more on that next week).

 

I’ve also spent more time reading short story collections. Two recent ones that were well worth the time, more than worth the time, in fact, are Here It Snows in June by Eric Cyr and 13 Short Stories of Longing by Adam Nettesheim. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Flannery O’Connor’s Hollow Men – Mitchell Kalpakgian at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

The Great Books for You and for Me – Nadya Williams at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Dante’s Global Vision: Seeing & Being Seen in the Divine Comedy – Peter Kalkavage at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

The meaning of Ceuta – Jack Davey at The Critic Magazine.

 

The Drawing Rooms of Old London – Spitalfields Life.

Poets and Poems: Trish Hopkinson and “A Godless Ascends”

Poets, and writers in general, write from their own lives, their own experiences. How we are shaped as individuals is reflected, consciously or unconsciously, in what we write.  A Godless Ascends, the 2024 collection by Trish Hopkinson, kept punching that home in my head as I read. 

Shew rites about her family, her childhood, and herself. She writes about her mother and her father. She says this about her father: “Truth is, / my dad’s book closed before he learned / to read, so he bult a burning house instead / & when a thief offered him gold, he didn’t fight or turn to run / but swallowed it whole, carried it like lead in his throat.” That may at first sound cruel or uncharitable, but it is precise, a daughter weighing what she finally understands. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Bathing – poem by Sonja Bnskin Mesher.

 

“The Village Blacksmith” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – Kelly Keller at On the Common.

 

Waiting at Life’s Window: R.S. Thomas’s “The Word” – Alexander Fayne.

 

Blankets & Boston Terriers: Interview with Tania Runyan – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Under the Harvest Moon – poem by Carl Sandburg at Every Day Poems.

Some Monday Readings – August 3, 2026

 

Glen Hansard Made Music Feel Alive – Spencer Klavan at The Free Press.

 

The Antiquarian Bookshops of Old London – Spitalfields Life.

 

A Brief History of Hold Music, From Early Patents to the Soundtrack of Customer Service Purgatory – Leo DeLuca at Smithsonian Magazine.

 

Why the Left’s Own Thinkers Predict New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani Will Fail – Aaron Renn.

 

All the Horrifying Things We Do to Our Books – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Local News Is Dying. This Kid Bought His Hometown Newspaper Anyway – Franne Block at The Free Press.

 

How Christopher Nolan’s Best Movies Expose The Odyssey’s Flaws – Samuel D. James at Digital Liberties.

 

Rembrandt Began a Biblical Painting. Another Artist Finished it ‘Rather Crudely.’ Now, Restorations Have Revealed the Long-Lost Original – Ellen Wexler at Smithsonian Magazine.

 

Old Sarum – Hillfort, Castle, Cathedral to Rotten Borough – 1949 to 2026 – A London Inheritance.

 

Photograph: A view of Old Sarum by John H. Rhodes via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The greatest from the least

After Micah 5:2-5 

A backwater, a place

so small as to be

melded into another,

a place no one would

expect a king to be born.

 

Yet.

 

It is the birthplace

of David, and it is

from the line of David

that the king will come,

the one to rule,

the one to be great

to the ends of the earth.

 

The flock will return, and

he will shepherd them,

his flock, and they

shall dwell secure

as he rules in the name

of the Lord, as he rules

in the strength of the Lord,

as he rules in the majesty

of the Lord.

 

He is the greatest,

raised up from the least.

 

Photograph by Carlos N. Cuatzo Meza via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Fear That Sings and Dances: Basking in the Majesty of God – David Mathis at Desiring God.

 

The Porn Buster – Barry York at Gentle Reformation.

 

Love God with All Your Imagination: A Call for Christian Storytelling – Kahryn Butler at Desiring God.

 

Bells & Pomegranates: An Early Warning System – Andrew Kerr at Gentle Reformation.

Saturday Good Reads – August 1, 2026

My parents were both profoundly affected by the Great Depression. My father, graduating from high school, saw his hopes for college and a medical career disappear. My mother, whose family had been relatively well-to-do, was a child, her family reduced to a father hunting for food, her mother scrubbing floors in movie theaters, and days when there was nothing to eat in the house. You don’t “get over” an experience like that; you can come to terms with it, deal with it, and overcome it, but it leaves a deep impression. At the Coolidge Review, Alexander Field writes that the Great Depression did have a hidden economic miracle that almost no one realized at the time. 

Most of us watched or read about the testimony of Dr. Anthony Facui before a Senate committee on Wednesday. Or the non-testimony. My own Missouri senator asked if Dr. Fauci could tell them the color of his tie or of the rug in the room. Both questions were met with Fauci pleading the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. The fact is, he was caught. Even with the pardon he received from former President Joe Biden, answering any question truthfully about the COVID-19 issue would be setting off multiple grenades, including for his own reputation. The general news media, almost on cue, circled the wagons; they’re as culpable as Dr. Fauci is, and the insistence that he “did the right thing” is almost beyond belief. Reporters who dared to question the received wisdom paid the price. By the way, Racket News has unlocked all its articles on Dr. Fauci; it’s providing the coverage that our mainstream media should be.

 

The mayor of New York City released the names of all the properties the city was defining as “second homes” which would result in an additional annual property tax. Except the list was never quality-checked or, apparently, reality-checked. It turns out that a lot of the listings are not what the city thought they were, as a reporter for The Free Press discovered when his 81-year-old mother was socked with an additional $55,000 assessment on her house. It’s not a second home. She owns no second home. But someone in the city decided her property qualified. But never fear; there’s an appeal process – dense, opaque, and all online, almost especially designed to mystify elderly people. She navigated it, or actually, her son did it for her (article unlocked).

 

More Good Reads

 

Writing and Literature

 

Old-Souled Stories – Scott Bradford at Story Warren.

 

Narnia: There is no “Problem” of Susan – Jeremy Rios. 

 

The Good Death of Kate Montclair – Dwight Longenecker at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Life and Culture 

 

A Liturgy with a Pause – for the Killing – George Sinclair at The Gospel Coalition Canada.

 

Who Benefits the Most from AI Data Centers? – Georgia Tech at Futurity.

 

25 Movies That Actually Reflect the American Spirit – Around the Parnassus Campfire.

 

Twenty-One Years, by the Numbers – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

America 250

 

Samuel Brady: A Future Legend Goes to War – Eric Sterner at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

The Southern Pivot and the Battle of Camden in the Revolutionary War – Keli Holt at Just Enough History.

 

The Tombstone Edition that Helped Galvanize American Independence – Neely Tucker at Library of Congress Blogs.

 

American Stuff

 

Katherine Lee Bates and the American Mythos – Tim Milosch at Front Porch Republic.

 

America’s Museum Erased Christianity – Lauren Cooley at the Institute for Faith & Culture.

 

Music

 

How Antonio Vivaldi Died in Obscurity and Conquered the World Two Centuries Later – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

 

Poetry

 

“My Dearest Dust,” poem by Lady Catherine Dyer – Katie Hartsock and Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“Narcissus and Adonis,” Sonnet 3 by William Shakespeare – K.S. Bernstein at Apple Blossoms in a Mournful Wood.

 

The Outsider’s Blessing – poem by Jack Baumgartner at The School for the Transfer of Energy.

 

“Upon Julia’s Clothes,” poem by Robert Herrick – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Falling Slowly – Glen Hansard (1970-2026) and Marketa Irglova

Illustration: The Book Hunters (1907) by Gordon Grant (1875-1962), printed in Collier’s Magazine in 1909.

He sings over you

After Zephaniah 3:14-20 

Forget the humiliation,

forget the shame.

The Lord is singing

over you.

 

He takes away

the judgments

against you.

He wipes away

the enemies

arrayed against

you. He gathers

the weak, the outcast,

the oppressed

in his arms,

transforming shame

into praise.

 

He gathers us in,

he exalts over us,

he sings our renown,

he sings our praise.

 

Photograph by Steven Erixon via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“At the Cemetery,” poem by Robert Cording – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

Honey: A healing gift from the Creator – Creation.com. 

 

When Your Boss Expects You to Lie – John Piper at Desiring God.

 

“Fight the Good Fight,” hymn by John Samuel Bewley Monsell – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

A Given – poem by Seth Lewis.

Some Thursday Readings – July 30, 2026

 

Did Charles Dickens’s Bleak House Inspire Murder on the Orient Express? – Olivia Rutigliano at CrimeReads.

 

Such a thing – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“The Heart of the Night,” poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Cave Story – poem by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

 

“The Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten,” poem by Oliver Herford – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Bard Bites Back – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

I Am the Place That Was Ruled by Three Empires – Emily Jaycox at Missouri Historical Society.

 

Illustration: The cover of the first serial installment of Bleak House, 1852.

 

Revisiting Longfellow with a Memory from Zimbabwe

I employed the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) as a kind of refrain in my novel Brookhaven. A main character is well known in his family for his lifelong love of Longfellow’s poetry and his ability to recite it from memory.  

What I didn’t realize or remember was just how long I’d been reading Longfellow’s poetry myself. That is, until a recent comment on a post at Tweetspeak Poetry popped up.

 

The comment first arrived as an email. It’s a standard notification that Tweetspeak writers get when someone comments on a post they’ve written. I read it and looked at the date of the post – Oct. 3, 2017, almost nine years ago. Had I actually resumed reading Longfellow that long ago?

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Neglected Genius of Hilaire Belloc – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Tools of the Trade – Kelly Belmonte on writing.

 

What-ifs and he Price of Beauty – Elliott Drago at Front Porch Republic.

 

Writer Reads: Jan Carson’s Few and Far Between – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

Why you must know your book’s genre – Nathan Bransford.

 

The Beautiful Ordinary – Kelly Keller at Story Warren on Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry.

“The Lamp” - A Ghost Story by Agatha Christie

Hercule Poirot? Yes. Miss Jane Marple? Yes. Tommy and Tuppence Beresford? Yes. General mystery stories? Yes. 

Ghost stories? No. Except the answer is really yes.

 

I’ve read a lot of novels and stories by Agatha Christie. The novels wither her trademark and famous detectives. Her thrillers. Her general mysteries without a trademark detective. But I didn’t know she also wrote ghost stories.

 

The Lamp is a ghost story by Agatha Christie.

 

It’s not long, only about 13 pages. It was first published in 1933 in a collection called The Hound of Death. The book was available only in one way – by collecting coupons from the magazine “The Passing Show.” And there it sat, until 1971, when it was published in the United States in a collection called The Golden Ball and Other Stories. In 2013, it was published as a standalone ebook by William Morrow Paperbacks.

 

I was expecting a mystery. Instead, I got a ghost.

 

Agatha Christie in the 1930s

The story is not set in any particular time. It could be anytime between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth century. The only real clue is that the family is attended by servants, including maids, so that might push it back toward the ninetheenth.

 

A woman is looking for a house for herself, her young son, and her father. She finds one she really likes, but she questions the estate agent closely about why the house has been empty for 19 years. He finally admits that there is a story about a ghost, a boy who was left with servants while his father traveled to London. Unfortunately, the father died there, and it’s said that the little boy wanders through the place, crying.

 

The woman does not believe in ghosts. She buys the house, and the family moves in. And all seems to go well until her son and her father begin to hear noises. And see things. Things will not end the way she expects. For that matter, things will not end like the reader expects.

 

The title comes from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The woman’s elderly father quotes this passage:

 

What Lamp has Destiny to guide

Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?

“A Blind Understanding,” Heaven replied.

 

The story seems odd for a work by Agatha Christie. It also seems a little creepy. You’re not going to see Hercule Poirot using his little gray cells or Miss Marple knitting away listening quietly. Instead, you get the innocent if discerning understanding of childhood and the wisdom of age and how those in between can easily miss what’s really going on.

 

Yes, it’s an Agatha Christie ghost story.

 

Some Tuesday Readings

 

“Vivien’s Song,” poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Three Poems for Robinson Jeffers – Lucas Smith at The Sprawl of Quality.

 

Two Moccasins Tied Together – poem by Emily Patterson at Every Day Poems.

 

Fire in July – poem by Rosa Gilbert at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Some Monday Readings - July 27, 2026

 

Make do – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher. 

One Tool to Rule Them All – Brad Littlejohn at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Two Ways of Looking at a Sparrow – Alexander Fayne.

 

Britain: Tome policing – Bijan Omrani at The Critic Magazine.

 

The Year I Taught in Prison – Michael Connolly at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

The Creatives Behind the Festival of Britain: Jacquetta Hawkes – A London Inheritance.

 

Don’t have blocks of time to write? Pockets work great! – Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

 

Sounds of the Forest – Timber Festival.

 

I Read All These Books and Boy Are My Lips Tired – Greg Sullivan at Sippican Cottage.

 

Christianity and the Three Cultures – Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Photograph: Jacquetta Hawkes (1910-1996) and J.B. Priestly (1894-1984) in 1960.

The fuller's soap

After Malachi 3:1-4

 

He’s coming, both

as a fire and as 

a cleansing, a washing

like the fuller’s soap

used to clean and

cleanse linen, taking

the soiled garment

and making it white

as snow, cleansed

of all impurities,

making us acceptable

and righteous to the Lord,

making us an acceptable

dwelling place of the Lord.

 

Photograph by Sincerely Media via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

Some Sunday Readings

 

Six Ways to Shepherd Kids Through Loss – Kirsten Black at Gospel-Centered Discipleship.

 

It’s Hard to Grow Up – Melissa Edgington at Your Mom Has a Blog. 

The Words We Need to Speak – Glenn McCarty at Story Warren.

Saturday Good Reads – July 25, 2026

When I had American history in both high school and college, I can vaguely remember reading or classroom discussion about only two ministers – Jonathan Edwards, who was always cited for his “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and not much else, and John Wesley, who started Methodism in England and was instrumental in the First Great Awakening in America. But there were other well-known pastors, and they played a significant role in the American Revolution. 

Darryl Dash is a pastor in Toronto, author of a few books, and a columnist for The Gospel Coalition Canada. He was on vacation last week, and he and family visited a small church. They more stumbled into it than visited and had to be directed to the right room. And he discovered the beauty of a remarkably ordinary church.

 

Netflix has been hemorrhaging subscribers, and it’s affecting the value of their stock. Ted Gioia at The Honest Broker thinks something else is going on – the most popular strategy in the tech world has stopped working. And it may be good for all of us.

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

The Thousand Injuries: The Not Qwhite Voter and Politics of Recognition – William Matthew McCarter at Front Porch Republic.

 

Like Grass – Sarah Silflow at Front Porch Republic.

 

British Stuff

 

The migrant crime cover up – Rob Bates at The Critic Magazine.

 

America 250

 

13 Places Where American History Began – Kate Orlando at Only in Your State.

 

George Washington, The Fall of Charleston & The Battle of the Waxhaws – Keli Holt at Just Enough History.

 

How Courage and Compromise Secured American Liberty – Robert M.S. McDonald at Real Clear History.

 

Faith

 

Every Christian Has the Same Story – Michael Kelley at Forward Progress.

 

Tolkien invented a word to describe the Gospel’s turning point – Biblitodo News.

 

Aging Wisely in an Anti-Aging World – Tim Challies.

 

Poetry

 

The Reveal of the Rocks – poem by Kyle Fisk at Society of Classical Poets.

 

“To Helen,” poem by Edgar Allan Poe – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient & Modern.

 

“Thy Beauty’s Field,” Sonnet 2 by William Shakespeare – K.S Bernstein at Apple Blossoms in a Mournful Wood.

 

“The Charge of the Light Brigade,” poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

“Beloved, Thou Hast Brought Me Many Flowers,” poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Does it matter if you don’t like the characters? – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Why Am I So Negative About Traditional Book Publishing? – Dean Wesley Smith.

 

We Are Thankful – Sovereign Grace

 Painting: Reading Girl, oil on canvas by Alexei Harlamoff (1840-1925). 

A refiner's fire

After Malachi 3:1-4 

The one foretold

is coming,

coming like a fire,

a purifier’s fire,

a refiner’s fire

sifting like a refiner

of silver and gold,

purifying and whittling

away of impurities.

The purified will bring

offerings, offerings

pleasing to the Lord

as they did in days

of old.

The fire of righteousness

purifies and cleanses,

making the offerings

making us, pleasing

and acceptable to the Lord.

 

Photograph by Yasin Hemmati via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“Eschatology,” poem by Jose Tolentino Mendonca – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

How to Wait for Cultural Reckoning – Joe Carter at The Gospel Coalition.

 

“Away With Our Sorrow and Fear,” hymn by Charles Wesley – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Poetry Helps You Open Your Heart to God – Catherine Lawton at Glimpses of Glory in the Unfolding Story. 

 

The Skill That Unlocks Other Skills – Seth Lewis.

 

An Ear for the Outsider, Part 2 – poem by Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

Some Thursday Readings – July 23, 2026

 

The Spider Taketh Hold with Her Hands, and is in Kings’ Palaces – Kilby Austin at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

“Idyll,” poem by Siegfried Sassoon and “There Is a Garden in her Face,” poem by Thomas Campion – – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Thirteen Ways of Looking at My Mother’s Bible – poem by Megan Willome. 

 

“When I consider how my light is spent,” sonnet by John Milton – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Talking about ‘The Nameless Isle’ – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street. 

 

A Picture That Paints a Thousand Words – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Dumpling Pond: Legend, Folklore, and Local Memory in Greenwich, Connecticut – Lisa Figlioli at Journal of the American Revolution. 

 

The Bell and the Blackbird – poem by David Whyte.

 

George Cruikshank’s Summer in London – Spitalfields Life.

 

Eighteen Months, a Dark Teesside short story by Glenn McGoldrick, is free on Amazon today. I have a short review here. 

 

Illustration: At the Royal Academy (1835) by George Cruikshank.