One Death, Nine Stories

The second editorial collaboration between Aronson and Smith (after 2011’s Pick-Up Game) collects nine short stories by Ellen Hopkins, A.S. King, Rita Williams-Garcia, Chris Barton, Nora Raleigh Baskin, and more; not unlike Adele Griffin’s The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone, also out this season, the book is built around the influence of a deceased teenager, remembered and considered by those around him. Kevin Nicholas, charismatic and angry, has been shaped by his father’s suicide; eight years later, 19-year-old Kevin’s body is zipped into a bag, and everyone from his younger sister and high school peers to the cosmetologist prettying his corpse dwell on their relationships with Kevin or use his death to evaluate their own lives. Predictably, anything good that people think they knew about Kevin proves false. The girls connect him with sex, the boys with innocence-destroying competition. The impact of many details and events depends on readers’ willingness to read into what is said. There are plenty of dots to connect and introspection from adolescents on the precipice of something new and unknown, but most of these authors have done better in longer formats. Ages 14–up. (Aug.)