The Curious Lives of Nonprofit Martyrs

Singleton (Between Wrecks) delivers an offbeat collection filled with Southern eccentrics. Doug, the narrator of “Cock Rescue,” doesn’t much like his sister-in-law, Frankie, a “pre-literary agent,” who hustles writers by sending their manuscripts to agents in exchange for a fee. Meanwhile, Doug’s wife, Emma, has just started her own new pursuit, a rooster sanctuary called Cock Rescue. Emma’s first patron, a MAGA hat–wearing, booze-toting individual, has the wrong idea, however, and shows up “penis out,” prompting Doug to scare him off with a chicken deboner. In “The Arbitrary Schemes of Naming Humans,” a 30-something man named Coast, after the soap his promiscuous mother used after sex, hoping to avoid getting pregnant, attributes the name to his tendency to drift from one job and relationship to another. Quarles, the narrator of “Proofs of Purchase,” prematurely inherits a series of worthless items from his father, a former drug counselor who has dementia. His father’s legacy also catches up with Quarles at the local bar and bait shop, where he chats with one of his father’s clients. Things get tense when the man claims Quarles’s father ratted him out to his parol officer for drug use. Singleton lights up the colorful and odd situations with wit and verve. Southern fiction fans will have a blast. (Aug.)