Emerging writer Peter Biles offers his first anthology of short stories. Composed with experimental boldness, the stories extend from the hilarious to the grim, from urban disillusionment to rural desperation, from fantasy to gritty realism, and from frustrated longing to quiet hope. With creative debts owed to the likes of Raymond Carver, Flannery O'Connor, and Anton Chekhov, Keep and Other Stories explores human life and relations in a world where utility and power are all that matters. ""Keep,"" the penultimate story about two teenage lovers in a dying Colorado lumber town, seeks to unify the anthology into a thematic whole with its tender treatment of characters who are at a crossroads with each other, the dispassionate way of the world, and their own conflicted hearts.