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Gina Frangello, novelist and editor of the local literary magazine Other Voices, on her favorite book of the last year

The Apple's Bruise
(Simon & Schuster, $12)
Lisa Glatt is a loaded weapon. In an era where short fiction by women increasingly falls under "chick-lit," Glatt's collection breaks all of the rules. It is not a novel-in-stories. No scrappy heroines find true love. Instead, girls are murdered upstairs from a man who refuses to tell the police what he heard; a woman must leave her lover now that she's succumbed to his wish to be peed on; a child is abandoned on the side of the road by parents who seem to suffer mainly from indifference. Glatt is a master of the ambiguous ending and her inaugural collection is a creepy, intense gem.