Circle View: Stories

by Brad Barkley

In the thirteen stories of Barkley's debut collection, characters are haunted by memory and missed chances, buoyed by humor and a fragile optimism.


In "Under Water," a man whose job keeps him buried beneath the waters of the Chesapeake reassures his wife that their lives have meaning despite living in a world fraught with imminent danger. In the title story, two people living out their ruined marriage at an abandoned drive-in theater are offered a fresh chance at life with the arrival of two unlikely characters. "Escaping," set in turn-of-the-century Baltimore, depicts a young nurse from a typhoid ward in a life-changing chance encounter with Houdini.

Genres: Short Stories

240 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1996

About the author

Brad Barkley is the author of the novels Money, Love (Norton), and Alison's Automotive Repair Manual (St. Martin’s), two collections of short stories, and three YA novels with Penguin: Scrambled Eggs at Midnight , Dream Factory, and Jars of Glass. Brad has won numerous awards, including four Individual Artist Awards from the State of Maryland and a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His short fiction has appeared in nearly thirty magazines, including Southern Review, Georgia Review, the Oxford American, Glimmer Train, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, which twice awarded him the Emily Balch Prize for Best Fiction. His work was anthologized in New Stories from the South: The Year's Best. A native of North Carolina, he lives in Western Maryland with his wife Kristin and their dog, Millie Grace. When not working, he plays as a hang glider pilot and a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.