By Cate Kennedy
224 pages; BlackCat

If stories could be called watchful, that might begin to describe Cate Kennedy's debut collection, Dark Roots (Black Cat). Her characters live with the metallic taste of dread and regret, "little bads" that sabotage a life. So the aging woman with a young lover in the title story watches her roots grow out, dark with traces of gray, "an abrupt line drawn against the scalp like a growth ring on a tree." Kennedy's tales are full of such provocative messages, tantalizingly revealed.

— Cathleen Medwick