editor rating 1 vote: 
Set in a fictionalized version of Hot Springs, Arkansas, Ho Springs is the story of a native daughter who returns home after 20 years in Paris to find her family in a shambles, their historic restaurant shuttered, the town itself in chaos. Ho Springs is told from several characters’ viewpoints, including a Parisian teenager and a meth ho, an Evangelical . . .
overall 5 votes: 
editor average: 
The cult-classic “noir” columns return. Charles Bukowsky said, of these pieces, “What this guy understands is that the street IS a wound.” Hunter Thompson commented, “And people keep saying they should lock ME up.” . . .
overall 19 votes: 
editor average:
Servicing the Pole is the portrait of a New York stripper—a battle-worn misfit slogging her way through the city’s roughest clubs, watching as the job replaces her personal life, and secretly harbouring rock star ambitions. As the fast-paced night life’s deceptive promises of easy money gradually give way to the harsher realities of addiction and prostitution, Emily must decide—is . . .
overall 3 votes:
editor rating:
Eddie, an ordinary guy, with an ordinary life in an ordinary world decides one day he is tired of the ordinary life. He makes a brash decision to try serial killing on for size. Eddie fails miserably and in the process hooks up with a group of new friends whose lives are less than ordinary are happy to take the . . .
What first drew me into Servicing the Pole was the quick, succinct voice of the character. It is written in first person present tense—something that usually bothers me—but I scarcely noticed it when I began to read.
Servicing the Pole isn’t a happy story—in fact, most of the time I found [more . . .]
I like grey and gritty stories, and this is an excellent one. Lauri describes the life of an exotic dancer, with honesty, no self-pity, and with a strange detachment which I recognize from having had acquaintances who were sex workers. It explores with eyes wide open the fine line between pole/lap dancing and prostitution in the mind of the [more . . .]