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Cliché-verre is a technique of etching and painting directly on photographic negatives. The term means “glass negative” in French and is as old as photography itself, dating to the 1840s and earlier.

Lucifer, to escape the cold of a Northern New Mexico winter, steps into an old adobe church, intruding on a baptism. By insinuating himself into the boy’s and sponsors’ lives, Dr. Luke Ferrer becomes Adám’s tutor, though it is unclear whose education is being undertaken. The Prince of Darkness, intent on instructing a new race of human beings loyal to him, is confounded to learn that his protégé “does not like girls in that way”. Adam likes boys, especially his mejor amigo. This is but the first of many challenges and obstacles Lucifer must face and overcome.

Shoot Me, Jesus is a “novel in short stories”, what writer Jane Lawless called “erotic magic realism with a Southwestern spiciness.” Humor is an essential element of each story. The 11 linked tales move forward and backward in time in the manner of flashbacks and foreshadowing in a novel, though the plots are always character-driven. It is their realizations, insights, and inner changes that move the collection along.

Recently widowed Conor McGuile acquires an antique railcar which he restores and outfits with all the comforts of home. He learns the caboose is haunted by an Indian warrior unjustly accused of robbing a bank courier of a fortune in gold. Conor determines to right the wrong and restore the brave’s reputation.

In the final years of World War II, the Virgin Mary appears in Roswell, New Mexico, to teenagers Antonio and Sixtus. Through Dr. Richard Feynman, the physicist from Los Alamos, the young men learn of the impending arrival of faraway visitors to whom they will represent Earth as ambassadors. She pays the young men several more visits before they enlist in the army in early 1947. Stationed at Roswell Army Air Force Base, they are firsthand witnesses to the famed UFO crash.

Weird Santa and Other Xmas Tales is magic realism with a dash of erotic spiciness. The 10 independent stories in this collection range from “A Doggie’s Tale”, a boy-and-his-dog story appropriate for children, to “Never Too Old, Never Too Late” in which an old babushka recounts her Christmases in the Old Country. After receiving her magic gingerbread cookies, Ana’s young American friends, two couples, discover the depth of their passion for each other on a snowy Christmas Eve. In the previous two volumes of short fiction, the stories were interconnected.

The Magic of Kindness is magic realism with a dash of erotic spiciness. Like the author’s previous collection of tales, it is a “novel in short stories”. The eight quirky tales in the present volume are connected not only by plot elements, but also by everyday objects and characters who appear in more than one story. A few of the tales are inadvertent romances.