Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club

By turns savage, biting, funny, poetic, and heartbreaking, Megan Gail Coles's debut novel rips into the inner lives of a wicked cast of characters, exposing class, gender, and racial tensions over the course of one Valentine's Day in the dead of a winter storm.Valentine's Day, the longest day of the year.A fierce blizzard is threatening to tear a strip off the city, while inside The Hazel restaurant a storm system of sex, betrayal, addiction, and hurt is breaking overhead. Iris, a young hostess, is forced to pull a double despite resolving to avoid the charming chef and his wealthy restaurateur wife. Just tables over, Damian, a hungover and self-loathing server, is trying to navigate a potential punch-up with a pair of lit customers who remain oblivious to the rising temperature in the dining room. Meanwhile Olive, a young woman far from her northern home, watches it all unfurl from the fast and frozen street.Through rolling blackouts, we glimpse the truth behind the shroud of scathing