The linked stories in Joseph Costa's Comets remind me of fiction by the late great Denis Johnson and Thom Jones. Costa, like those writers, writes movingly, hilariously, and empathetically about people on the margins: boxers, veterans, petty criminals, not-so-petty criminals, strivers, strays of all kinds, and especially the cabinet makers of Tampa, Florida. The characters in these stories are hard-boiled, but they care—about each other, and about life, which hasn't quite worked out for them, but might, yet, and soon. Maybe even in the next story. It's impossible for the reader not to care about them, and root for them, too. What a wonderful book!

Joseph Costa’s Comets cuts across the literary cosmos searing his signature in the stars. These stories feature blue-collar Floridians caught in the teeth of the daily grind. Many of the pieces examine the complexities of family and the devastating ways that honor, tradition, and responsibility create fissures in the human spirit. But no matter how far we plummet into deep-space darkness, with wisdom and kindness, Costa always finds a way to scatter light.

Joseph Costa's Comets is a loving intergenerational look at Ybor City and the men who built it and were built by it. The collection is as insightful and satisfying and full of Lawrence's "subtle interrelatedness" as any novel. It hums with buried circuitry."