“In his new short story collection, Amazing Things Are Happening Here, Jacob Appel renders our post 9/11 world through a variety of personalities, each narrating their unique and startling stories. Meet the shy high school student with a crush on a girl dying of leukemia, the mother whale who beaches to save her offspring, the search for the VA hospital’s lunatic who goes missing and never returns, and more. [ . . . ] These stories lift us far above the realm of entertainment, and instead enrich and enliven the psyche’s oceanic heights and depths.”—Marilyn Krysl