Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt.

This is Bookworm, and today I'm very proud of myself.

I'm proud of my guest.

I've had a guest on whose work I never knew before it was recently introduced to me,

although she's written around nine various books. This newest book by Roberta Allen is called

The Princess of Herself. Great title, huh? And it's from Pelicanesis, which is a press that is located in

Claremont, California. And the princess of herself is a book of short stories. I find them

interconnected, are they? Yes. Oh, thank you.

Yep.

I found them to be what's more interconnected,

Roberta, about a small, relatively speaking, a small group of people who live in an area in upstate New York.

They've moved away from New York City to be in a less hectic place.

But then they get to the less hectic place,

and they discover they only have one another.

It's not the nonstop hilarity and activity that they had in the

...