Sarah Lippek's debut collection of short stories, Complicity, is obsessed with the military and the dead. The prelude to the book begins with a three-page blurt of a hand-to-hand battle between a soldier and a girl. "I work with the dead," a story called "The Coroner" begins, "Death never stops. No matter what slump the economy suffers, the dead keep rolling through the door. I touch the bodies of women every day."

Lippek writes with simple language, but there are tiny little intentional errors threaded in the text—a question mark missing here, an awkward phrasing there—that gives the book the feel of a concerto played on a piano with one broken key. Nothing is quite right, nobody is quite trustworthy, everything is injured in one subtle way or another. Like a beautiful smile with a missing tooth, you can't stop looking away.

You can preview Complicity over at Google Books, and Lippek reads tonight at Pilot Books at 7 pm. This is the reading of the night. If you want to know what other readings are coming up tonight and this weekend, you should check our fastidiously updated reading calendar.