Kimberly King Parsons’s first book, Black Light, is aptly titled. Each story reflects light out of darkness. Equally, these stories find rot and provocative weirdness in the well-lit subdivisions of Texan America—middle-class parents stand at one or two removes from reality; hotels become heavens to the down-at-heel; children bully and are bullied and proceed by means of fictions.

They fight in cars—in his Volvo or in her Volvo, in the backseats of cabs. It’s been like this since the beginning of them. They used to do it in her old pickup, in his father’s borrowed hatchback. When they were young it was dangerous. They’d swerve in anger, shove past speed limits without noticing.