“Not all of the source material will be familiar to readers, and not every writer knows how to manage this experiment. Many American readers will be unfamiliar with the witch prototype of Baba Iaga (best handled in Joy Williams’ “Baba Iaga and the Pelican Child,” in which the ornithologist John James Audubon cuts a frightening figure). And it is unlikely that everyone will recognize the eerily macabre yet luminous lesser-known stories of the Brothers Grimm.” Jessica Freeman-Slade looks at the anthology My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

• Brad Cohan speaks with Stephen Joerg of the fine jazz label AUM Fidelity. In related news: David S. Ware and Cooper-Moore recently collaborated? Excellent.

• At Full Stop, Emma Schneider reviews Monique Roffey’s novel of Trinidad The White Woman on the Green Bicycle.

• “To call one’s self a “robot artist,” as Vorn does, seems to be an apology – why not just artist who uses robotic technologies in expression of something else? ” In Pittsburgh, Daphne Carr looks at Bill Vorn’s Hysterical Machines.

• NPR Music lists their 25 favorite albums of the year so far.

• Jessica Hopper looks at the latest album from The Coathangers, Larceny and Old Lace: “These are smart girls thrilling themselves with how bad they can be.”

• Jen and the Pen takes an indie-press-centered approach to summer reading.