With Our Bellies Full and the Fire Dying  

By Debra H. Goldstein 

White City Press, 2025 

Paperback: $13.00 

Genre: Mystery, Short Fiction  

Reviewed by Joe Cuhaj    

Cover of WITH OUR BELLIES FULL AND THE FIRE DYING by Debra H. Goldstein. Cover shows an illustration of a group of three adults and one child huddled around a fire with a cityscape in the background.

Some of you may be too young to remember the days of pulp mystery magazines like Ellery Queen Mysteries, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mysteries, and Master Detective. Each month, these magazines brought readers the best short fiction mysteries by the world’s best up-and-coming writers. Some remain to this day (now as online magazines like Ellery Queen), still stimulating mystery lovers’ “little grey cells” with short but oh-so-sweet tales of murder and mayhem. 

Debra H. Goldstein’s new collection, With Our Bellies Full and the Fire Dying, brings back this experience through short tales of sinning and redemption, all with a twist you will never see coming. Goldstein is a retired attorney and former judge, so you know she has seen a thing or two. Her stories come alive, some with deep, heart-rending glimpses of the dark side of a person’s soul, while others are good old detective tales that conjure up images of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe looking for their next case. 

Many of the stories, previously published as standalone pieces, are award winners. Two of my favorites show the range of Goldstein’s writing. The first, “Violet Eyes,” is also the shortest, coming in at under 800 words, but it packs a punch as it tells the tale of a marriage that has run its course and grabs the reader with a blindsiding twist at the end. Another standout is “Bucket List Dreams.” It’s one of those stories I mentioned earlier that is reminiscent of a good detective noir. The sleuth is approached by a young married woman who presents him with a job: “I want you to get rid of my husband.” Simple, right? All is not as it seems, and as Goldstein writes in the introduction, “When dreams of different people overlap, a whole lot of sinning just might happen.” 

Being a compilation of standalone stories, With Our Bellies Full and the Fire Dying makes for a great bring-along on your trip to the beach or vacation this summer, and trust me when I say the stories included are jammed with so many surprising twists and turns you won’t want to put it down. 

Joe Cuhaj is the author of 13 outdoor recreation guides on hiking, kayaking, and camping in Alabama and the Gulf Coast, as well as seven nonfiction history books for Prometheus Books and Arcadia Publishing. A cozy mystery fan, Joe is currently working on his own series, The Crystal Bay Mysteries.