Hitting the Charts brings back into print stories that go as far back as 1980, offering up the full range of Leon Rooke's voice and accomplishment. These are stories as improvisations, as performances, stories which push the boundaries of form and function, as free from constraint as a Monk solo and as disquieting and resonant as a southern Baptist preacher at a big-tent revival. A new sort of literary riff, then, a dazzling display of language and sensiblity, deserving of its own unique adjective: Rookian.

According to Russell Banks, North Carolina ex-pat Leon Rooke's work charts "what the short story form can and cannot do, for he works out there in the terra incognita mapping limits." "Hitting the Charts," a nineteen story Best-Of compilation, offers stories as free from constraint as a Monk solo, and as disquieting and resonant as a southern Baptist preacher at a big-tent revival. Dancing is not forbidden.