Staff Picks, the new collection from comic maestro George Singleton, provides a loosely linked baker’s dozen of stories set in small, often-floundering towns such as Steepleburg, which once boasted more congregations per capita than anywhere in the southeastern U.S., and Poke, home to a dedicated chapter of Optimists International. A woman tries to win an RV in a radio station’s contest, so she can drive the vehicle through the plate glass window of a business that cheated her; a father vacillates on telling his teenage son the truth about the boy’s mother; a character discovers an uncle’s infidelities; a father parades his young son around, meeting women who could’ve been the boy’s mother; a husband and wife confront adult trick-or-treaters dressed as Jesus and the two thieves, while still grieving the accidental death of their son. In turns both comic and tragic, Singleton shows characters trying to make sense out of the Old South, the New South, and the New New South in all their ragged glory.