Staff Picks
#BroaderBookshelf 2018: Read a Book of Short Stories
- Chantal W.
- Saturday, January 20, 2018
Collection
The best thing about short stories, is, well, that they're short. Short story collections give readers a chance to try a genre or author without investing a lot of time. You can find collections that are by a single author or anthologies from a variety of authors. Below you will find a plethora of choices, so broaden your reading horizons by reading a book of short stories and maybe branch out to a genre you haven't tried before.
Share your reading choice with us via social media by taking a picture of the book cover and using #BroaderBookshelf. When you complete all 14 prompts return your bookmark for a $3 for free card. Happy Reading!
100 Years of the Best American Short Stories
Published in 2015
Collects forty short stories published between 1915 and 2015, from writers that include Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, and Alice Munro that exemplify their era and stand the test of time.
Alive in Shape and Color
17 Paintings by Great Artists and the Stories They Inspired
Published in 2017
Autumn Cthulhu
Published in 2016
"After summer is winter, and life inevitably gives way to frozen sterility. In our modern world, we live cushioned existences, and congratulate ourselves on our supposed escape from the old dangers. We think ourselves caught out of nature's reach by our technological wizardry. Safely cocooned. This foolishness blinds us to the truth that our elder forebears could not avoid. Engulfed by the rhythms of the world, they understood ... Autumn means death."--Amazon.com.
Because You Love to Hate Me
13 Tales of Villainy
Published in 2017
A collection of classic fairy tales and stories, from Medusa to Sherlock Holmes, retold from the villains' points of view by teams of authors and "BookTubers."
The Beloved Christmas Quilt
Three Stories of Family, Romance, and Amish Faith
Published in 2017
"For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name's sake lead me, and guide me". (Psalm 31:3) The scripture embroidered on the back of a beloved quilt brings hope to three generations of Pennsylvania Amish women at Christmastime.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017
Published in 2017
Presents a collection of the best science fiction and fantasy short stories written during 2016.
The Best American Short Stories 2017
Published in 2017
The Book of Swords
Published in 2017
Buenos Aires Noir
Published in 2017
Buenos Aires: city of contrasts, contradictions; always on the edge of chaos; in love with its own disorder despite the crude, transitory violence, the lack of law and order, the ubiquitously hurled insult, the thunderous boom of traffic, and honking, hurled curses. Its inhabitants love/hate the city. In the language of the port-dwellers, irony is currency. The multimillionaires of Puerto Madero deal in this irony with as fluently as the workers in the "misery cities," which is what we call the poorest neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. This shared language comes from the mansions and the shanties that are built side by side, separate by nothing but a single street or railroad track--contradiction within eyesight. In the stories that make up this volume we glimpse what Buenos Aires really is: distinctive points of view, as well as the narrative potential of a city that has reinvented itself many times over. This collection highlights the relations between the social and economic classes--from their tensions, from their cruelties, and also from their love. Deep inside, inhabitants of Buenos Aires live this contradiction.
Colonial Horrors
Sleepy Hollow and Beyond
Published in 2017
Collects sixteen tales of suspense, horror, and the supernatural from the Colonial era.
Continental Crimes
Published in 2017
"A man is forbidden to uncover the secret of the tower in a fairy-tale castle by the Rhine. A headless corpse is found in a secret garden in Paris – belonging to the city's chief of police. And a drowned man is fished from the sea off the Italian Riviera, leaving the carabinieri to wonder why his socialite friends at the Villa Almirante are so unconcerned by his death. These are three of the scenarios in this new collection of vintage crime stories. Detective stories from the golden age and beyond have used European settings – cosmopolitan cities, rural idylls and crumbling chateaux – to explore timeless themes of revenge, deception, murder and haunting. Including lesser-known stories by Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, J. Jefferson Farjeon and other classic writers, this collection reveals many hidden gems of British crime."--Page 4 of cover.
Crime Scenes
Stories
Published in 2016
Short crime fiction stories from some of Australia's best known crime writers as well as new talents. Selected by Ned Kelly Award winner, Zane Lovitt.
Fall of Poppies
Stories of Love and the Great War
Published in 2016
The top voices in historical fiction deliver an intensely moving collection of short stories about loss, longing, and hope in the aftermath of World War I.
Forged in Blood
Published in 2017
From a Certain Point of View.
Published in 2017
Humans Wanted
Published in 2017
"Twelve authors provide their perspectives on human ingenuity and usefulness as we try to find our place among the stars. From battletested to brokenhearted, humans are capable of amazing things. Humans Wanted shows not only what we are, but also how awesome we can be."-- Provided by publisher.
It Occurs to Me That I Am America
New Stories and Art
Published in 2018
"In time for the one-year anniversary of the Trump Inauguration and the Women's March, this provocative, unprecedented anthology features original short stories from thirty bestselling and award-winning authors--including Alice Walker, Richard Russo, Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Hoffman, Neil Gaiman, Michael Cunningham, Mary Higgins Clark, and Lee Child--with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen"-- Provided by publisher.
Mad Hatters and March Hares
All-new Stories from the World of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland
Published in 2017
Manhattan Mayhem
Published in 2015
From Wall Street and Greenwich Village to Chinatown, Harlem and beyond, the streets and skyscrapers of Manhattan are brimming with crimes and misdemeanors.
Matchup
Published in 2017
"In this incredible follow-up to the New York Times and USA TODAY bestseller FaceOff, twenty-two of the world's most popular thriller writers come together for an unforgettable anthology. MatchUp takes the never-before-seen bestseller pairings of FaceOff and adds a delicious new twist: gender. Eleven of the world's best female thriller writers from Diana Gabaldon to Charlene Harris are paired with eleven of the world's best male thriller writers, including John Sandford, C.J. Box, and Nelson DeMille. The stories are edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child"-- Provided by publisher.
Montreal Noir
Published in 2017
More Human Than Human
Stories of Androids, Robots, and Manufactured Humanity
Published in 2017
The short stories in More human than human demonstrate the depth and breadth of artificial humanity in contemporary science fiction. Issues of passing, of what it is to be human, of autonomy and slavery and oppression, and yes, the hubris of creation; these ideas have fascinated us for at least two hundred years, and this selection of stories demonstrates why it is such an alluring and recurring conceit.
New York Fantastic
Fantasy Stories from the City That Never Sleeps
Published in 2017
Fantasy spreads across the five boroughs in the first volume of a new anthology series collecting fantastic and extraordinary stories set in specific urban locales. An intriguing but insular man with telekinetic powers becomes New York City's greatest superhero . . . A love affair blossoms between the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building . . . There are tunnels under New York that do not appear on any map . . . Being a Manhattan real estate broker for supernaturals is a real challenge . . . Editor and anthologist Paula Guran collects a diverse array of unusual and memorable tales set in the Big Apple, from a who's-who of New York Times bestsellers and Hugo and Nebula Award-winning writers including George R. R. Martin, Peter Straub, Naomi Novik, Maria Dahvana Headley, Holly Black, and many more. Anyone who's visited New York, New York knows what a "magical" place it is; these stories reveal just how marvelous, extraordinary, mysterious, and even occasionally eerie a truly fantastic city can be.
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2017
Published in 2017
Pen America Best Debut Short Stories 2017
Published in 2017
The Language of Thorns
Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic
Published in 2017
Presents a collection of six short stories that transports readers to familiar and strange magical lands with haunted towns, hungry woods, talking beasts, and gingerbread golems.
For a Little While
New and Selected Stories
Published in 2016
Selected stories. Wild horses ; In Ruth's Country ; Redfish ; Watch ; Legend of Pig-Eye ; History of Rodney ; Fires ; Field events ; Hermit's story ; Fireman ; Swans ; Elk ; Pagans ; Canoeists ; Goats ; Her first elk ; Titan ; Lives of rocks -- New stories. How she remembers ; Blue tree ; Lease hound ; River in winter ; Coach ; Alcoholic's guide to Peru and Chile ; Fish story.
The Accomplished Guest
Stories
Published in 2017
"Set along the East Coast from Maine to Key West, this collection of stories explores unconventional friendships, frustrated loves, mortality, and aging"-- Provided by publisher.
A Manual for Cleaning Women
Selected Stories
Published in 2015
"Stories from a lost American classic "in the same arena as Alice Munro" (Lydia Davis) "In the field of short fiction, Lucia Berlin is one of America's best kept secrets. That's it. Flat out. No mitigating conditions." --Paul Metcalf A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With her trademark blend of humor and melancholy, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday--uncovering moments of grace in the cafeterias and Laundromats of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Northern California upper classes, and from the perspective of a cleaning woman alone in a hotel dining room in Mexico City. The women of Berlin's stories are lost, but they are also strong, clever, and extraordinarily real. They are hitchhikers, hard workers, bad Christians. With the wit of Lorrie Moore and the grit of Raymond Carver, they navigate a world of jockeys, doctors, and switchboard operators. They laugh, they mourn, they drink. Berlin, a highly influential writer despite having published little in her lifetime, conjures these women from California, Mexico, and beyond. Lovers of the short story will not want to miss this remarkable collection from a master of the form"-- Provided by publisher.
The Illustrated Man
Published in 1997
Classic Bradbury, this collection of tales offers images that are as keen as a tattooist's needle and as colorful as the inks that stain the body. Featuring a new Introduction, "The Illustrated Man" presents 18 startling visions of humankind's destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin. He was a riot of rockets and fountains and people, in such intricate detail and color that you could bear the voiced murmuring, small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body. The Illustrated Man Ray Bradbury brings wonders alive. A peerless American storyteller, his oeuvre has been celebrated for decades--from The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 to Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes. The Illustrated Man is classic Bradbury --a collection of tales that breathe and move, animated by sharp, intaken breath and flexing muscle. Here are eighteen startling visions of humankind's destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin--visions as keen as the tattooist's needle and as colorful as the inks that indelibly stain the body. The images, ideas, sounds and scents that abound in this phantasmagoric sideshow are provocative and powerful: the mournful cries of celestial travelers cast out cruelly into a vast, empty space of stars and blackness ... the sight of gray dust settling over a forgotten outpost on a road that leads nowhere ... the pungent odor of Jupiter on a returning father's clothing. Here living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, Martian invasions are foiled by the good life and the glad hand, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets. Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man is a kaleidoscopic blending of magic, imagination, and truth, widely believed to be one of the Grandmaster's premier accomplishments: as exhilarating as interplanetary travel, as maddening as a walk in a million-year rain, and as comforting as simple, familiar rituals on the last night of the world. He was a riot of rockets and fountains and people, in such intricate detail and color that you could hear the voices murmuring, small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body. Ray Bradbury brings wonders alive. A peerless American storyteller, his oeuvre has been celebrated for decades--from The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 to Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes. THE ILLUSTRATED MAN is classic Bradbury--a collection of tales that breathe and move, animated by sharp, intaken breath and flexing muscle. Here are eighteen startling visions of humankind's destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin--visions as keen as the tattooist's needle and as colorful as the inks that indelibly stain the body. The images, ideas, sounds and scents that abound in this phantasmagoric sideshow are provocative and powerful: the mournful cries of celestial travelers cast out cruelly into a vast, empty space of stars and blackness ... the sight of gray dust settling over a forgotten outpost on a road that leads nowhere ... the pungent odor of Jupiter on a returning father's clothing. Here living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, Martian invasions are foiled by the good life and the glad hand, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets.
Beneath the Bonfire
Stories
Published in 2015
"The ten stories in this ... collection evoke a landscape that will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has traveled the back roads and blue highways of America, and they completely capture the memorable characters who call it home"--Dust jacket flap.
No Middle Name
The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Short Stories
Published in 2017
Get ready for the ultimate Jack Reacher reading experience. No Middle Name includes eleven previously published stories and a thrilling new novella. The first time that all of Lee Child's short fiction starring Reacher has been available in the same place at the same time.
Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories
Published in 1992
From the author of the widely acclaimed The House on Mango Street comes a story collection of breathtaking range and authority, whose characters give voice to the vibrant and varied life on both sides of the Mexican border. The women in these stories offer tales of pure discovery, filled with moments of infinite and intimate wisdom.
Man V. Nature
Stories
Published in 2014
"A debut collection of stories which illuminates the complexity of human behavior, as seen through the lens of the natural world. These stories expose unsuspecting men and women to the realities of nature, the primal instincts of man, and the dark humor and heartbreak of our struggle to not only thrive, but survive." -- Provided by publisher.
This is How You Lose Her
Published in 2012
Presents a collection of stories that explores the heartbreak and radiance of love as it is shaped by passion, betrayal, and the echoes of intimacy.
Bream Gives Me Hiccups
& Other Stories
Published in 2015
"Taking its title from a group of stories that begin the book, Bream Gives Me Hiccups moves from contemporary L.A. to the dorm rooms of an American college to ancient Pompeii, throwing the reader into a universe of social misfits, reimagined scenes from history, and ridiculous overreactions. In one piece, a tense email exchange between a young man and his girlfriend is taken over by his sister, who is obsessed with the Bosnian genocide (The situation reminds me of a little historical blip called the Karađorđevo agreement); in another, a college freshman forced to live with a roommate is stunned when one of her ramen packets goes missing (she didn't have "one" of my ramens. She had a chicken ramen); in another piece, Alexander Graham Bell has teething problems with his invention (I've been calling Mabel all day, she doesn't pick up! Yes, of course I dialed the right number--2!)" -- provided by publisher.
The Wilds
Published in 2014
"At an obscure South Carolina nursing home, a lost world reemerges as a disabled elderly woman undergoes newfangled brain-restoration procedures and begins to explore her environment with the assistance of strap-on robot legs. At a deluxe medical spa on a nameless Caribbean island, a middle-aged woman hopes to revitalize her fading youth with grotesque rejuvenating therapies that combine cutting-edge medical technologies with holistic approaches and the pseudo-religious dogma of Zen-infused self-help. And in a rinky-dink mill town, an adolescent girl is unexpectedly inspired by the ravings and miraculous levitation of her fundamentalist friend's weird grandmother. These are only a few of the scenarios readers encounter in Julia Elliott's debut collection, The Wilds. In these genre-bending stories, teetering between the ridiculous and the sublime, Elliott's language-driven fiction uses outlandish tropes to capture poignant moments in her humble characters' lives. Without abandoning the tenets of classic storytelling, Elliott revels in lush lyricism, dark humor, and experimental play. "-- Provided by publisher.
Things We Lost in the Fire
Stories
Published in 2017
"A haunting collection of short stories all set in Argentina"-- Provided by publisher.
Seven Stones to Stand or Fall
A Collection of Outlander Fiction
Published in 2017
"A magnificent collection of short fiction--including two never-before-published novellas--featuring Jamie Fraser, Lord John Grey, Master Raymond, and many more, all extending the story of Outlander in thrilling new directions "The Custom of the Army" begins with Lord John Grey being shocked by an electric eel and ends at the Battle of Quebec. Then comes "The Space Between," where it is revealed that the Comte St. Germain is not dead, Master Raymond appears, and a widowed young wine dealer escorts a would-be novice to a convent in Paris. In "A Plague of Zombies," Lord John unexpectedly becomes military governor of Jamaica when the original governor is gnawed by what probably wasn't a giant rat. "A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows" is the moving story of Roger MacKenzie's parents during World War II. In "Virgins," Jamie Fraser, aged nineteen, and Ian Murray, aged twenty, become mercenaries in France, no matter that neither has yet bedded a lass or killed a man. But they're trying. "A Fugitive Green" is the story of Lord John's elder brother, Hal, and a seventeen-year-old rare book dealer with a sideline in theft, forgery, and blackmail. And finally, in "Besieged," Lord John learns that his mother is in Havana--and that the British Navy is on their way to lay siege to the city. Filling in mesmerizing chapters in the lives of characters readers have followed over the course of thousands of pages, Gabaldon's genius is on full display throughout this must-have collection"-- Provided by publisher.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Published in 2013
It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond the world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed - within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it. His only defense is three women, on a farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duckpond is ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang.
Signals
Published in 2017
"A widely celebrated novelist gives us a generous collection of exhilarating short stories, proving that he is a master of this genre as well. Once again, "he reminds us," wrote The Miami Herald, "that great writing is a timeless art." After the stunning historical novels The Clearing and The Missing, Tim Gautreaux now ranges freely through contemporary life with twelve new stories and eight from previous collections. Most are set in his beloved Louisiana, many hard by or on the Mississippi River, others in North Carolina and even in midwinter Minnesota. But generally it's heat, humidity, and bugs that beset his people as they wrestle with affairs of the heart, matters of faith, and the pros and cons of tight-knit communities--a remarkable cast of characters, primarily of the working class, proud and knowledgeable about the natural or mechanical world, their lives marked by a prized stereo or a magical sewing machine retrieved from a locked safe, boats and card games and casinos, grandparents and grandchildren and those in between, their experiences leading them to the ridiculous or the scarifying or the sublime; most of them striving for what's right and good, others tearing off in the opposite direction"-- Provided by publisher.
The Pier Falls
And Other Stories
Published in 2016
"Mark Haddon, author of the international bestselling novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and A Spot of Bother, returns with a collection of unsparing short stories In the prize-winning story "The Gun," a man's life is marked by a single afternoon and a rusty.45; in "The Island," a mythical princess is abandoned on an island in the midst of war; in "The Boys Who Left Home to Learn Fear," a cadre of sheltered aristocrats sets out to find adventure in a foreign land and finds the gravest dangers among themselves. These are but some of the men and women who fill this searingly imaginative and emotionally taut collection of short stories by Mark Haddon, that weaves through time and space to showcase the author's incredible versatility. Yet the collection achieves a sum that is greater than its parts, proving itself a meditation not only on isolation and loneliness but also on the tenuous and unseen connections that link individuals to each other, often despite themselves. In its titular story, the narrator describes with fluid precision a catastrophe that will collectively define its victims as much as it will disperse them--and brilliantly lays bare the reader's appetite for spectacle alongside its characters'. Cut with lean prose and drawing inventively from history, myth, fairy tales, and, above all, the deep well of empathy that made his three novels so compelling, The Pier Falls reveals a previously unseen side of the celebrated author"-- Provided by publisher.
The Big Book of the Continental Op
Published in 2017
Collects all twenty-eight stories and two serialized novels starring Continental Op, the hardworking private eye with an unyielding personal code.
Besieged
Stories from the Iron Druid Chronicles
Published in 2017
"Atticus O'Sullivan is a Druid who has walked the earth for over 2,000 years--and had many adventures along the way. Besieged gives us a never-before-seen look into the life and back story of this popular series hero in a collection of new short stories"-- Provided by publisher.
I Was Trying to Describe What It Feels Like
New and Selected Stories
Published in 2017
"Noy Holland is one of America's great writers, and each of her previous collections has been greeted with wide acclaim. Critics have praised her exquisite prose, her exuberant characters, and the exhilarating tension of her tales. Following the wonderful reception of her first novel, Bird, which Counterpoint published last year, we are proud to offer a gathering of 48 stories, 17 from her previous collections and 25 never before published in book form"-- Provided by publisher.
The Dark Dark
Stories
Published in 2017
"This is the first collection of stories from a widely acclaimed novelist writing in the realm of the literary fantastical. They urge an understanding of youth and mortality, ghosts, ghost towns, doubling and loss, with the hope that we can know one another more deeply or at least stand side by side to observe the mystery of the world"-- Provided by publisher.
The Lottery and Other Stories
Published in 2005
Collects short stories by Shirley Jackson, including "Like Mother Used to Make," "Afternoon in Linen," "A Fine Old Firm," as well as "The Lottery."
Monsters
Short Stories
Published in 2017
Monsters is an illustrated collection of wild, weird, and whimsical tales with a twist. These stories are not about mythical creatures; here, the creatures speak for themselves. There's an orc who hates Tolkien, a young demon awash in teenage angst, an angel abandoned by Jesus who finds the Fates. Jensen creates a world both delicately dreamlike and all too real, where the villain is sometimes the victim and evil is not always what we thought. If stories teach us how to be human, then the stories in Monsters are the ones we need now. These are fractured fairy tales for grown-ups, where the roots of sadism are laid bare and the horrors of human supremacism are firmly faced. But as in all of Jensen's work, love is both always possible and also a call to action. By turns macabre, melancholy, and magical, these stories and their accompanying images will leave you wondering who the real monsters are and how they can be defeated.
Fen
Stories
Published in 2017
Fen is a liminal land. Real people live their lives here. They wrestle with familiar instincts, with sex and desire, with everyday routine. But the wild is always close at hand, ready to erupt. This is a place where animals and people commingle and fuse, where curious metamorphoses take place, where myth and dark magic still linger. So here a teenager may starve herself into the shape of an eel. A house might fall in love with a girl. A woman might give birth to a well what?
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
Published in 2018
A collection of stories contemplates subjects ranging from old age and mortality to the unexpected ways the mysteries of the universe manifest, depicting haunted characters trying to atone for the past, remember departed loved ones, or come to terms with lifelong obsessions.
Echoes of Sherlock Holmes
Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon
Published in 2016
In this follow-up to the acclaimed In the Company of Sherlock HOlmes, expert Sherlockians Laurie King and Les Klinger put forth the question: What happens when great writers/creators who are not known as Sherlock Holmes devotees admit to being inspired by Conan Doyle stories? While some are highly-regarded mystery writers, others are best known for their work in the fields of fantasy or science fiction. All of these talented authors, however share a great admiration for Arthur Conan Doyle and his greatest creations, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. From back cover.
The World Goes on
Published in 2017
"In [this short story collection], a narrator first speaks directly, then tells eleven unforgettable stories, and then bids farewell"--Amazon.com.
Interpreter of Maladies
Stories
Published in 1999
Stories about Indians in India and America. The story, A Temporary Matter, is on mixed marriage, Mrs. Sen's is on the adaptation of an immigrant to the U.S., and in the title story an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors.
The Best of Richard Matheson
Published in 2017
"The first career retrospective of terrifying stories by "one of the greatest writers of the 20th century" (Ray Bradbury), edited by award-winning author Victor LaValle Among the greats of 20th-century horror and fantasy, few names stand above Richard Matheson. Though known by many for novels like I Am Legend and his sixteen Twilight Zone episodes, Matheson truly shines in his chilling, masterful short stories. Since his first story appeared in 1950, virtually every major writer of science fiction, horror, and fantasy has fallen under his influence, including Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub, and Joe Hill, as well as filmmakers like Stephen Spielberg and J.J. Abrams. Matheson revolutionized horror by taking it out of Gothic castles and strange cosmos and setting it in the darkened streets and suburbs we recognize as our own. He infused tales of the fantastic and supernormal with dark explorations of human nature, delving deep into the universal dread of feeling alone and threatened in a dangerous world. The Best of Richard Mathesonbrings together his greatest hits as chosen by Victor LaValle, an expert on horror fiction and one of its brightest talents, marking the first major overview of Matheson's legendary career. "[Matheson is] the author who influenced me most as a writer."--Stephen King "Richard Matheson's ironic and iconic imagination created seminal science-fiction stories. For me, he is in the same category as Bradbury and Asimov."--Steven Spielberg "He was a giant, and YOU KNOW HIS STORIES, even if you think you don't." -Neil Gaiman"-- Provided by publisher.
Five-carat Soul
Published in 2017
"An antiques dealer discovers that a legendary toy commissioned by Civil War General Robert E. Lee now sits in the home of a black minister in Queens. Five strangers find themselves thrown together and face unexpected judgment. An American president draws inspiration from a conversation he overhears in a stable. And members of The Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band recount stories from their own messy and hilarious lives."-- Provided by publisher.
The High Places
Stories
Published in 2016
"What a terrible thing at a time like this: to own a house, and the trees around it. Janet sat rigid in her seat. The plane lifted from the city and her house fell away, consumed by the other houses. Janet worried about her own particular garden and her emptied refrigerator and her lamps that had been timed to come on at six. So begins "Mycenae," a story in The High Places, Fiona McFarlane's first story collection. Her stories skip across continents, eras, and genres to chart the borderlands of emotional life. In "Mycenae," she describes a middle-aged couple's disastrous vacation with old friends. In "Good News for Modern Man," a scientist lives on a small island with only a colossal squid and the ghost of Charles Darwin for company. And in the title story, an Australian farmer turns to Old Testament methods to relieve a fatal drought. Each story explores what Flannery O'Connor called "mystery and manners." The collection dissects the feelings--longing, contempt, love, fear--that animate our existence and hints at a reality beyond the smallness of our lives. Salon's Laura Miller called McFarlane's The Night Guest "a novel of uncanny emotional penetration. How could anyone so young portray so persuasively what it feels like to look back on a lot more life than you can see in front of you?" The High Places is further evidence of McFarlane's preternatural talent, a debut collection that reads like the selected works of a literary great"-- Provided by publisher.
Always Happy Hour
Stories
Published in 2017
"Acerbic and ruefully funny, [this book] weaves tales of young women-- deeply flawed and intensely real-- who struggle to get out of their own way. They love to drink and have sex; they make bad decisions with men who either love them too much or too little; and they haunt a Southern terrain of gas stations, public pools, and dive bars. Though each character shoulders the weight of her own baggage-- whether it's a string of horrible exes, a boyfriend with an annoying child, or an inability to be genuinely happy for a best friend-- they are united in their unrelenting suspicion that they deserve better. These women seek understanding in the most unlikely places: a dilapidated foster home where love is a liability in "Big Bad Love," a trailer park littered with a string of bad decisions in "Uphill," and the unfamiliar corners of a dream home purchased with the winnings of a bitter divorce settlement in "Charts." Taking a microscope to delicate patterns of love and intimacy, Miller evokes the reticent love among the misunderstood, the gritty comfort in bad habits that can't be broken, and the beat-by-beat minutiae of fated relationships."--Amazon.com
Family Furnishings
Selected Stories, 1995-2014
Published in 2014
"From the recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature-perhaps our most beloved author-a new selection of her peerless short fiction, gathered from the collections of the last two decades, a companion volume to Selected Stories (1968-1994). By all accounts, no Nobel Prize in recent years has garnered the enthusiastic reception that Alice Munro's has, and in its wake, her reputation and readership has skyrocketed worldwide. Now, Family Furnishings will bring us twenty-five of her most accomplished, most powerfully affecting stories, most of them set in the territory she has so brilliantly made her own: the small towns and flatlands of southwestern Ontario. Sublty honed with the author's hallmark precision, grace, and compassion, these stories illuminate the ordinary but quite extraordinary particularity in the lives of men, women, and children as they discover sex, fall in love, part, quarrel, head out into the unknown, suffer defeat, find a way to be in the world. As the Nobel Prize presentation speech reads in part: "Reading one of Alice Munro's texts is like watching a cat walk across a laid dinner table. A brief short story can often cover decades, summarizing a life, as she moves deftly between different periods. No wonder Alice Munro is often able to say more in thirty pages than an ordinary novelist is capable of in three hundred. She is a virtuoso of the elliptical and...the master of the contemporary short story.""-- Provided by publisher.
After the Quake
Stories
Published in 2003
A collection of stories inspired by the January 1995 Kobe earthquake and the poison gas subway attacks two months later takes place between the two disasters and follows the experiences of people who found their normal lives undone by surreal events.
One More Thing
Stories and Other Stories
Published in 2014
"B.J. Novak's One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories is an endlessly entertaining, surprisingly sensitive, and startlingly original debut that signals the arrival of a brilliant new voice in American fiction. A boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes--only to discover how claiming the winnings might unravel his family. A woman sets out to seduce motivational speaker Tony Robbins--turning for help to the famed motivator himself. A new arrival in Heaven, overwhelmed with options, procrastinates over a long-ago promise to visit his grandmother. We also meet Sophia, the first artificially intelligent being capable of love, who falls for a man who might not be ready for it himself; a vengeance-minded hare, obsessed with scoring a rematch against the tortoise who ruined his life; and post-college friends who try to figure out how to host an intervention in the era of Facebook. Along the way, we learn why wearing a red T-shirt every day is the key to finding love, how February got its name, and why the stock market is sometimes just. down. Finding inspiration in questions from the nature of perfection to the icing on carrot cake, One More Thing has at its heart the most human of phenomena: love, fear, hope, ambition, and the inner stirring for the one elusive element that might just make a person complete. Across a dazzling range of subjects, themes, tones, and narrative voices, the many pieces in this collection are like nothing else, but they have one thing in common: they share the playful humor, deep heart, sharp eye, inquisitive mind, and altogether electrifying spirit of a writer with a fierce devotion to the entertainment of the reader"-- Provided by publisher.
The Doll-master and Other Tales of Horror
Published in 2016
Six terrifying tales to chill the blood from the unique imagination of Joyce Carol Oates. A young boy plays with dolls instead of action figures. But as he grows older, his passion takes on a darker edge...A white man shoots dead a black boy creating a media frenzy. But could it be that it was self-defense as he claims? A nervous woman tries to escape her husband. He says he loves her, but she's convinced he wants to kill her...These quietly lethal stories reveal the horrors that dwell within us all.
Beautiful Days
Stories
Published in 2018
"A new collection of stories by American master Joyce Carol Oates, mysterious and surreal, and perfectly pitched for the confusion of the current political landscape"-- Provided by publisher.
What is Not Yours is Not Yours
Stories
Published in 2016
The stories collected in What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours are linked by more than the exquisitely winding prose of their creator: Helen Oyeyemi's ensemble cast of characters slip from the pages of their own stories only to surface in another. The reader is invited into a world of lost libraries and locked gardens, of marshlands where the drowned dead live and a city where all the clocks have stopped; students hone their skills at puppet school, the Homely Wench Society commits a guerrilla book-swap, and lovers exchange books and roses on St Jordi's Day. It is a collection of towering imagination, marked by baroque beauty and a deep sensuousness.
Why They Run the Way They Do
Stories
Published in 2016
"A 'darkly beautiful' collection 'suffused with astonishing wit and tenderness' (Jenny Offill, New York Times bestselling author of Dept. of Speculation). From the celebrated author of Who I Was Supposed to Be comes twelve beautiful short stories celebrating the everyday truths of people facing unusual or challenging situations & often of their own making. In Why They Run the Way They Do, critically acclaimed author Susan Perabo illustrates the triumphs and tragedies of daily life. Perfectly distilled into moments of sharp humor and poignancy, her latest collection features ordinary people in sometimes extraordinary circumstances. Two young students try their hand at blackmail upon learning an illicit secret; a woman grapples with feelings of betrayal after discovering her spinster sister's pregnancy test; the ghost of a couple's past comes back to haunt them in the form of their toddlers stuffed toy. Weaving the banal and bizarre together, 'Perabo's clear, wry sentences meld a prose style that's reminiscent of Raymond Carver's with a sensibility that's informed by People' (The New York Times). Here, this 'literary talent' (The Boston Globe) captures the human condition through struggles that are quiet and grand; dark and provocative. Brilliantly crafted, Why They Run the Way They Do is ultimately an homage to the philosophy that life without humor is no life at all."--Amazon.com.
Burning Bright
Published in 2010
Captures the eerie beauty, stark violence, and rugged character of Appalachia in a collection of stories that spans the Civil War to the present day.
The Last Girlfriend on Earth
And Other Love Stories
Published in 2013
A collection of humorous short stories about love and romance, including the tale of a besotted Sherlock Holmes ignoring all the clues that his girlfriend's been cheating on him.
Trajectory
Published in 2017
"In this pair of novellas and two stories, Russo's characters bear little similarity to the blue-collar citizens we're familiar with from most of his novels. In "Horseman," a tenured professor confronts a young plagiarist as well as her own weaknesses as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches--"And after that, who knew?" In "Intervention," a realtor facing an ominous medical prognosis finds himself in his father's shadow while he presses forward, or not. In "Voice," a semi-retired English professor is conned by his increasingly estranged brother into coming along on a group tour of the Biennale, fleeing a mortifying incident with a traumatized student back in Massachusetts but encountering further complications en route. And in "Milton and Marcus," a lapsed novelist is struggling with his wife's illness and trying to rekindle his screenwriting career, only to be stymied by the pratfalls of that trade when he's called to an aging, iconic star's mountaintop in Wyoming"-- Provided by publisher.
CivilWarland in Bad Decline
Stories and a Novella
Published in 2016
A novella and short stories on a future America, a land of corporate hypocrisy, violence and pollution. Trendy attractions include pickled babies and cows with plexiglass sides, so you can see the milk made, people buy other people's more interesting memories for downloading into their heads.
Madagascar
New & Selected Stories
Published in 2016
"From Nelson Algren Award for Short Fiction and O. Henry Prize winner Steven Schwartz comes this indispensable collection spanning nearly four decades of artistic mastery. These compelling, deftly crafted narratives about fathers and sons, loss and separation, sorrow, comic happenstance, and the vagaries of romantic and familial love offers a resonating testament to the depth and promise of human connection."--Amazon.com
First-person Singularities
Published in 2017
A collection of eighteen first-person stories by the science fiction master includes tales featuring such diverse narrators as a dolphin in love with a human and an alien visitor living in disguise in a New York hotel.
Anything is Possible
Published in 2017
"Anything Is Possible explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others. Here are two sisters: One trades self-respect for a wealthy husband while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to accept her mother's happiness in a foreign country; and the adult Lucy Barton (the heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton, the author's celebrated New York Times bestseller) returns to visit her siblings after seventeen years of absence. Reverberating with the deep bonds of family, and the hope that comes with reconciliation, Anything Is Possible again underscores Elizabeth Strout's place as one of America's most respected and cherished authors"--Amazon.com.
The Gourmet Club
A Sextet
Published in 2017
"The decadent tales in this collection span 45 years in the extraordinary career of Japan's master storyteller, Tanizaki Jun'ichiro (1886-1965), the author of Naomi, A Cat, a Man, and Two Women, and The Makioka Sisters. Made accessible in English by the expertise of translators Anthony H. Chambers and Paul McCarthy, the stories in The Gourmet Club vividly explore an array of human passions. In "The Children," three mischievous friends play sadomasochistic games in a mysterious Western-style mansion. The sybaritic narrator of "The Secret" experiments with cross-dressing as he savors the delights of duplicity. "The Two Acolytes" evokes the conflicting attractions of spiritual fulfillment and worldly pleasure in medieval Kyoto. In the title story, the seductive tastes, aromas, and textures of outlandish Chinese dishes blend with those of the seductive hands that proffer them to blindfolded gourmets. In "Mr. Bluemound," Tanizaki, who wrote for a film studio in the early 1920s, considers the relationship between a flesh-and-blood actress and her image fixed on celluloid, which one memorably degenerate admirer is obsessed with. And, finally, "Manganese Dioxide Dreams" offers a tantalizing insight into the author's mind as he weaves together the musings of an old man very like Tanizaki himself-Chinese and Japanese cuisine, a French murder movie, Chinese history, and the contents of a toilet bowl. These beautifully translated stories will intrigue and entertain readers who are new to Tanizaki, as well as those who have already explored the bizarre world of his imagination"-- Provided by publisher.
Criminals
Love Stories
Published in 2016
Each of the fifteen stories asks two defining questions: What kind of love story is this? as well as, Who here is exactly what kind of criminal? In "His Rank," an armed man enters a bar to claim the girl he understands to be his destiny only to be told she has, the weekend before, married someone else. In "Skylab," in which lovers have run away together to work medical relief in Malaysia, the young woman is reading the Koran to learn what it says about adulterers even as she waits for satellite debris to rain down on her. She'll be punished, won't she, for the crime of happiness? And in "The Bride of the Black Duck" a new widow falls in love with an entire complicated family in her neighborhood, with whom she's suddenly, irrevocably plighted her troth: she is theirs, just as they are hers. In Criminals the stories are linked by theme, the characters often tender, movingly, but flawed.
Almost Insentient, Almost Divine
Published in 2016
A collection of weird fiction from visionary writer D.P. Watt. The foolish wisdom of forlorn puppets. A diabolical chorus in many voices. Shadowy shapes emerging from the strange blueness. Dreamers of other truths. A spidery skein. You - and some other you. Creatures in the hedgerows. Cold rime creeping across darkened windows. The numinous night pool. A hive of pain. These and other nightmares await.
The Age of Perpetual Light
Stories
Published in 2017
""A storyteller of the first order."--Joshua Ferris. "Josh Weil is a spectacular talent."--Lauren Groff. Following his debut Dayton Literary Peace Prize-winning novel, The Great Glass Sea, Sue Kaufman Prize winner and National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" author Josh Weil brings together stories selected from a decade of work in one stellar new collection that explores themes of progress, the pursuit of knowledge, and humankind's eternal attempt to decrease the darkness in the world. Beginning at the dawn of the past century, in the early days of electrification, and moving into an imagined future in which the world is lit day and night, each tale in The Age of Perpetual Light follows deeply-felt characters through different eras in American history; from a Jewish dry goods peddler who falls in love with an Amish woman while showing her the wonders of an Edison Lamp, to a 1940 farmers' uprising against the unfair practices of a power company, a Serbian immigrant teenage boy in 1990's Vermont desperate to catch a glimpse of an experimental satellite, to a back-to-the-land couple forced to grapple with their daughter's autism during winter's longest night. As he did with the rough-living figures in his soulful and "devastatingly memorable" (Binnie Kirshenbaum) The New Valley, in The Age of Perpetual Light Weil explores through his unforgettable characters our most complex and fraught desires. Brilliantly hewn and piercingly observant, these are tales that speak to the all-too-human desire for advancement and the struggle of wounded hearts to find a salve, no matter what the cost. This is a breathtaking book from one of our brightest literary lights"-- Provided by publisher.
The Dark and Other Love Stories
Published in 2017
The characters in these thirteen masterful and engaging stories exist on the edge of danger, where landscapes melt into dreamscapes and every house is haunted. A drug dealer's girlfriend signs up for the first manned mission to Mars. A girl falls in love with a man who wants to turn her into a bird. A teenaged girl and her best friend test their relationship by breaking into suburban houses. A wife finds a gaping hole in the floor of the home she shares with her husband, a hole that only she can see. Full of longing and strange humor, these subtle, complex stories--about the love between a man and his pet crow, an alcoholic and his AA sponsor, a mute migrant and a newspaper reporter--show how love ties us to each other and to the world. The Dark and Other Love Stories announces the emergence of a wonderfully gifted storyteller whose stories enlarge our perceptions about the human capacity to love.
Dog Run Moon
Stories
Published in 2016
"A construction worker on the run from the shady local businessman whose dog he has stolen; a Wild West re-enactor engaged in a long-running affair with the Indian "squaw" who slays him on the battlefield every year; a middle-aged high school janitor caught in a scary dispute over land and cattle with her former step-son - Callan Wink's characters are often confronted with predicaments few of us can imagine. But thanks to the humor, remarkable empathy and layered storytelling of this supremely gifted author, these stories become universally transporting and resonant. Set mostly in Montana and Wyoming, near the borders of Yellowstone National Park, they combine an unforgettable understanding of the natural world with powerful human concerns. Dog Run Moon announces the arrival of a major new talent writing deep in the American grain"-- Provided by publisher.
A Haunted House and Other Short Stories
Published in 2002
Features Virginia Woolf's short fiction posthumously collected by her husband, Leonard Woolf.