From the bestselling author of P.S., I Love You, a fiercely feminist story collection that blends fables with magical realism--perfect for fans of Roxane Gay.In this singular and imaginative story collection, Cecelia Ahern illuminates the myriad ways in which women overcome adversity with wit, resourcefulness and compassion. Exploring dilemmas and aspirations that women everywhere will relate to, these unforgettable tales blend magical realism and familiar scenarios with startling and often hilarious results. In matters ranging from marriage and childrearing to politics and career, the heroines of these thought-provoking stories confront problems both mysterious and mundane: one woman is tortured by sinister bite marks that appear on her skin; another is swallowed up by the floor during a mortifying presentation; yet another resolves to return and exchange her boring husband at the store where she originally acquired him.
Publisher: n/a
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9781538730966
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Hardcover
Reunion Beach
By Hilderbrand, Elin
In this warm and moving anthology, a group of bestselling authors and writers pay tribute to legendary, larger-than-life New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank and her literary legacy, capturing her unforgettable spirit, joy, and humor in stories of reunions and love.When Dorothea Benton Frank died in the fall of 2019, her friends in the literary community were bereft. Her loss was a hole in their lives that could not be filled. Elin Hilderbrand dedicated her most recent novel 28 Summers to Dottie, and other writers paid tribute to her in blogs and on social media. Yet they wanted to do more. Inspired by the title Dorothea Benton Frank planned for her next book - Reunion Beach - these close friends and colleagues channeled their creativity, admiration, and grief into stories and poems that celebrate this remarkable woman and her abiding love for the lush Lowcountry of her native South Carolina - a land of beauty, history, charm, and gullah magic she so brilliantly brought to life in her acclaimed novels.
Publisher: n/a
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9780063048935
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Hardcover
Trigger Warning
By Gaiman, Neil
Multiple award winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman returns to dazzle, captivate, haunt, and entertain with this third collection of short fiction following Smoke and Mirrors and Fragile Things - which includes a never-before published American Gods story, "Black Dog," written exclusively for this volume.In this new anthology, Neil Gaiman pierces the veil of reality to reveal the enigmatic, shadowy world that lies beneath. Trigger Warning includes previously published pieces of short fiction - stories, verse, and a very special Doctor Who story that was written for the fiftieth anniversary of the beloved series in 2013 - as well "Black Dog," a new tale that revisits the world of American Gods, exclusive to this collection.Trigger Warning explores the masks we all wear and the people we are beneath them to reveal our vulnerabilities and our truest selves. Here is a rich cornucopia of horror and ghosts stories, science fiction and fairy tales, fabulism and poetry that explore the realm of experience and emotion. In Adventure Story - a thematic companion to The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Gaiman ponders death and the way people take their stories with them when they die. His social media experience A Calendar of Tales are short takes inspired by replies to fan tweets about the months of the year - stories of pirates and the March winds, an igloo made of books, and a Mother's Day card that portends disturbances in the universe. Gaiman offers his own ingenious spin on Sherlock Holmes in his award-nominated mystery tale The Case of Death and Honey. And Click-Clack the Rattlebag explains the creaks and clatter we hear when we're all alone in the darkness.A sophisticated writer whose creative genius is unparalleled, Gaiman entrances with his literary alchemy, transporting us deep into the realm of imagination, where the fantastical becomes real and the everyday incandescent. Full of wonder and terror, surprises and amusements, Trigger Warning is a treasury of delights that engage the mind, stir the heart, and shake the soul from one of the most unique and popular literary artists of our day.
Publisher: n/a
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9780062330260
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Hardcover
Fantastic Hope
By Hamilton, Laurell K.
A collection of sixteen sci-fi and fantasy stories edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton and debut author William McCaskey.A girl who will go to any lengths to save her newborn brother. A woman who is stuck in a continuous loop, reliving her life after being murdered over and over again by the same man. Martyrs who make the ultimate sacrifice for humanity.In this anthology, sixteen authors have weaved together brand-new stories that speak to the darkness and despair that life brings but, above all, the hope that shimmers within it.Laurell K. Hamilton and William McCaskey are joined by Kevin J. Anderson, Griffin Barber, Patricia Briggs, Larry Correia, Kacey Ezell, Monalisa Foster, Robert E. Hampson, John G. Hartness, Jonathan Maberry, L. E. Modesitt Jr., Sharon Shinn, Mark Sumner, Patrick Tracy, and Michael Z. Williamson.
Publisher: n/a
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9780593099209
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Paperback
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick
By Hurston, Zora Neale
From "one of the greatest writers of our time" (Toni Morrison) - the author of Barracoon and Their Eyes Were Watching God - a collection of remarkable stories, including eight "lost" Harlem Renaissance tales now available to a wide audience for the first time. New York Times' Books to Watch forBuzzfeed's Most Anticipated Books of 2020Newsweek's Most Anticipated BooksForbes.com's Most Anticipated Books of 2020E!'s Top 2020 Books to ReadGlamour's Best Books In 1925, Barnard student Zora Neale Hurston - the sole black student at the college - was living in New York, "desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world." During this period, she began writing short works that captured the zeitgeist of African American life and transformed her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Nearly a century later, this singular talent is recognized as one of the most influential and revered American artists of the modern period.Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston's "lost" Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives. These stories challenge conceptions of Hurston as an author of rural fiction and include gems that flash with her biting, satiric humor, as well as more serious tales reflective of the cultural currents of Hurston's world. All are timeless classics that enrich our understanding and appreciation of this exceptional writer's voice and her contributions to America's literary traditions.
Publisher: n/a
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9780062915795
|
Hardcover
Sleep No More
By James, P D
No one gets inside the head of the murderer - or makes it a more thrilling read - than the late, great P. D. James. Fast on the heels of her latest best seller: a new, fiendishly entertaining gathering of previously uncollected stories, from the author of Death Comes to Pemberley and The Private Patient.It's not always a question of "whodunit?" Sometimes there's more mystery in the why or how. And although we usually know the unhealthy fates of both victim and perpetrator, what of those clever few who plan and carry out the perfect crime? The ones who aren't brought down even though they're found out? And what about those who do the finding out who witness a murder or who identify the murderer but keep the information to themselves? These are some of the mysteries that we follow through those six stories as we are drawn into the thinking, the memories, the emotional machinations, the rationalizations, the dreams and desires behind murderous cause and effect.
Publisher: n/a
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9780525520733
|
Hardcover
Tiny Love Stories
By Jones, Daniel
- in less time than it takes to read this paragraph. Told in voices that are honest, vulnerable, tender, and wise, here are 175 true stories that are each as moving as a lyric poem and convey a universally recognized feeling, all in fewer than one hundred words. There are stories of love found and love lost, and the sometimes rarest of loves, self-love. Stories of romantic love, brotherly love, platonic love. Stories of mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, strangers who dream of what might have been. And the oldest story of all - boy meets girl - their tale ends happily ever after, even though along the way the boy became a girl.
Publisher: n/a
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9781579659912
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Hardcover
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams
By King, Stephen
Includes the story "Premium Harmony" - set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine The masterful #1 New York Times bestselling story collection from O. Henry Prize winner Stephen King that includes twenty-one iconic stories with accompanying autobiographical comments on when, why and how he came to write (or rewrite) each one.For more than thirty-five years, Stephen King has dazzled readers with his genius as a writer of short fiction. In this new collection he introduces each story with a passage about its origins or his motivations for writing it. As Entertainment Weekly said about this collection: "Bazaar of Bad Dreams isbursting with classic King terror, but what we love most are the thoughtful introductions he gives to each tale that explain what was going on in his life as he wrote it." There are thrilling connections between stories; themes of morality, the afterlife, guilt, what we would do differently if we could see into the future or correct the mistakes of the past. In "Afterlife," a man who died of colon cancer keeps reliving the same life, repeating his mistakes over and over again. Several stories feature characters at the end of life, revisiting their crimes and misdemeanors. Others address what happens when someone discovers that he has supernatural powers - the columnist who kills people by writing their obituaries in "Obits;" the old judge in "The Dune" who, as a boy, canoed to a deserted island and saw names written in the sand, people who then died in freak accidents. In "Morality," King looks at how a marriage and two lives fall apart after the wife and husband enter into what seems, at first, a devil's pact they can win. "I made these stories especially for you," says King. "Feel free to examine them, but please be careful. The best of them have teeth." Stories include: -Mile 81 -Premium Harmony -Batman and Robin Have an Altercation -The Dune -Bad Little Kid -A Death -The Bone Church -Morality -Afterlife -Ur -Herman Wouk Is Still Alive -Under the Weather -Blockade Billy -Mister Yummy -Tommy -The Little Green God of Agony -Cookie Jar -That Bus Is Another World -Obits -Drunken Fireworks -Summer Thunder
Publisher: n/a
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9781501111679
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Hardcover
Five-Carat Soul
By Mcbride, James
One of The New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2017"A pinball machine zinging with sharp dialogue, breathtaking plot twists and naughty humor... McBride at his brave and joyous best." - New York Times Book ReviewExciting new fiction from James McBride, the first since his National Book Award-winning novel The Good Lord Bird. The stories in Five-Carat Soul - none of them ever published before - spring from the place where identity, humanity, and history converge. They're funny and poignant, insightful and unpredictable, imaginative and authentic - all told with McBride's unrivaled storytelling skill and meticulous eye for character and detail. McBride explores the ways we learn from the world and the people around us. 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. As McBride did in his National Book award-winning The Good Lord Bird and his bestselling The Color of Water, he writes with humor and insight about how we struggle to understand who we are in a world we don't fully comprehend. The result is a surprising, perceptive, and evocative collection of stories that is also a moving exploration of our human condition.
Publisher: n/a
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9780735216693
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Hardcover
Tiny Tales
By Smith, Alexander Mccall
It is often said that the best things in life come in small packages--anyone in search of proof need look no further than the stories in this collection: brief, utterly engaging tales that offer lasting surprise and delight.From the original Greek financial crisis, when the profligate Gods of Olympus were punished by Odin and the other Norse Gods for their unchecked spending, to a handy unintended benefit of cosmetic surgery; from Pope Ron, the first Australian Pope, who wants nothing more than to live quietly, to a rather droll cat named Stanley, to Good President Wenceslas, benevolent leader of a snowy land: these stories are by turns funny, poignant, and deliciously wicked, each one a gift begging to be unwrapped and enjoyed again and again.
Publisher: n/a
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9780593316009
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Hardcover
100 Years of The Best American Short Stories
By Moore, Lorrie
The Best American Short Stories is the longest running and best-selling series of short fiction in the country. For the centennial celebration of this beloved annual series, master of the form Lorrie Moore selects forty stories from the more than two thousand that were published in previous editions. Series editor Heidi Pitlor recounts behind-the-scenes anecdotes and examines, decade by decade, the trends captured over a hundred years. Together, the stories and commentary offer an extraordinary guided tour through a century of literature with what Moore calls "all its wildnesses of character and voice." These forty stories represent their eras but also stand the test of time. Here is Ernest Hemingway's first published story and a classic by William Faulkner, who admitted in his biographical note that he began to write "as an aid to love-making.
Publisher: n/a
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9780547485850
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Hardcover
First Person Singular
By Murakami, Haruki
The eight masterly stories in this new collection are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From nostalgic memories of youth, meditations on music, and an ardent love of baseball to dreamlike scenarios and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world. Occasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Murakami himself is present. Is it memoir or fiction? The reader decides. Philosophical and mysterious, the stories in First Person Singular all touch beautifully on love and solitude, childhood and memory. . . all with a signature Murakami twist.
Publisher: n/a
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9780593318072
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Hardcover
One More Thing
By Novak, B.j.
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 that 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 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.
Publisher: n/a
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9780385351836
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Hardcover
Cursed
By Marie, O'regan,
Fairy tales take a weird twist in this anthology compiling stories from an all-star cast of fantasy writers, including stories from Neil Gaiman, Charlie Jane Anders and Alison Littlewood. Here in this book you'll find unique twists on the fairy tale conceit of the curse, from the more traditional to the modern - giving us brand new mythologies as well as new approaches to well-loved fables. Some might shock you, some might make you laugh, but they will all impress you with their originality.
Publisher: n/a
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9781789091502
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Love & Other Crimes
By Paretsky, Sara
From New York Times bestselling author Sara Paretsky, a collection of thrilling crime and detective short stories, many featuring legendary detective V.I. Warshawski -- including a brand-new V.I. story.New York Times bestselling author Sara Paretsky is the master of twisting suspense and propulsive plot. She has been hailed by the crime community as "a legend" (Harlan Coben) and "one of the all-time greats" (Karin Slaughter) . Her acclaimed novels featuring detective V.I. Warshawski rank among the most celebrated crime series in modern fiction. Now in this spellbinding collection, Paretsky showcases her extraordinary talents with fourteen short stories, eight of which feature the indomitable detective -- and a new V.I. story.
Publisher: n/a
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9780062915542
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Paperback
The Rock Eaters
By Peynado, Brenda
What does it mean to be other? What does it mean to love in a world determined to keep us apart?These questions murmur in the heart of each of Brenda Peynado's strange and singular stories. Threaded with magic, transcending time and place, these stories explore what it means to cross borders and break down walls, personally and politically. In one story, suburban families perform oblations to cattlelike angels who live on their roofs, believing that their "thoughts and prayers" will protect them from the world's violence. In another, inhabitants of an unnamed dictatorship slowly lose their own agency as pieces of their bodies go missing and, with them, the essential rights that those appendages serve. "The Great Escape" tells of an old woman who hides away in her apartment, reliving the past among beautiful objects she's hoarded, refusing all visitors, until she disappears completely.
Publisher: n/a
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9780143135623
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Paperback
Unrestricted Access
By Rollins, James
Experience the exciting breadth of #1 New York Times bestselling author James Rollins's wild imagination and adventurous spirit in this anthology of his short masterworks, including a new full-length novella featuring Captain Tucker Wayne and his military war dog, Kane, as well as eleven previously published short stories, gathered together for the first time.In this breathtaking collection of short fiction, his first ever anthology, James Rollins brings together twelve thrilling stories that dig a little deeper into his creative stomping grounds and open vistas into new landscapes and characters.At the center of Unrestricted Access is the never-before-published novella "Sun Dogs." While trekking through the Sonora desert, a gunshot thrusts Tucker and Kane into an adventure that challenges their considerable skills.
Publisher: n/a
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9780062686800
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Hardcover
You Think It, I'll Say It
By Sittenfeld, Curtis
A dazzling collection of short stories from the New York Times bestselling author of Prep, American Wife, and Eligible Curtis Sittenfeld has established a reputation as a sharp chronicler of the modern age who humanizes her subjects even as she skewers them. Now, with this first collection of short fiction, her "astonishing gift for creating characters that take up residence in readers' heads" (The Washington Post) is showcased like never before. Throughout the ten stories in You Think It, I'll Say It, Sittenfeld upends assumptions about class, relationships, and gender roles in a nation that feels both adrift and viscerally divided. In "The World Has Many Butterflies," married acquaintances play a strangely intimate game with devastating consequences. In "Vox Clamantis in Deserto," a shy Ivy League student learns the truth about a classmate's seemingly enviable life. In "A Regular Couple," a high-powered lawyer honeymooning with her husband is caught off guard by the appearance of the girl who tormented her in high school. And in "The Prairie Wife," a suburban mother of two fantasizes about the downfall of an old friend whose wholesome lifestyle-brand empire may or may not be built on a lie. With moving insight and uncanny precision, Curtis Sittenfeld pinpoints the questionable decisions, missed connections, and sometimes extraordinary coincidences that make up a life. Indeed, she writes what we're all thinking - if only we could express it with the wit of a master satirist, the storytelling gifts of an old-fashioned raconteur, and the vision of an American original. Praise for Curtis Sittenfeld "Novelists get called master storytellers all the time, but Sittenfeld really is one." - The Washington Post "Sittenfeld . . . . is popular but intellectual, accessible but mysterious and, above all - a perspective chameleon with an uncanny ability to enter the minds of callow prep school outcasts and devotedly compromising first ladies alike." - NPR's All Things Considered "[Sittenfeld] is a master of dramatic irony, creating fully realized social worlds before laying waste to her heroines' understanding of them. . . . Her prose [is] a rich delight." - The Boston Globe "Three cheers for Curtis Sittenfeld and her astute, sharp and ebullient anthropological interest in the human condition." - The New York Times
Publisher: n/a
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9780399592867
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Hardcover
Grand Union
By Smith, Zadie
Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal! A dazzling collection of short fictionZadie Smith has established herself as one of the most iconic, critically respected, and popular writers of her generation. In her first short story collection, she combines her power of observation and her inimitable voice to mine the fraught and complex experience of life in the modern world. Interleaving eleven completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from TheNew Yorker and elsewhere, Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction. Moving exhilaratingly across genres and perspectives, from the historic to the vividly current to the slyly dystopian, Grand Union is a sharply alert and prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us. Nothing is off limits, and everything - when captured by Smith's brilliant gaze - feels fresh and relevant. Perfectly paced and utterly original, Grand Union highlights the wonders Zadie Smith can do.
Publisher: n/a
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9780525558996
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Hardcover
Flights
By Tokarczuk, Olga
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE. A visionary work of fiction by "A writer on the level of W. G. Sebald" (Annie Proulx) . "A magnificent writer." - Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize-winning author of Secondhand Time. "A beautifully fragmented look at mans longing for permanence.... Ambitious and complex." - Washington Post. From the incomparably original Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. Chopins heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storytellers answer.
Roar
By Ahern, Cecelia
From the bestselling author of P.S., I Love You, a fiercely feminist story collection that blends fables with magical realism--perfect for fans of Roxane Gay.In this singular and imaginative story collection, Cecelia Ahern illuminates the myriad ways in which women overcome adversity with wit, resourcefulness and compassion. Exploring dilemmas and aspirations that women everywhere will relate to, these unforgettable tales blend magical realism and familiar scenarios with startling and often hilarious results. In matters ranging from marriage and childrearing to politics and career, the heroines of these thought-provoking stories confront problems both mysterious and mundane: one woman is tortured by sinister bite marks that appear on her skin; another is swallowed up by the floor during a mortifying presentation; yet another resolves to return and exchange her boring husband at the store where she originally acquired him.
Reunion Beach
By Hilderbrand, Elin
In this warm and moving anthology, a group of bestselling authors and writers pay tribute to legendary, larger-than-life New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank and her literary legacy, capturing her unforgettable spirit, joy, and humor in stories of reunions and love.When Dorothea Benton Frank died in the fall of 2019, her friends in the literary community were bereft. Her loss was a hole in their lives that could not be filled. Elin Hilderbrand dedicated her most recent novel 28 Summers to Dottie, and other writers paid tribute to her in blogs and on social media. Yet they wanted to do more. Inspired by the title Dorothea Benton Frank planned for her next book - Reunion Beach - these close friends and colleagues channeled their creativity, admiration, and grief into stories and poems that celebrate this remarkable woman and her abiding love for the lush Lowcountry of her native South Carolina - a land of beauty, history, charm, and gullah magic she so brilliantly brought to life in her acclaimed novels.
Trigger Warning
By Gaiman, Neil
Multiple award winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman returns to dazzle, captivate, haunt, and entertain with this third collection of short fiction following Smoke and Mirrors and Fragile Things - which includes a never-before published American Gods story, "Black Dog," written exclusively for this volume.In this new anthology, Neil Gaiman pierces the veil of reality to reveal the enigmatic, shadowy world that lies beneath. Trigger Warning includes previously published pieces of short fiction - stories, verse, and a very special Doctor Who story that was written for the fiftieth anniversary of the beloved series in 2013 - as well "Black Dog," a new tale that revisits the world of American Gods, exclusive to this collection.Trigger Warning explores the masks we all wear and the people we are beneath them to reveal our vulnerabilities and our truest selves. Here is a rich cornucopia of horror and ghosts stories, science fiction and fairy tales, fabulism and poetry that explore the realm of experience and emotion. In Adventure Story - a thematic companion to The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Gaiman ponders death and the way people take their stories with them when they die. His social media experience A Calendar of Tales are short takes inspired by replies to fan tweets about the months of the year - stories of pirates and the March winds, an igloo made of books, and a Mother's Day card that portends disturbances in the universe. Gaiman offers his own ingenious spin on Sherlock Holmes in his award-nominated mystery tale The Case of Death and Honey. And Click-Clack the Rattlebag explains the creaks and clatter we hear when we're all alone in the darkness.A sophisticated writer whose creative genius is unparalleled, Gaiman entrances with his literary alchemy, transporting us deep into the realm of imagination, where the fantastical becomes real and the everyday incandescent. Full of wonder and terror, surprises and amusements, Trigger Warning is a treasury of delights that engage the mind, stir the heart, and shake the soul from one of the most unique and popular literary artists of our day.
Fantastic Hope
By Hamilton, Laurell K.
A collection of sixteen sci-fi and fantasy stories edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton and debut author William McCaskey.A girl who will go to any lengths to save her newborn brother. A woman who is stuck in a continuous loop, reliving her life after being murdered over and over again by the same man. Martyrs who make the ultimate sacrifice for humanity.In this anthology, sixteen authors have weaved together brand-new stories that speak to the darkness and despair that life brings but, above all, the hope that shimmers within it.Laurell K. Hamilton and William McCaskey are joined by Kevin J. Anderson, Griffin Barber, Patricia Briggs, Larry Correia, Kacey Ezell, Monalisa Foster, Robert E. Hampson, John G. Hartness, Jonathan Maberry, L. E. Modesitt Jr., Sharon Shinn, Mark Sumner, Patrick Tracy, and Michael Z. Williamson.
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick
By Hurston, Zora Neale
From "one of the greatest writers of our time" (Toni Morrison) - the author of Barracoon and Their Eyes Were Watching God - a collection of remarkable stories, including eight "lost" Harlem Renaissance tales now available to a wide audience for the first time. New York Times' Books to Watch forBuzzfeed's Most Anticipated Books of 2020Newsweek's Most Anticipated BooksForbes.com's Most Anticipated Books of 2020E!'s Top 2020 Books to ReadGlamour's Best Books In 1925, Barnard student Zora Neale Hurston - the sole black student at the college - was living in New York, "desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world." During this period, she began writing short works that captured the zeitgeist of African American life and transformed her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Nearly a century later, this singular talent is recognized as one of the most influential and revered American artists of the modern period.Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston's "lost" Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives. These stories challenge conceptions of Hurston as an author of rural fiction and include gems that flash with her biting, satiric humor, as well as more serious tales reflective of the cultural currents of Hurston's world. All are timeless classics that enrich our understanding and appreciation of this exceptional writer's voice and her contributions to America's literary traditions.
Sleep No More
By James, P D
No one gets inside the head of the murderer - or makes it a more thrilling read - than the late, great P. D. James. Fast on the heels of her latest best seller: a new, fiendishly entertaining gathering of previously uncollected stories, from the author of Death Comes to Pemberley and The Private Patient.It's not always a question of "whodunit?" Sometimes there's more mystery in the why or how. And although we usually know the unhealthy fates of both victim and perpetrator, what of those clever few who plan and carry out the perfect crime? The ones who aren't brought down even though they're found out? And what about those who do the finding out who witness a murder or who identify the murderer but keep the information to themselves? These are some of the mysteries that we follow through those six stories as we are drawn into the thinking, the memories, the emotional machinations, the rationalizations, the dreams and desires behind murderous cause and effect.
Tiny Love Stories
By Jones, Daniel
- in less time than it takes to read this paragraph. Told in voices that are honest, vulnerable, tender, and wise, here are 175 true stories that are each as moving as a lyric poem and convey a universally recognized feeling, all in fewer than one hundred words. There are stories of love found and love lost, and the sometimes rarest of loves, self-love. Stories of romantic love, brotherly love, platonic love. Stories of mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, strangers who dream of what might have been. And the oldest story of all - boy meets girl - their tale ends happily ever after, even though along the way the boy became a girl.
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams
By King, Stephen
Includes the story "Premium Harmony" - set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine The masterful #1 New York Times bestselling story collection from O. Henry Prize winner Stephen King that includes twenty-one iconic stories with accompanying autobiographical comments on when, why and how he came to write (or rewrite) each one.For more than thirty-five years, Stephen King has dazzled readers with his genius as a writer of short fiction. In this new collection he introduces each story with a passage about its origins or his motivations for writing it. As Entertainment Weekly said about this collection: "Bazaar of Bad Dreams is bursting with classic King terror, but what we love most are the thoughtful introductions he gives to each tale that explain what was going on in his life as he wrote it." There are thrilling connections between stories; themes of morality, the afterlife, guilt, what we would do differently if we could see into the future or correct the mistakes of the past. In "Afterlife," a man who died of colon cancer keeps reliving the same life, repeating his mistakes over and over again. Several stories feature characters at the end of life, revisiting their crimes and misdemeanors. Others address what happens when someone discovers that he has supernatural powers - the columnist who kills people by writing their obituaries in "Obits;" the old judge in "The Dune" who, as a boy, canoed to a deserted island and saw names written in the sand, people who then died in freak accidents. In "Morality," King looks at how a marriage and two lives fall apart after the wife and husband enter into what seems, at first, a devil's pact they can win. "I made these stories especially for you," says King. "Feel free to examine them, but please be careful. The best of them have teeth." Stories include: -Mile 81 -Premium Harmony -Batman and Robin Have an Altercation -The Dune -Bad Little Kid -A Death -The Bone Church -Morality -Afterlife -Ur -Herman Wouk Is Still Alive -Under the Weather -Blockade Billy -Mister Yummy -Tommy -The Little Green God of Agony -Cookie Jar -That Bus Is Another World -Obits -Drunken Fireworks -Summer Thunder
Five-Carat Soul
By Mcbride, James
One of The New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2017"A pinball machine zinging with sharp dialogue, breathtaking plot twists and naughty humor... McBride at his brave and joyous best." - New York Times Book ReviewExciting new fiction from James McBride, the first since his National Book Award-winning novel The Good Lord Bird. The stories in Five-Carat Soul - none of them ever published before - spring from the place where identity, humanity, and history converge. They're funny and poignant, insightful and unpredictable, imaginative and authentic - all told with McBride's unrivaled storytelling skill and meticulous eye for character and detail. McBride explores the ways we learn from the world and the people around us. 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. As McBride did in his National Book award-winning The Good Lord Bird and his bestselling The Color of Water, he writes with humor and insight about how we struggle to understand who we are in a world we don't fully comprehend. The result is a surprising, perceptive, and evocative collection of stories that is also a moving exploration of our human condition.
Tiny Tales
By Smith, Alexander Mccall
It is often said that the best things in life come in small packages--anyone in search of proof need look no further than the stories in this collection: brief, utterly engaging tales that offer lasting surprise and delight.From the original Greek financial crisis, when the profligate Gods of Olympus were punished by Odin and the other Norse Gods for their unchecked spending, to a handy unintended benefit of cosmetic surgery; from Pope Ron, the first Australian Pope, who wants nothing more than to live quietly, to a rather droll cat named Stanley, to Good President Wenceslas, benevolent leader of a snowy land: these stories are by turns funny, poignant, and deliciously wicked, each one a gift begging to be unwrapped and enjoyed again and again.
100 Years of The Best American Short Stories
By Moore, Lorrie
The Best American Short Stories is the longest running and best-selling series of short fiction in the country. For the centennial celebration of this beloved annual series, master of the form Lorrie Moore selects forty stories from the more than two thousand that were published in previous editions. Series editor Heidi Pitlor recounts behind-the-scenes anecdotes and examines, decade by decade, the trends captured over a hundred years. Together, the stories and commentary offer an extraordinary guided tour through a century of literature with what Moore calls "all its wildnesses of character and voice." These forty stories represent their eras but also stand the test of time. Here is Ernest Hemingway's first published story and a classic by William Faulkner, who admitted in his biographical note that he began to write "as an aid to love-making.
First Person Singular
By Murakami, Haruki
The eight masterly stories in this new collection are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From nostalgic memories of youth, meditations on music, and an ardent love of baseball to dreamlike scenarios and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world. Occasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Murakami himself is present. Is it memoir or fiction? The reader decides. Philosophical and mysterious, the stories in First Person Singular all touch beautifully on love and solitude, childhood and memory. . . all with a signature Murakami twist.
One More Thing
By Novak, B.j.
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 that 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 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.
Cursed
By Marie, O'regan,
Fairy tales take a weird twist in this anthology compiling stories from an all-star cast of fantasy writers, including stories from Neil Gaiman, Charlie Jane Anders and Alison Littlewood. Here in this book you'll find unique twists on the fairy tale conceit of the curse, from the more traditional to the modern - giving us brand new mythologies as well as new approaches to well-loved fables. Some might shock you, some might make you laugh, but they will all impress you with their originality.
Love & Other Crimes
By Paretsky, Sara
From New York Times bestselling author Sara Paretsky, a collection of thrilling crime and detective short stories, many featuring legendary detective V.I. Warshawski -- including a brand-new V.I. story.New York Times bestselling author Sara Paretsky is the master of twisting suspense and propulsive plot. She has been hailed by the crime community as "a legend" (Harlan Coben) and "one of the all-time greats" (Karin Slaughter) . Her acclaimed novels featuring detective V.I. Warshawski rank among the most celebrated crime series in modern fiction. Now in this spellbinding collection, Paretsky showcases her extraordinary talents with fourteen short stories, eight of which feature the indomitable detective -- and a new V.I. story.
The Rock Eaters
By Peynado, Brenda
What does it mean to be other? What does it mean to love in a world determined to keep us apart?These questions murmur in the heart of each of Brenda Peynado's strange and singular stories. Threaded with magic, transcending time and place, these stories explore what it means to cross borders and break down walls, personally and politically. In one story, suburban families perform oblations to cattlelike angels who live on their roofs, believing that their "thoughts and prayers" will protect them from the world's violence. In another, inhabitants of an unnamed dictatorship slowly lose their own agency as pieces of their bodies go missing and, with them, the essential rights that those appendages serve. "The Great Escape" tells of an old woman who hides away in her apartment, reliving the past among beautiful objects she's hoarded, refusing all visitors, until she disappears completely.
Unrestricted Access
By Rollins, James
Experience the exciting breadth of #1 New York Times bestselling author James Rollins's wild imagination and adventurous spirit in this anthology of his short masterworks, including a new full-length novella featuring Captain Tucker Wayne and his military war dog, Kane, as well as eleven previously published short stories, gathered together for the first time.In this breathtaking collection of short fiction, his first ever anthology, James Rollins brings together twelve thrilling stories that dig a little deeper into his creative stomping grounds and open vistas into new landscapes and characters.At the center of Unrestricted Access is the never-before-published novella "Sun Dogs." While trekking through the Sonora desert, a gunshot thrusts Tucker and Kane into an adventure that challenges their considerable skills.
You Think It, I'll Say It
By Sittenfeld, Curtis
A dazzling collection of short stories from the New York Times bestselling author of Prep, American Wife, and Eligible Curtis Sittenfeld has established a reputation as a sharp chronicler of the modern age who humanizes her subjects even as she skewers them. Now, with this first collection of short fiction, her "astonishing gift for creating characters that take up residence in readers' heads" (The Washington Post) is showcased like never before. Throughout the ten stories in You Think It, I'll Say It, Sittenfeld upends assumptions about class, relationships, and gender roles in a nation that feels both adrift and viscerally divided. In "The World Has Many Butterflies," married acquaintances play a strangely intimate game with devastating consequences. In "Vox Clamantis in Deserto," a shy Ivy League student learns the truth about a classmate's seemingly enviable life. In "A Regular Couple," a high-powered lawyer honeymooning with her husband is caught off guard by the appearance of the girl who tormented her in high school. And in "The Prairie Wife," a suburban mother of two fantasizes about the downfall of an old friend whose wholesome lifestyle-brand empire may or may not be built on a lie. With moving insight and uncanny precision, Curtis Sittenfeld pinpoints the questionable decisions, missed connections, and sometimes extraordinary coincidences that make up a life. Indeed, she writes what we're all thinking - if only we could express it with the wit of a master satirist, the storytelling gifts of an old-fashioned raconteur, and the vision of an American original. Praise for Curtis Sittenfeld "Novelists get called master storytellers all the time, but Sittenfeld really is one." - The Washington Post "Sittenfeld . . . . is popular but intellectual, accessible but mysterious and, above all - a perspective chameleon with an uncanny ability to enter the minds of callow prep school outcasts and devotedly compromising first ladies alike." - NPR's All Things Considered "[Sittenfeld] is a master of dramatic irony, creating fully realized social worlds before laying waste to her heroines' understanding of them. . . . Her prose [is] a rich delight." - The Boston Globe "Three cheers for Curtis Sittenfeld and her astute, sharp and ebullient anthropological interest in the human condition." - The New York Times
Grand Union
By Smith, Zadie
Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal! A dazzling collection of short fictionZadie Smith has established herself as one of the most iconic, critically respected, and popular writers of her generation. In her first short story collection, she combines her power of observation and her inimitable voice to mine the fraught and complex experience of life in the modern world. Interleaving eleven completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from The New Yorker and elsewhere, Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction. Moving exhilaratingly across genres and perspectives, from the historic to the vividly current to the slyly dystopian, Grand Union is a sharply alert and prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us. Nothing is off limits, and everything - when captured by Smith's brilliant gaze - feels fresh and relevant. Perfectly paced and utterly original, Grand Union highlights the wonders Zadie Smith can do.
Flights
By Tokarczuk, Olga
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE. A visionary work of fiction by "A writer on the level of W. G. Sebald" (Annie Proulx) . "A magnificent writer." - Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize-winning author of Secondhand Time. "A beautifully fragmented look at mans longing for permanence.... Ambitious and complex." - Washington Post. From the incomparably original Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. Chopins heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storytellers answer.