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Newly discovered work by one of Canada's favourite writers The Canadian Shields brings together fifty short writings by Carol Shields (1935–2003), including more than two dozen previously unpublished short stories and essays and two dozen essays previously published but never before collected. Invaluable to scholars and admirers of Shields's work, the writings discovered in the National Library Archives by Nora Foster Stovel and presented to the public here for the first time reflect Shields's interest in the relationships between reality and fiction, mothers and daughters, and gender and genre. They also reveal her love of Canada, especially Winnipeg, her home for twenty years. Originally written for women's magazines, travel journals, convocation addresses, and even graduate school term papers, Shields's imaginative essays explore ideas about home, Canadian literature, contemporary women's writing, and the future of fiction. Whether autobiographical, cultural, or feminist in focus, these works vividly illuminate the multiple chapters of Shields's writing life. Margaret Atwood and Lorna Crozier frame Shields's texts with tributes to her work and impact. An introduction by Stovel situates Shields as a Canadian author and subversive feminist writer, demonstrating how American-born-and-raised Carol Anne Warner became “the Canadian Shields”—a quintessential and beloved Canadian writer and the only author to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the Governor General's Gold Medal for Fiction.

Longlisted for the 2024 Giller PrizeShort stories about disparate characters consider what it means to find happiness.On New Year's Eve, a pair of addicts robs a string of high-end parties in order to fund their own recovery. A recently separated woman relocates to a small northern town, where she receives a life-changing visitation, and a Russian hitman, suffering from a mysterious lung ailment, retrieves long-buried memories of his past. In the nineteenth century, a disparate group of women coalesce in the attempt to aid a young girl in her escape from a hospital for the insane. These are but some of the remarkable characters who populate these stories, all of them grappling with conflicts ranging from mundane to extraordinary. Caroline Adderson's A Way to Be Happy considers what it means to find happiness—and how often it comes through the grace of others.

Finalist, Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers (Writers'Trust of Canada) A beautifully imagined story collection set largely in Nigeria that explores themes of masculinity and repressed desires through the lens of (un)conditional love In this stunning debut story collection set largely in Nigeria, questions abound: What happens when we fall short of society's—and our own—expectations? When our personal desires conflict with the duties we are bound to? The characters in Perfect Little Angels confront these dilemmas and more in these brilliantly imagined tales. In a boarding school, tensions brew between students and vengeful staff. An addict seeks a fresh start in pottery class. A man returns home from university abroad with confessions that unravel his mother's world. Amid winter storms, a ghost delights her grief-stricken partner. And atop a hill surrounded by rot and garbage, two lovers dare to embark on a secret, dangerous romance. Human desires—for connection, salvation, and understanding—imbue these deeply Nigerian stories with universal resonance. In Vincent Anioke's tenderly written stories, characters seek love in different permutations from teachers, parents, dead partners, and even God. Perfect Little Angels is a nuanced exploration of masculinity, religion, marginalization, suppressed queerness, and self-expression through the lens of (un)conditional love. This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. This book is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.

A refreshingly original debut collection of short stories that grapple with the self-alienation and self-discovery that make us human.For fans of Souvankham Thammavongsa, Lynn Coady, and Lisa Moore comes a striking debut collection of short stories that explore bodies both human and animal: our fascination with their strange effluences, growths, and protrusions, and the dangerous ways we play with their power to inflict harm on ourselves and on others. Throughout The Whole Animal, flawed characters wrestle with the complexities of relationships with partners, parents, children, and friends as they struggle to find identity, belonging, and autonomy. Bodies are divided, often elusive, even grotesque. In “Porcelain Legs,” a pre-teen fixes on the long, thick hair growing from her mother's eyelid. In “Wolf-Boy Saturday,” a linguist grasps for connection with a young boy whose negligent upbringing has left him unable to speak. In “Butter Buns,” a college student sees his mother in a new light when she takes up body-building. With strange juxtapositions, beguiling dark humour, and lurid imagery, The Whole Animal illuminates the everyday experiences of loneliness and loss, of self-alienation and self-discovery, that make us human. This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. A Simple book with few images, which is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.

Après son livre à succès, Annie Muktuk et autres histoires (Mémoire d'encrier 2021), ancré dans le Nord, dans la vie et les légendes des Inuit, l'autrice inuit Norma Dunning fait résonner dans Tainna, la voix de celles et ceux qu'on ne voit pas – les Inuit des milieux urbains vivant dans le sud du Canada. Sans-abri ou immensément riches, jeunes ou vieux, vivants ou non, les personnages de Tainna sont tantôt habités par un sentiment d'aliénation, de mal du pays et de solitude, tantôt par la lumière et la force des ancêtres, de la communauté et des liens familiaux. À la fois drôle et cinglant, Tainna donne vie à des personnages attachants qui affrontent avec humour et ténacité le racisme, la misogynie et la discrimination.

'Literature at the highest level: heartrending, disquieting, fascinating.'—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)Drawing together the best of his short fiction published over the last four decades, Burn Man: Selected Stories showcases Mark Anthony Jarman's sharply observed characters and acrobatic, voice-driven prose in stories that walk the tightrope between the commonplace and the mystical. With an insightful introduction from John Metcalf, this revelatory selection highlights one of the most spirited and singular masters of the short story form.

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2023 • One of CBC Books Best Books of 2023 • One of the Globe 100's Best Books of 2023“To say Heighton is an immensely talented writer is true enough but insufficient... As good a writer as Canada has ever produced.”—National PostThe unforgettable last collection by the bestselling author of The Shadow BoxerA man recalls his father's advice on how to save a drowning person, but struggles when the time comes to use it. A wife's good deed leaves a couple vulnerable at the moment when they're most in need of security—the birth of their first child. Newly in love, a man preoccupied by accounts of freak accidents is befallen by one himself. In stories about love and fear, idealisms and illusions, failures of muscle and mind and all the ways we try to care for one another, Steven Heighton's Instructions for the Drowning is an indelible last collection by a writer working at the height of his powers.

This story was first published in MacLean's, Vol. 40, No. 20, October 15, 1927 issue, pp: 3-5,44, 45 & 47. It won a prize of $125 in MacLean's short story contest.

Broken Fiction is a collection of short autofictional stories and poems that both offer solace and depict anguish at the collision of memory, loss, and grief. This kind of story-making negotiates a recognition and acceptance of hard truths without resorting to easy resolution.The pieces in this volume are playful and fierce. The narrator's willingness to give attention to where love works or goes wrong, or to the moments when suffering cannot be veiled by a positive attitude—even as the comic or absurd overwhelms the tragic and humiliating—takes us to places that inhabit both memory and fiction. Photographs break the fiction and pull the reader into the inevitable forces of time and loss and death.Broken Fiction invites readers to consider a way through—and sometimes around—illness and love, pain and joy, and gives a droplet of hope in nature's comedy of errors and coincidence.

A dazzling collection of short stories about North American outdoor life—both classic and contemporary—from James Fenimore Cooper and Jack London to Margaret Atwood and Anthony Doerr and many more.The North American landscape, in its rich and rugged variety, has inspired an equally wide and deep range of fiction over the past centuries. Diana Fuss has gathered a rich collection of timeless classics and contemporary discoveries summoning up our close and imagined encounters with all things wild.From the nineteenth century's Washington Irving (“Rip Van Winkle”) to the twenty-first century's Ted Chiang (“The Great Silence”)—a panoramic view of wilderness fiction, from Gothic tales of mystery and suspense (“The Heroic Slave” by Frederick Douglass), to tales of danger and survival (“Walking Out” by David Quammen); from modern tales of retreat and solitude (“Happiness” by Ron Carlson), to never-before-told tales of our new reality—of environment and extinction (“the river” by adrienne maree brown): these are stories that reveal the many ways in which the American literary landscape has shaped—and is shaped by—our conceptions of the wild. Diana Fuss nimbly shows, in her introductory text and commentary throughout, the development of the wilderness story, from its emergence in the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne (“Young Goodman Brown”) and James Fenimore Cooper (“A Panther Tale”), to the height of its popularity in the stories of Jack London (“To Build a Fire”), to the environmentally conscious writing of T. C. Boyle (“After the Plague”) and Karen Russell (“St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”).Among those whose work appears in the collection: Wallace Stegner, Annie Proulx, Ambrose Bierce, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, L. Frank Baum, Margaret Atwood, Tommy Orange, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, and Ray Bradbury.

Following the immense success of his debut collection of horror stories, Midnight Storm, Moonless Sky, Blackfoot storyteller Alex Soop once again scares the wits out of readers while uncovering overlooked social anxieties and racism affecting Indigenous Peoples across North America. Whistle at Night and They Will Come: Indigenous Horror Stories Volume 2 delivers stories ranging from supernatural mythology and the paranormal to post-apocalyptic scenarios, and zombie lockdown—12 tales in all in short story and novella formats. Whistle at Night coincides with the launch of Durvile & UpRoute Books'new horror series, “Dark Tales.”

“Blaise is probably the greatest living Canadian writer most Canadians have never heard of.”—Quill & Quire“If you want to understand something about what life was like in the restless, peripatetic, striving, anxiety-ridden, shimmer cultural soup of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries,'writes Margaret Atwood,'read the stories of Clark Blaise.'This Time, That Place draws together twenty-four stories that span the entirety of Blaise's career, including one never previously published. Moving swiftly across place and time, through and between languages—from Florida's Confederate swamps, to working-class Pittsburgh, to Montreal and abroad—they demonstrate Blaise's profound mastery of the short story and reveal the range of his lifelong preoccupation with identity as fallacy, fable, and dream. This Time, That Place: Selected Stories confirms Clark Blaise as one of the best and most enduring masters of the form—on either side of our shared borders.

Took You So Long presents emotionally resonant stories about challenging relationships and deeply flawed characters mired in the circumstances of their everyday lives.

A collection of linked short stories that hopscotches between time and space to explore the haunting hunger that reaches beyond the physical and into the spiritual—for love, for understanding and for truth.

A collection of short stories by a singular, mature, multi-talented, unique voice, equally compelling in prose, poetry and oral storytelling whose reputation has grown considerably in the Caribbean, Canada, the US and the UK.'Bernadette Dyer is a folk singer of the Caribbean and a weaver of fantastic, moral and spellbinding tales. Her words induct and seduce, instruct and soothe. Elementary in style, but philosophical in subject, she be Miss Lou at song and Aesop at the story telling. To open her books is to be enlightened, and one closes them knowing one has been refreshed and improved.'-George Elliott Clarke, internationally renowned poet, Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada'...a wonderful collection of stories that have common universal themes in a multicultural context. The themes of love, identity, tradition versus modern beliefs are woven well in stories... with unpredictable endings.'- Karen Lemmons, Goodreads book reviewer'...a beautiful piece of literary art. Richly written, Dyer takes the reader on an historical trip through World war I and the Holocaust. She eases the reader from one cultural experience to the next with ease and grace. With each page the reader is captivated... If you are in to quality, no nonsense fiction...Bernadette Gabay Dyer is your writer.'-T. Rhythm Knight, Apoo Bookclub'Bernadette Gabay Dyer...brings a unique voice influenced by the Caribbean experience and sStorytelling tradition to the Canadian Diaspora in ways that unite cultures and foster insight and understanding.'-Nicole Lyn, Actress & Celebrity'The sometimes whimsical, sometimes mystical. sometimes nostalgic, always poignant collection of short stories is definitely more than'fair'. Bernadette Dyer skillfully navigates the immigrant experience, which is the common thread that weaves its way through this great collection. Its colourful characters grab hold of your heart, a

An unprecedented glimpse into the formation of the legendary talent of Leonard Cohen.Before the celebrated late-career world tours, before the Grammy awards, before the chart-topping albums, before'Hallelujah'and'So Long, Marianne'and'Famous Blue Raincoat', the young Leonard Cohen wrote poetry and fiction and yearned for literary stardom. In A Ballet of Lepers, readers will discover that the magic that animated Cohen's unforgettable body of work was present from the very beginning.Written between 1956 in Montreal, just as Cohen was publishing his first poetry collection, and 1961, when he'd settled on Greece's Hydra island, the pieces in this collection offer startling insight into Cohen's imagination and creative process, and explore themes that would permeate his later work, from shame and unworthiness to sexual desire to longing, whether for love, family, freedom or transcendence.The titular novel, A Ballet of Lepers – one he later remarked was'probably a better novel'than his celebrated book The Favourite Game – is a haunting examination of these elements, while the fifteen stories, as well as the playscript, probe the inner demons of his characters, many of whom could function as stand-ins for the author himself.Meditative, surprising, playful and provocative, A Ballet of Lepers is vivid in its detail, unsparing in its gaze, and reveals the great artist and visceral genius like never before.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The prestigious annual story anthology includes prize-winning stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Lorrie Moore, Olga Tokarczuk, Joseph O'Neill, and Samanta Schweblin.'Widely regarded as the nation's most prestigious awards for short fiction.'—The Atlantic MonthlyContinuing a century-long tradition of cutting-edge literary excellence, this year's edition contains twenty prizewinning stories chosen from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year. Guest editor Valeria Luiselli has brought her own refreshing perspective to the prize, selecting stories by an engaging mix of celebrated names and emerging voices and including stories in translation from Bengali, Greek, Hebrew, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. The winning stories are accompanied by an introduction by Luiselli, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines that publish short fiction. AN ANCHOR BOOKS ORIGINAL.THE WINNING STORIES:“Screen Time,” by Alejandro Zambra,translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell“The Wolves of Circassia,” by Daniel Mason“Mercedes's Special Talent,” by Tere Dávila,translated from the Spanish by Rebecca Hanssens-Reed“Rainbows,” by Joseph O'Neill“A Way with Bea,” by Shanteka Sigers“Seams,” by Olga Tokarczuk,translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft “The Little Widow from the Capital,” by Yohanca Delgado“Lemonade,” by Eshkol Nevo,translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston “Breastmilk,” by ‘Pemi Aguda“The Old Man of Kusumpur,” by Amar Mitra,translated from the Bengali by Anish Gupta“Where They Always Meet,” by Christos Ikonomou,translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich“Fish Stories,” by Janika Oza“Horse Soup,” by Vladimir Sorokin,translated from the Russian by Max Lawton“Clean Teen,” by Francisco González“Dengue Boy,” by Michel Nieva,translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer“Zikora,” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie“Apples,” by Gunnhild Øyehaug,translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson “Warp and Weft,” by David Ryan“Face Time,” by Lorrie Moore“An Unlucky Man,” by Samanta Schweblin,translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell

Two crystalline novellas linked by one devastating crime: Say This is an immersive meditation on the interplay between memory, trauma, and narrative.It's a cold spring in Baltimore, 2018, when the email arrives: the celebrity journalist hopes Eva will tell him everything about the sexual affair she had as a teen with her older cousin, a man now in federal prison for murder. Thirteen years earlier, Lenore-May answers the phone to the nightmare news that her stepson's body has been found near Mount Hood, and homicide is suspected. Following Eva's unsettling ambivalence towards her confusing relationship, and constructing a portrait of her cousin's victim via collaged perspectives of the slain man's family, these two linked novellas borrow, interrogate, sometimes dismantle the tropes of true crime; lyrically render the experiences of grief and dissociation; and brilliantly mine the fault lines of power and consent, silence, justice, accountability, and class. Say This is a startling exploration of the devastating effects of trauma on personal identity.

A major collection of'flash fiction'by one of Canada's most accomplished and renowned writers. The collection includes the prestigious Edinburgh Award for Flash Fiction 2022 story How to Draw a Frog and other award winning gems of the author's work.His flash fiction has been published in many countries, including Ireland, the UK, the US, Hong Kong, India, Nigeria.Bruce Meyer is the author of over sixty books or poetry, short fiction, flash fiction and literary non-fiction. He is also well-known as the voice behind various CBC radio's literature broadcasts The Great Books, A Novel Idea, Great Poetry, Poetry is Life and Vice Versa. He has taught at various universities, including University of Toronto, McMaster University, University of Windsor, Laurentian University, Notre Dame, Skidmore College, University of Southern Mississippi, University of Texas in Austin.. His many awards include being named Poet Laureate of the City of Barrie where he now resides with his family.Bruce Meyer's works have received very high international praise from numerous sources. The writer himself, perhaps, best explains his work:'The challenge is for the writer to drill down into a fragment of the commonplace and make it into something more than anyone could have foreseen with the source. Isn't that what resides at the core of invention?''Stories are easy to begin but the real work resides in finishing them..''A successful piece of writing goes'Ping'and that is when all the parts come together and the memory of the piece doesn't leave the mind.'ˆ

The 14 stories in Exit Strategies explore the subtleties of memory and storytelling, masterfully creating the universal picture from the quotidian details. These stories do not shy away from difficult truths: a former actuary with a head injury which has robbed her of her mental acuity takes a job caring for a defiant farmer who is facing the decline of his body and his property; an elderly Belgian woman refuses to continue a road trip in BC when her soon-to-be-Canadian son and his dollhouse-obsessed girlfriend stop to help a stranded motorist; an intellectually disabled woman kidnaps three Black children and has the happiest day of her life. This collection gives voice to characters who are not always heard.

In settings as diverse as a struggling advertising agency, a book store, and a large computer company, the protagonists in Kickback and Other Stories find duplicity, betrayal, and sudden violence. As so often in life, there are no heroes, and it's often hard to tell who is the greater villain. A four-time nominee for the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story, and winner of the 2001 Ellery Queen Readers'Award, Sellers'stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Down & Out Magazine and numerous anthologies.'Closing Doors', which appears in this collection and originally appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, recently was awarded the 2020 Arthur Ellis Best Crime Short Story Award. Don Hutchison, acclaimed author of Great Pulp Heroes, said of Peter Sellers'stories:'A typical Sellers story there is usually one bad decision made, and on that hangs the plot—as well as the perpetrator.'

Lucy Maud Montgomery was a Canadian author and is best known for her novels, the first of which was Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908. She also published over 500 short stories, and 142 of these are available in chronological order in a six volume set, this being the 3rd volume - a selection of the stories from 1904. The stories in this volume show L.M. Montgomery's early talent as a writer. The characters are interesting, the Canadian settings are described beautifully and a plot with dramatic tension is introduced quickly. The stories vary in style from romantic to funny to sinister. This book offers a fascinating series of stories to read. (Amazon)

Twenty prizewinning stories selected from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year—continuing the O. Henry Prize's century-long tradition of literary excellence.'Widely regarded as the nation's most prestigious awards for short fiction.'—The Atlantic Monthly.Now entering its second century, the prestigious annual story anthology has a new title, a new look, and a new guest editor. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has brought her own refreshing perspective to the prize, selecting stories by an engaging mix of celebrated names and young emerging voices. The winning stories are accompanied by an introduction by Adichie, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines that publish short fiction.Featured in this collection: Daphne Palasi Andreades • David Means • Sindya Bhanoo • Crystal Wilkinson • Alice Jolly • David Rabe • Karina Sainz Borgo (translator, Elizabeth Bryer) • Jamel Brinkley • Tessa Hadley • Adachioma Ezeano • Anthony Doerr • Tiphanie Yanique • Joan Silber • Jowhor Ile • Emma Cline • Asali Solomon • Ben Hinshaw • Caroline Albertine Minor (translator, Caroline Waight) • Jianan Qian • Sally Rooney

Annie Muktuk, les hommes la désirent et se l'arrachent. Elle règne avec sa beauté légendaire et sa gloire chimérique sur le petit monde d'Igloolik. Des visages hauts en couleur prennent aux tripes. Josephee, se fiant à la ruse des Esprits, amène sa femme Elipsee sur le territoire dans l'Arctique pour la guérir du cancer. Husky, agent de la Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson, vit rondement avec ses trois épouses, Tetuk, Alaq et Keenaq jusqu'au jour où ils partent ensemble en vacances dans le sud. Ces récits drôles et crus disent le racisme, l'aliénation, mais aussi la tendresse, le sexe et l'humour. Annie Muktuk touche au cœur de ce que signifie être inuit.

In her debut short story collection, Quednau offers unsettling examinations of “what really happened” with rich, complex characters that might equally arouse our suspicions or sympathy: we pay attention. She gives voice to the interludes between actions, what almost occurred, or might yet, the skewed time of “before” and acute reckoning of “afterward.” Seemingly innocent gestures leave their marks in comeuppance: the blurt of an intimate nickname becoming an ad hoc striptease in a public place, a parked car leading to a woman flailing in a dunk tank, a garage sale with no early birds ending in vengeance, the redemptive act of shucking corn with an ex-husband's new lover transforming into greater loss. These stories attest to Quednau's belief that the most significant moments in our lives—the things that alter us—lie in the margins, just out of sight of what was once presumed or predicted. In these short fictions timing is everything, the rusted twentieth-century myths of ownership or conquest are set against the incoming reality of pandemic, our separate notions of love or of courage, of painful transformation, yet to be believed.

For fans of Heather O'Neill's Daydreams of Angels, Otessa Moshfegh's Homesick for Another World, and Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties, Nowadays and Lonelier features a cascade of characters seeking connection in the darkest alleyways and meaning in the mundane. In these pages, a ballet dancer navigates complex family ties that are frayed by addiction; a young girl discovers sex and sexuality in the nineties in an impoverished urban center; a lover sojourns in Egypt and exacts an unexpected revenge; and a barista and a painter weather an apartment fire in Montreal. The collection is concerned with the contrast experienced by working- and middle-class millennials, between access to education and art compared to a relative lack of access to secure jobs and housing—and how these conditions leave many straddling a world where mental health, addictions, and sex work are daily realities as they try to carve out space for themselves in times that are increasingly alienating. Nowadays and Lonelier, Carmella Gray-Cosgrove's debut story collection, features vivid portraits of unsure yet hopeful people struggling to find a good life in a hard world.

Lucy Maud Montgomery was a Canadian author and is best known for her novels, the first of which was Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908. She also published over 500 short stories, and these are available in chronological order in a six volume set, this being the first volume - a selection of the stories from 1896 to 1901. The twenty stories in this volume show L.M. Montgomery's early talent as a writer. The characters are interesting, the Canadian settings are described beautifully and a plot with dramatic tension is introduced quickly. The stories vary in style from romantic to funny to sinister. This book offers a fascinating series of stories to read. (Amazon)

A NYT Book Review Best Historical Fiction Book of the Year'The Singing Forest blends thought-provoking reflections on the moral reckoning of war crimes with... a young woman's attempts to decode her eccentric professional and personal families.'—Alida Becker, New York Times In attempting to bring a suspected war criminal to justice, a lawyer wrestles with power, accountability, and her Jewish identity. In a quiet forest in Belarus, two boys stumble across a long-kept secret: the mass grave where Stalin's police secretly murdered thousands in the 1930s. The results of the subsequent investigation have far-reaching effects, and across the Atlantic in Toronto, Leah Jarvis, a lively, curious young lawyer, finds herself tasked with an impossible case: the deportation of elderly Stefan Drozd, who fled his crimes in Kurapaty for a new identity in Canada. Leah is convinced of Drozd's guilt, but she needs hard facts. She travels to Belarus in search of witnesses only to find herself asking increasingly complex questions. What is the relationship between chance, inheritance, and justice? Between her own history—her mother's death, her father's absence, the shadows of her Jewish heritage—and the challenges that now confront her? Beautiful and wrenching by turns, The Singing Forest is a profound investigation of truth and memory—and the moving story of one man's past and one woman's determination to reckon with it.

Casey Plett's 2018 novel Little Fish won a Lambda Literary Award, the Firecracker Award for Fiction, and the Amazon First Novel Award (Canada). Her latest work, A Dream of a Woman, is her first book of short stories since her seminal 2014 collection A Safe Girl to Love. Centering transgender women seeking stable, adult lives, A Dream of a Woman finds quiet truths in prairie high-rises and New York warehouses, and in freezing Canadian winters and drizzly Oregon days.In “Hazel and Christopher,” two childhood friends reconnect as adults after one of them has transitioned. In “Perfect Places,” a woman grapples with undesirability as she navigates fetish play with a man. In “Couldn't Hear You Talk Anymore,” the narrator reflects on past trauma and what might have been as she recalls tender moments with another trans woman.An ethereal meditation on partnership, sex, addiction, romance, groundedness, and love, the stories in A Dream of a Woman buzz with quiet intensity and the intimate complexities of being human.This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. A Simple book with few images, which is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.

Avez-vous déjà entendu parler de Marie-Josèphe Angélique, l'esclave qui a mis le feu à la demeure de sa maîtresse et incendié une partie de Montréal? Savez-vous ce qu'il est advenu des statues de Nubiens qui flanquaient jusqu'à tout récemment l'ascenseur du Ritz-Carlton? Peut-être n'êtes-vous pas sans connaître Hamidou Diop, cet espion qui a échoué à abattre le révolutionnaire Aquin dans les Alpes suisses. Mais vous ignorez sûrement qu'il se terre depuis dans le tunnel de la station Peel. Et le nom de Kaie Kellough, vous dit-il quelque chose? Non? Pourtant, cet auteur a signé plusieurs livres au début du XXIe siècle, avant la montée des eaux du fleuve et l'exode des propriétaires du sud de Montréal vers les appartements à louer du quartier Saint-Michel. Dans Petits marronnages, Kaie Kellough s'engouffre dans les interstices de l'histoire officielle pour tirer de l'oubli les figures fictives ou bien réelles des diasporas caribéennes et africaines. Musiciens et autostoppeurs, poètes et banlieusards sans histoire, agents secrets et historiens, domestiques et révolutionnaires s'y croisent et s'y recroisent dans une improvisation débridée sur le thème du déracinement. Encensé par la critique à sa parution en anglais, ce premier recueil de nouvelles est à l'image des meilleurs morceaux de jazz. Foisonnant et imprévisible, il joue aussi habilement avec le passé qu'avec son instrument : le langage.

A collection of the year's best stories selected by celebrated two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn WardIn her introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2021, guest editor Jesmyn Ward says that the best fiction offers the reader a “sense of repair.” The stories in this year's collection accomplish just that, immersing the reader in powerfully imagined worlds and allowing them to bring some of that power into their own lives. From a stirring portrait of Rodney King's final days to a surreal video game set in the Middle East, with real consequences, to an indigenous boy's gripping escape from his captors, this collection renders profoundly empathetic depictions of the variety of human experience. These stories are poignant reminders of the possibilities of fiction: as you sink into world after world, become character after character, as Ward writes, you “forget yourself, and then, upon surfacing, know yourself and others anew.'The Best American Short Stories 2021 includes GABRIEL BUMP • BRANDON HOBSON • DAVID MEANS• JANE PEK • TRACEY ROSE PEYTON • GEORGE SAUNDERS • BRYAN WASHINGTON • KEVIN WILSON • C PAM ZHANG and others

Walking Leonard and Other Stories, is a short story collection of roughly 30,000 words in the literary fiction genre. The stories depict unspoken pivot points in the lives of ordinary people. Themes include responsibility and violation between parent and child, nature as a protective force, and the shucking off of various selves in the process of a lifetime. The stories spring from the foothills of southern Alberta, specifically Calgary, and some even more specifically from the historic neighborhood of Bowness, once a small town in its own right.

Daniel is a young Métis man searching for a way to exist in a world of lateral violence, intergenerational trauma and systemic racism. Facing obstacles of his own at every turn, he observes and learns from the lived realities of his family members, friends, teachers and lovers. He finds hope in the inherent connection of Indigenous Peopls to the land, and the permanence of culture, language and ceremony in the face of displacement. Set in Edmonton, this story considers Indigenous youth in relation to the urban constructs and colonial spaces in which they survive—from violence, whitewashing, trauma and racism to language revitalization, relationships with Elders, restaking land claims and ultimately, triumph. Based on Papaschase and Métis oral histories and lived experience, Conor Kerr's debut novel will not soon be forgotten.

“Twenty masterfully crafted short stories” by T.C. Boyle, Emma Cline, Mary Gaitskill, and more: “Outstanding and well worth the read.” —Booklist (starred review)“To read their stories felt to me the way I suspect other people feel hearing jazz for the first time,” recalls Curtis Sittenfeld of her initial encounter with the Best American Short Stories series. “They were windows into emotions I had and hadn't had, into other settings and circumstances and observations and relationships.”Decades later, Sittenfeld was met by the same feeling selecting the stories for this year's edition. The result is a striking and nuanced collection, bringing to life awkward college students, disgraced public figures, raunchy grandparents, and mystical godmothers. To read these stories is to experience the transporting joys of discovery and affirmation, and to realize that story writing in America continues to flourish. The Best American Short Stories 2020 includes selections by: T. C. BOYLE • EMMA CLINE • MARY GAITSKILL • ANDREA LEE • ELIZABETH McCRACKEN • ALEJANDRO PUYANA • WILLIAM PEI SHIH • KEVIN WILSON • JANE PEK • CAROLYN FERRELL • SCOTT NADELSON • MENG JIN • and more

In D.A. Lockhart's Breaking Right ordinary Hoosiers experience extraordinary moments that reveal the complicated correlations between their beliefs, their relationships and the land beneath their feet.

To fill gaping holes in their lives, the protagonists in The Quantum Theory of Love and Madness embark on bizarre quests that ultimately lead them astray. Whether a child savant who sings the lyrics to hundreds of songs (and never talks), a woman who has to decide whether to turn in her arsonist brother, a failed writer whose fictional character suddenly comes to life, an unhappy insurance examiner who discovers a fallen angel and decides to cash in on his find, or a successful, middle-class man who pines for the poet he once was, nothing is sacred in this collection of stories. Myth and imagination hold equal weight, authenticity and fable go hand-in-hand, and the lines between reality and illusion blur. Characters find themselves trapped, or at least, incapable of restoring their humanity. It may be sobering to observe such forays into darkness but underlying their failures is a tacit suggestion that perhaps they could have won out with more imagination, more strength, or simply with some encouragement. And some do; amidst the carnage of those who fail and disappear emerge some who acquire new strength to reconnect with the world.

From the short story in which a character enters a'painted sidewalk,'the collection moves into an exploration of the creation of memoir and memory. Some of the stories, but especially one about a'bard,'set in Montreal, another set in Iceland and one set off the coast of England, contain ghosts. The last is told from a ghost's perspective. The protagonist's husband, a mathematician, has called her from the shadows. While she was alive, he insisted time was immutable. Now he is attempting to solve the equation that will bring her back.

Rebecca Higgins's characters do weird things in their attempts to negotiate the world. They steal books and hide in bathrooms and treat grocery receipts like tarot cards. They may want solitude, even escape, but they don't want to be invisible. They move between isolation and connection—on the internet, at uncomfortable parties, in a tent after Hurricane Katrina. These stories are about friendship and loneliness and the awkward, fumbling ways we try to love each other. We lie and leave things out, so often torn between hiding ourselves and needing to be seen.

Dragged fresh from the grave and pulled out of the haunted corners of a school locker, these thirteen new stories are a nod to the storytelling style of Tales from the Crypt and The Twilight Zone. Most kids don't have to stress about things like exotic insects with a taste for human flesh when they go to class. But students at this school have to be ever vigilant. You never know when a supernatural pastry or a clay monster bent on revenge might be lurking just around the corner. Even a simple field trip to a local animal sanctuary can have s-s-serious consequences. A companion volume to Tales from Beyond the Brain, these stories are guaranteed to make you laugh like a hyena, shake your head in wonder or tremble with fear. The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.

Born on the twin backs of torpidity and obsession, In the Beggarly Style of Imitation is a voyage into the mind of one of the Canadian literary underground's most unruly writers. Equal parts tribute to the historical genesis of the novel and the well-trodden subject of love, the exercises of imitation contained in this collection offer a brief survey through the illustrious forms and genres of literary expression: epistolary, aphorism, essay, picaresque, romance and satire culminate in a celebratory brand of fiction that proves with finality that imitation is truly the vilest form of flattery.

An A.V. Club Book to Read for June 2019 In moments of exile and self-exile, exodus and return, Elise Levine's uncanny narratives lay bare the secret grammar of their characters'psyches. An ill-tempered divinity-school candidate refuses to minister to a dying man's wife; a couple fails to connect as they tour an ersatz cave in the south of France; holy women grieve in medieval England, and a pregnant runaway hitches a ride with a Church leader of dubious intentions. Propelled by their longing for pasts that no longer exist, these reluctant Adams and contemporary Eves confront the unspoken, the maligned, the abject aspects of their inner geographies, mining them for gems that glint and scatter in the light. Uncompromising and honest, lyrical and wry, This Wicked Tongue dares to tell the truth about the places we have come from and the new ones we might find.

“If you really want to journey into the heart of darkness, you'd be advised to travel with Vancouver writer Keath Fraser, a man of extraordinary talents.” —Bronwyn Drainie An icon of Canadian short fiction, Keath Fraser has exerted a wide and trenchant influence since the publication of his first collection Taking Cover in 1982. Damages: Selected Stories 1982–2012 gathers the finest of his work across decades. Combining the craftsmanship of the form's greatest masters with the idiosyncratic voices and music of our contemporary moment, the stories selected here travel from the richly peopled worlds of Fraser's Vancouver to the Gulf of Thailand, a Phnom Penh bone-house embassy, and the Rajasthan desert, and demonstrate remarkable diversity of character and effortless storytelling across a range of modes. Featuring an introduction by John Metcalf, and including the novella “Foreign Affairs,” called by the Oxford Companion of Canadian Literature “one of the masterpieces of Canadian short fiction,” Damages showcases Keath Fraser as one of the best and most enduring story writers of the last fifty years.

Written over a period of three years and across a range of styles and lengths, Walking with Albert is Keith Weaver's first short story compilation. These stories range from micro-narratives of a few pages in length to what could be called miniature novellas. Weaver's stories cover a vast territorial expanse, taking the reader from outer space to the minutia of Earth's countryside, then into the human heart. One story concerns a young man's unrealised expectation of winning a Fields Medal, while others explore the joys and challenges of rural life, past and present. Probing, experimental, and often funny, this collection includes one story that hints at astrophysics, another about a death on a golf course, and another about a cat that defies anti-Semitism from the past. Weaver's imagination ranges across the human and animal worlds and extends to the world of things. In one story, two starkly mismatched men find something in common on a summer morning, while another story concerns itself with a pair of toast tongs. Taken together, these stories represent a bold new direction in a body of work that includes three novels, a novella, and works of nonfiction.

It's all about scars and what they mean. Old myths made new. Poems for those who've passed.Tales of the lost and found. Rarely seen stories, reprinted.Brand new stories - in new places and familiar words. Scar Tissue and other stories. Holmes ♥ WatsonRavenfallKitty and CadaverThe Vampires of MelbourneHolmes + Watson

#1 New York Times best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anthony Doerr brings his“stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) to selecting The Best American Short Stories 2019. “As soon as you complete a description of what a good story must be, a new example flutters through an open window, lands on your sleeve, and proves your description wrong,” writes Anthony Doerr about the task of selecting The Best American Short Stories 2019. The year's best stories are a diverse, addictive group exploring everything from America's rich rural culture to its online teen culture to the fragile nature of the therapist-client relationship. This astonishing collection brings together the realistic and dystopic, humor and terror. For Doerr, “with every new artist, we simultaneously refine and expand our understanding of what the form can be.” The Best American Short Stories 2019 includes Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Jamel Brinkley, Jeffrey Eugenides, Ursula K. Le Guin, Manuel Muñoz, Sigrid Nunez, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, Jim Shepherd, Weike Wang, and others.

What might happen when one tries to move a railway station? Do you know where Jericho is? Can someone could become rich based on knowledge of an obsolete size of paper? Ever had nightmares about a pitcher plant? In Fool's Cap and Other Stories, readers will travel to Italy, France, Germany, England, Nova Scotia, and other parts of Canada. There's a story about road hockey, two old friends discovering things over a cup of coffee, an event that leads a shadowy figure to change his life, an odd pair of vigilantes, and even a man with a coin in his mouth. From darkness and personal discovery to whimsy and just plain absurdity, Keith Weaver's second collection of short stories will delight readers yet again.

Canada's answer to Chuck Palahniuk.A bear runs amok in a luxury hotel. A daily swim at the local pool becomes a question of life or death. The champion of a border wall faces an unexpected adversary.The twelve stories in Different Beasts ask what it means to be both human and monster. Shape-shifting waifs, haunted stuffies, scavenging drones, insectoid demon-gods, and mutant angels all come to life in this wildly imagined debut. As do broken soldiers, disgraced politicians, tired parents, ogres and children, opportunists, and desperate survivors — human beasts each struggling with the animalian aspects of their nature.In this wild, fantastical, viscerally memorable debut, J.R. McConvey explores the power dynamics that undergird social relationships and crystallize into structures of fealty and worship, fear and control, aspiration and desire.

The characters of Moccasin Square Gardens inhabit Denendeh, the land of the people north of the sixtieth parallel. These stories are filled with in-laws, outlaws and common-laws. Get ready for illegal wrestling moves (“The Camel Clutch”), pinky promises, a doctored casino, extraterrestrials or “Sky People,” love, lust and prayers for peace. While this is Van Camp's most hilarious short story collection, it's also haunted by the lurking presence of the Wheetago, human-devouring monsters of legend that have returned due to global warming and the greed of humanity. The stories in Moccasin Square Gardens show that medicine power always comes with a price. To counteract this darkness, Van Camp weaves a funny and loving portrayal of the Tłı̨chǫ Dene and other communities of the North, drawing from oral history techniques to perfectly capture the character and texture of everyday small-town life. “Moccasin Square Gardens” is the nickname of a dance hall in the town of Fort Smith that serves as a meeting place for a small but diverse community. In the same way, the collection functions as a meeting place for an assortment of characters, from shamans and time-travelling goddess warriors to pop-culture-obsessed pencil pushers, to con artists, archivists and men who just need to grow up, all seeking some form of connection.

In the stories in Winning Chance, Katherine Koller explores second chances, how we find them, and how we find the courage to take them. Whether they are contractors running into an ex while on the job, a busy mother pursuing community theatre, or a family building an illegal ice rink after an environmental collapse, Katherine Koller has created empathetic portraits of characters searching to connect.

Il y a des coutumes qu'on s'explique mal. Par exemple, cette tradition de maintenir nos ancêtres vivants dans des cuves de conservation. Ou bien cette obsession avec l'ef?cience postale, jusque dans l'au-delà. Et que dire des nouvelles tendances?: des poissons rouges à l'apéro?? des pesticides numériques?? des voyages à l'étranger par le truchement des rêves?? Vues à hauteur d'humains, d'animaux ou d'insectes, ces situations révèlent un monde sens dessus dessous, délicieusement décalé et rigoureusement curieux. «?Central taco, ici la Lune?!?» L'appel est lancé?: de la Nouvelle Europe à la Saskatchewan en passant par la basse-ville d'Ottawa et les fonds marins, les quatorze nouvelles d'«Une dent contre l'ordinaire» promettent une plongée dans l'univers abracadabrant d'un auteur qui n'a pas?ni de nous étonner.