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Like walking onto the set of your favorite Hallmark Christmas movie, Mistletoe Season invites readers to fall in love alongside three couples, featuring old flames, opposites attract, and even a royal romance.Say No to Mistletoe by Sheila RobertsMistletoe is Hailey Fairchild's kryptonite. Every time she's kissed someone under the mistletoe it's led to love disaster. Not a good thing for a romance writer! When she was a gawky high school girl, her hunky neighbor, Carwyn Davies, star of the basketball team (and her dreams), kissed her under the mistletoe on a dare. But the kiss wasn't a dream come true. It was a mortifying moment she's never forgotten, and now she's about to go home for the holidays, unengaged and... determined to say no to mistletoe. Especially if Carwyn is anywhere around.Return to Mistletoe by Kathleen FullerEmmy Banks has always loved Christmas. How could she not when she lives in Mistletoe, Missouri? Kieran O'Neill has spent years abroad, renovating an old Irish castle, but returns to Mistletoe for his mother's seventieth birthday. He reconnects with Emmy, his sister's close friend, and spends time with her in her charming antique shop. When the weather turns colder, things start to warm up between Emmy and Kieran. But can Emmy risk her heart when she knows he'll never stay in Mistletoe and she'll never leave?The Mistletoe Prince by Pepper BashamPrince Arran St. Clare has lost his freedom and fairytale life in exchange for a three-month'punishment'in the small town of Ransom, North Carolina. To prove he is ready for the royal life for which he was born, Arran must engage in the Christmas charity fundraiser, The Mistletoe Wish. But when kindness, authenticity, and hard work prove more appreciated in Appalachia than a royal pedigree, Arran must face the mirror and find out who he is beyond the crown. Add a beautiful and intelligent woman who doesn't recognize her own worth, some mistletoe, and a little Christmas magic, and it all might be enough to help the rebel-prince understand what truly matters most.Featuring three separate stories, Mistletoe Season is the perfect escape from a bustling Christmas season. Pull up a cozy blanket, fix yourself a warm drink, and set yourself up by the fire to enjoy three delightful, low-spice romances.

Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke award-winner Ann Leckie is a modern master of the SFF genre, forever changing its landscape with her groundbreaking ideas and powerful voice. Now, available for the first time comes the complete collection of Leckie's short fiction, including a brand new novelette, “Lake of Souls.” Journey across the stars of the Imperial Radch universe. Listen to the words of the Old Gods that ruled the Raven Tower. Learn the secrets of the mysterious Lake of Souls. And so much more, in this masterfully wide-ranging and immersive short fiction collection from award-winning author Ann Leckie.

Gathered for the first time: one of America's great humorists revisits the books and movies from his youth—often with some embarrassment—in this complete, 22-piece collectionFrom October 1948 to October 1953, The New Yorker published humorist S. J. Perelman's “Cloudland Revisited” series: 22 reviews of once-popular books and silent films whose expiration dates had passed. All but forgotten even at the time, they were nonetheless part of Perelman's youth and made an indelible mark on him.In the comic genius's biting satire they live once again:Gertrude Atherton's sensationalist fantasy Black OxenSax Rohmer's supervillain blockbuster The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchuthe “underwater” silent film adaptation of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the SeaEdgar Rice Burrough's 1914 novel Tarzan of the Apesand George Barr McCutcheon's 1901 historical fantasy novel Graustark—the Game of Thrones of its era—which launched numerous sequels and film adaptations The complete series is collected here for the first time. With self-deprecating humor and frequent embarrassment, Perelman reflects on how rereading and rewatching brings us in contact with how we, like an old book or film, have both changed and remained the same. This paperback includes a tribute to Perelman's art by another beloved New Yorker writer, Adam Gopnik.

Together for the first time, all 5 standalone novels from the Hugo and Nebula award–winning writer who reinvented science fiction, including one restored to printSpans from the 1971 classic The Lathe of Heaven to her career-crowning 2008 masterpiece LaviniaThis 7th volume in the definitive Library of America edition of Ursula K. Le Guin's works presents 5 remarkable standalone novels that showcase her boundless creativity and literary range.In the Locus Award–winning The Lathe of Heaven (1971), one of Le Guin's most admired works of science fiction, George Orr begins have effective dreams: dreams that change reality itself. But when he turns to the sleep researcher William Haber for help, the doctor sees an opportunity to use Orr's strange gift for his own ends.A former Terran prison colony on the planet Victoria seems destined for revolution in The Eye of the Heron (1978), when the authoritarian leaders in the City try to assert control over the peaceful farmers who have been sent to live around them.The Beginning Place (1980) is a parable-like story in which Hugh and Irena have both found their way to the Beginning Place, a gateway to another world. The two initially become enemies, but must learn to work together when the utopia they've found turns out to have a shadow.The long out-of-print Searoad: Chronicles of Klatsand (1991) is a Winesburg, Ohio-like series of linked stories set in a small vacation town on the Oregon coast, where some of the characters have come for a weekend and some for longer, but all are pilgrims in the grip of inexpressible longings.And Le Guin's final, powerfully feminist novel, Lavinia (2008), reimagines Virgil's Aeneid from the perspective of a woman who, in poet's telling, never speaks a word. Special features include an appendix presenting three essays by Le Guin related to the novels, previously unseen hand-drawn maps by author herself, helpful annotation, and a chronology of Le Guin's life and career.Brought together here for the first time, these 5 remarkable standalone novels showcase a Hugo and Nebula Award–winning master at her very best.

'Cuadros died of AIDS in 1996, two years after chronicling the disease in City of God, a book of poems and stories about queer Los Angeles. His belated follow-up takes the same form, with the same bracing urgency.'—The New York Times'Without doubt one of the sexiest and most important writers I've ever read.'—Justin Torres, author of Blackouts'My Body Is Paper is a testament to the unrelenting literary magic of Gil Cuadros. Through poetry and prose, Cuadros holds a mirror up to California, reflecting this land of dualities back at us. He gives us sunshine and sickness, ecstasy and drudgery, eros and death. I am so very grateful for his work.'—Myriam Gurba, author of Creep: Accusations and ConfessionsSince City of God (1994) by Gil Cuadros was published 30 years ago, it has become an unlikely classic (an'essential book of Los Angeles'according to the LA Times), touching readers and writers who find in his work a singular evocation of Chicanx life in Los Angeles during and leading up to the AIDS epidemic, which took his life in 1996. Little did we know, Cuadros continued writing exuberant prose and poems in the period between his one published book and his untimely death at the age of 34. This recently discovered treasure, My Body Is Paper, is a stunning portrait of sex, family, religion, culture of origin, and the betrayals of the body. Tender and blistering, erotic and spiritual—Cuadros dives into these complexities which we grapple with today, showing us how to survive these times, and beyond.

One of The Millions Most Anticipated Books for Spring!Set in the uncanny valley between Bugs Bunny and Franz Kafka, Cartoons is an explosive series of outrageous, absurdist tales.“The true surrealist is unblinking, convulsive, and cheerfully open to the mysterious flow, into their texts, of mythic and archetypal elements operating beyond their conscious control. In Cartoons, Kit Schluter vaults into the zone of Julio Cortázar, Richard Brautigan, and late Giorgio di Chirico, where the reader breaths the air of pure freedom attained rattling inside the chains of self.”—Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn More than simply a book, Cartoons proposes itself as a genre of imaginary writing in opposition to the realism of most contemporary U.S. fiction, aligning itself with the French symbolism and Latin American fabulism its author is known to translate. A giant cricket with a tiny Kit Schluter in a jar, The Girl Who Is a Piece of Paper, an umbrella who confuses the words porpoise and purpose in its quest for self-fulfillment, these are just a few denizens of its pages, suffused with a fairy tale-like animism. A pair of slugs go on a bender. A microwave oven decries microaggressions. A beer bottle is filled with regret. An escalator mechanic's shoe conceals a terrible secret. As befits its title, Cartoons defies the laws of physics and fiction alike, eschewing tonal consistency in favor of a simultaneity of joy and horror, ecstasy and disgust, wrapped in an extravagant layer of black humor. The stories blur the boundary between microfiction and poet's prose, featuring impossible transformations and surrealistic events, even as they wrestle with urgent psychic and moral dilemmas. Heightening the atmosphere of pervasive unreality are a number of drawings by the author, which don't so much illustrate as parallel the tales with their own fantastic scenarios.

The trailblazing book that influenced a generation of writers, and proves that mature reflection needn't be lacking in attitude.In the beginning when everything was very sexual we talked about our fantasies. She thought about having a guy for some of it. She thought about having a gun. I had gone through a lot to get away from guys so I admit that the thought of going back to them, even for a little adventure, was surprising and disconcerting …Ann Rower's first book, If You're a Girl, published by Semiotext(e)'s Native Agents series in 1991 in tandem with Cookie Mueller's Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, cemented her reputation as the Eve Babitz of lower Manhattan.Rower was fifty-three years old at the time. Her stories—urtexts of female autofiction—had long been circulating within the poetry and postpunk music scenes. They were unlike anyone else's: disarming, embarrassing, psuedoconfessional tales of everyday life dizzily told and laced with dry humor. In If You're a Girl, she recounts her adventures as Timothy Leary's babysitter, her artistic romance with actor Ron Vawter, and her attempts to evade a schizophrenic stalker.Rower went on to publish two novels: Armed Response (1995) and Lee & Elaine (2002). After the 2002 suicide of her partner, the writer Heather Lewis, Rower stopped writing for almost two decades. And then she picked up where If You're a Girl left off. No longer a girl, she produced dozens of stories from her life in New York as an octogenarian.This new, expanded edition includes most of the original book, together with selections from both her novels and her recent writings. If You're a Girl is a trailblazing book that manifests Rower's influence on a generation of writers, and proves that mature reflection needn't be lacking in attitude.

A collection of stories that are off center in some way and range from the comic to the absurd to the relentlessly tragic.

Moving between power plants and pirate ships, remote caves and suburban strip malls, Maggie Cooper's The Theme Park of Women's Bodies takes readers on a tour of worlds built by, for, or around women. By turns darkly satirical and almost utopian, Cooper's fierce, fabulist stories explore the power and promise of these spaces as sanctuaries and strongholds, places of connection and creation. Yet at the same time, they point to the ways that a narrowly defined femininity feeds exploitation and violence, inviting readers to consider the breadth of'woman'as a category with a wide-ranging history, present, and future. Grappling with the role of gender and the body in creating and maintaining communities, these stories dream of worlds where we can all escape our narrow orbits.

A feast of great literature—12 Classic Christmas Stories all in one volume!Celebrate this magical season with some of the greatest literary figures in history. The wisdom and warmth of Christmas are wrapped in the stories of beloved and gifted authors such as Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, O. Henry, G. K. Chesterton, Willa Cather, Conan Doyle, Washington Irving, George MacDonald, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anthony Trollope, and other classic storytellers.Not only will you be immersed in the Christmas spirit, but you will draw from the insight of historian Dr. Timothy Larsen who introduces each tale, sharing with readers the history, background, and inspiration behind the literature.This collection invites us to contemplate and savor all that is good and true about God's redemptive story and our call to be Christ-like. The stories call us to generosity, reconciliation, and sacrifice. They encourage us to live with joy and gratitude. Hope and wonder abound as you gather your family around the fire and read aloud the Twelve Classic Christmas Stories.Increasing our love for great tales and for Christmas, this beautiful hardcover book is the perfect gift.

This 18th anthology of short stories set in the beloved Valdemar high fantasy universe features tales by debut and established authors and a brand-new novella from Mercedes Lackey.The Heralds of Valdemar are the kingdom's ancient order of protectors. They are drawn from all across the land, from all walks of life, and at all ages—and all are Gifted with abilities beyond those of normal men and women. They are Mindspeakers, FarSeers, Empaths, ForeSeers, Firestarters, FarSpeakers, and more. These inborn talents—combined with training as emissaries, spies, judges, diplomats, scouts, counselors, warriors, and more—make them indispensable to their monarch and realm. Sought and Chosen by mysterious horse-like Companions, they are bonded for life to these telepathic, enigmatic creatures. The Heralds of Valdemar and their Companions ride circuit throughout the kingdom, protecting the peace and, when necessary, defending their land and monarch.Now, twenty-two authors ride with Mercedes Lackey to the beloved land of Valdemar, where feuds—large and small, devastating and comic, longstanding and fresh—are brewing. Familiar faces await: in her brand-new novella Mercedes Lackey brings fan-favorite Vanyel back to the page, along with his aunt, the indomitable Herald Savil. So come explore Valdemar in these fantastical tales where:Vanyel is enlisted in a clandestine mission, but when his investigation into two squabbling noble families reveals a pair of lifebonded lovers, he and Savil find themselves scrambling to prevent an all-out war—and the King himself is watching…A duel between two small town bards abruptly crosses a line, and their battle of wits explodes beyond verbal showmanship…A student of the Bardic college is increasingly frustrated by a peer's insistence that she's seeing ghosts, but as her visions escalate she begins to wonder and to worry…

Finalist for the CHIRBy AwardsThe long-awaited new book from the critically acclaimed author of The Lightkeepers and The Wildlands: an intense and insightful collection that celebrates the horrors and joys of inhabiting our bodiesThe body cannot tell any lies. From birth to death, and through all the transitions in between, the body stores our knowledge and history, our feelings and experiences. Our betrayals. These insightful and empathetic stories, from the critically acclaimed author of The Last Animal, shine new light on our physical vessels set against our physical world, two landscapes irretrievably connected and altered over time.An entomologist solves cold cases and upholds a sense of justice by studying the decay of corpses in a field and the insect life they develop. A caregiver obsesses over a stained-glass lampshade to deal with the elegiac losses of Alzheimer's. A sister with webbed fingers highlights the often-universal belief that our siblings just might be creatures brought forth from the deep. The memory of a scent evokes the haunting legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic.These eleven stories display Abby Geni's great capacity to take us into the lives and experiences of others to scrutinize the physical self: birth, childhood, transition, mental health, trauma, aging, illness, love, sex, and death.

Fun and spooky stories for everyone to read togetherMake any night in more exciting with this thrilling collection of 16 tales that are creepy, funny, mysterious, and strange. Feel shivers down your spine as you read about ringing bells in a cemetery, ghostly underpants, fairies that create dreams, and more!Perfect for story time—These stories are short, simple, and easy to read aloud at a sleepover, in the car, around the campfire, or anytime!A terrific range of tales—Explore updated retellings of all the classic stories, like The Hook'and'The Ghost of the Bloody Finger.'Not too scary— Each story is written to be fun and silly for kids as young as 6, with just enough detail to make them spooky, but not too spooky!From a mysterious fog to two heads in a suitcase, these stories are sure to excite and delight kids and adults of all ages.

A tribute to the author's mother Kitty, the gritty Chicago landscape of his youth, and the'ghost years, that time in your life you don't know won't never come again.'Barry Gifford has been writing the story of America in acclaimed novel after acclaimed novel for the last half-century. Almost all of the stories in Ghost Years takes place in the 1950s, examining the lives of women in that period—the suppression, the lack of opportunities, the dependency on men. Following his story collection, Roy's World, which inspired the documentary directed by Rob Christopher, narrated by Lili Taylor, Matt Dillon and Willem Dafoe, these stories show a childhood in mid-century America filled with innocence, grief, joy and wonder in equal measure.

As the dying Sun sputters its last rays of light over a frozen Earth, young astronomers Kuila and Ramo join the remaining humans descending underground. Though their people decayed into complacency as resources dwindled, Kuila and Ramo found companionship admiring the stars and dreaming of worlds with warmth and light. Now facing a dark future burrowed deep below the ice, they cling to hopes of rediscovering their ancestors'knowledge and one day traveling to a new home planet orbiting a brilliant new Sun. Will their vision spur humanity's rebirth or fade to black like the guttering Sun that once nurtured their dying Earth?

When a member of the dangerous Damakoi race comes to warn about an assassin from his planet targeting the Galactic Capitol, agent Cameron must decide whether to trust him. Suspicious at every turn, Cameron sets up a complex trap to root out the real killer. But the Damakoi have their own devious plans involving invisible walls and deadly radiation. Cameron races to uncover the truth before the Capitol and thousands of lives go up in smoke.

Inspired by Victoria Kelly's experiences as the wife of a fighter pilot during three wartime deployments, this collection follows women whose lives have been impacted by war and military service as they struggle with their fragile ideas of home. In “Prayers of an American Wife,” a Navy wife grapples with loneliness when she discovers that her neighbor, also a Navy wife, is having an affair while their husbands are deployed on the same aircraft carrier. Tensions rise in “The Strangers of Dubai” as a soldier on leave tries to buy his wife a souvenir from an Afghan vendor. After attending eight funerals with fellow military wives whose husbands died in the Iraq war, the protagonist in “Finding the Good Light” divorces her Navy husband and tries to start a new life as a movie star. These, along with the eleven other stories in this collection, explore the emotional landscape of the resilient women who remain on the homefront. Kelly's stories offer readers an intimate, eye-opening look into the sacrifices and steadfastness of military family members.

A collection of award-winning short stories, including the viral “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison, an eight-time Hugo Award winner, five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, and four-time Nebula Award winner. As one of the great writers of speculative fiction of the twentieth century, Harlan Ellison shaped the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. This inventive and provocative collection of his best-known and most-acclaimed stories is a perfect treasury for old Ellison fans as well as readers discovering this zany, polyphonic writer for the first time. Featuring these stories and many more: “‘Repent, Harlequin,'Said the Ticktockman” — Hugo Award winner “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” — Bram Stoker Award winner “Mefisto in Onyx” — Bram Stoker Award winner “Jeffty Is Five” — British Fantasy Award winner “Shatterday” — Twilight Zone episode “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” — Edgar Allan Poe Award winner “Paladin of the Lost Hour” — Hugo Award winner, Twilight Zone episode A must-read for sci-fi book lovers and fans of Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Isaac Asimov, this career-spanning compilation of classic short stories is also perfect for readers who enjoyed Dangerous Visions, A Boy and His Dog, or other Harlan Ellison books.

Tea Leaves is an astonishing collection of fables for our time by a young writer of tremendous power and promise. Tea Leaves presents 16 speculative short stories that place queer characters in larger-than-life situations to emphasize the surreal experience of marginalization. A queer romance spans multiple incarnations, but only in doomed cities. A gay medieval scholar must testify for his life to the otherworldly octopus who traps him in a cafe bathroom. Ignoring their better judgment, a witch brings their mortal partner on a hunt for a dangerous sorcerer and must cope with the dire consequences. Each of the stories within Tea Leaves explores the urgency of modern queer life in encounters between the otherworldly and the queer other. In juxtaposing queer narratives with new, larger-than-life myths, Tea Leaves both exalts and lampoons the queer experience while examining the sometimes surreal obstacles of marginalization.

Winner of the 2024 Michael L. Printz AwardA National BestsellerFrom Michael L. Printz Award winner A.S. King and an all-star team of contributors including Anna-Marie McLemore and Jason Reynolds, an anthology of stories about remarkable people and their strange and surprising collections.From David Levithan's story about a non-binary kid collecting pieces of other people's collections to Jenny Torres Sanchez's tale of a girl gathering types of fire while trying not to get burned to G. Neri's piece about 1970's skaters seeking opportunities to go vertical—anything can be collected and in the hands of these award-winning and bestselling authors, any collection can tell a story. Nine of the best YA novelists working today have written fiction based on a prompt from Printz-winner A.S. King (who also contributes a story) and the result is itself an extraordinary collection.M. T. Anderson, e. E. Charlton-Trujillo, A.S. King, David Levithan, Cory McCarthy, Anna-Marie McLemore, G. Neri, Jason Reynolds, Randy Ribay, and Jenny Torres Sanchez have each penned a surprising and provocative tale.(Cover art may vary.)

Sometimes you just want to be silly. #1 Bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson is known for his grand science fiction sagas, his epic fantasies, his fast-paced adventures, or his steampunk Clockwork chronicles. But Kevin J. Anderson also has a lighter side. You'll laugh so hard, brains will come out your nose. What happens when— A wimpy, henpecked man finds an enchanted loincloth that turns him into a real jungle Ape Man? A stranded alien uses his advanced technology to fool audiences as a stage magician? A frustrated monster-movie actor uses a gypsy witch's special makeup to turn into a real werewolf when the cameras start to roll? A group of heavy-metal fans finds a spell on the internet to raise their favorite dead rock star from the grave for a final encore? A vampire, just minding his own business, wakes from his coffin to find he's being stalked through his own castle by an over-enthusiastic vampire hunter? A futuristic law firm uses time travel as a legal loophole to win their client's case? Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. takes on the Boogeyman for a client, or is hired out to save a sacrificial Aztec Christmas turkey? These twenty stories cover a range of slapstick, subtle, short-short, and groaner humor. The Funny Business also includes for the very first time the scripts of the hilarious comic miniseries Grumpy Old Monsters, never before published. Beware—silliness ahead. Open the book, and prepare to snicker!

This carefully crafted ebook:'The Collected Stories of 1920 - 1925'contains 14 stories in one volume and is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. The 1920s proved the most influential decade of Fitzgerald's development. To supplement his income, he turned to writing short stories for such magazines as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire magazine, and sold the film rights of his stories and novels to Hollywood studios. He was constantly in financial trouble and often required loans from his literary agent, Harold Ober, and his editor at Scribner's, Maxwell Perkins. Table of Contents: Myra Meets his Family. The Smilers. The Popular Girl. Two for A Cent. Dice, Brassknuckles & Guitar. Diamond Dick and the First Law of Woman. The Third Casket. The Unspeakable Egg. John Jackson's Arcady. The Pusher-in-the-Face. Love in the Night. One of my Oldest Friends. A Penny Spent. Not in the Guidebook. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigmatic writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.

Photographic Memories is an anthology of essays, playlets, and short fiction by writer and photographer Willy Conley. The pieces in this collection are grounded in Deaf experiences, a hallmark of Conley's work. Written from the unique perspective of a Deaf artist who navigates between the Deaf and hearing worlds, Conley depicts a variety of topics, settings, and characters: a day in the life of a traveling Deaf theater company, a nail salon, a baseball player trying to go pro. Conley also addresses critical issues at the heart of his Deaf identity, such as creating professional opportunities for Deaf theater artists, the need for better standards in sign language interpreting, and ableism. Original photographs taken by the author accompany his writings and invite the reader to contemplate the often-blurred lines between reality and memory.

Amazing Stories Volume 138 is a great collection of action short stories from'The Golden Age of Science Fiction'. Featured here are two short stories by Murray Leinster:'The Disciplinary Circuit', and'The Manless Worlds', and one story by Margaret St. Clair:'Piety'.

From the fun of the fair to the depths of hell, experience sixteen more curses in this sequel to the bestselling Cursed: An Anthology. A blend of traditional and reimagined curses from fairy-tales to Snow White, from some of the best names in fantasy.BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FORTake a trip to a terrifying carnival and uncover the secrets within, solve a mysterious puzzle box and await your reward, join a travelling circus and witness the strangest ventriloquist act you've ever seen.In this follow-up to the bestselling Cursed: An Anthology, you'll unearth curses old and new. From a very different take on Snow White, to a new interpretation of The Red Shoes, the best in fantasy spin straw into gold, and invite you into the labyrinth.Just don't forget to leave your trail of breadcrumbs…Featuring stories from:Joanne HarrisNeil GaimanJoe HillSarah PinboroughAngela SlatterM. R. CareyChristina HenryA. C. WiseLaura PurcellKatherine ArdenAdam L. G. NevillMark ChadbournHelen GrantKelley ArmstrongA. K. BenedictL. L. McKinney

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR • An emotionally rich collection of short stories, painting a fascinating portrait of contemporary India and its diaspora and a yearning rendering of the people and places we call home, from a major new literary talent.“A full-hearted, brilliant debut of necessary beauty.” —Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars and New York Times bestseller Friday Black'Injam's stories made me want to cast all else aside and return home.” —Megha Majumdar, author of A BurningVivid, vibrant, and unwaveringly affecting, The Best Possible Experience brings us intimate, impeccably realized accounts of individuals living in one of the most populous countries in the world and in its American diaspora—all haunted, in every sense of the word, by a loss of home. Classically elegant in prose and consistently modern in outlook, Nishanth Injam's stories ques­tion what it means to have a home and to return home, and show, above all, that home is not a place so much as it is people who are ready to accept you as you are. We see a young man trapped on a bus on the way to visit his parents as his fellow pas­sengers vanish into the restroom. A family, newly in America, determined to host a perfect luncheon for their son's white classmate—with no idea what to serve him. A woman who returns to a small vil­lage in India every summer to visit the grandfather who raised her, a man who lives with the ghosts of his son and his wife. And a man preparing for his green card interview with the American woman he has paid to marry him. A sui generis talent, Injam first started writing after coming to the United States from India in his twenties. The Best Possible Experience, his profoundly personal debut collection, delivers a universal in­quiry into the idea of belonging and preserves in writing the home he left behind, before it was lost

These dazzling stories show a crime fiction veteran at the height of his career.In his first-ever collection, the award-winning author of the Billy Boyle World War II mysteries presents an eclectic mix of new and previously published mystery stories rife with historical detail and riveting wartime storytelling.“The Horse Chestnut Tree” explores betrayal and murder during the American Revolution. In the speculative work “Glass,” an atomic supercollider and the breakdown of the time-space continuum change the lives of two cousins devoured by greed. “Vengeance Weapon,” a historical thriller about an enslaved Jewish laborer working at the Dora concentration camp, looks at how far someone will go to get revenge. And for his Billy Boyle fans, Benn delivers “Irish Tommy,” a police procedural set in 1944 Boston featuring Billy's father and uncle.Full of terror, action, amusement, and bliss, The Refusal Camp is a must-have collection from a crime fiction veteran at the height of his career.

Named a Public Picks 2023 by Public Books Long List for the 2024 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, Boundless Deep, and Other Stories is a portrait of a family that holds together despite everything. By turns introspective, surreal, and bitingly funny, this collection of linked short stories spans seven decades across Japan and the United States and shows the tenacity of relationships fractured by language and distance. At the funeral of her old boss, a grandmother confronts the legacy of the draft letters she delivered as a girl during World War II. Facing the loss of his job, a father becomes the caricature strangers have always believed him to be. A graduate student living far from home is worn down by the reality of what it takes to save even a small piece of the world. Along the way, we meet communist revolutionary Shigenobu Fusako hiding out in a Tokyo hotel, submariner and war criminal Nishina Sekio in his tortured dreams, and Edwin, a half-dolphin friend, wreaking havoc in a public pool. Written in the compressed style of Amy Hempel and Lucia Berlin, these stories examine characters whose struggles submerge them, weighing them down from every angle, until they can finally float free.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author's brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens'across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author? The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.Within these ten stories our authors including Edgar Allan Poe, H G Wells, Guy de Maupassant and a host of others demonstrate the power and the motivation that revenge demands. Yes, the pen is mightier and more brutal than the sword.01 - The Top 10 - Revenge - An Introduction02 - Bernice Bobs Her Hair by F Scott Fitzgerald03 - The Cone by H G Wells04 - The Hand by Guy de Maupassant05 - The Cask of Amontillardo by Edgar Allan Poe06 - The Signal by Vsevolod Garshin07 - The Caballero's Way by O Henry08 - The Cold Embrace by Mary Elizabeth Braddon09 - The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky by Stephen Crane10 - The Scapegoat by Paul Laurence Dunbar11 - A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell

For the first time on Earth a human child had been born who could summon us! He was eight years old now, but wise beyond his years and he had summoned us deliberately across space. He had sat, hunched and shivering, in his own small room, staring up at the far-flung constellations. Then, abruptly, he had thrown out his arms and called to us.

From “master of language” (The New York Times) John Edgar Wideman, a reissue of the revered trilogy that launched his career—two novels and story collection all set in Wideman's own hometown.Damballah, Hiding Place, and Sent for You Yesterday provide a stunning introduction to the uncompromising work of John Edgar Wideman, whose literary achievements have inspired The New York Times to name him “one of America's premier writers of fiction.” Damballah's narratives examine the vexed history of Homewood, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania neighborhood whose origins are rooted in a time when slavery was still legal in the United States of America. The novels Hiding Place and Sent for You Yesterday personalize and interrogate that history's presence in the contemporary lives of Homewood people and all Americans. Deeply concerned that designations such as “economically oppressed” or “Black” continue to dismiss and marginalize rather than embrace communities like the one in which he was raised, John Edgar Wideman—employing words on the page as his weapon—has dedicated himself to recording the weight, beauty, complexity, and justice that he believes Homewood's voices, stories, and lives have earned and deserve. In 1983, The Homewood Trilogy signaled the arrival of a major voice in American literature. Forty years later, this edition of the Trilogy celebrates Wideman's ongoing contribution by offering these masterworks to a new generation of readers.

Zero-sum games are played for lethal stakes in these arresting stories by one of America's most acclaimed writers, the award-winning, best-selling author of BlondeA brilliant young philosophy student bent on seducing her famous philosopher-mentor finds herself outmaneuvered; diabolically clever high school girls wreak a particularly apt sort of vengeance on sexual predators in their community; a woman stalked by a would-be killer may be confiding in the wrong former lover; a young woman is morbidly obsessed by her unfamiliar new role as “mother.” In the collection's longest story, a much-praised cutting-edge writer cruelly experiments with “drafts” of his own suicide.In these powerfully wrought stories that hold a mirror up to our time, Joyce Carol Oates has created a world of erotic obsession, thwarted idealism, and ever-shifting identities. Provocative and stunning, Zero-Sum reinforces Oates's standing as a literary treasure and an artist of the mysterious interior life.

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.

This carefully crafted ebook:'The Complete Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated)'is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Excerpts:'I am afraid this ghost story will bear a very faded aspect when transferred to paper. Whatever effect it had on you, or whatever charm it retains in your memory, is, perhaps, to be attributed to the favorable circumstances under which it was originally told.'(The Ghost of Doctor Harris) American novelist and short story writer Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) published his first work, a novel titled Fanshawe, in 1828; he later tried to suppress it, feeling it was not equal to the standard of his later work. He published several short stories in various periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales. Much of Hawthorne's writing centres on New England, many works featuring moral allegories with a Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered to be part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, Dark romanticism. His themes often centre on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity. Table of Contents: Biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne Collections of Short Stories: Twice-Told Tales (1837) Grandfather's Chair (1840) Biographical Stories Mosses from an Old Manse (1846) Wonder Book For Girls and Boys (1851) The Snow Image and Other Twice Told Tales (1852) Tanglewood Tales For Girls and Boys (1853) The Dolliver Romance and Other Pieces, Tales and Sketches (1864) The Story Teller Sketches in Magazines

This carefully crafted ebook:'The Popular Girl and 3 other stories'is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. A wonderfully written collection of'Girl meets Boy'short stories. From this collection, our favourite is definitely'The Popular Girl': it tells the story of Yanci, a beautiful Southern girl who realizes she is alone after her father dies. She decides to go after a man named Scott, who is well off and would do anything to have her... Fitzgerald's beautifully drawn exploration of the interdependency of love and money captures in perfect detail the concerns that pervade so many of his stories. Content: Myra Meets his Family The Smilers The Popular Girl Two for A Cent Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896–1940) was an American novelist and short-story writer. He is ranked among the great American writers of the 20th cent. Fitzgerald is widely considered the literary spokesman of the'jazz age'—the decade of the 1920s. Part of the interest of his work derives from the fact that the mad, gin-drinking, morally and spiritually bankrupt men and women he wrote about led lives that closely resembled his own.

The Leigh Brackett Science Fiction MEGAPACK® presents 13 classic science fiction works -- 2 novels and 13 shorter stories -- by an acclaimed master of the genre, dubbed the'Queen of Space Opera'by her legion of fans. Included in this volume are: THE STELLAR LEGIONA WORLD IS BORNTHE DRAGON-QUEEN OF JUPITEROUTPOST ON IOTHRALLS OF THE ENDLESS NIGHTCITADEL OF LOST SHIPSTHE BLUE BEHEMOTHTERROR OUT OF SPACETHE JEWEL OF BASTHE VANISHING VENUSIANSBLACK AMAZON OF MARSTHE STARMENLAST CALL FOR SECTOR 9G If you enjoy this ebook, check out the hundreds of others in the MEGAPACK® series, covering science fiction, fantasy, horror, mysteries, westerns, and much, much more. Search your favorite ebook store for'Wildside Press Megapack'to see available titles.

Art and life. Each the mirror of the other. This then is the classic definition of what ‘Realism'as a writing form really is. Some might call it a fancy term for the mundane day to day pursuits but in the hands of an author it comes alive. We are drawn into characters and landscapes that we can empathize with, we can, metaphorically speaking, help shoulder their burden, be on the long trail with them whatever the landscapes, the hurdles, incidents and other people may place in their literary way. In this volume such luminaries as Jack London, Kate Chopin, O Henry, Bret Harte and many others bring their talents to this remarkable volume.Genius has many names.

This award-winning short story collection brings us moments of tenuousness, in which characters seek out or struggle to hold on to what's most precious in the face of change and loss.The stories take us from suburban New Jersey to prewar Vienna to Western Oregon, chronicling the lives of, among others, a suburban teenage boy taking revenge with a stolen Revolutionary War bayonet; a woman adrift, literally and figuratively, amid a workplace affair; a nearly forgotten and destitute musician attempting to reclaim his creative spark; and a young Mark Rothko finding his way after several early failures.While It Lasts speaks to how we are all bound by limited time to achieve what we must despite our own knowledge of how everything is fleeting.

“A powerful and provocative debut collection” (The New York Times Book Review) by “a startling talent who can seemingly do anything” (Anthony Marra) that explores the lives of ordinary people in Turkey to reveal how even individual acts of resistance have extraordinary repercussions.“I Am My Country employs many different literary styles and voices to dazzling effect.”—The AtlanticFINALIST FOR THE PEN/ROBERT W. BINGHAM PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE STORY PRIZE • AN ELECTRIC LIT AND LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Spanning decades and landscapes, from the forests along the Black Sea to the streets of Istanbul, Kenan Orhan's ​playful stories ​conjure dreamlike worlds—of talking animals, flying houses, and omniscient prayer-callers—to ​examine humanity's unfaltering pursuit of hope in even the darkest circumstances.A determined florist trains a neighborhood stray dog to blow up a corrupt president. A garbage collector finds banned instruments—and later, musicians—in the trash and takes them home to form a clandestine orchestra in her attic. A smuggler risks his life to bring a young woman claiming to be pregnant via immaculate conception across the border with Syria. A poor cage-maker tries to use his ability to talk to birds to woo his childhood love just before the 1955 Istanbul pogrom. These characters are united by a desperate yearning to break free from the volatile realities they face: rising authoritarianism, cultural and political turmoil, and staggering violence.Ranging from the absurd to the tenderhearted, the stories in I Am My Country illuminate the constant force amid one country's history of rampant oppression and revolutionary progress: the impulse to survive.

Amazing Stories Volume 149 is a great collection of action short stories from'The Golden Age of Science Fiction'. Featured here are three short stories by two different authors:'And The Gods Laughed'by Frederic Brown,'The Cosmic Express', and'The Pygmy Planet', both stories by Jack Williamson.

Nine short stories, set in various locales (the U.S., Monte Carlo, Switzerland...) and with various sets of characters, but all showing Louis Bromfield's creative powers and unobtrusively excellent style of writing.

Between the years of 1886 and 1939, the world saw the first automobiles, rapid urbanization, the decay of empires, vast economic inequality, the first airplanes and the terrifying secrets of the atom. It was a time of cataclysmic cultural and technological transformation, and spawned the rise of the literary genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror. This work assembles gems of late nineteenth and early twentieth century genre literature, including stories by such literary giants as H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, A. Merritt and E. M. Forster, as well as smaller authors like Clare Winger Harris, Marie Corelli, William Hope Hodgson and others. An array of incisive nonfiction pieces on cultural and scientific advances of the time period provides a context for the anthology's stories.

Amazing Stories Volume 140 is a great collection of action short stories from'The Golden Age of Science Fiction'. Featured here are three short stories by different authors:'Ahead of His Time'by Ray Cummings, and two stories by William Tenn,'The Ionian Cycle'and'Consulate'.

A mother struggles with what it means to be Chicana as she searches for her son at a powwow. A delivery driver has a fateful encounter with a voracious customer at the end of the world. A grieving father learns the true identity of the hummingbird that hovers outside his kitchen window. A Mexican cowboy— who might or might not be the Messiah— orders a pepperoni pizza on a Friday night. And a troubled young man develops an unexpected bond with his neighbor's racist yard ornament. In his debut collection, Tomá s Hulick Baiza explores the poetic and mythic spaces between light and dark, where Aztec gods and more contemporary obsessions fight for dominance. With characters who jump off the page, A Purpose to Our Savagery takes readers on a journey through tragi-comic, hallucinatory, and even nightmarish landscapes where he exalts the resilience of outsiders in a world inclined to leave them behind. In the end, Baiza's stories highlight the extraordinary and mundane challenges that we overcome to make it to the next day.

Come along on this beautiful adventure called life and celebrate its various hues and colors. In this meticulously prepared collection, we have brought to you the most beloved Thanksgiving classics: Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen (O. Henry) The Purple Dress (O. Henry) Three Thanksgivings (Charlotte Perkins Gilman) An English Dinner of Thanksgiving (George Eliot) An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving (Louisa May Alcott) Aunt Susanna's Thanksgiving Dinner (Lucy Maud Montgomery) The Genesis of the Doughnut Club (Lucy Maud Montgomery) Ezra's Thanksgivin'Out West (Eugene Field) Helen's Thanksgiving (Susan Coolidge) John Inglefield's Thanksgiving (Nathaniel Hawthorne) Thanksgiving at the Polls (Edward Everett Hale) Millionaire Mike's Thanksgiving (Eleanor H. Porter) The Thanksgiving of the Wazir (Andrew Lang) The Master of the Harvest (Mrs. Alfred Gatty) A Wolfville Thanksgiving (Alfred Henry Lewis) How We Kept Thanksgiving at Oldtown (Harriet Beecher Stowe) The Thanksgiving Party and its Consequences (Mary Jane Holmes) The Night before Thanksgiving (Sarah Orne Jewett) Miss Heck's Thanksgiving Party (Ida Hamilton Munsell)

Amazing Stories Volume 148 is a great collection of action short stories from'The Golden Age of Science Fiction'. Featured here are five short stories by three different authors:'Dead World'by Jack Douglas,'Bimmie Says','Pollony Undiverted','Shatter The Wall'all three by Sydney J. Van Scyoc, and'A Fall Of Glass'by Stanley R. Lee.

Amazing Stories Volume 147 is a great collection of action short stories from'The Golden Age of Science Fiction'. Featured here are four short stories by three different authors:'Imitation of Death'and'And there was Light'by Lester Del Rey,'Call Him Savage'by Howard Browne, and'License To Steal'by Louis Newman.

Excerpt: “That night, the sounds that came from the metal stamping plant of Weedham Industries, Incorporated, might have been prophetic of the immediate and ugly future, for they were like the rattle of machine guns. But Joseph, the keeper of the south gate, was blissfully ignorant of a Thompson gun and its deadly chatter so that he drew no such comparison. His only worry at the time lay in the dark sky above and the blue-white stabs of lightning that promised an electrical storm. He hated storms. Probably he hated the idea of being murdered or would have if it ever occurred to him. But then he didn't know that he was going to be murdered, and he did know it was going to storm. The thunder was the tocsin of the storm, but those who came to rob and kill moved unheralded in swift silence. The night shift had clocked in over an hour ago, and there should be no passing through the gate for at least six hours. Joseph tilted his chair back against the steel fence and kindled his cob pipe. The air was hot and still, so that blobs of pipe smoke clung like earth-bound ghosts about him. In spite of the impending storm, Joseph was happy. In his mind was a kindly thought for William'Old Bill'Weedham, principal owner of Weedham Industries. That was because of the bonus Joseph was anticipating. Within the next twenty-four hours, Joseph knew, seventy-five thousand dollars would be distributed as cash bonuses to the employees of the metal stamping division. Joseph had mentally spent his tiny fraction of the money a dozen times or more. He did a lot of dreaming, Joseph did. But about pleasant things. He had never dreamed of those who rob and kill.'

Amazing Stories Volume 142 is a great collection of action short stories from'The Golden Age of Science Fiction'. Featured here are three short stories by different authors:'The Trans-Galactic Twins'by George O. Smith,'Moon Dust'by Oliver Saari and one story by Frank Bill Venable,'Theft'.