Imaginary Boyfriends
" Midtown Manhattan was like a stifling greenhouse filled with exotic human orchids that couldn't survive anywhere else and its streets were littered with their broken blossoms. Adele, bless her heart, was one of them." In his first collection, Imaginary Boyfriends, Manuel Igrejas spins eight tales of love, loss, sex, fantasy, and delusion, where characters who think they're clever often do foolish things.
Planet Earth
International-award-winning stories of life and love in the midst of planetary decline. In Planet Earth, Nicholas Ruddock moves nimbly through a range of styles--from conventional to flash-fiction to his unique mastery of the long sentence--in stories exploring themes of love and passion, all with an awareness of our species-specific carelessness burning up the world. This collection showcases a gifted writer at the top of his game, each story fresh and unexpected: the time Mario Vargas Llosa sucker-punched Gabriel Garc穩a M獺rquez at a theatre in Mexico City inspires a young Marxist couple's violent act of revenge in Toronto years later; an anxious young man finds solace in the employ of Prince, the musician; we get a haunting glimpse of Toronto's polio epidemic at its peak in 1953; a young Canadian student bears witness to the Algerian protests and police violence in 1961 Paris; a pair of na簿ve young women find themselves involved with a mysterious circus troupe in Nice. These provocative but contemplative stories are paradoxically positive and quick-witted, with a humorous fondness for humans and all our failings.
Christmas Stories from Mississippi
How do you create Christmas spirit when the temperature refuses to dip below fifty degrees or when snow is a miracle that vanishes at sunrise? Held together by bonds of family, soil, and history, Mississippians share a peculiar yuletide experience in the Deep South. To capture the state's unique holiday glow, Christmas Stories from Mississippi packages writings by such greats as Eudora Welty, Willie Morris, Elizabeth Spencer, Clifton Taulbert, Barry Hannah, William Faulkner, Ellen Gilchrist, and many other Mississippi writers. Illustrated by one of Mississippi's best-known artists, Wyatt Waters, these seventeen short stories and essays reveal the wonders and sorrows of Christmastime and the special poignancy of childhood memories. With Waters's touch, the book makes the perfect gift for literary readers and anyone who relishes life in Mississippi. Christmas Stories from Mississippi opens with Welty's classic, "A Worn Path," and closes with Morris's personal reflection, "Christmases Gone, Revisited." Between the writings of these two Mississippi literary giants are stories, memoirs, essays, and excerpts such as Spencer's "Presents," Gilchrist's "Surviving the Holiday Season," an excerpt from Faulkner's Light in August, Hannah's "Sermon with Meath," and Taulbert's "Quilts: Kiver for My Children." The many storytellers and many perspectives in Christmas Stories from Mississippi share southern experiences in which families create their own entertainment, relish and break traditions, and celebrate a season in ways no other region's families can.
The Earth Room
The Earth Room transports us from the forests of Appalachia to the Sonoran Desert to the glaciers of Iceland, all while exploring the mysteries of what it means to be alive. In one story, a woman transforms her boyfriend into a salamander. In another, a group of women are drawn together by a support group for the partners of vampires and werewolves. Inhabiting this haunting and fantastical collection are secret tunnels, magical doorways, modern witches, a mother who gives birth to a ghost, a town full of doubles, a sanctuary for potbelly pigs, and a daughter who never grows up. The Earth Room offers a thrilling, fabulist journey through the natural world, superstition, motherhood, and loss.
The Church of Divine Electricity
Delightfully blending literary fiction with speculative genres, the stories in The Church of Divine Electricity somehow manage to feel as though they could take place today. In Emily Mitchell's created worlds, as in our own, technology bewitches, especially with its ability to heighten both connections and isolation. Whether being held by a giant and comforting machine, allowing micro-drones to record one's every moment for a year to win prize money, or choosing self-mutilation in exchange for a bionic hand, these characters navigate technological and social change. The familiar can turn unrecognizable and disorienting--sometimes in a flash, sometimes gradually. Lyrical, haunting, and often funny, these stories ask us to consider what--and who--gets left out of a seemingly utopian future of technological advancements. Finely observed, thoughtful, and vivid, Mitchell's stories get under your skin. It's not that the best-laid plans could lead us astray--it's that they may already have.
Mind the Gap
Mind the Gap is the beautifully crafted second short story collection from award-winning writer Alice Zorn. With an uncompromising lyric voice, Zorn travels through Mexico, Morocco, Texas, England, Austria, Tunisia, and northeastern Quebec in these seven short stories and one novella, each following a compelling narrator on a quest -- to find someone who does not wish to be found, to discover the truth behind family secrets, to expiate guilt, to make new bonds, to realize a dream. Away from home, facing a new mirror, characters leave selves behind and discover new selves. Alice Zorn shines once again in this exploration of friendship, love, art, work, gender, and cultural identity in this spectacular collection of travel fiction.
A Wooded Shore
From the award-winning "master of the short story" (The New York Times Book Review)--nine shattering, hilarious tales of men on the outskirts of America, habituating the motels, hot dog stands, and dive bars time forgot, grappling with a world that is swiftly changing, and dreaming of a return to the wooded shores of their youth In these nine peerless stories, a family boating trip veers into emotional disaster while very narrowly avoiding the physical; a would-be cheater hands over his car--his prized possession--for a shot with a pretty girl; a furniture magnate and his filmmaker daughter visit his impoverished hometown; a doctor's long-ago affair returns with a bitter pill. Crackling with wry humor, shot through with both wisdom and pain, these are stories of grifters and dreamers, of the lovelorn and the lawless, stories of the ongoing dissonance between the lives we want and the lives this world will allow.
Playing the Symphony of the Impossible Peace
Playing the Symphony of the Impossible Peace is a searing collection of very short stories that dissects the anatomy of modern global existence. Author Ahmed Mostafa Ahmed wields the pen like a surgical knife, exposing the hypocrisy of political systems, the crippling weight of bureaucracy, and the absurdities of a world addicted to silence in the face of injustice. From a father's terrifying realization about a meager raise to a lawyer proposing a cinematic solution to corruption, each story is a powerful, fleeting echo of the impossible peace we strive to achieve. Prepare for reality, condensed-where a vote on democracy can lead to abandonment, and the most profound truths are found in the most concise moments.
A Shadow of Love (The Discreet Edition)
Some loves save you. Some loves destroy you. Some loves do both.From fleeting encounters under city lights to passions born in blood and rain, this collection explores what it means to love in the shadows-when tenderness collides with danger, when devotion blurs into obsession, when survival demands surrender and defiance.A boy made of starlight who disappears like smoke.A gangster whose devotion can only be written in secret poems.A scarred stranger who becomes both captor and salvation.An assassin who learns the language of flowers in a gardener's hands.A childhood friend who burns brighter than the fire that hunts him.A master who lingers like mist long after his last kiss.Dark, haunting, and achingly intimate, these six love stories are not promises, but possibilities. These are tales where the heart is both weapon and wound...where even in the darkest corners, love still dares to bloom.This is the discreet edition of the short story collection 'A Shadow of Love.' Warnings for mature content. Please read content notes. Recommended for readers 18 years old and above.
Thin Places
A finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award, Thin Places is a gothic and atmospheric collection from the national bestselling author of The Bog Wife. This beautiful reissue includes four additional stories. A not-quite-human proprietor menaces guests at a hotel on the edge of a swamp. A composer visits a remote Slavic village where villagers perform soundless songs that accompany violent sacrifices. Four reclusive women conjour children out of unconventional materials in an unnerving mansion. The arrival of a lighthouse-keeper's daughter portends disaster for an insular island community with bizarre traditions. With transcendent prose that celebrates her hypnotic and humane vision of the strange and supernatural, Kay Chronister weaves a dark tapestry of love, grief, death, and the exquisite pain and joy of life on the periphery of the familiar. The fifteen stories collected here, chronicle the lives of powerful women and children, wicked witches and demons, cursed artists and overlooked communities. Thin Places is a perfect companion to Chronister's national bestselling novel The Bog Wife and ideally suited for readers of Shirley Jackson and Carmen Maria Machado.
Always One Mistake
A cow falls through the roof of a bar, landing on a criminal struggling with his bad choices. A recovering gambler wins and wrecks a car on the same day. A mysterious woman transforms toys and oddities into higher powers for newcomers at a twelve-step program. In a fit of road rage, an angry driver mistakenly flips off a cop. A broken man finds a curious companion while attending the reunion show of the favorite heavy-metal band from his youth. These are the strange stories of the all-too-real world of Always One Mistake. Here, author Ace Boggess shows humanity at its bleakest, but also its most hopeful. These stories are explorations of what it means to live in modern times-- times filled with addiction, crime, loss, and overcoming.
Winter Delights
The Holidays bring stress, comfort, mystery, and, in the end, ginger-flavored joy.Boxing Day at Wentworth Manor brings joy and celebration. But a cruel crime threatens to ruin the party.A Christmas parade, a mug full of comfort, and a special new friend help a mother learn how to better show her love.Walt knows y'all think Santa Claus ain't real. One snowy Christmas Eve, Walt learns better.The Christmas season hits hard for some people. Yet it sometimes also brings hope for recovery and renewal.Stuart's Stop 'N Shop, always open, even for Christmas. Then the holiday spirit surprises Stuart, Bobby, and Pete.When the Santa Train fails to make the trip, one special person makes all the difference for a grateful town.When the magic of Old Christmas makes an appearance, the magic of music turns sadness to joy.If there's one thing entrepreneur Tina Braddock knows, it's that a good salesperson rolls with the unexpected. Even when the unexpected only stands four inches tall.Carrie faces Christmas in a new city, far from those who refuse to see her. Then she finds a true family to join for the celebration.Ellie faces unwelcome changes in her life, threatening her Christmas spirit. Only Deke, Miss Pebbles, and a pan of Grammy's gingerbread promise a joyful new start.
Late Rehearsals
A collection of self-contained chapters exploring human imperfections, life, and death through humor and raw introspection, perfect for readers who enjoy character-driven, literary fiction. The characters in Dominic Hoffman's tales of Late Rehearsals are familiar. Their choices are recognizable, and the people are far from perfect. Humor is a constant. However, their most significant commonality is the sense that every day is a rehearsal for the next. In this compilation of narratives, contemporary fables and intimate accounts, we travel cultures and cities, contemplate life and death to discover that our lives can be justified, vilified or distanced by the simple act of viewing the lives of others. The individuals in these stories walk their own paths, and their Late Rehearsals will continue into the inevitable closing night.
Winter Delights
The Holidays bring stress, comfort, mystery, and, in the end, ginger-flavored joy.Boxing Day at Wentworth Manor brings joy and celebration. But a cruel crime threatens to ruin the party.A Christmas parade, a mug full of comfort, and a special new friend help a mother learn how to better show her love.Walt knows y'all think Santa Claus ain't real. One snowy Christmas Eve, Walt learns better.The Christmas season hits hard for some people. Yet it sometimes also brings hope for recovery and renewal.Stuart's Stop 'N Shop, always open, even for Christmas. Then the holiday spirit surprises Stuart, Bobby, and Pete.When the Santa Train fails to make the trip, one special person makes all the difference for a grateful town.When the magic of Old Christmas makes an appearance, the magic of music turns sadness to joy.If there's one thing entrepreneur Tina Braddock knows, it's that a good salesperson rolls with the unexpected. Even when the unexpected only stands four inches tall.Carrie faces Christmas in a new city, far from those who refuse to see her. Then she finds a true family to join for the celebration.Ellie faces unwelcome changes in her life, threatening her Christmas spirit. Only Deke, Miss Pebbles, and a pan of Grammy's gingerbread promise a joyful new start.
Winter Delights
The Holidays bring stress, comfort, mystery, and, in the end, ginger-flavored joy.Boxing Day at Wentworth Manor brings joy and celebration. But a cruel crime threatens to ruin the party.A Christmas parade, a mug full of comfort, and a special new friend help a mother learn how to better show her love.Walt knows y'all think Santa Claus ain't real. One snowy Christmas Eve, Walt learns better.The Christmas season hits hard for some people. Yet it sometimes also brings hope for recovery and renewal.Stuart's Stop 'N Shop, always open, even for Christmas. Then the holiday spirit surprises Stuart, Bobby, and Pete.When the Santa Train fails to make the trip, one special person makes all the difference for a grateful town.When the magic of Old Christmas makes an appearance, the magic of music turns sadness to joy.If there's one thing entrepreneur Tina Braddock knows, it's that a good salesperson rolls with the unexpected. Even when the unexpected only stands four inches tall.Carrie faces Christmas in a new city, far from those who refuse to see her. Then she finds a true family to join for the celebration.Ellie faces unwelcome changes in her life, threatening her Christmas spirit. Only Deke, Miss Pebbles, and a pan of Grammy's gingerbread promise a joyful new start.
One Way and Other Stories
Miriam Allen deFord (1888-1975) was a feminist, a suffragette, birth control advocate, journalist, editor, winner of the Mystery Writer's of America's Edgar Award, and author of science fiction, mystery, and true crime. Now, at long last, a collection of her science fiction short stories are back in print with One Way & Other Stories.-Mystery writer, Fortean, anti-fascist, feminist of the first generation, and science fiction trailblazer for five decades, Miriam Allen deFord masterfully weaves all of her facets into her stories, bringing a macabre, fantastic tone to her tales: Bradbury meets Hitchcock. She was already the grand dame of science fiction when the genre reached its second peak with the magazine boom of the early '50s. Her work thus paved and led the way for SF's Silver Age.Miriam Allen deFord somehow slips under the radar when SF luminaries are listed. With luck, this volume will remedy this oversight. Gideon Marcus, editor of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women
Epiphany and More
Epiphany and More gathers 13 new short stories by Alex Darkfell. Folklore-rooted, modern twists and raw emotional undercurrent including Cornish, Norse and Japanese myth re-imagined"Epiphany" - She was sold by her mother, mocked by servants and when betrayal came, she burned the world down."Dance of the Raven" - A hiker meets the trickster."Touchwood" - Inheritance, a locked attic and a hungry succubus."Of Ivy and Teeth" - Two schoolgirls step into a forest clearing in search of the Green Bride, how many will walk out?And more!
