The Accidentals
From the International Booker Shortlisted author of Still Born, a powerful collection of stories about characters coping with estrangement, isolation, and the unknown. Acclaimed for her piercing insights and razor-sharp prose, award winning author Guadalupe Nettel introduces us to eight characters who are each in their own way lost and wandering, struggling to connect with the people around them. In "Imprinting," Nettel shows us a young woman finding an unexpected affinity with an estranged uncle, whose exile from the family is too deep a secret for his niece to know. She introduces us, in "Life Elsewhere," to a frustrated actor who begins, without realizing it, to take over the life and house of a more successful former colleague. And in "The Torpor," we meet a woman who lives with her children in a dying world where it is better to be asleep than awake. With her signature bold, stark style of writing that makes her work "a revelation" (Katie Kitamura, author of INTIMACIES), this stunning collection interrogates humanity's struggle to communicate and reveals the universal longing for connection.
The Situe Stories
The Situe, or Arab grandmother, moves in and out of this collection of eleven short stories, forming an irresistible drama of an extended Arab family in twentieth-century America. Frances Khirallah Noble's deft and accomplished tales draw her experiences and the stories told by grandmothers, aunts, and other female relatives. Each story is complete in itself, but read together they fuse to form a powerful whole. Khirallah Noble writes of immigrants tom between two cultures, the lure of capitalist success versus the cost of assimilation, marital and parental tensions, youth and age, innovation and tradition. Chronologically arranged and covering much of the twentieth century, the book begins with Hasna Elias's immigration to America from what is now Syria and Lebanon, and ends in the present, where the situe lives in a Southern California home for the elderly. Containing elements of magic and stoicism, the stories present textured characters rich in independence, creativity, and initiative. As the stories move forward in time from the Old World to the new, Frances Khirallah Noble's style shifts subtly from folk tale to contemporary fiction. The Situe Stories gracefully captures the integration of Christian Arab women into American culture.
The Secret Lives of OFWs
What does a Mananangal (Viscera Sucker) in Riyadh, A Mambabarang (Witch) in Dubai, and an Oryol (Water Nymph) in Hong Kong have in common? In this collection of short stories, they are all Filipino migrant workers struggling to survive the challenges of the OFW experience. These are stories of love and resilience. Of enduring against the monstrosity of abuse, assault, isolation, and fractured family dynamics. A speculative exploration that answers the question; What would happen if mythic Philippine supernatural creatures were forced confront the horrors of the OFW life?
I Could Be Famous
Named a Best Book of the Year by Vogue. Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by Debutiful."A terrific debut: fresh, original, and surprising." --George Saunders, Booker-Prize winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo From a magnetic new voice in fiction "made for this moment and for those coming of age within it" (Jonathan Dee), a debut story collection following ten ambitious women and one male superstar as they pursue their desires--however deluded--for more. A listless woman befriends an influencer at a rooftop party, only to discover her lifestyle is not as glamorous as it seems. A college freshman gives the world's longest blow job to a boy whose name she's forgotten. A fan-favorite reality TV star joins a dating app after an explosive breakup, ready to move on, but finds she's in control only when cameras are rolling. While working in a hot tub showroom, a struggling actress goes method so she can nail an audition for the role of High School Junkie Girlfriend. Threaded throughout these explorations of neuroses and aspirations is one Arlo Banks, a hotshot actor who faces his own downfall when he's accused of cannibalism. From the dazzling to the mundane, Rende's unnervingly astute stories hold a mirror to our obsession with how we're perceived and our ache to be adored. Above all else, I Could Be Famous is a love letter to big ambitions and bigger dissatisfactions, belief in ourselves, and the fascination we hold with the idea that we could--somehow, someday--be famous.
Hell is Other People
Between black market organ trading, sentient rain, and cannibal romance, this collection delivers ten gory horror tales. The collection is split into three sections and grapples with how other people can fail us through lies, deceit, and possession. The ways that other people are incomparable in their cruelty. The ways they can lead us to our deaths. This collection, featuring reworked versions of previously published short stories and original material, amalgamates David-Jack Fletcher's writing journey. It explores the primary theme that people, not demons, monsters, or ancient worm gods, are the cause of evil-the arbiters of our impending doom. The monsters, well, they're just a happy coincidence.
Atavists
The word atavism, coined by a botanist and popularized by a criminologist, refers to the resurfacing of a primitive evolutionary trait or urge in a modern being. This inventive collection from Lydia Millet offers overlapping tales of urges ranging from rage to jealousy to yearning--a fluent triumph of storytelling, rich in ideas and emotions both petty and grand.The titular atavists include an underachieving, bewildered young bartender; a middle-aged mother convinced her gentle son-in-law is fixated on geriatric porn; a bodybuilder with an incel's fantasy life; an arrogant academic accused of plagiarism; and an empty-nester dad determined to host refugees in a tiny house in his backyard.As they pick away at the splitting seams in American culture, Millet's characters shimmer with the sense of powerlessness we share in an era of mass overwhelm. A beautician in a waxing salon faces a sudden resurgence of grief in the midst of a bikini Brazilian; a couple sets up a camera to find out who's been slipping homophobic letters into their mailbox; a jilted urban planner stalks a man she met on a dating app.In its rich warp and weft of humiliations and human error, Atavists returns to the trenchant, playful social commentary that made A Children's Bible a runaway hit. In these stories sharp observations of middle-class mores and sanctimony give way to moments of raw exposure and longing: Atavists performs an uncanny fictional magic, full of revelation but also hilarious, unpretentious, and warm.
Exit Zero
Twelve delightfully strange, haunting stories from the acclaimed, oracular author of Beautyland. Death-shaped entities--with all of their humor and strangeness-- haunt the twelve stories in Exit Zero. Vampires, ghost girls, fathers, blank spaces, day-old peaches, and famous paintings all pierce through their world into ours, reminding us to pay attention! and look alive! and offering many other flashes of wisdom from the oracle and author of Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino.
Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare
USA Today BestsellerA Debutiful "Best Debuts of the Year""Rich and wise, humming with confidence." -New York Times Book Review"A knockout. Eleven knockouts. One KO for every story."-Elizabeth McCracken"Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare is a frontrunner for Book of the Year." -Debutiful Megan Kamalei Kakimoto's wrenching and sensational debut story collection presents a Hawai'i where unruly sexuality and generational memory overflow the postcard image of paradise and the boundaries of the real, where the superstitions born of the islands take on the weight of truth. A childhood encounter with a wild pua'a (pig) on the haunted Pali highway portends one young woman's fraught relationship with her pregnant body. An elderly widow begins seeing her deceased lover in a giant flower. A kanaka writer, mid-manuscript, feels her raw pages quaking and knocking in the briefcase. Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare is both a fierce love letter to Hawaiian identity and mythology, and a searing dispatch from an occupied territory threatening to erupt with violent secrets.
The Age of Calamities
Written by an inimitable new voice, The Age of Calamities is a genre-defying, mind-bending collection of absurdist, funny, and speculative short stories. In this bold debut collection, Senaa Ahmad pushes the boundaries of history and its figures, sending the reader on a thrilling ride. In "Let's Play Dead," Henry VIII wants Anne Boleyn gone, but there's a tiny problem--she keeps coming back to life no matter what he does. "Choose Your Own Apocalypse" hurls readers back to 1945, where they assume the role of a technician for the Manhattan Project, confronted with labyrinthine paths and harrowing outcomes. And "Inside the House of the Historian" invites us to a dinner party turned murder mystery full of figures like Nefertiti, Queen Victoria, John Adams, and Marilyn Monroe. These stories and others entice readers to confront the past, the present, and themselves all at once. Zany and haunting, inviting and brilliant, each poignant tale delves into the surreal and tragicomic nature of the present through the lens of yesterday. The Age of Calamities is an evocation of life and death on history's unsteady margins, of how to reckon with the blunt-force trauma of ill-fated times. Fiercely clever and wildly inventive, this debut establishes Senaa Ahmad as a literary force.
Save Me, Stranger
From EDGAR-AWARD WINNING author Erika Krouse, a VISCERAL, DAZZLING collection of stories set across the globe about characters desperate for salvation"Far-ranging and visionary collection...A dozen little masterpieces of heart and longing and surprise." --ADAM JOHNSON"Save Me, Stranger is a book of parables--supernal and sinister. Disturbing but comforting. Read these stories with a buddy, because someone will have to scrape you off the floor." --LOUISE ERDRICHErika Krouse's debut memoir, Tell Me Everything, was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "lyrical, jarring, propulsive," and the Washington Post as "mesmerizing on every page." Now, with an electrifying new collection of stories, Save Me, Stranger, she further cements her reputation as an essential voice. From the coldest town on earth to a sex shop in Bangkok to a haunted bed-and-breakfast in the Rockies, we meet characters at hinge moments. A runaway fights for her future while driving an ice-cream truck in gang territory; a cleaning woman investigates the teenager who died in her stead; a terminal patient in Alaska discovers new life in helping others die. This collection explores the borderlands between humor and hurt, community and self, and hope and despair, redefining what it means to survive. Scalpel-sharp, unsparingly funny, and achingly wise, Krouse's expansive stories build to unforgettable emotional catharses, as these men and women must decide how far they are willing to go to save one another--and themselves.
Lucky Tomorrow
Lives of longing and resilience, searching and belonging in a debut story collection from a memoirist and renowned advocate for change For a Lucky Tomorrow Buy a Flower Today. Is it true? a prospective customer asks. About the luck? "Absolutely!" Felma says. Flowers, she knows, are all that's anchored in this world, even if not for long, and like others in these luminous stories, Felma knows what it is to be rootless. In Lucky Tomorrow, Deborah Jiang-Stein presents an unforgettable cast of characters dreaming of redemption, purpose, and connection in a wounded yet beautiful world. A young girl stuck working at her family's candy stand. A former priest trapped on a crowded train. A prisoner robbed of the book she's been writing. A father haunted by his broken family. A woman confined to a psych ward. A reverend caring for her dying housemate. And Felma, a flower vendor, searching for the daughter she gave birth to while in prison, who was swiftly bundled away. Felma's story leads us in, through, and around the others--a central beating heart for these lives on the fringes, where Jiang-Stein finds a singular, tenacious humanity. The stories in Lucky Tomorrow move through settings drawn from the path of the author's own life: Seattle, where she grew up after being born in an Appalachian prison; Tokyo, where she once lived; the Twin Cities, where she currently resides; and the American South, where she travels for much of her advocacy work with women in prison. Pushing the boundaries of genre, Jiang-Stein delicately layers the stories of these outcasts, eccentrics, and visionaries, gathering them in from the shadows with remarkable empathy and candor, laying bare our shared sorrows and joys.
Hellions
Finalist for the Southern Book Prize "I am obsessed with these lush, feral stories."―Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties "Beautiful, visceral, surprising stories, both wild and dangerous, with a Southern twang but universal appeal. Elliott is an Angela Carter for our times."―Jeff VanderMeer, author of Absolution A TIME Best Book of the Month From the acclaimed author of The Wilds comes an electric story collection that blends folklore, fairy tales, Southern Gothic, and horror, reveling in the collision of the familiar with the wildly surreal. In a plague-stricken medieval convent, a nun works on a forbidden mystic manuscript, pining for Christ's love. During a long, muggy July in rural South Carolina, an adolescent girl finds unexpected power as her family obsesses over the horror film The Exorcist. On the outskirts of a Southern college town, a young woman resists the tyranny of a shape-shifting older professor as she develops her own sorceress skills. And at a feminist art colony in the North Carolina mountains, a group of mothers contends with the supernatural talents their children have picked up from a pair of mysterious orphans who live in the woods. With exuberance, ferocity, and astounding imagination, Julia Elliott's Hellions jumps from the occult to the comic, from the horrific to the wondrous, presenting earthbound characters who long for the otherworldly.
Two Tales: Jamali Kamali and Zundelstate
These two stories explore love and beauty in the context of fear and threats. Jamali Kamali is a book-length poem about two men who lived in 16th century India. Little about them is known but they are buried together in a small tomb in Delhi. For hundreds of years, the story that these men were lovers has been passed down through the generations. Jamali Kamali is a fictional account of their love, longing, separation, and death. ZundelState, a novella in verse, takes place a thousand years in the future in a repressive land where history is banned, and dreaming has vanished. Joe, a lover of history, is rebellious and secretive. Marianna is a model worker for the State where she works in the HistoryShit Apparatchik Division. They fall in love against all odds. These two tales of outsiders, one from the distant past and the other from the far-off future, echo and reflect upon each other in surprising ways.
