Like the changing seasons, themes of childhood, siblinghood, and adult loss and betrayal are woven throughout these stories. In “Florida,” we share in Emmeline’s devastation when her mother makes her go to school unbathed after wetting the bed: “But how will you ever learn if you don’t suffer the consequences?” In stories like “Shoebox,” we witness daughters struggling against distant parents, their lives out of control; these girls “don’t want to grow big and strong, they want to be left alone.” As we read about and remember milestone moments from our own lives, like first kisses, first heartbreak, and first sexual encounters, so too do we recognize that familiar “smile a woman wears when she’s on the verge of tears,” particularly in stories like “Wake Up,” “The Hollow,” “Breathless,” and “Foreign Film,” which reveal to us the lives of women in the midst of separation, divorce, widowhood, and desperation: “I call my husband sometimes in the middle of the night. ‘Are we going to be okay?’ I ask, whispering. I don't want to wake him up completely.” It is difficult not to think of these women as the little girl, all grown up now, from “Wild Yellow Dog, Giant Red Fox,” whose grandmother gives her a Royal typewriter and asks: “Please make your next story a happy one.” This is a collection that captures the feeling of embarking “on a long trip, something important and urgent, as if someone far away has died and here we are, speeding to the wake.”

    These are not your mother's bedtime stories. In this mesmerizing debut collection, Aubrey Hirsch will lead you into the darkest recesses of human life, where hope and longing and love and loss look all too much like one another. Each of these sixteen stories may be filled with its own kind of despair, but they are not despairing as Hirsch enters with deep sympathy into the souls of lonely women (Cheater, Hydrogen Event in a Bubble Chamber, Made in Indonesia), broken men (Leaving Seoul, Advice for Dealing with the Loss of a Beloved Pet), young recruits (The Specialists), and dutiful daughters (Strategy #13: Journal, No System for Blindness). With a hard intelligence, Hirsch considers the toll of heartache (Why We Never Talk About Sugar, Certainty) and loss (The Borovsky Circus Goes to Littlefield, Paradise Hardware) and the simple cost of longing. Taut and tension filled, these stories will transport you into the heart of what it means to be human. But be careful. Hirsch's compassion arrives on a knife blade. And you just may find your own heart cut open.

    'My Mother Was an Upright Piano' builds on the strengths of Tania Hershman's first collection of short stories 'The White Road', which was commended by the judges of the 2009 Orange Award for New Writers.

    What I became interested in is the darker side of etiquette—the way people conduct themselves in situations that Emily Post would never write about. This book started with the story ‘The Etiquette of Adultery.’ I loved that title and all that it suggested. Was there an etiquette, a set of unwritten rules, for a situation that seemed to break all the rules of a ‘decent’ society? From there, the collection grew—exploring the etiquette of obesity, dementia, infertility, arson, etc. These stories were really fun to write for two reasons. One, they allowed me to experiment with form, writing in small sections, chapters, definitions and other pieces of a suggested larger text. And two, I loved seeing how the characters emerged from each story. Each person in these ten stories ends up writing their own codes of etiquette, which I think is actually true in life. We all have our rules, our moral codes, our lines that we won’t cross. It’s when we cross those lines that things get really interesting.”

    Includes stories about:Taylor Swift, Mark Ruffalo, Kim Kardashian, Paul Rudd, Taylor Momsen, Idris Elba, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Lana Del Rey, Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber, and of course Ryan Reynolds.

    In this richly nuanced collection of very short fiction, the author tilts the everyday and spins characters in unexpected directions. From an online purchase that takes over a woman's life to a plain box that brings a tired clerk a magical gift, from a spurned woman hiding in her ex-husband's closet to a doting wife coaxing her ailing husband to eat, The Ice Cream Vendor's Song reveals worlds familiar yet strange, haunting yet tender, all rendered with emotional clarity and exquisite prose. The Ice Cream Vendor’s Song, Laura McHale Holland’s most recent collection of mystical flash fiction, seduces with a voice more compelling than the mythical siren’s call. But this is an enticement that you don’t want to resist. Holland’s superbly imaginative prose probes a deeper understanding of the human condition and touches tender, guarded places in our hearts. – Nancy Pogue LaTurner, author of Voluntary Nomads

    Enjoy!

    In his latest installment of twenty-nine horrifying and darkly humorous stories, author Michael Crane takes you on a trip to the carnival you'll never forget (and a trip you may not survive). Oh, there will be games that cheat you out of something far more valuable than money. Rides will break down, but not necessarily by accident. Nobody leaves happy. In fact, nobody leaves at all.Welcome to the Dead Carnival... a place that truly lives up to its name.Features bonus drabbles/shorts by authors Daniel Pyle, Robert J. Duperre, Jason Letts, Daniel Arenson, J.L. Bryan, M.S. Verish, and M.P. McDonald.(Be sure to check out the other books in the series: LESSONS AND OTHER MORBID DRABBLES, LESSONS II: ANOTHER MORBID DRABBLE COLLECTION, and LESSONS III: DEMONIC DOLLS AND OTHER MORBID DRABBLES)