In "Know the Mother," author Desiree Cooper explores the complex archetype of the mother in all of her incarnations. In a collage of meditative stories, women-both black and white-find themselves wedged between their own yearnings and their roles as daughters, sisters, grandmothers, and wives.In this heart-wrenching collection, Cooper reveals that gender and race are often unanticipated interlopers in family life. An anxious mother reflects on her prenatal fantasies of suicide while waiting for her daughter to come home late one night. A lawyer miscarries during a conference call and must proceed as though nothing has happened. On a rare night out with her husband, a new mother tries convincing herself that everything is still the same. A politician's wife's thoughts turn to slavery as she contemplates her own escape: "Even Harriet Tubman had realized that freedom wasn't worth the price of abandoning her family, so she'd come back home. She'd risked it all for love." With her lyrical and carefully crafted prose, Cooper's stories provide truths without sermon and invite empathy without sentimentality."Know the Mother" explores the intersection of race and gender in vignettes that pull you in and then are gone in an instant. Readers of short fiction will appreciate this deeply felt collection.

    Forty-five acclaimed and emerging writers—including Alberto Chimal, Toh EnJoe, Kathy Fish, Amelia Gray, Etgar Keret, R. O. Kwon, and Eliel Lucero—offer readers “some of the brightest concise writing available today” (NewPages). With spotlights on Texture Press and author Megan Giddings, the acclaimed new series, with its “finger on the pulse,” succeeds in its aim to make something big from many small things.Featuring Small Fictions by:Amir Adam, Daniel Aristi, Tina Barry, Paul Beckman, Laurie Blauner, John Brantingham, Alberto Chimal, Justin Lawrence Daugherty, Toh EnJoe, Grant Faulkner, Kathy Fish, Rosie Forrest,Megan Giddings, Amelia Gray, Charles Hansmann, Britt Haraway, Mary-Jane Holmes, Laird Hunt, A. Nicole Kelly, James Kennedy, Etgar Keret, R. O. Kwon, Nathan Leslie, Paul Lisicky, Eliel Lucero, Nancy Ludmerer, Melissa Manning, Michael Martone, Elizabeth Morton, David Naimon, Jessica Plante, Dianca London Potts, Dawn Raffel, James Reidel, Sophie Rosenblum, Caitlin Scarano, Vincent Scarpa, Robert Scotellaro, Courtney Sender, Janey Skinner, Curtis Smith, Robert Vaughan, Clio Velentza"Prepare to be surprised by this striking new series--it has quickly become essential reading." ~Amy Hempel

    Past versions of a man show up at the birthday party he’s thrown himself. A lonely trucker delivers two-headed angels as part of a money-making scheme. And, in the title story, a daughter of monsters awaits her coming-of-age.

    Within, you’ll find a tender heart, a painful core, and a paradoxically disastrous and beautiful coming-of-age of every and any girl, told through fairy tales that mirror real life and are at once contemporary and timeless. Joining the ranks of Angela Carter, Kate Bernheimer, and Allyse Near, Lau weaves tales of a girl who is too fantastical to be real and too real to be fantasy.“A beautifully vicious first collection of retrofitted fairy tales, with whip-smart swerves, darkly funny moments, and razor-sharp language. Like Angela Carter meets Let the Right One In with a dash of Lady Vengeance tossed in for good measure.”—Brian Evenson, author of Windeye and ALA-RUSA Award-winner Last Days

    In Whiskey, Etc., it’s the particulars that draw you closer—the stained coffee cups, curled-up dogs, wood–burning stoves and canoes snug in their sheds—to a muddled loneliness housed behind crystalline windows. To follow Flick’s cowboy–possum saunter across these dazzling short (short) stories is to visit life, desperate and languid and dolefully funny, where it happens.

     A girl haunted by her sister's drowning. A boy desperate for his father's affection. A woman forced to make a devastating decision. A man trapped by his obsessions. Experience tales of love, loss, murder, and madness through this collection of flash and micro fiction. Take a peek behind the smile of a stranger. Get a glimpse inside the heart of a friend. Scratch the surface and discover what is hidden beneath. These stories will open your mind, tug at your thoughts, and allow you to explore the possibility that, even in the brightest moments, something is Hinting at Shadows. Each selection is approximately 100 words, with a bonus section of Microbursts in which each story is told in 50 words or less.

    An intriguing maelstrom of broken minds and broken hearts, from revenge to desire, from new found love to soulmates, herein lies a tale for everyone. Prepare your senses for an emotional and sometimes terrifying ride.

    Galef traces the genre back to its varied origins, from the short-short to nanofiction, with examples that include vignettes, prose poems, character sketches, fables, lists, twist stories, surrealism, and metafiction. The authors range from the famous, such as Colette and Borges, to today's voices, like Roxane Gay and Bruce Holland Rogers. A writer and longtime creative writing teacher, Galef also shows how flash fiction skills translate to other types of writing. Brevity is an indispensable resource for anyone working in this increasingly popular form.For more information, see davidgalef.com/brevity.

    And So On... The BareBack Anthology features the most innovative and honest poetry, fiction, and flash fiction that has appeared in BareBackMagazine since its inception. And So On... is bold, brave, and a great showcase of some amazingly talented new and established writers from around the world.

    A woman who grows a blanket of feathers. A talking cow. A baby born from an egg. A hu-manatee. Modeled after a scientific journal, complete with abstracts and endnotes, Studies in Hybrid Morphology includes more than a dozen surreal stories exploring the intersections of human and animal, head and heart, science and fiction. The strange characters who populate these stories, human and non-human animals alike, seek something fundamental—meaning, identity, self-worth, comfort, connection. In most cases, they come up short, or land wide of their targets. After all, how often is anything quite what we’d hoped or expected? Instead, in the space of these pages, the reader is invited to eschew expectation, revel in the joy of unforeseen discoveries, and entertain the question: what does it mean to be alive and self-aware?