This story appears in the anthology Make Shift: Dispatches from the Post-Pandemic Future, edited by Gideon Lichfield and available for pre-order from The MIT Press.Content advisory: Discussion of pandemics, near-drowning

    

    25,000 first printing. $25,000 ad/promo.

    These are miraculous stories of survival, perhaps even forgiveness. To some of us Georgia's life would be unthinkable. Sellers makes us believe it is well worth living. "Heather Sellers writes delicious, dangerous prose. She starts you twenty-three floors up in condo squalor, nips across for dysfunction in Disney country, threatens incest in Hotlanta, and comes to grief on the Gulf. The dead-credible life of Georgia Jackson-ineffably sweet, thoroughly in love with her own luscious body, half in love with her lush of a father-skids at the edge of the surreal. Her story had me laughing through the lump in my throat. An original. A knockout debut."-Janet Burroway

    Made-to-order for those with a taste for inventive idiosyncrasy, this book promises to provoke and entertain in equal measure. About the author: Ishavasyam took a sabbatical from her career in marketing to fulfil her childhood dream of writing a book. Besides weaving tall tales, she loves playing board games and belly dancing. She is a hoarder of art supplies, and has an alarming number of incomplete DIY projects. Ishavasyam lives with her husband, whom she adores to bits, to the point where she may soon give in to his incessant plea to get a dog.

    The stories range from both urban and rural settings. All the stories included in the book are different from each other with a range of diverse characters. Some of the stories in this selection are Mukti, Kuch Yun hona Uska, Cigarette Ka Aakhri Kash, and Bisesar Bo Ki Premika. This book will make for a riveting and engaging read for those who enjoy Hindi short stories.

    The stories include tales of strippers, of their husbands and lovers and the helpless, ill-placed desire that is shot out of their customers, of a rape by a man of another man at a peep show in Times Square, the victim wordlessly accepting what happens to him while watching a woman dance behind glass, of fucking a woman wearing a fur coat and feeling unexplainable rage at her disregard of animal life. The story ends with the character running away into the night with the coat, "as if an animal rescued." In "Invisible Fish," a night clerk in a mall pet store tortures the animals at night until the whole place stinks of fear and rage. Dumbfounded, the store owners blugeon to death a chimpanzee, the only animal in the store that can imagine capable of such atrocities.

    

    The short stories included in this selection are representative not only of Tagore's range, but they also enable us to revise the conventional view of Tagore as a short story writer. Writing them at a time when the form was not yet popular, Tagore eschewed the romantic strain prevalent in his day. His stories are fables of modern man, where fairy tale meets hard ground, where myths are reworked, and the religion of man triumphs over the religion of rituals and convention, where the love of a woman infuses the universe with humanity. He writes with concern about such issues as the Hindu revivalism in the late nineteenth century and the bondage of women. The rhythms of daily life, his rural encounters and childhood reminiscences, unfold in his tales, as does a sense of history, the reality of the political situation and its impact on individual lives. Tagore wishes to see the world of humanity not only reflected in his own life but also actualized in Bengali literature. His profound sensibility led him beyond the merely regional, his humanity stretching across east and west, fulfilling the purpose of his Jibandebata, his life's deity, Edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri, a well-known scholar and translator, this is an authoritative and readable translation of Tagore's short stories. An essential Tagore for the collector, it is one that will find its place on every discerning reader's shelf.

    Carlos Ninguna is seventeen. His father is a snake-handler and Carlos is his apprentice. When a man who may or may not be on the FBI's Most Wanted List moves into the apartment above them, Carlos is faced with a whole tangle of complicated decisions.Anthony Doerr is one of the country's most honored young story writers. His short stories have appeared in the Atlantic, McSweeney's, the Paris Review, and Zoetrope: All-Story, where "The Snake Handler" originally appeared. His most recent collection, Memory Wall, won the 2010 Story Prize.

    This is the brilliant short story that featured in the back of the special edition ebook of CONN IGGULDEN’S bestselling novel EMPEROR: BLOOD OF GODS.As the effects of age creep up on Augustus Caesar, he is left with the whispers of his wife Livia in one ear and the echoes of his youthful dreams in the other, as he tries to come to the rescue of his beloved grandson, Marcus.

    But Commonwealth operative Simon Kovalic knows nothing ever goes to plan. So, when a duplicitous bounty hunter lives up to his reputation, Kovalic’s ready—just maybe not ready enough.Now he and his team must get offworld, before their enemies catch up with them…

    Supernatural detective Jack Nightingale is called in to investigate a young girl who appears to be possessed by an evil spirit.

    Abbott, "Cheever's true heir, our major American short story writer" (William Harrison).Here are stories about fathers and sons, stories about men and women, and stories about the relationships between men by one of our most gifted story writers. The narrator of "The Who, the What and the Why," begins breaking into his own house as a sort of therapy after his daughter dies. In "The Human Use of Inhuman Beings," the main character realizes that his closest relationship is to an angel, who appears to him only to announce the death of loved ones. All Things, All at Once reminds us why Lee K. Abbott is to be treasured: his perfect pitch for tales of hapless Southwesterners, his way with sympathetic irony, his eye that skillfully notes the awkward humiliations—common heartbreak, fractured families—and records it all in lyrical, affectionate language. In tales new and from previous collections Abbott examines lived life and the lies we necessarily tell about it.

     Farzana is one of the prostitutes at Begum's kotha and Ramakant Bannerjee, the writer, loves her deeply. He's promised to marry her once he has enough money. He's currently writing his most ambitious novel, the story of Kaneez. As the story of Kaneez unfolds, so does the intriguing life of Farzana. What fate does she meet? Read on to find out.