In "A Most Blessed and Auspicious Occasion," a young couple planning a wedding is forced to deal with interfering relatives dictating the appropriate number of ritual goat sacrifices. "Missed Connection--m4w" is the tragicomic tale of a pair of lonely commuters eternally failing to make that longed-for contact. The members of a rock band in "Up-and-Comers" discover they suddenly have superpowers--but only when they're drunk. And in "The Serial Monogamist's Guide to Important New York City Landmarks," a woman maps her history of romantic failures based on the places she and her significant others visited together.Equally at home with the surreal and the painfully relatable (or both at once), Bob-Waksberg delivers a killer combination of humor, romance, whimsy, cultural commentary, and crushing emotional vulnerability. The resulting collection is a punchy, perfect bloody valentine.

    Tasked with finding the best, most revealing, honest, and astonishing writing of the last twelve months, they pored over hundreds of published poems, stories, comics, and essays. With the help of guest editor Edan Lepucki, they selected the contents of this anthology, a collection of work they feel looks a lot like 2019. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019 features comics about war and butts and stories about pizza-delivery women, family, dolls giving birth, anthropomorphic lakes, and more. It was a successful year. Read on to see for yourself.  The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019 includes Viet Thanh Nguyen, Charles Johnson, Robin Coste Lewis, Garth Greenwell, Nathaniel Russell, Britteney Black Rose Kapri, Andrea Long Chu, Deborah Taffa, Renée Branum, and others.  Hill country / Patricia Sammon --Follow the drinking gourd / Charles Johnson --Curse for the American dream / Jane Wong--Barbarians at the gate / Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling--I worked with Avital Ronell. I believe her accuser/ Andrea Long Chu--Holton Arms class of 1984. to the United States Congress--Diagnosis in reverse / Kate Gaskin--On true war stories/ Viet Thanh Nguyen--The frog king / Garth Greenwell--Child A / Emily Rinkema--As the sparks fly upward / Renee Branum--Arabic lesson / Latifa Ayad --Barbara from Florida/ Maddy Raskulinecz--It's natural (selected comics)/ Nathaniel Russell --Our Belgian wife / Uche Okonkwo--Self-care / Robin Coste Lewis --The brothers Aguayo/ Devin Gordon --Naked and vulnerable, the rest is circumstance / Sylvia Chan --Spring / Mikko Harvey --The babyland diaries / Angela Garbes --Two poems / Britteney Black Rose Kapri--The Gettysburg Address (sound translations 1 and 2 / Keith Donnell Jr. --Almost Human / Deborah Taffa --Macho / Margaret Ross --The lake and the onion / David Drury

    This dazzling panorama of thought, language and form includes work by authors who are already well known to the English-speaking world (Bulgakov, Pasternak, Akhmatova, Mayakovsky), as well as others, whose work we have the pleasure of encountering here for the very first time in English. Edited by Boris Dralyuk, the acclaimed translator of Isaac Babel'sRed Cavalry(also published by Pushkin Press), 1917includes works by some of the best Russian writers - some already famous in the English-speaking world, some published here for the very first time. It is an anthology for everyone: those who are coming to Russian literature for the first time, those who are already experienced students of it, and those who simply want to know how it felt to live through this extreme period in history. POETRY: Marina Tsvetaeva, 'You stepped from a stately cathedral ', 'Night. - Northeaster. - Roar of soldiers. - Roar of waves.' Zinaida Gippius, 'Now', 'What have we done to it?', '14 December 1917' Osip Mandelstam, 'In public and behind closed doors' Osip Mandelstam, 'Let's praise, O brothers, liberty's dim light' Anna Akhmatova, 'When the nation, suicidal' Boris Pasternak, 'Spring Rain' Mikhail Kuzmin, 'Russian Revolution' Sergey Esenin, 'Wake me tomorrow at break of day' Mikhail Gerasimov, 'I forged my iron flowers' Vladimir Kirillov, 'We' Aleksey Kraysky, 'Decrees' Andrey Bely, 'Russia' Alexander Blok, 'The Twelve' Titsian Tabidze, 'Petersburg' Pavlo Tychyna, 'Golden Humming' Vladimir Mayakovsky, 'Revolution: A Poem-Chronicle', 'To Russia', 'Our March' PROSE Alexander Kuprin, 'Sashka and Yashka' Valentin Kataev, 'The Drum' Aleksandr Serafimovich, 'How He Died' Dovid Bergelson, 'Pictures of the Revolution' Teffi, 'A Few Words About Lenin', 'The Guillotine' Vasily Rozanov, from 'Apocalypse of Our Time' Aleksey Remizov, 'The Lay of the Ruin of Rus'' Yefim Zozulya, 'The Dictator: A Story of Ak and Humanity' Yevgeny Zamyatin, 'The Dragon' Aleksandr Grin, 'Uprising' Mikhail Prishvin, 'Blue Banner' Mikhail Zoshchenko, 'A Wonderful Audacity' Mikhail Bulgakov, 'Future Prospects'"

    This genre-busting collection includes fiction young, coming-of-age, multicultural and nonfiction, including articles on popular culture and politics, profiles, humor, satire, even alternative comics.

    In the years (and decades) that followed, Granta established itself as the one of the most prestigious literary publications in the English-speaking world. In that time Granta has published 26 Nobel Prize for Literature winners, defined new literary genres and paved the way for generations of young novelists. To celebrate forty years of brilliant publishing, Granta 147 brings together our best fiction and non-fiction from the last four decades, along with a selection of letters from behind the scenes. This will be a collector's issue and is not to be missed.Featuring...Angela CarterKazuo IshiguroTodd McEwenBruce ChatwinJames FentonPrimo LeviAmitav GhoshRaymond CarverPhilip RothJohn Gregory DunneRyszard KapuscinskiJoy WilliamsJohn BergerGabriel García MárquezBill BufordLindsey HilsumLorrie MooreHilary MantelIan JackEdward SaidDiana AthillEdmund WhiteVed MehtaAdrian LeftwichAlexandra FullerBinyavanga WainainaMary GaitskillLydia DavisJeanette WintersonHerta Müller

    Since her death in 1965, her place in the landscape of twentieth-century fiction has grown only more exalted.As we approach the centenary of her birth comes this astonishing compilation of fifty-six pieces—more than forty of which have never been published before. Two of Jackson’s children co-edited this volume, culling through the vast archives of their mother’s papers at the Library of Congress, selecting only the very best for inclusion.Let Me Tell You brings together the deliciously eerie short stories Jackson is best known for, along with frank, inspiring lectures on writing; comic essays about her large, boisterous family; and whimsical drawings. Jackson’s landscape here is most frequently domestic: dinner parties and bridge, household budgets and homeward-bound commutes, children’s games and neighborly gossip. But this familiar setting is also her most subversive: She wields humor, terror, and the uncanny to explore the real challenges of marriage, parenting, and community—the pressure of social norms, the veins of distrust in love, the constant lack of time and space.For the first time, this collection showcases Shirley Jackson’s radically different modes of writing side by side. Together they show her to be a magnificent storyteller, a sharp, sly humorist, and a powerful feminist.This volume includes a foreword by the celebrated literary critic and Jackson biographer Ruth Franklin.

    His characters, almost all of who are first-generation Indian Americans, subvert our expectations that they will sit quietly by. We meet two brothers caught in an elaborate web of envy and loathing; a young gay man who becomes involved with an older man whose secret he could never guess; three women who almost gleefully throw off the pleasant agreeability society asks of them; and, in the final pair of linked stories, a young couple struggling against the devastating force of community gossip. If You See Me, Don't Say Hi examines the collisions of old world and new world, small town and big city, traditional beliefs (like arranged marriage) and modern rituals (like Facebook stalking). The men and women in these stories are full of passion, regret, envy, anger, and yearning. They fall in love with the wrong people and betray one another and deal with the accumulation of years of subtle racism. They are utterly compelling. Ranging across the country, Patel’s stories -- empathetic, provocative, twisting, and wryly funny -- introduce a bold new literary voice, one that feels more timely than ever.

    The result: "The most creative, generous, and democratic of any of the annual volumes" (Rick Moody).Among its numerous awards, the Pushcart Prize has been chosen for the Poets Writers / Barnes Noble "Writers for Writers" Award and the National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement recognition.

    They had some good times. There was a whiteboard in the conference room, and often cartoons were drawn on this whiteboard. The cartoons were of varying quality. By the end of the year, with the help of a similar committee of high school students in Ann Arbor, and their guest editor, Rachel Kushner, they selected the contents of this anthology. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2016 features stories about Bulgarian spaceships, psychedelic mushroom therapy, and a cyclorama in Iowa. If you don’t know what a cyclorama is, you aren’t alone. Read on to find out.The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2016 includes N. R. KLEINFIELD,  ANNA KOVATCHEVA, DAN HOY, ANTHONY MARRA, MICHAEL POLLAN, MARILYNNE ROBINSON, DANA SPIOTTA, ADRIAN TOMINE, INARA VERZEMNIEKS and othersRachel Kushner, guest editor, is the author of The Flamethrowers, which was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award and one of the New York Times’s top five novels of 2013. Kushner’s debut novel, Telex from Cuba, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award, a winner of the California Book Award, and a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book.

     This inspiring collection of forty-eight short stories and poems brimming with courage, fear, pain, hope, and elation offers an intimate glimpse of the runner s art and heart. The very best writing about running is here, yet the selections aren t simply about the physical challenge of going just one more mile or knocking off another second. Here you ll find a love story, two war tales, a horror story, several murder mysteries, and a surreal comedy by such authors as Evelyn Waugh, Walt Whitman, Joyce Carrol Oates, Max Apple, and A.E. Housman. Whether you re a weekend athlete, an Olympic hopeful, or simply someone who likes to read rather than run, this wonderful and exhilarating anthology has something to offer. Animates the spirit of running better than any other book. Runner s World"

    Screenwriter, director, and star of the acclaimed film Me and You and Everyone We Know, Miranda July brings her extraordinary talents to the page in a startling, sexy, and tender collection.

    Pure Drivel is a collection of pieces, most of them written for the New Yorker, that demonstrate Martin's playful way with words and his unerring ability to create a feeling of serendipitous improvisation even on the printed page. Here's a passage from a piece that announces a shortage of periods in the Times Roman font: "Most vulnerable are writers who work in short, choppy sentences," said a spokesperson for Times Roman, who continued, "We are trying to remedy the situation and have suggested alternatives, like umlauts, since we have plenty of umlauts--and, in fact, have more umlauts than we could possibly use in a lifetime! Don't forget, umlauts can really spice up a page with their delicate symmetry--resting often midway in a word, letters spilling on either side--and not only indicate the pronunciation of a word but also contribute to a writer's greater glory because they're fancy, not to mention that they even look like periods, indeed, are indistinguishable from periods, and will lead casual readers to believe that the article actually contains periods!" Although some of these pieces flirted with topicality when they first appeared, Martin is most successful when he leaves the real world behind and gives his wit free rein. This collection preserves the best (so far) of his glorious improvisations. --Simon Leake

    'The Fall of the House of Usher' describes the final hours of a family tormented by tragedy and the legacy of the past. In 'Tell-Tale Heart', a murderer's insane delusions threaten to betray him, while stories such as 'The Pit and the Pendulum' and 'The Cask of Amontillado' explore extreme states of decadence, fear and hate. These works display Poe's startling ability to build suspense with almost nightmarish intensity.David Galloway's introduction re-examines the myths surrounding Poe's life and reputation. This edition includes a new chronology and suggestions for further reading.PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED AS SELECTED WRITINGSChronologyIntroductionFurther ReadingA Note on the TextPOEMSStanzasSonnet — To ScienceA/ AaraafRomanceTO HelenIsrafelThe City in the SeaThe SleeperLenoreThe Valley of UnrestThe RavenUlalumeFor AnnieA ValentineAnnabel LeeThe BellsEldoradoTALESMS. Found in a BottleLigeiaThe Man that was Used UpThe Fall of the House of UsherWilliam WilsonThe Man of the CrowdThe Murders in the Rue MorgueA Descent into the MaelströmEleonoraThe Oval PortraitThe Masque of the Red DeathThe Pit and the PendulumThe Tell-Tale HeartThe Gold-BugThe Black CatThe Purloined LetterThe Facts in the Case of M. ValdemarThe Cask of AmontilladoHop-FrogESSÄYS AND REVIEWSLetter to B—Georgia ScenesThe Drake—Halleck Review (excerpts)Watkins TottleThe Philosophy of FurnitureWyandottéMusicTime and SpaceTwice-Told TalesThe American Drama (excerpts)HazlittThe Philosophy of CompositionSong-WritingOn ImaginationThe Veil of the SoulThe Poetic Principle (excerpts)Notes

    A man travels to his son’s school to deal with the fallout of a violent attack and to make sure his son will not lose his college place. But what exactly has his son done? And who is to blame? A young woman trying to make it in LA, working in a clothes shop while taking acting classes, turns to a riskier way of making money but will be forced to confront the danger of the game she’s playing. And a family coming together for Christmas struggle to skate over the lingering darkness caused by the very ordinary brutality of a troubled husband and father.These outstanding stories examine masculinity, male power and broken relationships, while revealing – with astonishing insight and clarity – those moments of misunderstanding that can have life-changing consequences. And there is an unexpected violence, ever-present but unseen, in the depiction of the complicated interactions between men and women, and families. Subtle, sophisticated and displaying an extraordinary understanding of human behaviour, these stories are unforgettable.

    Featuring: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Diane Di Prima, Bob Dylan, Ken Kesey, Charles Bukowski, Michael McClure, and more.