A student plagiarizes a paper and holds fast to her alibi until she finds herself complicit in the resurrection of one professor's shadowy past. A dinner party becomes the occasion for the dissolution of more than one marriage. A woman is hired to find a wife for the one true soulmate she's ever found. In all, Rebecca Lee traverses the terrain of infidelity, obligation, sacrifice, jealousy, and yet finally, optimism. Showing people at their most vulnerable, Lee creates characters so wonderfully flawed, so driven by their desire, so compelled to make sense of their human condition, that it's impossible not to feel for them when their fragile belief in romantic love, domestic bliss, or academic seclusion fails to provide them with the sort of force field they'd expected.

    She captures the beguiling transformation from child to adult with humor, heartache, and desperation. From grieving mothers to fathers adrift, old flames to restless teens, the isolated characters in Doll Palace are united by conflicting desires, quiet rebellions, and the private struggles of the heart.

    Here Mason writes about love with stunning insight and variety.

    The walking wounded. These are the stories of ordinary people.

    It is a riveting commentary on the way we live now by a spectacular prose artist.Ann Beattie published her first short story in The New Yorker in 1972. Twenty-eight years later, she received the 2000 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She is, as the Washington Post Book World said, "one of our era's most vital masters of the short form." The eleven stories in her new work are peopled by characters coming to terms with the legacies of long-held family myths or confronting altered circumstances -- new frailty or sudden, unlikely success. Beattie's ear for language, her complex and subtle wit, and her profound compassion are unparalleled. From the elegiac story "The Famous Poet, Amid Bougainvillea," in which two men trade ruminations on illness, art, and servitude, to "The Big-Breasted Pilgrim," wherein a famous chef gets a series of bewildering phone calls from George Stephanopoulos, Perfect Recall comprises Beattie's strongest work in years. It is a riveting commentary on the way we live now by a spectacular prose artist.

    Author of the New York Times bestsellers “Let the Great World Spin” and “Transatlantic,” McCann has been called “a giant among us” (Peter Carey), “dazzlingly talented” (O: The Oprah Magazine), and “that rare species in contemporary fiction: a literary writer who is an exceptional storyteller” (The Independent). He’s received a National Book Award, an Oscar nomination, and a slew of international prizes. His talents are on full display in his new short story, “Gone,” a deeply affecting literary thriller about a mother and son, alone in a cottage on the west coast of Ireland, and the search that ensues when the boy—whom she adopted years before, deaf and with “already a whole history written in him”—goes missing. He slips away in early morning, down to the cold sea with his new Christmas wetsuit, and as the hours and days drag on, the coast guard, police, dogs, fishermen, farmers, and schoolchildren holding hands search the sea and walk the fields while the television crews and detectives come and go, the police at the cottage seeming to “ghost into one another: almost as if they could slip into one another’s faces.” The mother, Rebecca, now under suspicion, is racked with guilt over the decisions that led to her son’s disappearance, and tormented by the judgment of others: "You bought what? A wetsuit? Why in the world? What sort of mother? How much wine did you drink?" For Rebecca, “every outcome was unwhisperable.” “Gone” is a charged narrative that propels you forward, heart in your throat, and a moving, intimate look at life’s struggles toward grace and a kind of redemption.

    

    DC Books' catalog primarily includes books in Malayalam literature, and also children's literature, poetry, reference, biography, self-help, yoga, management titles, and foreign translations.

    Laced through with the humor, the empathy, and the rare and magical descriptive powers that have led Elizabeth McCracken’s fiction to be hailed as “exquisite” (The New York Times Book Review), “funny and heartbreaking” (The Boston Globe), and “a true marvel” (San Francisco Chronicle), these nine vibrant stories navigate the fragile space between love and loneliness. In “Property,” selected by Geraldine Brooks for The Best American Short Stories, a young scholar, grieving the sudden death of his wife, decides to refurbish the Maine rental house they were to share together by removing his landlord’s possessions. In “Peter Elroy: A Documentary by Ian Casey,” the household of a successful filmmaker is visited years later by his famous first subject, whose trust he betrayed. In “The Lost & Found Department of Greater Boston,” the manager of a grocery store becomes fixated on the famous case of a missing local woman, and on the fate of the teenage son she left behind. And in the unforgettable title story, a family makes a quixotic decision to flee to Paris for a summer, only to find their lives altered in an unimaginable way by their teenage daughter’s risky behavior.   In Elizabeth McCracken’s universe, heartache is always interwoven with strange, charmed moments of joy—an unexpected conversation with small children, the gift of a parrot with a bad French accent—that remind us of the wonder and mystery of being alive. Thunderstruck & Other Stories shows this inimitable writer working at the full height of her powers.

    You’ll discover how far a prisoner will go to be with his dying wife, and what lurks between the walls of that Louisiana jailhouse to keep him there. You’ll find out how deep a man can cut himself to dig out the past. You’ll meet a college professor whose fear of flying might be the least of his worries. And you’ll learn how a sister’s love for sweet treats can reunite a broken family…whether they want it or not. Aliens and lot lizards…disembodied lips…the voice of God Himself… Thirteen stories and a brand new novella from horror author Wesley Southard. Within these pages, we all go a little mad…

    In Fortune Smiles - his first book since Orphan Master - he continues to give voice to characters rarely heard from, while offering something we all seek from fiction: a new way of looking at our world.In six masterly stories, Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal. "George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine" follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. "Nirvana," which won the prestigious Sunday Times short story prize, portrays a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finding solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In "Hurricanes Anonymous" - first included in the Best American Short Stories anthology - a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind. Unnerving, riveting, and written with a timeless quality, these stories confirm Johnson as one of America's greatest writers and an indispensable guide to our new century.

    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.

    Stories were to be about 250 words long; first prize was a check and a crate of oranges.Two to three thousand stories began to show up annually in Tallahassee, and National Public Radio regularly broadcast the winner. But, more important, the Micro form turned out to be contagious; stories of this "lack of length" now dot the literary magazines. The time seemed right, then, for this anthology, presenting a decade of contest winners and selected finalists. In addition, Stern commissioned Micros, persuading a roster of writers to accept the challenge of completing a story in one page.Jesse Lee Kercheval has a new spin on the sinking of the Titanic; Virgil Suarez sets his sights on the notorious Singapore caning; George Garrett conjures up a wondrous screen treatment pitch; and Antonya Nelson invites us into an eerie landscape. Verve and nerve and astonishing variety are here, with some wild denouements.How short can a Micro be, you wonder. Look up Amy Hempel's contribution, and you'll see.Includes:Poet's husband by M. GilesCough by Harry HumesDaydream by R. AllenWrong channel by R. FernandezHarmony by J. Williams20by20 by L. BrewerYour fears are justified by R. DeMarinisAt the point by B. McCaddonHalo by M. McFeeMockingbird by L. BerryChanging the channel by E.E. MillerWanting to fly by S. DunningEclipsed by R. ShusterNew Year by P. PainterSurvivors by K. AddonizioAnti-Cain by V. SuarezPainted devils by F. ChappellHoneycomb by N.R. SingerBaby, baby, baby by F. CamoinAn old story by J. KelmanConception by T. FlemingAll this by J. AvallonStone belly girl by J. Granger Worry by R. WallaceYou can't see dogs on the radio by L. WendlingTrue story of Mr. and Mrs. Wong by M. ChinFlu by S. DybekThe bridge by R. EdsonKennedy in the barrio by J.O. CoferGrief by R. CarlsonMount Olive by M.A. LoveHurray for Hollywood by G. GarrettThis is how I remember it by Betsy KemperNovember by U. HegiCarpathia by J.L. KerchevalChickens by E. MagarrellMayor of the sister city speaks to the chamber of commerce in Klamath Falls, Oregon, on a night in December in 1976 by M. MartoneConfirmation names by M. LippoHostess ; Housewife by A. HempelLand's end by A. NelsonLast supper in the Cabinet Mountains by D. BottomsStrongman by W. White-RingDiverging paths and all that by M. O'HaraA gentleman's C by P. PowellOf exposure by J. HolmanTea leaves by J. BurrowayWe eat our peas for the souls in Purgatory by A. McPetersWaiting by P. McNallyBut what was her name? by D. RaffelGuadalupe in the Promised Land by Sam ShepardMorning news by J. SternMolibi by L. HancockWallet by A. Woodman

    Groff transports the reader, then jolts us alert with a crackle of wit, a wave of sadness, a flash of cruelty, as she writes about loneliness, rage, family, and the passage of time. With shocking accuracy and effect, she pinpoints the moments and decisions and connections behind human pleasure and pain, hope and despair, love and fury—the moments that make us alive.

    "The Red Bow,"about a town consumed by pet-killing hysteria, won a 2004 National Magazine Award and "Bohemians," the story of two supposed Eastern European widows trying to fit in in suburban USA, is included in The Best American Short Stories 2005. His new book includes both unpublished work, and stories that first appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and Esquire. The stories in this volume work together as a whole whose impact far exceeds the simple sum of its parts. Fans of Saunders know and love him for his sharp and hilarious satirical eye. But In Persuasion Nation also includes more personal and poignant pieces that reveal a new kind of emotional conviction in Saunders's writing.Saunders's work in the last six years has come to be recognized as one of the strongest-and most consoling-cries in the wilderness of the millennium's political and cultural malaise. In Persuasion Nation's sophistication and populism should establish Saunders once and for all as this generation's literary voice of wisdom and humor in a time when we need it most.