Book picks similar to
Worth a Thousand Words: A Collection of Short Shorts by Angie Thompson


romance
short-stories
good-family-relationships
christian-fiction

Love Is Hell


Melissa Marr - 2008
    But it,s totally worth it.In these supernatural stories by five of today's hottest writers—Melissa Marr (Wicked Lovely), Scott Westerfeld (Specials), Justine Larbalestier (Magic or Madness), Gabrielle Zevin (Elsewhere), and Laurie Faria Stolarz (Blue is for Nightmares)—love may be twisted and turned around, but it's more potent than ever on its quest to conquer all.From two students who let the power of attraction guide them to break the hard-and-fast rules of their world to the girl who falls hard for a good-looking ghost with a score to settle, the clever, quirky characters in this exciting collection will break your heart, then leave you believing in love more than ever.

Evidence of the Affair


Taylor Jenkins Reid - 2018
    Even though I do not know you…The correspondence between Carrie Allsop and David Mayer reveals, piece by piece, the painful details of a devastating affair between their spouses. With each commiserating scratch of the pen, they confess their fears and bare their souls. They share the bewilderment over how things went so wrong and come to wonder where to go from here.Told entirely through the letters of two comforting strangers and those of two illicit lovers, Evidence of the Affair explores the complex nature of the heart. And ultimately, for one woman, how liberating it can be when it’s broken.

Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die


Ryan NorthArryn Diaz - 2010
    It didn't give you the date and it didn't give you specifics. It just spat out a sliver of paper upon which were printed, in careful block letters, the words DROWNED or CANCER or OLD AGE or CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN. It let people know how they were going to die." Machine of Death tells thirty-four different stories about people who know how they will die. Prepare to have your tears jerked, your spine tingled, your funny bone tickled, your mind blown, your pulse quickened, or your heart warmed. Or better yet, simply prepare to be surprised. Because even when people do have perfect knowledge of the future, there's no telling exactly how things will turn out. Featuring stories by: * Randall Munroe* Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw* Tom Francis* Camille Alexa* Erin McKean* James L. Sutter* Douglas J. Lane* and many others.Featuring illustrations by: * Kate Beaton* Kazu Kibuishi* Aaron Diaz* Jeffrey Brown* Scott C.* Roger Langridge* Karl Kerschl* Cameron Stewart* and many others

Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love


Elsie ChapmanAnna-Marie McLemore - 2019
    A tourist from Montenegro desperately seeks a magic soup dumpling that can cure his fear of death. An aspiring chef realizes that butter and soul are the key ingredients to win a cooking competition that could win him the money to save his mother’s life. Welcome to Hungry Hearts Row, where the answers to most of life’s hard questions are kneaded, rolled, baked. Where a typical greeting is, “Have you had anything to eat?” Where magic and food and love are sometimes one in the same. Told in interconnected short stories, Hungry Hearts explores the many meanings food can take on beyond mere nourishment. It can symbolize love and despair, family and culture, belonging and home.

Room Five: Finding Their Good Girl: Club Sin


Ines Michelle - 2021
    One gave me my first kiss, the other took my virginity and the last one initiated me to naughty pleasures. Tonight, they're ready to please me beyond my wildest dreams...Fantasies are meant to come true and the men of Club Sin will see to your every kinky desire. This November, 22 of your favorite steamy romance authors take you inside Club Sin, a forbidden place where you’ll find love and pleasure with multiple hot men in these Reverse Harem novellas. Can you handle the heat?22 rooms, 22 fantasies…Which door will you step through?Grab your Kindles and pre-order the series for only #99cents while you can. Price goes up on release day for each title. Or read for FREE in Kindle Unlimited on release day.

Melody's Christmas


I.D. Johnson - 2017
    She returns to her hometown of Charles Town, West Virginia, to help her mother save the family antique business, content to stay focused on her work. However, when a chance encounter with an adorable five-year-old leads her to befriend an attractive single dad, Melody begins to realize she's been putting her life on hold, something her father would've never wished for her. Will she learn to hear the song in the falling snow again? Reid has recently moved to Charles Town to start over after his wife walked out, leaving him alone to raise their son, Michael. When Michael decides he needs Melody Murphy in his life, Reid needs to find out what it is that has his son drawn to the young woman like a magnet. The closer he gets to Melody, the more he begins to believe he might get a second chance at love after all. This is a sweet contemporary romance with Christian themes, perfect for holiday reading.

Willful Creatures


Aimee Bender - 2005
    This is a place where a boy with keys for fingers is a hero, a woman's children are potatoes, and a little boy with an iron for a head is born to a family of pumpkin heads. With her singular mix of surrealism, musical prose, and keenly felt emotion, Bender once again proves herself to be a masterful chronicler of the human condition.

Oblivion: Stories


David Foster Wallace - 2004
    These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity by delineating the office politics surrounding a magazine profile of an artist who produces miniature sculptures in an anatomically inconceivable way ("The Suffering Channel"). Or capture the ache of love's breakdown in the painfully polite apologies of a man who believes his wife is hallucinating the sound of his snoring ("Oblivion"). Each of these stories is a complete world, as fully imagined as most entire novels, at once preposterously surreal and painfully immediate. Oblivion is an arresting and hilarious creation from a writer "whose best work challenges and reinvents the art of fiction" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).Mister squishy --The soul is not a smithy --Incarnations of burned children --Another pioneer --Good old neon --Philosophy and the mirror of nature --Oblivion --The suffering channel

Live Without You


Sarah Grace Grzy - 2019
    Everyone she loves has abandoned her and opening her heart to others is just asking for more pain. She can't help but blame herself for her brother's tragic death six years ago, and in her guilt, she shuts herself off from the world. No one could love her-not even the God who promised to be there for her but wasn't. For paramedic Ezra Bryant, failure is not an option. He's had enough of it, and only by God's grace is he able to put it behind him. But when a traumatic event brings Piper's greatest fear and Ezra's failures to light, can they use that event to allow God to mend their broken pieces? Can love triumph over fear, and grace over guilt?

Chill Factor: A Holiday Anthology


Freya Barker - 2021
    As the guests of Aspen’s prestigious ski resort, the St. James Inn, brace for the storm of the century, their holiday vacation changes from jovial celebration to desperate survival. Join the authors of Sister Scribes — Anna Bishop Barker, Freya Barker, Taryn Bradley, and Maddie Wade — as they bring you four stories of romance in this suspenseful Christmas anthology. Cabin Fever by Anna Bishop BarkerSnowbound by Freya BarkerHoneymoon On Ice by Taryn BradleyMistletoe Protector by Maddie WadeAll proceeds from the sale of this anthology will be disbursed to a selection of US military charities assisting with the physical and mental challenges suffered by our veterans and their families, as well as current support related to the Afghanistan withdrawal.Thank you for your support!

Vampires Never Get Old: Tales with Fresh Bite


Zoraida CórdovaRebecca Roanhorse - 2020
    Parker, Tessa Gratton, Heidi Heilig, Julie Murphy, Mark Oshiro, Rebecca Roanhorse, Laura Ruby, Victoria “V. E.” Schwab, and Kayla Whaley.

Babysitting for the Billionaire


Sammi Starlight - 2018
    When she goes to work for the billionaire, Benjamin Savage, as his daughter's nanny, she is thrilled. Things start to heat up between them. Will she give in to her feelings or continue to struggle on her own?

Made for Him


Alexis Ashlie - 2020
    It will give you the HEA that you crave with OTT everything. You don’t want to miss this one.

Finding Fireflies


A.C. Williams - 2015
    I’m 32 years old, accident-prone, a church secretary, and still single. Never-been-on-a-date kind of single. But that doesn’t mean I’ve never been in love. Until I find the second love of my life, I’ll always have my memories of summers past with Aaron, the guy of my dreams, chasing fireflies at twilight. Compared to him, the options at the Highpointe Baptist Church’s singles group just add insult to injury. But my stable pastor’s kid’s life takes an extraordinary turn when a misunderstanding lands me in jail, and that’s where I meet Jordin, a young prostitute. Her troubles make my life look like a dream, and I can’t help but feel that I need to help her in any way possible. Of course, that’s the perfect time for Aaron to reappear in my life, only to befriend Jordin. Just when I think it can’t possibly get worse, Jordin gets herself kidnapped by an underground prostitution ring, and it’s up to Aaron and me to get her back. This story isn’t for the faint-hearted. I have to face off with jilted women desperate for a second MRS degree, survive bad catfish, captain pontoon boats, and fight old people for their motor scooters. This is my story. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The Kicking the Bucket List


Cathy Hopkins - 2017
    Dee; sensitive and big-hearted; Rose uptight and controlled and Fleur the reckless free spirit.At the reading of their mother’s will, the three estranged women are aghast to discover that their inheritance comes with strings attached. If they are to inherit her wealth, they must spend a series of weekends together over the course of a year and carry out their mother’s ‘bucket list’.But one year doesn’t seem like nearly enough time for them to move past the decades-old layers of squabbles and misunderstandings. Can they grow up for once and see that Iris’ bucket list was about so much more than money…