Soft, euphonic women gradually grow old; weak, unhappy men confront love and their own mortality; and abominable children desperately try to grow up with grace. With a unique voice and dry humor, Willett gives us a new insight into human existence, showing us those specific moments in relationships when life suddenly becomes visible.Critically acclaimed when it was first published in 1987, Jenny and the Jaws of Life is being brought back due to popular demand. It's a timeless collection filled with a certain freshness and wit that ring just as loudly today.

    “Spare and haunting tales that ask ordinary questions about that extraordinary emotion: love.”—Chicago TribuneThe novella and five stories that make up this collection reveal the lives of immigrant families haunted by lost loves: a ghost seduces a young girl into a flooded river; a mother commands a daughter to avenge her father’s death; and in the title novella, a woman speaks from beyond the grave about her tragic marriage to an exiled musician whose own disappointments nearly destroyed their two daughters.

    Full of loneliness and hope, heartbreak and humor, Rothbart's tales blaze their way from midwestern farm fields to state prisons and border-town brothels. Much like the lost, tossed, and forgotten items Rothbart collected in his acclaimed book, Found, the stories in The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas capture the oddity, poetry, and dignity of everyday life.

    Her story "Pleiades" was called "a masterpiece" by Dave Eggers. Sachdeva has a talent for creating moving and poignant scenes, following her highly imaginative plots to their logical ends, and depicting how one small miracle can affect everyone in its wake.The world by night --Glass-lung --Logging lake --Killer of kings --All the names for God --Robert Greenman and the mermaid --Anything you might want --Manus --Pleiades

    In these stories, our bodies become strange and unfamiliar terrain, a medium for transformation. In “Fundamental Laws of Nature,” a doctor considers her legacy, both good and bad, when she discovers that her mother has been reincarnated as a thoroughbred mare. In the title story, a mischievous angel chronicles the remarkable life of a girl just beyond death’s reach.In Scheer’s hands, empathy and attachment are illuminated by the absurdity of life. When our bodies betray us, when we begin to feel our minds slip, how much can we embrace without going insane? How much can we detach ourselves before losing our humanity? Scheer’s stories grapple with these questions in each throbbing, choking, heartbreaking moment.

    In these magnificent portraits of people living life in America today, the bestselling author brilliantly ranges over the American continent, from Alaska to Washington D.C., in fiction that illuminates the heart of modern life.

    The stories are set in New York and in Italy (where Malamud's alter ego, the struggling New York Jewish painter, Arthur Fidelman, roams amid the ruins of old Europe in search of his artistic patrimony); they tell of egg candlers and shoemakers, matchmakers, and rabbis, in a voice that blends vigorous urban realism, Yiddish idiom, and a dash of artistic magic.The Magic Barrel is a book about New York and about the immigrant experience, and it is high point in the modern American short story. Few books of any kind have managed to depict struggle and frustration and heartbreak with such delight, or such artistry.

    Here is a collection of his short fiction, with dozens of tales spanning his career and ranging from the moving to the macabre, the humorous to the haunting. From the penetrating 'Memories of Youghal' to the bittersweet 'Bodily Secrets' and the elegiac 'Two More Gallants', here are masterpieces of insight, depth, drama and humanity, acutely rendered by a modern master.'A textbook for anyone who ever wanted to write a story, and a treasure for anyone who loves to read them' Madison Smartt Bell'Extraordinary... Mr. Trevor's sheer intensity of entry into the lives of his people...proceeds to uncover new layers of yearning and pain, new angles of vision and credible thought' The New York Times Book Review

    In these collected stories of man against the wilderness, London lays claim to the title of greatest outdoor adventure writer of all time.Contents:- To build a fire- Love of life- Chinago- Told in the drooling ward- The Mexican- War- South of the slot- Water baby- All Gold Canyon- Koolau the leper- Apostate- Mauki- An Odyssey of the north- A piece of steak- Strength of the strong- Red one- Wit or Porportuk- God of his fathers- In a far country- To the man on trail- White silence- League of the old men- Wisdom of the trail- Batard

    In stories as darkly comic as they are unflinching, people isolated by geography, emotion, or circumstance cut imperfect paths to peace—they have no other choice. A Russian mail-order bride in Finland is rendered silent by her dislocation and loss of language, the mother of a severely disabled boy writes him postcards he'll never read on a cruise ship held hostage by pirates, and an Iowa actuary wanders among the reincarnations of those she's known in her 127 lives. Horrocks' women find no simple escapes, and their acts of faith and acts of imagination in making do are as shrewd as they are surprising.

    Fourteen stories focus on a group of southern women who seek happiness and a sense of worth in bars, marriages, divorces, art, drug use, lovers' arms, and earthquakes

    These stories are set in a nameless community too small to be called a town, a place where wanting an education is a mark of ungodly arrogance and dowsing for water a legitimate occupation. Offutt has received a James Michener Grant and a Kentucky Arts Council Award.

    A young girl suffers her first betrayal. A widow flirts with an elderly blind man against the wishes of her grown-up children. A neighborhood loan shark teaches o white social worker a lesson in responsibility. And there is more. Sharing the world of Toni Cade Bambara's "straight-up fiction" is a stunning experience.

    In these ten bracingly transgressive tales, all her gifts of characterisation and observation are fully engaged, ushering concealed horrors into the light. Childhood cruelty is played out behind the bushes in 'Comma'; nurses clash in 'Harley Street' over something more than professional differences; and in the title story, staying in for the plumber turns into an ambiguous and potentially deadly waiting game.Whether set in a claustrophobic Saudi Arabian flat or on a precarious mountain road on a Greek island, these stories share an insight into the darkest recesses of the spirit. Displaying all of Mantel's unmistakable style and wit, they reveal a great writer at the peak of her powers.

    Several of the stories unfold in Big Sky country, McGuane's signature landscape: a father tries to buy his adult son out of virginity; a convict turned cowhand finds refuge at a ranch in ruination; a couple makes a fateful drive through the perilous gorge of the title story before parting ways. McGuane's people are seekers, beguiled by the land's beauty and myth, compelled by the fantasy of what a locale can offer, forced to reconcile dream and truth. The stories of "Gallatin Canyon" are alternately comical, dark, and poignant. Rich in the wit, compassion, and matchless language for which McGuane is celebrated, they are the work of a master.