Sadie’s lover calls her as he drives to meet his wife at marriage counseling. Gwen pines for her roommate, a man who will hold her hand but then tells her that her palm is sweaty. And Sasha agrees to have a drink with her married lover’s wife and then immediately regrets it. These are the women of Single, Carefree, Mellow, and in these eleven sublime stories they are grappling with unwelcome houseguests, disastrous birthday parties, needy but loyal friends, and all manner of love, secrets, and betrayal. In “Cranberry Relish” Josie’s ex—a man she met on Facebook—has a new girlfriend he found on Twitter. In “Blue Heron Bridge” Nina is more worried that the Presbyterian minister living in her garage will hear her kids swearing than about his finding out that she’s sleeping with her running partner. And in “The Rhett Butlers” a teenager loses her virginity to her history teacher and then outgrows him. In snappy, glittering prose that is both utterly hilarious and achingly poignant, Katherine Heiny chronicles the ways in which we are unfaithful to each other, both willfully and unwittingly. Maya, who appears in the title story and again in various states of love, forms the spine of this linked collection, and shows us through her moments of pleasure, loss, deceit, and kindness just how fickle the human heart can be.

    These fifteen compact stories are meticulously observed glimpses of everyday life that expose the ominous lurking under the ordinary. While his wife sleeps, a husband prowls the Internet, obsessed with female serial killers; a bureaucrat tries to reinvent himself, exposing goodness as artifice when he converts to Buddhism in search of power; a woman sits on the edge of the bed where her lover lies, attempting to locate a motive for his violence within her own self-doubt. Shifting between moments of violence (real and imagined) and mundane contemporary life, these stories encompass the complexity of human emotions, our capacity for cruelty as well as compassion. Not so much minimalist as stealthy, Karate Chop delivers its blows with an understatement that shows a master at work.

    How does she do it? No one knows. But here, in her newest collection, I Am the Brother of XX, she does it again. Like a magician or a master criminal, who can say how she gets away with it, but whether the stories involve famous writers (Calvino, Ingeborg Bachmann, Joseph Brodsky) or baronesses or 13th-century visionaries or tormented siblings bred up in elite Swiss boarding schools, they somehow steal your heart. And they don’t rest at that, but endlessly disturb your mind.

    Here, brought together in one volume for the first time, in a masterly new translation by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.The Steppe—the most lyrical of the five—is an account of a nine-year-old boy’s frightening journey by wagon train across the steppe of southern Russia. The Duel sets two decadent figures—a fanatical rationalist and a man of literary sensibility—on a collision course that ends in a series of surprising reversals. In The Story of an Unknown Man, a political radical spying on an important official by serving as valet to his son gradually discovers that his own terminal illness has changed his long-held priorities in startling ways. Three Years recounts a complex series of ironies in the personal life of a rich but passive Moscow merchant. In My Life, a man renounces wealth and social position for a life of manual labor.The resulting conflict between the moral simplicity of his ideals and the complex realities of human nature culminates in a brief apocalyptic vision that is unique in Chekhov’s work.(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) From the Hardcover edition.

    Henry Prize Stories 2010 brings to life a dazzling array of subjects: a street orphan in Malaysia, a cowboy and his teenage bride, a Russian nanny in Manhattan, a nineteenth-century Nigerian widow, and political prisoners on a Greek island. Also included are essays from the eminent jurors on their favorite stories, observations from the winners on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines.  Them Old Cowboy Songs Annie Proulx  Clothed, Female FigureKirstin Allio  The Headstrong Historian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie  Stand By Me Wendell Berry  Sheep May Safely GrazeJess Row  Birch Memorial Preeta Samarasan  VisitationBrad Watson  The Woman of the House William Trevor  The Bridge Daniel Alarcón  A Spoiled ManDaniyal Mueenuddin  Oh, DeathJames Lasdun  Fresco, Byzantine Natalie Bakopoulos  The End of My Life in New YorkPeter Cameron  ObitTed Sanders  The Lover Damon Galgut  An East Egg Update George Bradley  Into the GorgeRon Rash  MicrostoriesJohn Edgar Wideman  Some Women Alice Munro  Making GoodLore Segal  For author interviews, photos, and more, go to www.ohenryprizestories.com   A portion of the proceeds from this book will go to support the PEN Readers & Writers Literary Outreach Program.

    The second section contains the grand master's ruminations on the SF genre itself. And the final section is comprised of Asimov's thoughts on the craft and writing of science fiction.

    JonesCold snap by Thom JonesDoe season by David Michael KaplanPatriotic by Janet KauffmanGirl by Jamaica KincaidTerritory by David LeavittThe kind of light that shines on Texas by Reginald McKnightYou're ugly, too by Lorrie MooreThe management of grief by Bharati MukherjeeMeneseteung by Alice MunroGhost girls by Joyce Carol OatesThe things they carried by Tim O'BrienThe shawl by Cynthia OzickBrokeback Mountain by Annie ProulxStrays by Mark RichardIntensive care by Lee SmithThe way we live now by Susan SontagTwo kinds by Amy TanFirst, body by Melanie Rae ThonAble, Baker, Charlie, Dog by Stephanie VaughnNineteen fifty-five by Alice WalkerFever by John Edgar WidemanTaking care by Joy Williams

    Among the things I do pretty well at this point I’d have to list darts, re-closing Stay-Fresh boxes, and staying out of the way. This is the self-eulogy offered early on by the unwilling hero of the opening story in this collection, a dazzling array of work in short fiction from a master of the form. The stories in Love and Hydrogen—familiar to readers from publications ranging from McSweeney’s to The New Yorker to Harper’s to Tin House—encompass in theme and compassion what an ordinary writer would seem to need several lifetimes to imagine.A frustrated wife makes use of an enterprising illegal-gun salesman to hold her husband hostage; two hapless adult-education students botch their attempts at rudimentary piano but succeed in a halting, awkward romance; a fascinated and murderous Creature welcomes the first human visitors to his Black Lagoon; and in the title story, the stupefyingly huge airship Hindenburg flies to its doom, representing in 1937 mankind's greatest yearning as well as its titanic failure. Generous in scope and astonishing in ambition, Shepard’s voice never falters; the virtuosity of Love and Hydrogen cements his reputation as, in the words of Rick Bass, “a passionate writer with a razor-sharp wit and an elephantine heart”—in short, one of the most powerful talents at work today.

    S. Lewis’s adult religious books, a repackaged edition of the revered author’s definitive collection of short fiction, which explores enduring spiritual and science fiction themes such as space, time, reality, fantasy, God, and the fate of humankind.From C.S. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics—comes a collection of his dazzling short fiction.This collection of futuristic fiction includes a breathtaking science fiction story written early in his career in which Cambridge intellectuals witness the breach of space-time through a chronoscope—a telescope that looks not just into another world, but into another time. As powerful, inventive, and profound as his theological and philosophical works, The Dark Tower reveals another side of Lewis’s creative mind and his longtime fascination with reality and spirituality. It is ideal reading for fans of J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis’s longtime friend and colleague.

    Howard created more than the greatest action hero of the twentieth century—he also launched a genre that came to be known as sword and sorcery. But Conan wasn’t the first archetypal adventurer to spring from Howard’s fertile imagination. “He was . . . a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a touch of the ancient philosopher, and more than a touch of the pagan. . . . A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things. . . . Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in only one respect—he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such was Solomon Kane.”Collected in this volume, lavishly illustrated by award-winning artist Gary Gianni, are all of the stories and poems that make up the thrilling saga of the dour and deadly Puritan, Solomon Kane. Together they constitute a sprawling epic of weird fantasy adventure that stretches from sixteenth-century England to remote African jungles where no white man has set foot. Here are shudder-inducing tales of vengeful ghosts and bloodthirsty demons, of dark sorceries wielded by evil men and women, all opposed by a grim avenger armed with a fanatic’s faith and a warrior’s savage heart. This edition also features exclusive story fragments, a biography of Howard by scholar Rusty Burke, and “In Memoriam,” H. P. Lovecraft’s moving tribute to his friend and fellow literary genius. Skulls in the stars --The right hand of doom --Red shadows --Rattle of bones --The castle of the devil --Death's black riders --The moon of skulls --The one black stain --The blue flame of vengance --The hills of the dead --Hawk of Basti --The return of Sir Richard Grenville --Wings in the night --The footfalls within --The children of Asshur --Solomon Kane's homecoming --Solomon Kane's homecoming (variant).

    Winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, two O. Henry prizes, and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, Rash brilliantly illuminates the tensions between the traditional and the modern, the old and the new south, tenderness and violence, man and nature. Though his focus is regional, the themes of Rash's work are universal, striking an emotional chord that resonates deep within each of our lives.Something Rich and Strange showcases this acclaimed master's artistry and craftsmanship in thirty-two stories culled from previously published collections and two available for the first time in book form: "Outlaws" and "Shiloh." Each work of short fiction demonstrates Rash's dazzling ability to evoke the heart and soul of this land and its people—men and women inexorably tethered to the geography that defines and shapes them. Filled with suspense and myth, hope and heartbreak, and told in language that flows like "shimmering, liquid poetry" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), Something Rich and Strange is an iconic work from an American literary virtuoso.

    Aldo, his best friend and muse, is a haplessly criminal entrepreneur with an uncanny knack for disaster. As Aldo's luck worsens, Liam is inspired to base his next book on his best friend's exponential misfortunes and hopeless quest to win back his one great love: his ex-wife, Stella. What begins as an attempt to make sense of Aldo's mishaps spirals into a profound story of faith and friendship.With the same originality and buoyancy that catapulted his first novel, A Fraction of the Whole, onto prize lists around the world—including shortlists for the Man Booker Prize and the Guardian First Book Award—Steve Toltz has created a rousing, hysterically funny but unapologetically dark satire about fate, faith, friendship, and the artist's obligation to his muse. Sharp, witty, kinetic, and utterly engrossing, Quicksand is a subversive portrait of twenty-first-century society in all its hypocrisy and absurdity.

    She writes the kind of fiction that celebrates the flawed dignity of the human and reminds us all of the fine venture of living in grace and hope in the worlds we are born to and make.

    Two photographers document a nation’s guilt in pictures of its people’s hands. An underground club in Western Australia plays jazz to nostalgic patrons dreaming of America’s Deep South. A young woman struggles to define herself among the litter of objects an ex-lover has left behind. In short vignettes and longer stories, Josephine Rowe explores the idea of things that are left behind: souvenirs, scars, and prejudice. Rowe captures everyday life in restrained poetic prose, merging themes of collective memory and guilt, permanence and impermanence, and inherited beliefs. These beautifully wrought, bittersweet stories announce the arrival of an exciting new talent in Australian fiction.

    Yann Martel's title story (described as "unforgettable...a truly stunning piece of fiction"*), won the 1991 Journey Prize to universal acclaim. The intensely human tragedy that lies at its heart is told with a spare, careful elegance that resonates long after it has ended--and is matched through all the stories by an immediacy an dazzling freshness.