Dani Carter was seven years old -- her sister, Rose, seventeen -- when their beautiful, impetuous mother, Maria, walked out of their lives, abandoning her husband and family for a love affair that would end tragically mere months later. Over the decades that followed, Dani was able to overcome the persistent pain and feelings of betrayal, eventually wedding a successful man and giving birth to a wonderful son. But love has long been missing from her marriage, propelling her into the arms of another and inspiring troubling thoughts of escape. If it were not for the distress caused by the recent death of her father, she might well have already been gone. The sins of the mother, Dani fears, have been visited upon the daughter. Dani's sister, Rose, never spoke or speaks of their lost parent. And their iron-willed, driven father -- who channeled his shame and anger into phenomenal business success -- always made it brutally clear that he considered his ex-wife to be evil incarnate. But Dani remembers a sweet, funny, vivacious young woman who did everything with exuberant love and tenderness. And now that she finds herself in a similar heartbreaking situation, Dani can't help but wonder who Maria really was. It's a puzzle that may soon be completed, after a lifetime of searching for missing pieces. Maria, calling herself Mariah, is about to reenter her daughters' worlds -- at a time of emotional confusion and physicalchaos -- bearing secrets and bitter truths ... and, perhaps, long-awaited answers to what could possibly drive a mother to sacrifice what was dearest to her heart.

    By turns subtle and intense, disturbing and elusive, the stories in this collection are ultimately connected by themes of memory and loss, reality and fabrication, and by a richless of language that rests lightly on its carefully foundation.

    The one thing each of them lacks is a special woman to share his life with—until true love steps in to transform three sexy single guys into grooms-to-be…A fender bender seems like a stroke of lousy luck, until attorney Kyle Chatham glimpses the woman who just put a dent in his vintage Jag. The fact that gorgeous social worker Ava Warrick wants little to do with him only piques his interest. What starts out as simple friendship gives way to cozy dinners and blissful, breathless nights…until Ava brings their relationship to a screeching halt. Kyle's sure she's his soul mate. But now that the confirmed bachelor is ready to commit, can he convince a woman who's learned never to trust in love that a connection this real, this passionate, is anything but an accident?

    During the State of Emergency following the Sharpeville massacre he was detained for five months. Continuing to write, he endured house arrest and solitary confinement. La Guma left South Africa as a refugee in 1966 and lived in exile in London and Havana. He died in 1986.A Walk in the Night and Other Stories reveals La Guma as one of the most important African writers of his time. These works reveal the plight of non-whites in apartheid South Africa, laying bare the lives of the poor and the outcasts who filled the ghettoes and shantytowns.A walk in the night --Tattoo marks and nails --At the Portagee's --The gladiators --Blankets --A matter of taste --The lemon orchard

    Plus, this year featuring more all-new material than ever before!Contributors to the 2017 calendar include:Kelly Link (Get in Trouble, Magic for Beginners)Jim Gavin (Middle Men, AMC's forthcoming Lodge 49)Carmen Maria Machado (Her Body and Other Parties)Ken Liu (The Paper Menagerie, The Grace of Kings)Maggie Shipstead (Astonish Me, Seating Arrangements)and [REDACTED x 19]!As always, each booklet is sealed, so you won't know what story you're getting until the morning you open it. Calendars are available in a one-time print run, which means that once they're gone, they're gone forever. The 2017 edition has also been reimagined, design-wise—did someone say translucent vellum sleeve? Yes. It was us.

    The book contains two interwoven stories. In the first, it’s 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, 14-year-old Citoyen "City" Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he’s sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared.Before leaving, City is given a strange book without an author called Long Division. He learns that one of the book’s main characters is also named City Coldson--but Long Division is set in 1985. This 1985 City, along with his friend and love-object, Shalaya Crump, discovers a way to travel into the future, and steals a laptop and cellphone from an orphaned teenage rapper called...Baize Shephard. They ultimately take these with them all the way back to 1964, to help another time-traveler they meet protect his family from the Klan.City’s two stories ultimately converge in the mysterious work shed behind his grandmother’s, where he discovers the key to Baize’s disappearance.

    And in ‘Gunter Weber's Confession’, we return once more to the Greek island of Captain Corelli's Mandolin and its much-loved characters.Full of wit, charm and warmth, Labels and Other Stories shows the imaginative range and unique storytelling power of one of our msot treasured writers.

    That was the way it was since the beginning, and the way it was to be until the end. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. But when an older man—a fellow slave—seeks to gain favor by preaching the master’s gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own. Isaiah and Samuel’s love, which was once so simple, is seen as sinful and a clear danger to the plantation’s harmony.With a lyricism reminiscent of Toni Morrison, Robert Jones, Jr. fiercely summons the voices of slaver and the enslaved alike to tell the story of these two men; from Amos the preacher to the calculating slave-master himself to the long line of women that surround them, women who have carried the soul of the plantation on their shoulders. As tensions build and the weight of centuries—of ancestors and future generations to come—culminate in a climactic reckoning, The Prophets masterfully reveals the pain and suffering of inheritance, but is also shot through with hope, beauty, and truth, portraying the enormous, heroic power of love.

    

    What we know of identity is smashed and in its place, true individuals emerge, each bristling with a unique sexuality, a belief-system all their own. Reminiscent of Jane Bowles, William Burroughs, and Colette, her writing glows with an authenticity that is intoxicating and rare. A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 HonoreeWhiting Award WinnerPEN/Hemingway Award FinalistLambda Literary Award FinalistLonglisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction & The Story

    Now the stories alone are available for the first time in trade paperback.

    Who has it. Who doesn’t. How you get it. How you don’t.In Refund, Bender creates an award-winning collection of stories that deeply explore the ways in which money and the estimation of value affect the lives of her characters. The stories in Refund reflect our contemporary world—swindlers, reality show creators, desperate artists, siblings, parents — who try to answer the question: What is the real definition of worth?In “Theft,” an eighty-year-old swindler, accustomed to tricking people for their money, boards a cruise ship to see if she can find something of true value—a human connection. In “Anything for Money,” the creator of a reality show is thrown into the real world when his estranged granddaughter reenters his life in need of a new heart; and in the title story, young artist parents in downtown Manhattan escape the attack on 9/11 only to face a battle over their subletted apartment with a stranger who might have lost more than only her deposit.Set in contemporary America, these stories herald a work of singular literary merit by an important writer at the height of her power.

    In her debut collection of short fiction, Due takes us to Gracetown, a small Florida town that has both literal and figurative ghost; into future scenarios that seem all too real; and provides empathetic portraits of those whose lives are touched by Otherness. Featuring an award-winning novella and fifteen stories—one of which has never been published before—Ghost Summer: Stories is sure to both haunt and delight.With an Introduction by Nalo Hopkinson and an Afterword by Steven Barnes.

    The kids in "Get Down "are trapped between their own good breeding and their burning desire to join the house party of sex, romance, and bad behavior that seems to be happening on some other block, down some other more dangerous street. The adults in "Get Down "are just trying to hold it together. Here is a debut that will make you laugh and cringe in equal measure. Set mostly in middle-class black Philadelphia during the crack and Reagan years, the stories in "Get Down "are antic, poignant, and utterly universal--they'll bring back memories for anyone who has ever stood in the corner of a darkened school gym wondering whether to dance . . . or duck for cover. They announce a sparkling new talent, a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop whose work has been featured in "Vibe," "Essence," and the anthology "Naked: Black Women Bare All About Their Skin, Hair, Hips, Lips, and Other Parts.

    While she knows racism is a problem (occasional brushes with the uglier side of people don't let her forget it), Naomi is, at heart, just like any other teenage girl. All of that changes when Joshua, Naomi's older brother, is killed in an accident on his way to a civil rights demonstration in Chicago. Racism becomes a personal issue, and Naomi decides that she needs to help bring about changes in the system. At college in Atlanta, she becomes immersed in politics, organizing protests and butting heads with school administrations as well as with her boyfriend, who isn't too friendly to the cause. Disillusioned by authority figures and betrayed by the man she loves, Naomi returns home, confused about the world and her place in it.