With fervent intensity and sly wit, he gives each tale his signature mix of characters—some almost ghostly, others vividly real—who live in worlds tinged with surreal potential. There are crazed nuns hijacking streetcars, eerie adventures across frozen ponds, and a boy who is visited by a miniature bride and groom every night in his uncle's doomsday compound. Whether they are about a simple transaction, a brave inquiry, a difficult negotiation, or shared bliss, the stories in Ecstatic Cahoots target the friction between our need for ecstatic self-transcendence and our passionate longing for trust between lovers, friends, family, and even strangers. Call it micro-fiction or mini-fiction, flash fiction or short shorts. Whatever the label, the marvelous encounters here are marked by puzzlement, anguish, and conspiratorial high spirits. In this thrilling collection, Stuart Dybek has once again re-envisioned the possibilities of fiction, creating myriad human situations that fold endlessly upon each other, his crackling prose drawing out the strange, the intimate, and the mysterious elements in each.

    Ringed by steep mountains, this bleak village is cut off from the rest of Iceland and from the modern world. The locals are adamant that Iceland's legendary huldufólk - hidden people - had a hand in the death. Magnus finds their superstition suspicious... As he digs deeper, Magnus discovers that the victim was not a popular man, leading him to suspect that other, more human, passions are at work...

    In Evil Eye, Oates offers four chilling tales of love gone horribly wrong, showing the lengths people will go to find love, keep it, and sometimes end it.In "Evil Eye," we meet Mariana, the young 4th wife of a prominent intellectual. When her husband's brazen first wife visits one night, Mariana learns a terrible secret that threatens her marriage and sanity. In "So Near, Anytime, Always," shy teenager Lizbeth meets Desmond, a charming boy who offers this introverted girl the first sparks of young romance. Yet just as their relationship begins to blossom, Lizbeth realizes that beneath Desmond's perfect façade lies a dark soul that could wreak havoc on Lizbeth and her loved ones. In "The Execution," spoiled college student Bart Hansen has planned the perfect, brutal crime to get back at his parents for their years of condescension. Yet what he didn't plan for is a mother whose love is more resilent than he could have ever imagined, who threatens to derail his carefully laid-out plans.

    His fiction is an acknowledged influence on entire generations of writers, ranging from H.P. Lovecraft to James Branch Cabell, from Clark Ashton Smith to Lin Carter. Although many of his most famous stories are longer in length, the miniature portraits of Fifty-One Tales (originally published in 1915 and sometimes reprinted under the title The Food of Death) are an ideal introduction to Dunsany. Nowhere is the jewel-like quality of his prose more evident than in the short tales, seminal works which runs the gamut from whimsy to fantasy to social satire.CONTENTS:"The Assignation" "Charon" "The Death of Pan" "The Sphinx at Gizeh" "The Hen" "Wind and Fog" "The Raft Builders" "The Workman" "The Guest" "Death and Odysseus" "Death and the Orange" "The Prayer of the Flowers" "Time and the Tradesman" "The Little City" "The Unpasturable Fields" "The Worm and the Angel" "The Songless Country" "The Latest Thing" "The Demagogue and the Demi-Monde" "The Giant Poppy" "Roses" "The Man with the Golden Ear-rings" "The Dream of King Karna-Vootra" "The Storm" "A Mistaken Identity" "The True History of the Hare and the Tortoise" "Alone the Immortals" "A Moral Little Tale" "The Return of Song" "Spring in Town" "How the Enemy Came to Thlūnrāna" "A Losing Game" "Taking Up Piccadilly" "After the Fire" "The City" "The Food of Death" "The Lonely Idol" "The Sphinx in Thebes (Massachusetts)" "The Reward" "The Trouble in Leafy Green Street" "Furrow-Maker" "Lobster Salad" "The Return of the Exiles" "Nature and Time" "The Song of the Blackbird" "The Messengers" "The Three Tall Sons" "Compromise" "What We Have Come To" "The Tomb of Pan" "The Poet Speaks With Earth" (English version only) "The Mist" (American version only)

    Drawing on that episode in her life, she produced Hospital Sketches, a fictionalized account of her experiences at the military hospital in Georgetown.This collection of five poignant short stories contains two pieces from Hospital Sketches, published in 1863: "Obtaining Supplies," recounting the obstacles Alcott's fictionalized persona, Tribulation Periwinkle, faced in gaining her independence and getting to Washington; and "A Night," a moving account of her encounter with a dying soldier. Also included are "My Contraband," a gripping tale of vengeance involving a Civil War nurse, her Confederate patient and his former slave; "Happy Women," a fictionalized essay about four "spinsters" with a positive attitude toward their marital status; and "How I Went Out to Service," an autobiographical sketch of a young woman's undaunted pursuit of financial independence.Rich in their simple eloquence, these stories provide revealing glimpses of the concerns and literary techniques of one of America's most admired authors.

    One night of heavy emotions and bad decisions severs their tie for years. Can a chance encounter reconnect their hearts or will they continue to live life alone, forever yearning?

    That’s a mantra that Colson Crook lives by and for very good reason. The odds were stacked against him from his birth to a single mother in a low-income area of Port Arthur, Texas. He’d succumbed to the odds on more than one occasion, but now he is living the life he is destined to live. Trying to get other people to forget about his past seems to be the problem, especially his family. However, over the years, he’s learned to deal with their negativity. His life is almost complete, except in one area. Love. It had eluded him for years and he’s accepted that. But one fateful night, his eyes land on the woman that could change his relationship status forever.Sky Jones is a successful teacher that wants to make a difference in the lives of her students. However, dealing with the attitudes of the teenagers she teaches, constantly increases in difficulty and threatens to make her forget her reason for pursuing that career in the first place. Deciding to take a short distance girls’ trip for spring break gives her the reprieve she needs, but it also gives her something else… an undeniable attraction to an older man that she can’t ignore.Colson and Sky start on a fast-paced trek and feel that despite the warnings of the people closest to them, they want to pursue something meaningful. Will they continue to throw caution to the wind or will one of them decide to take heed to those warnings and dismantle what they’ve built?

    Beagle, author of The Last Unicorn.Bestselling author Patricia A. McKillip (The Riddle-Master of Hed) is one of the most lyrical writers gracing the fantasy genre. With the debut of her newest work, Dreams of Distant Shores is a true ode to her many talents. Within these pages you will find a youthful artist possessed by both his painting and his muse and seductive travelers from the sea enrapturing distant lovers. The statue of a mermaid comes suddenly to life, and two friends are transfixed by a haunted estate.Fans of McKillip’s ethereal fiction will find much to delight them; those lucky enough to be discovering her work will find much to enchant them.

    Don B made his fortune off music and his name from the trail of broken lives he's left in his wake. He is a predator in every sense of the word. Don B's wealth and power make him believe he's untouchable, but all this changes during a business trip to Miami and a chance meeting with a stranger who calls herself Reign. She is cold, cunning and beautiful...a perfect match for the self proclaimed Don of Harlem. He is determined to have her for his own at all costs, but soon finds that the price to be with Reign is a steep one, even for a man as wealthy as Don B. In his pursuit of Reign Don B finds himself caught up in twisted plot of sex, secrets and murder, where the predator now finds himself the prey.

    I never won anything. But here I was, boarding a plane for an all-expenses paid trip to Makani Island. Alone. I wasn’t expecting anything more than a soul-soothing vacation.Then I met him. A total grouch, or so I thought. A guy I wouldn’t want to see again. Ever. But somehow, he convinced me to take a walk on the beach. The walk turned into an all-night conversation. A once in a lifetime connection. We both knew it, but his mega-wealthy parents had wedding plans set out for him already.He said he was his own man, but I refused to be a wedge between them. Could I really give him up? The bigger question was…would he let me?Island Dreams is a clean short read, and the first in a vacation romance series.

    It's raining heavily. Black umbrellas everywhere. Mysterious mourners, and the arrival of a new priest in Wonderland.Who died? When and why? And who is this crowd?The latest Snap of Insanity reveals a secret or two you may not have been ready for. It also hints to the coming events of Mushrooms (Insanity 8)

    Now they're fighting for justice and revenge! They Came from one Missouri family, but Lance and Buck Chaney had been fighting on opposite sides of the war—until they were brought together ba a shipment of gold dust. Fighting for the Confederacy, Buck had been ordered to hijack the gold his brother's Union troops were bringing north to Jefferson City. By the time the skirmish was over the shipment of gold was missing. Now the former enemies have joined together again—to hunt down the man who had taken the gold from them both in an act of treachery and bloodshed.

    A lonely teenage girl falls in love with an older, married neighbor. A woman attends a party at the home of her boyfriend’s ex-wife. A schoolteacher gets fired for teaching time incorrectly to grade-school students. And a young woman recovering from a breakup receives guidance from a drunk therapist. Poignant and sharply rendered, Otis’s stories seek answers to the questions of whom we love and why, how we search for love, lose it, or find it—sometimes at the last moment and in the most unlikely places. Quirky and hilarious, these stories display a knowing affection for human strangeness.

    For the wealthy rancher, his daughter Chloe, foreman Josiah, and ranch hands are all the family he needs. Chloe Holt loves her dad, but she needs a mom. So, armed with her dad’s credit card, the ten-year-old finds them the perfect wife and mother.  She prays that the pretty lady with the kind eyes will give them a chance…. and that her dad doesn’t ground her for life when he finds out!  Heather Ayer is down on her luck and has just done the craziest thing. She applied to a mail order bride agency. Marrying a man she’s never met is crazy. Then again, maybe it’s the fresh start she needs. Mail Order Family is a short, 23,000 word story. It is a contemporary mail order bride romance with inspirational and Christian themes of family, faith, and love. As always, it is clean and wholesome with a guaranteed happily ever after ending.

    Among other fine works, the collection also includes “Wunderkind,” McCullers’s first published story written when she was only seventeen about a musical prodigy who suddenly realizes she will not go on to become a great pianist. Newly reset and available for the first time in a handsome trade paperback edition, The Ballad of the Sad Café is a brilliant study of love and longing from one of the South’s finest writers.