His memories cluster around the houses they lived in, the schools he went to, the uncles and aunts and cousins he knew as a boy. This is an extremely funny book and the account of how Ted O'Malley repaired the plumbing is likely to become a classic of its kind. It is also a warm and touching book. As a picture of its time, it is clear, true and absolutely unforgettable

    Stories increasingly change point of view, switch location, and sometimes pack as much material as a short novel might,” writes guest editor Elizabeth Strout. “It’s the variety of voices that most indicates the increasing confluence of cultures involved in making us who we are.” The Best American Short Stories 2013 presents an impressive diversity of writers who dexterously lead us into their corners of the world.In “Miss Lora,” Junot Díaz masterfully puts us in the mind of a teenage boy who throws aside his better sense and pursues an intimate affair with a high school teacher. Sheila Kohler tackles innocence and abuse as a child wanders away from her mother, in thrall to a stranger she believes is the “Magic Man.” Kirstin Valdez Quade’s “Nemecia” depicts the after-effects of a secret, violent family trauma. Joan Wickersham’s “The Tunnel” is a tragic love story about a mother’s declining health and her daughter’s helplessness as she struggles to balance her responsibility to her mother and her own desires. New author Callan Wink’s “Breatharians” unsettles the reader as a farm boy shoulders a grim chore in the wake of his parents’ estrangement.“Elizabeth Strout was a wonderful reader, an author who knows well that the sound of one’s writing is just as important as and indivisible from the content,” writes series editor Heidi Pitlor. “Here are twenty compellingly told, powerfully felt stories about urgent matters with profound consequences.”

    Follow Max on his lifelong quest to produce the perfect novel. Touching, irreverent, hilarious and sad. Every writer should read this story. Every writer will relate to Max. please note: This is a SHORT STORY consisting of 2,500 words.

    Pressured by a starving fellow poet, Will establishes The Poets' Preservation Society, a genteel organization to help poets in need. But when Will meets his muse, the enigmatic and athletic Lily White, he becomes inspired not only to write poetry, but to take guerrilla action in support of poets everywhere. Poetry meets parkour and culture clashes with commerce in this hilarious look at how we measure the value of art.

    In these devastating stories, the hopeful monsters in question are those who will not be tethered by familial duty nor bound by the ghosts of their past.Home becomes fraught, reality a nightmare as Hiromi Goto weaves her characters through tales of domestic crises and cultural dissonance. They are the walking wounded—a mother who is terrified by a newborn daughter who bears a tail; a “stinky girl” who studies the human condition in a shopping mall; a family on holiday wih a visiting grandfather who cannot abide their “foreign” nature. But wills are a force unto themselves, and Goto’s characters are imbued with the light of myth and magic-realism. With humor and keen insight, Goto makes the familiar seem strange, and deciphers those moments when the idyllic skews into the absurd and the sublime.

    Which is a hard act to pull off when your mother is distracted, your girlfriend too beautiful and your father in and out of a mental institution. Lost Between Houses unfolds with mingled sarcasm, grief and awe, and grips the reader until its startling climax.

    A young PR man working at General Electric sold his first magazine piece. By the time he'd sold his third, he decided to quit his job and join the likes of Salinger, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner, and make a living as a full-time writer. That young man was Kurt Vonnegut.Bagombo Snuff Box collects Vonnegut’s favourite stories from the postwar years that sharpened his dark, vaudevillian and quietly subversive voice. Here we see the mind-bending wit and central themes of his masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five. A must-read for Vonnegut aficionados new and old.

    The book manages to be both harsh and sympathetic. It welds humour, tragedy and the personal embarrassments we all live through in a colourful and memorable way.

    Kate Stringer is a woman in mourning, her murdered husband the latest victim of the notorious Catholic Jack slayer. A nationwide manhunt remains underway, but the serial killer continues to remain elusive. Now, unknown to her, Kate too has been targeted by the maniac. However, other forces are in play. Things moving in the shadows, with an agenda of their own...From those broken places, where trauma and distress cloister, they watch with accusing eyes. And if they judge us, they may look to share their pain.

    collected in Spiritwalk

    While her almost-but-not-quite ex-boyfriend Adam is on a work assignment in Europe, Anna finds herself tricked into a ditch-the-loser intervention by her supportive yet meddling girlfriends. More frustrated than ever, Anna starts to smoke, asks Buddy, the backyard squirrel, for advice, and finally seeks out the help of a caring but fashion-challenged therapist. Adding to the emotional overload, Anna's beautiful but rash sister decides to move to the Middle East. Luckily, Anna has a resource even better than Buddy or the therapist: her devoted grandmother, who tells it like it is, refuses to conform to anyone's expectations, and who continues to live on her prairie farm all alone, half-blind, and completely happy. In her richly rewarding debut novel, Daria Salamon explores the bonds that make and break family, friendship, and love with warmth and good humor.

    Full of memorable characters and masterfully composed narrative, these short stories constitute a wonderful addition to any personal library, and are not to be missed by discerning collectors of Runyon's work. The stories contained herein include: Beach of Promise, Romance in the Roaring Forties, Dream Street Rose, The Old Doll's House, Blood Pressure, The Bloodhounds of Broadway, Tobias the Terrible, The Snatching of Bookie Bob, The Lily of St. Pierre, Earthquake, and more. Alfred Damon Runyon (1880 1946) was an American newspaperman and author, best remembered for his short stories about the world of Broadway in New York City that resulted from the Prohibition era. This volume is being republished now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author."

    These tales will delight fans of the horror short story with their ingenius twists and wicked irony. Brought to you by the international best-selling author readers have named the new Stephen King.Enter strange worlds and meet their unusual and sometimes terrifying residents.Dive into the first collection of ;Behind Dark Doors, filled with stories of suspense, horror, paranormal and supernatural, from the dark mind of short story award-winning author Susan May.DO US PARTWhen you've been married seventy years, what secret and deadly thoughts lie behind the smiles?HELL'S KITCHENGordon must survive the elimination round in an intense cooking competition. But he's made a fatal mistake and winning is now a matter of life and death.MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCESWhen a mother feels she's not being heard at a parent-teacher meeting, sometimes actions can speak louder than words.I HATE EMMA CARTERNew girl in school, Emma Carter, is assigned Angie Dutton as her babysitter. Angie’s nobody's keeper but perhaps this time she’s picked the wrong victim.IT'S IN THE GENESEver since Brandon joined his father on his late-night fishing trips he's changed from Helen’s happy-go-lucky son. Today, she’ll discover why.THE WAR VETERANFor seventy years, World War II veteran Jack Baker has endured vivid flashbacks to that horrific June day on Omaha Beach. Tonight, Jack's seventy-year-old secret comes back to claim him.⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Short stories at their best"⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "5.0 out of 5 stars It totally lived up to the hype!"⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "I absolutely loved this collection!"

    The poem explores the actual world of history transformed into the mythical world of poetry, where what we remember about the past may be more real than history tells us.

    Each finds a man carefully churning over his past, trying to fathom how the distance between people can become suddenly unbridgeable. Two tourists visit a remote island off the coast of Africa and are undone by a disconcerting encounter with another couple. A young man, enchanted by his bohemian cousin and her husband, watches them fall into a state of resentful dependence over the course of decades. A chaste but all-consuming love affair between a troubled boy and a wealthy but equally troubled girl leaves a scar that never heals. The son of divorced parents tries in vain to reunite them before realizing why he is wrong to do so. In The End of Love, Giralt Torrente forges discomfiting and gripping dramas from the small but consequential misunderstandings that shape our lives.