What’s meant to be an uneventful trip turns into a coming-of-age journey that teaches Jem that adulthood is not as easy as he might have expected, and life usually has a plan of its own.

    And  a grouping of four stories at the end follows a divorced psychiatrist in an arc that constitutes a short novel.   Included are: “His Women,”  “Great Sex,”  “Old Love Affairs,” and  “The Drinking Club,”  “Patients, “The Wrong Mexico, “ and “Earthquake Damage.”

    O'Leary to Barack Obama. "Flexing impressive literary chops, the beer vendor/creative-writing professor captures both the tough, defensive exterior and the vulnerable, often-broken heart of his city."— Timeout Chicago"Chicago, a page at a time. Michael Czyzniejewski gets right to the point in telling the city's stories." — Chicago Tribune"...Michael Czyzniejewski’s “Chicago Stories,” forty fictional monologues riffing on the common culture of the Windy City’s shared history, projected forward into a possible future. Not quite historical fiction—more like historical jazz." — Newcity Lit"In 'Chicago Stories,' Michael Czyzniejewski summons all of Chicago — its ghosts, living and dead, its heroes and fools, sinners and saints, its people and places and all of its occasions — and in these pages they have gathered, strange and unlikely bedfellows, to sing a new song for Chicago. It will twist your arm behind your back, this song. It will break your fingers."— Billy Lombardo, author of The Man With Two Arms and The Logic of a Rose: Chicago Stories

    A young woman named Foe has lost her memory and six messengers who attempt to recite her past back to her inevitably - and creatively - fail. Parts Kafka, Lewis Carroll, and Aesop, the imagistic allegory warns that in a culture of texting, email, and Twitter, we can't forsake real conversation - or we could lose its art forever. - Interview Magazine, Dec/Jan 2010.An exquisite memento of wildly imagined scenes, odd characters, and nightmares confused with waking life, a slipstream loop where bureaucracy and hallucination are so intertwined that you’re often confused which is the most absurd. - The Brooklyn Rail, April 2010.

    Spurned for her size, and broken hearted as she stands by and watches all of her peers married off, Mindy is led by God to respond to an advert to become a Mail Order Bride to a mystery man on the wilds of the Western Frontier. It’s 1871 and the Frontier is as wild, and as lonely, as ever. Mindy Silvers is a gutsy and beautiful young lady, who dares to believe God and respond to a call into the unknown as a Mail Order Bride. But her journey to Horatio Attwood’s homestead will not be an easy one. She failed to mention her size to her husband-to-be, and Mindy must overcome insurmountable odds, both inwardly and outwardly, to win her prize. And Mindy is not the only with a secret. Horatio too must overcome his own doubt and shame before he can embrace his destiny, and is bride. ‘Overweight Mail Order Bride For A Half-Blind Cowboy’ is a sweet, clean, historical Mail Order Bride tale of one gutsy woman’s journey to love and happiness. In this heart warming 'Destined For Love' series, strong and courageous Mail Order Brides overcome deep personal challenges to find lasting love with faithful men on the Western Frontier. Visit all the books in the series! Overweight Mail Order Bride For A Half-Blind Cowboy Crippled Mail Order Bride For A Faithful Frontier Cowboy (COMING SOON – JULY 2015) Burned But Beautiful Mail Order Bride For A Pioneer Doctor (COMING SOON – JULY 2015)

    She added that she wanted to ask his advice, because she had heard he was so critical about girls.

    Three cycles. Fists and possums and gunfighters and penises and hookers and short buses and dead babies and fireworks. The stories in this collection originally appeared in: HOBART, FICTION INTERNATIONAL, KITTY SNACKS, TEXAS OBSERVER, NEW BORDER and THE PURITAN.

    She and her two young children must now face a holiday season filled with so many reminders of what they've lost. But when a coworker who’s raising his young nephew moves next door, Rae discovers that the support of a good friend, and the gift of a child, can bring back some of the joy of the season.

    These are not your mother's bedtime stories. In this mesmerizing debut collection, Aubrey Hirsch will lead you into the darkest recesses of human life, where hope and longing and love and loss look all too much like one another. Each of these sixteen stories may be filled with its own kind of despair, but they are not despairing as Hirsch enters with deep sympathy into the souls of lonely women (Cheater, Hydrogen Event in a Bubble Chamber, Made in Indonesia), broken men (Leaving Seoul, Advice for Dealing with the Loss of a Beloved Pet), young recruits (The Specialists), and dutiful daughters (Strategy #13: Journal, No System for Blindness). With a hard intelligence, Hirsch considers the toll of heartache (Why We Never Talk About Sugar, Certainty) and loss (The Borovsky Circus Goes to Littlefield, Paradise Hardware) and the simple cost of longing. Taut and tension filled, these stories will transport you into the heart of what it means to be human. But be careful. Hirsch's compassion arrives on a knife blade. And you just may find your own heart cut open.

    Three women’s lives are about to change forever... Rachel Patten is an undoubted beauty, yet the only man she wants is the one who rejects her. But then rebellion takes her across strict class boundaries into the arms of her gamekeeper, Gideon Best…Daphne Underscar - plain, gauche, but far from stupid - knows full well that the ambitious Toby Smith married her for money. With love, and with courage, she is prepared to gamble her own happiness on the hope of a more fulfilling relationship. Meanwhile Philippa Van Damme has led a sheltered life, her childhood severed abruptly by a wrenching bereavement. Thrust headlong into an unstable post-war world, her hopes of a future with Hugo Fellafield are dashed by familial discord, and the threat of political scandal. From industrial London to the tropical landscape of Madeira, Green and Pleasant Land follows the three women in a triumphant sequel to Tomorrow, Jerusalem. Perfect for fans of Julia Quinn and Victoria Hislop.

    Along the way, however, Miriam boards the wrong train . . . Ann Abelson's novella begins a family saga based on actual events.

    AS they pass sweet yet hazardous hours in a china tree, The Grass Harp manages to convey all the pleasures and responsibilities of freedom. But most of all it teaches us about the sacredness of love, "that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life."This volume also includes Capote's A Tree of Night and Other Stories, which the Washington Post called "unobstrusively beautiful...a superlative book."

    A retired English professor who began writing fiction at the age of 70, Maclean produced what is now recognized as one of the classic American stories of the twentieth century. Originally published in 1976, A River Runs through It and Other Stories now celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary, marked by this new edition that includes a foreword by Annie Proulx.Maclean grew up in the western Rocky Mountains in the first decades of the twentieth century. As a young man he worked many summers in logging camps and for the United States Forest Service. The two novellas and short story in this collection are based on his own experiences—the experiences of a young man who found that life was only a step from art in its structures and beauty. The beauty he found was in reality, and so he leaves a careful record of what it was like to work in the woods when it was still a world of horse and hand and foot, without power saws, "cats," or four-wheel drives. Populated with drunks, loggers, card sharks, and whores, and set in the small towns and surrounding trout streams and mountains of western Montana, the stories concern themselves with the complexities of fly fishing, logging, fighting forest fires, playing cribbage, and being a husband, a son, and a father.

    In The Road Show we meet Zachary Edge, a Confederate soldier, on his way home at the war's close. He stumbles upon a traveling troupe, a chance encounter that is the start of an unforgettable odyssey. Edge hits the road with bawdy showgirls, roguish tricksters, and a host of colorful characters. He soon finds himself in the arms of Autumn Auburn, the lithesome artiste known for her breathtaking sensuality.

      The summer Berie was fifteen, she and her best friend Sils had jobs at Storyland in upstate New York where Berie sold tickets to see the beautiful Sils portray Cinderella in a strapless evening gown. They spent their breaks smoking, joking, and gossiping. After work they followed their own reckless rules, teasing the fun out of small town life, sleeping in the family station wagon, and drinking borrowed liquor from old mayonnaise jars. But no matter how wild, they always managed to escape any real danger—until the adoring Berie sees that Sils really does need her help—and then everything changes.