But it is in her short stories that her extraordinary talents—as a fabulist, feminist, social critic, and weaver of tales—are most penetratingly evident. This volume presents Carter's considerable legacy of short fiction gathered from published books, and includes early and previously unpublished stories. From reflections on jazz and Japan, through vigorous refashionings of classic folklore and fairy tales, to stunning snapshots of modern life in all its tawdry glory, we are able to chart the evolution of Carter's marvelous, magical vision.

    The sketches, poems, and stories of black rural and urban life that make up Cane are rich in imagery. Visions of smoke, sugarcane, dusk, and flame permeate the Southern landscape: the Northern world is pictured as a harsher reality of asphalt streets. Impressionistic, sometimes surrealistic, the pieces are redolent of nature and Africa, with sensuous appeals to eye and ear.

    It also began Coover's now-trademark riffs on fairy tales and bedtime stories. In these riotously word-drunk fictional romps, two children follow an old man into the woods, trailing bread crumbs behind and edging helplessly toward a sinister end that never comes; a husband walks toward the bed where his wife awaits his caresses, but by the time he arrives she's been dead for three weeks and detectives are pounding down the door; a teenaged babysitter's evening becomes a kaleidoscope of dangerous erotic fantasies-her employer's, her boyfriend's, her own; an aging, humble carpenter marries a beautiful but frigid woman, and after he's waited weeks to consummate their union she announces that God has made her pregnant. Now available in a Grove paperback, Pricksongs & Descants is a cornerstone of Robert Coover's remarkable career and a brilliant work by a major American writer.

    But when people are pushed—by a coworker’s taunt, a face-to-face encounter with a woman in free fall from a bridge—cracks appear, revealing alienation, casual cruelty, madness, and above all a simultaneous hunger for and fear of the unknown.Daniel Orozco leads the reader through the hidden lives and moral philosophies of bridge painters, men housebound by obesity, office temps, and warehouse workers. He reveals the secret pleasures of late-night supermarket trips for cookie binges, exceptional data entry, and an exiled dictator’s occasional piss on the U.S. embassy. A love affair blooms between two officers in the impartially worded pages of a police blotter; a new employee’s first-day office tour includes descriptions of other workers’ most private thoughts and actions; during an earthquake, the consciousness of the entire state of California shakes free for examination.Orientation introduces a writer at the height of his powers, whose work surely invites us to reassess the landscape of American fiction.Orientation is a Kirkus Reviews Best of 2011 Short Story Collections title.

    The tale revolves around three characters: two humans and one duck. Jim Dodge is the author of "Not Fade Away" and "Stone Junction".

    To say that his new collection is a departure is an understatement: Butler has taken actual headlines from the more outrageous of the supermarket tabloids and fashioned short fiction around them. Headlines such as "Titanic Victim Speaks Through Waterbed," "Woman Loses Cookie Bake-Off, Sets Self on Fire," and "Every Man She Kisses Dies" are the starting points for this quirky volume from one of the most original American writers at work today.

    Combining mysticism, history, and humor, the stories in this collection span more than two decades, illuminating the development of Marquez's prose and exhibiting the themes of family, poverty, and death that resound throughout his fiction.

    In 'The Southern Cross, ' Chanel, a girl of easy virtue and dubious reputation, chronicles her cruise around the Caribbean with three Atlanta developers. 'I may be old, but I'm not dead, ' begins Alice Scully, scandalizing her retirement-home writers' group in 'The Hap Memories Club.' And prim, old-maid Sarah is titillated by the housekeeper's horrific account of her daughter's 'blue wedding.' In 'The Bubba Stories, ' Charlene Christian explains, 'I made Bubba up in the spring of 1963 in order to increase my popularity with my girlfriends'; but this legendary brother takes on a life of his own. Paula's damaged brother Johnny, in the title story, is 'writing a new kind of book, ' constructing another narrative of his tragic life. Brothers, sisters, and friends appear in these stories as the narrators' other selves, offering other possibilities. Here we have news of the spirit, indeed: stories about longing and despair and imagination and grace, about love in all its strange and shifting forms.

    A man travels to his son’s school to deal with the fallout of a violent attack and to make sure his son will not lose his college place. But what exactly has his son done? And who is to blame? A young woman trying to make it in LA, working in a clothes shop while taking acting classes, turns to a riskier way of making money but will be forced to confront the danger of the game she’s playing. And a family coming together for Christmas struggle to skate over the lingering darkness caused by the very ordinary brutality of a troubled husband and father.These outstanding stories examine masculinity, male power and broken relationships, while revealing – with astonishing insight and clarity – those moments of misunderstanding that can have life-changing consequences. And there is an unexpected violence, ever-present but unseen, in the depiction of the complicated interactions between men and women, and families. Subtle, sophisticated and displaying an extraordinary understanding of human behaviour, these stories are unforgettable.

    With the publication of 1983's The Annunciation, Ellen Gilchrist established herself as a teller of charming, bittersweet tales of the modern South. Since then, her works of fiction - sixteen in all - have built up a solid base of dedicated fans. With her uncanny insights into human character & the bittersweet complications of love, Ellen Gilchrist occupies a unique place in American fiction.

    Soft, euphonic women gradually grow old; weak, unhappy men confront love and their own mortality; and abominable children desperately try to grow up with grace. With a unique voice and dry humor, Willett gives us a new insight into human existence, showing us those specific moments in relationships when life suddenly becomes visible.Critically acclaimed when it was first published in 1987, Jenny and the Jaws of Life is being brought back due to popular demand. It's a timeless collection filled with a certain freshness and wit that ring just as loudly today.

    In Europe, however (particularly in Germany, Italy, and France where he is published by the great publishing houses), he is critically recognized as one of America's greatest realist writers.

    Critics and readers alike fell in love with the voice of ninety-nine-year-old Lucy Marsden, one of the most entertaining and loquacious heoines in American literature.Lucy married at the turn of the last century, when she was fifteen and her husband was fifty. If Colonel William Marsden was a veteran of the "War for Southern Independence", Lucy became a "veteran of the veteran" with a unique perspective on Southern history and Southern manhood. Her story encompasses everything from the tragic death of a Confederate boy soldier to the feisty narrator's daily battles in the Home--complete with visits from a mohawk-coiffed candy-striper. Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All is proof that brilliant, emotional storytelling remains at the heart of great fiction.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    . . Hilarious and poignant."--Entertainment Weekly Bream Gives Me Hiccups: And Other Stories is the whip-smart fiction debut of Academy Award-nominated actor Jesse Eisenberg. Known for his iconic film roles but also for his regular pieces in the New Yorker and his two critically acclaimed plays, Eisenberg is an emerging literary voice.Taking its title from a group of stories that begin the book, Bream Gives Me Hiccups moves from contemporary L.A. to the dorm rooms of an American college to ancient Pompeii, throwing the reader into a universe of social misfits, reimagined scenes from history, and ridiculous overreactions. In one piece, a tense email exchange between a young man and his girlfriend is taken over by his sister, who is obsessed with the Bosnian genocide (The situation reminds me of a little historical blip called the Karadordevo agreement); in another, a college freshman forced to live with a roommate is stunned when one of her ramen packets goes missing (she didn't have "one" of my ramens. She had a chicken ramen); in another piece, Alexander Graham Bell has teething problems with his invention (I've been calling Mabel all day, she doesn't pick up! Yes, of course I dialed the right number - 2!).United by Eisenberg's gift for humor and character, and grouped into chapters that open with illustrations by award-winning cartoonist Jean Jullien, the witty pieces collected in Bream Gives Me Hiccups explore the various insanities of the modern world, and mark the arrival of a fantastically funny, self-ironic, and original voice.

    Channeling unexpected, eclectic voices in a collection perfectly suited to readers of Daniyal Mueenuddin, Alice Sebold, and Dave Eggers, Moffett delivers a nuanced, powerful, humorous, and moving meditation on the trials of transitions and liminal living in today’s modern world. Richard Russo says, “the first thing you notice reading the stories in Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events is the author’s extraordinary range—of expertise, technique, imagination and wit. There doesn’t seem to be much Kevin Moffett can’t do.”