They are stories about the woods, houses hidden in the gaps between mountains. Behind them, the skeletons of old and powerful machines rust into the slate and leaves. Water red with iron leeches from the empty mines and pools near a stone foundation. The boy there plays in the bones because he is a child and this will be his childhood. He watches while winter comes falling slowly down over the road. Sometimes he remembers a girl, her hair and the perfume she wore. These are stories about her and where she might have gone. He waits for sleep because in the next story he will leave. The boy watches an airplane blink red past his window. From here, you can't hear its violence.

    The opening narratives feature adolescent or pre-adolescent boys struggling with their conceptions of manhood: making sense of an old hermit whose life seems to have left no mark, or coexisting with a repulsive great-uncle in a world with no other male role model. Later, the stories depict grown men who find that these same struggles of manhood never go away: a man out of place among hunters and fathers in search of a missing child, or a man fighting through a blizzard to prove his worth to his own wife. The landscapes and lakescapes serve as recurring characters in the book. The boys and men wander forests—sometimes finding tranquility, sometimes finding tragedy. They climb and descend dunes. And often, they encounter the Big Lake: Lake Michigan. The idea of a Third Coast figures prominently in the book, the lake and its horizon serving as a kind of world’s end, where things pass away or come to life.

    These texts are characterized by a startling and macabre novelty, with elements of the grotesque, fantastic and child-like touching the imagination of the everyday. They express the cultural landscape of Stalinism -- years of show trials, mass atrocities and stifled political life. Their painful, unsettling eloquence testify to the humane and the comic in this absurdist writer's work. The translator Neil Cornwall gives a biographical introduction to his subject, enlarged upon by the poet Hugh Maxton in a contextual assessment of the writing of Flann O'Brien, Le Fanu and Doyle, and of their shared concerns with detective fiction, terror and death. Daniil Kharms 91905-42) died under Stalin. Along with fellow poets and prose-writers of the era -- Khlebnikov, Biely, Mandelstam, Zabolotsky and Pasternak -- he is one of the emerging experimentalists of Russian modernism.

    With a nervous energy and obsession to match his protagonists, Matt Bell’s prose burrows, forensically, into the layers of the brothers’ lives, employing a multilinear narrative structure and a frenetic plurality of perspectives to reach a core of despair that is both terrifyingly primal and distressingly familiar. Matt Bell's THE COLLECTORS was chosen by Brian Evenson as the runner-up manuscript in the 2008 Caketrain Chapbook Competition.

    An entire community was destroyed. For many people affected by this tragedy, the psychological scars may never heal.Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a condition that affects many people who have endured traumatic events, leaving them unable to move on from life-changing tragedies. In the immediate aftermath of the fire, the focus was rightly placed on providing food, shelter and health care for those left homeless – but it is important that we don’t lose sight of the psychological impact this fire will have had on its survivors.24 Stories is an anthology of short stories, written on themes of community and hope, by a mix of the UK’s best established writers and previously unpublished authors, whose pieces were chosen by Kathy Burke from over 250 entries.Contributors include: Irvine Welsh, A. L. Kennedy, Meera Syal, John Niven, Pauline Melville, Daisy Buchanan, Christopher Brookmyre, Zoe Venditozzi, Nina Stibbe, Mike Gayle, Murray Lachlan Young, Barney Farmer.

    "Somewhere between the laughtrack of Mark Leyner's work and European surrealism, Hansen's stories shock, titillate, and bombard the reader with dark shards of comedy." - KEVIN SAMPSELL, author of Creamy Bullets

    In her debut collection of fifteen short stories, Amina Cain makes ordinary worlds strange and spare and beautiful. A woman carves invisible images onto ice, a pair of black wings appears in front of a house, and a restless teacher sits in a gallery of miniature rooms. As Miranda Mellis describes, "The revelatory pleasure and hope [in these stories] emanate from an artistry driven by ethical desire." "I highly recommend reading I Go To Some Hollow," says Bhanu Kapil, "because of what it teaches you about love, and the relationship between love and writing." I GO TO SOME HOLLOW is published as part of the TrenchArt: Tracer Series, with an Introduction by Bhanu Kapil and collaborative visual art by Ken Erhlich and Susan Simpson.

    From the first page of each of the edgy and unrelentingly intense stories in this debut collection, the teenaged characters are headed for big trouble. The adult world has mostly failed them, and they find themselves entering into highly charged situations where they make their own rules, with misguided understanding of the consequences. The stories burn hot and fast, providing searing insights into their world of sex, drugs, drinking, violence, and accidental grace, played out in small, tough towns. Written with raw directness and understanding that makes these nine stories impossible to forget, The History of Vegas announces an exciting, fresh talent with the impact of Mary Gaitskill, Mary Karr, and Jayne Anne Phillips.

    The result is a kind of everyday fantastic. Dalton nails the Walserian trick of evincing a sincerity nearly indistinguishable from irony. The effect is a poised instability, more uncanny than the magic the stories sometimes describe."-Bookforum"Dalton handles her narratives with a deft skill and a keen, distinct, confident voice that never eases up, never ceases to surprise, leaving readers happy to experience her intriguing world up close. Just the way we like it."-Brooklyn Rail"[The stories] feel like brilliant sexual fairy tales on drugs. Dalton writes of self-discovery and sex with a knowing humility and humor."-Interview Magazine"'Pura Vida,' about an emotionally unavailable journalist on assignment to cover a sloth clinic in Costa Rica, is a standout, its final moment between woman and sloth arriving with breathtaking lightness, like the first flower of spring. Other memorable outings include trips to the Missouri Ozarks ("Wet Look"), the Alps ("Shrub of Emotion"), and the Painted Desert ("Baby Geisha"), with men and women on the verge of, but never quite reaching, psycho-sexual breakthroughs."-Los Angeles Magazine Critic's Pick"[Baby Geisha] pokes fun, it's satirical, there's an underlying delicious irony to it, and the telling parts are the ones where Dalton coins names, cuts down trees with her paragraphs, gives us just a touch of the absurd... Dalton's skill as a writer, and above all her expertise in choosing words that play into a darker cultural picture--an offsetting of America's natural high!--are not to be missed here."-FanzineBaby Geisha is a collection of thirteen sexually-charged stories that roam from the Coney Island Ferris wheel to the Greek Isles.True to Trinie Dalton's form, the stories in Baby Geisha are distinctly imagined while also representing a more grounded approach in the author's style. There's the Joan Didion-obsessed starving journalist of "Pura Vida," struggling to maintain a relationship with her performance artist sisters (or anyone, for that matter), on assignment in Costa Rica to write an article on sloth-hugging. "Millennium Chill" is about a woman who discovers that her body heat is mysteriously linked to that of an elderly beggar.Baby Geisha serves to support Dalton's reputation as a remarkable stylist and a very original artist.

    Sainsbury. Two short, punchy, action-packed episodes in each book.They murdered his parents, shot him in the head, and left him to die. They should have made sure.Twenty years after Tom Lewis watched his parents die, those responsible are being killed. One by one.Gentle, brain-damaged Tom, a giant of a man who can barely speak, can’t be responsible for their deaths. Can he?When Tom Lewis was shot, something new was created. Something unique. Something deadly. Something patient enough to plan revenge for twenty long years.Meet Bedlam Boy

    Why not try some microfiction short stories instead? These bite-sized, slice-of-life short stories are crafted with only one hundred words, so they go by in a flash. Perfect for time-challenged fiction lovers, these humorous yet thought-provoking stories can be read when you’re waiting in line, riding the bus, or whenever you need a short mental break. Go on. Try some flash fiction. Grab your copy of 100 Tiny Tales today! 100 Tiny Tales: Short Stories Told in Exactly One Hundred Words is written by K. Kris Loomis, a native South Carolinian and the author of the novels, The Sinking of Bethany Ann Crane and The Murder of Leopold Beckenbauer, as well as the short story collection, The Monster In the Closet and Other Stories. Kris is also a nonfiction author who writes books about yoga, meditation, and the time she spent living in South America, including After Namaste: Off-the-Mat Musings of a Modern Yogini and Thirty Days in Quito: Two Gringos and a Three-Legged Cat Move to Ecuador. When Kris isn’t at her standing desk writing, she can be found playing chess, folding an origami crane, or practicing a Beethoven sonata on the piano. She lives in Rock Hill, South Carolina with her husband and two cats. You can connect with Kris at her website, www.kkrisloomis.com or her Amazon Author page, or find her on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram @kkrisloomis.

    In eleven collections over thirty years, Edson has created his own poetic genre, a surreal philosophical fable, easy to enter, but difficult to leave behind. In The Tormented Mirror, Edson continues and refines his form in seventy-three new poems.

    This is author Lynn Crosbie at her most honest, most cutting, most hilarious, and most heartbreaking. The stories told here are at once a cache, a repository, of a seven-year period in the author's life; and, too, a gymnasium, a place where she can flex her prodigious wit and her dazzling stash of literary tricksDeft with matters both low- and highbrow (here are stories about 80s big-hair bands and the lasting, theological value of the Rocky series; here, too are stories contemplating critical theory and fine art), Life Is About Losing Everything speaks with manic yet grave authority about risking and losing everything, and then sorting through the remains to discover what is beautiful, what is trash, and what, ultimately, belongs.

    By turns sassy and serious, the poems can seem to sprint in two directions at once, managing to make the reader laugh at the same time they are struck by the emotional strength of the work. "Charming, inviting, beguiling and delightful poems in the language of someone who seems alive speaking refreshing riddles to herself." SHEILA HETI"Uptalk is a book of transcribed whale songs. Some scientists gave a whale a microphone and she took it home and stayed up all night under the covers talking to herself about faces and word-parts. I am delighted that Kimmy took it upon herself to transcribe this unique document of marine biology, and my heart goes out to the brilliant, charming whale author, wherever she may be." SARA WOODS

    In this piece, Syx is fighting the possibility of depression due to carelessness on her end, while indulging in the most freeing period of her existence. Life has never been more complicated, yet she's never felt so alive in all of her days. Her most shameful moment of weakness happens to be the most gratifying and beneficial experience that she just can't seem to shake. Tag along as Syx continues on her journey through the city. ******THIS IS A NOVELETTE!******