Lavery comes a collection of darkly mischievous stories based on classic fairy tales. Adapted from his beloved "Children's Stories Made Horrific" series, The Merry Spinster takes up the trademark wit that endeared Lavery to readers of both The Toast and his best-selling debut Texts from Jane Eyre. The feature become among the most popular on the site, with each entry bringing in tens of thousands of views, as the stories proved a perfect vehicle for Lavery’s eye for deconstruction and destabilization. Sinister and inviting, familiar and alien all at the same time, The Merry Spinster updates traditional children's stories and fairy tales with elements of psychological horror, emotional clarity, and a keen sense of feminist mischief.Readers of The Toast will instantly recognize Lavery's boisterous good humor and uber-nerd swagger: those new to Lavery's oeuvre will delight in his unique spin on fiction, where something a bit mischievous and unsettling is always at work just beneath the surface.Unfalteringly faithful to its beloved source material, The Merry Spinster also illuminates the unsuspected, and frequently, alarming emotional complexities at play in the stories we tell ourselves, and each other, as we tuck ourselves in for the night.Bedtime will never be the same.The daughter cells --The thankless child --Fear not: an incident log --The six boy-coffins --The rabbit --The merry spinster --The wedding party --Some of us had been threatening our friend Mr.Toad --Cast your bread upon the waters --The frog's princess --Good fences make good neighbors

    These stories feature clockwork hearts, lascivious queens, paper men, island circuses, and a flooded world.• On the island of Skye, an antlered girl and a tiger-tailed boy resolve never to be friends – but can they resist their unique connection?• In an alternative 19th-century Paris, a love triangle emerges between a man, a woman, and a coin-operated boy.• A teenager deals with his sister’s death by escaping from their tiny Scottish island – but will she let him leave?• In 1920s New Orleans, a young girl comes of age in her mother’s brothel.Some of these stories are radical retellings of classic tales, some are modern-day fables, but all explore substitutions for love.

    Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, these superb stories share Vonnegut’s audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.Alternative cover edition here

    They casserole. They pinwheel. They pump the salad spinner like it's a CPR dummy. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies out of the oven. These twelve irresistible stories take us from a haunted prewar Manhattan apartment building to the set of a rigged reality television show, from the unique initiation ritual of a book club to the getaway car of a pageant princess on the lam, from the gallery opening of a tinfoil artist to the fitting room of a legendary lingerie shop. Vicious, fresh, and nutty as a poisoned Goo Goo Cluster, American Housewife is an uproarious, pointed commentary on womanhood.

    Few readers had heard of David Bezmozgis before May 2003, when Harper's, Zoetrope, and The New Yorker all printed stories from his forthcoming collection. In the space of a few weeks, America thus met the Bermans--Bella and Roman and their son, Mark--Russian Jews who have fled the Riga of Brezhnev for Toronto, the city of their dreams.Told through Mark's eyes, the stories in Natasha possess a serious wit and uniquely Jewish perspective that recall the first published stories of Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth, not to mention the recent work of Jhumpa Lahiri, Nathan Englander, and Adam Haslett.

    Set in the American Midwest, England, and India (Mumbai, Ahmedabad, rural Gujarat) the stories in Each of Us Killers are about people trying to realize their dreams and aspirations through their professions. Whether they are chasing money, power, recognition, love, or simply trying to make a decent living, their hunger is as intense as any grand love affair. Straddling the fault lines of race, class, caste, gender, nationality, globalization, and more, they go against sociocultural norms despite challenges and indignities until singular moments of quiet devastation turn the worlds of these characters—auto-wallah, housemaid, street vendor, journalist, architect, baker, engineer, saree shop employee, professor, yoga instructor, bartender, and more—upside down."Challenging assumptions, confronting power, manipulating barriers whenever possible-even at grave personal cost-Bhatt's cast surprises, inspires, frightens, beguiles, but never disappoints." ~Shelf Awareness (starred review)Most anticipated debuts of 2020 at Electric Literature, Literary Hub, The Millions, Kirkus Reviews, Entropy Magazine, Debutiful, Ms. Magazine, Bustle. Best story collections of 2020 at Bustle and Largehearted Boy. Best collections of 2020 by Asian authors at Book Riot.". . . rich debut . . . a powerful expression of the hunger for success on one's own terms." ~Publishers Weekly". . . nuanced, clear-eyed tales of unvarnished humanity. [...] A formally diverse collection with exquisitely crafted stories about longing, striving, and learning what we can control." ~Kirkus Reviews"With this powerful, complex work, Bhatt should be launched into a wider readership that is fully deserved, and the literary world should rejoice in discovering a bright new star." ~Dallas Morning News. . . you will feel that you have encountered this level of skill, craft, and complexity before in reading the masters of the short story genre--even while the author subverts what we so often encounter in the genre about notions of loss and lonely voices and who gets to tell their own stories." ~Texas Public Radio". . . Bhatt peels back shells of self-awareness, revealing understandings of the often subtle distinctions of gender, race, and family expectations that define and confine them." ~The National Book Review". . . Bhatt gets under the skin of her characters with an ease that is difficult to achieve when creating characters beyond the pale of capital and caste. [. . .] using lively, sculpted language that avoids the stilted, literary English often afflicting Indian English writing." ~The Hindu". . . variety of literary techniques of plot, style, and voice--including the refreshing second-person singular and first-person plural--Bhatt's stories effortlessly straddle class, caste, gender, and race divides spanning the US, England, and India." ~Open The Magazine"Taken together, [the stories] show Bhatt's wide range, both in theme and style, and her ability to inhabit characters who couldn't be more different from each other." ~New York Journal of Books"Interspersing loss and longing, survival and success, in an array of memories, shades, moods, dreams [. . .] Bhatt packs in a powerful compilation, rich in prose and poetry . . ." ~NRI Pulse". . . brings a range of lived experience, experimentation, and stylistic variety, which announces a seasoned practitioner rather than a newcomer to fiction." ~India Currents". . . a collection that is as important in the telling as in remembering the times we live in and the times to come." ~The Hindu Business Line"Bhatt's deliberate expansion of established tropes about Indians and the Indian diaspora deserves special accolades." ~Leonard Prize 2020 Nominations, National Book Critics Circle" . . . exploration of South Asian identity in the workplace through a wide lens instead of the traditional representations. . ." ~Puerto del Sol". . . characters who are bound to their work, either by choice or circumstance, as they attempt to thwart societal expectations and break down barriers . . ." ~Phoebe Journal". . . as compulsively readable as it is sharp and as enjoyable as it is thought-provoking [. . .] an accomplished and impressive debut." ~Vagabond City"[. . .] interact with multiple voices, listening to the struggles of various characters, and enjoying cultural details through the incredible use of language and literary techniques [. . .] the entire collection is an enlightening voyage." ~Platform Magazine"Jenny Bhatt's gorgeous stories in Each of Us Killers remind me why I love to read a good book. It is such a pleasure to be immersed in the worlds of her characters, in their hunger for love or money, and in their local and global struggles to live. With mouth-watering detail, Bhatt serves up a rich and varied feast." ~Devi S. Laskar, Author of The Atlas of Reds and Blues"The potent stories in this collection evoke the complexities of a shifting, multilingual world with great precision. Bhatt moves between countries and realities with tremendous skill and insight." ~Idra Novey, author of Those Who Knew"In a series of thrilling, beautiful stories, Jenny Bhatt moves through the moods, thoughts, subversions involved in the experience of interracial relationships, East-West communications, theft, justice, migration. The collection works brilliantly both as an evocative amalgam of insightful observations about race, class, gender, aspirations, as well as on the sentence level. Bhatt writes, "polish it carefully, till it glitters with the hope of a false diamond and refracts your stark life into a spectrum of luminous rays, lighting up the darkness briefly"-referring to a character's particular memory, but could just as well be referring to the collection as a whole." ~Chaya Bhuvaneswar, Author of White Dancing Elephants"In Each of Us Killers, Jenny Bhatt excavates her characters with incisiveness, nuance, and complexity. The cast of vibrant characters in this wonderful collection is absolutely unique and memorable." ~Karen E. Bender, author of The New Order"This is a gorgeous collection. Bhatt weaves together, with the lightest touch, profound themes--work, ambition, displacement, class, and gender, and so much more. Her plots are beautifully rendered and her scope vast; her characters and her settings come to life on the page. These stories are full of bitter heartbreak with a measure of joy--a wonderful collection from a hugely talented writer." ~Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State"Sex, death, redemption, betrayal--this collection has it all, from the sordid to the divine. Bhatt's vivid imagination and well-voiced characters will take you on a ride you won't soon forget." ~Mathangi Subramanian, author of A People's History of Heaven"These stories are filled with wisdom and compassion, bristling with dark occurrences and gleaming with quiet moments of joy: an enriching collection." ~Mahesh Rao, author of Polite Society"Moving, haunting stories that explore a wide range of complex social inequities and yet share an undercurrent of a deep and very human kind of longing." ~Aatif Rashid, author of Portrait of Sebastian Khan"Each of Us Killers offers up a complex portrait of our times. From caste-based violence to domestic power play, from yoga to the under-seam of real-estate development, Bhatt uses a dozen devices to examine the lives of people around us, the choices that define them and, ultimately, our selves." ~Annie Zaidi, author of Unbound, 2000 Years of Indian Women's Writing"Ambitious, sensitive, this collection locates some essential Indian truths, especially its hidden violence." ~Prayaag Akbar, author of Leila

    One is the main course of dinner, another the porn star contracted to copulate in space for a reality TV show. They become futuristic ant farms, get knocked up by the star high school quarterback and have secret abortions, use parakeets to reverse amputations, make love to garden gnomes, go into air conditioning ducts to confront their mother’s ghost, and do so in settings that range from Hell to the local white-supremacist bowling alley.

    They illustrate family bonds and generational conflicts, youthful infatuation and genuine passion. Tender, ambitious, bold, and unflinching, they herald the arrival of a fresh, exciting, and lavishly talented new voice in American literature.

    A literary event of the highest order. Joy Williams has been celebrated as a master of the short story for four decades, her renown passing as a given from one generation to the next even in the shifting landscape of contemporary writing. And at long last the incredible scope of her singular achievement is put on display: thirty-three stories drawn from three much-lauded collections, and another thirteen appearing here for the first time in book form. Forty-six stories in all, far and away the most comprehensive volume in her long career, showcasing her crisp, elegant prose, her dark wit, and her uncanny ability to illuminate our world through characters and situations that feel at once peculiar and foreign and disturbingly familiar. Virtually all American writers have their favorite Joy Williams stories, as do many readers of all ages, and each one of them is available here.

    Curated by Jay Rubin (who has himself freshly translated several of the stories) and introduced by Haruki Murakami this is a book which will be a revelation to many of its readers. Short story writers already well-known to English-language readers are all included - Tanizaki, Akutagawa, Murakami, Mishima, Kawabata, Yoshimoto - but also many surprising new finds. From Tsushima Yuko's 'Flames' to Sawanishi Yuten's 'Filling Up with Sugar', from Hoshi Shin'ichi's 'Shoulder-Top Secretary' to Yoshimoto Banana's 'Bee Honey', The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories is filled with fear, charm, beauty and comedy.

    A retired doctor, for example, is forced to confront the horrific moral consequences of his wartime actions. An elderly woman subjects herself to an interview, gradually revealing a fifty-year old murder and its shattering aftermath. And in the last days of a doomed war, a prodigal son who enlisted against his parents' wishes survives the American invasion of his island outpost, only to be asked for a sacrifice more daunting than any he imagined.

    This is a place where teenage love and friendships are tested by the violence that threatens to erupt at the slightest provocation. A town that always pulls you back into its ways, no matter how cosmopolitan the city has made you.In 'Diwali in Muzaffarnagar' - Tanuj Solanki's new book of short stories after 'Neon Noon' - young men and women straddle the past and the present, the metropolis and the small town, and also the parallel needs of life: solitude and family.

    The title novella, "Raise the Red Lantern," which became a critically acclaimed film, tells the story of Lotus, a young woman whose father's suicide forces her to become the concubine of a wealthy merchant. Crushed by loneliness, despair, and cruel treatment, Lotus finds her descent into insanity both a weapon and a refuge."Nineteen Thirty-Four Escapes" is an account of a family's struggles during one momentous year; plagued by disease, death, and the shady promise of life in a larger town, the family slowly disintegrates.Finally, "Opium Family" details the last years of a landowning clan whose demise is brought about by corruption, lust, and treachery -- fruits of the insidious crop they harvest.

    She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.Three short lines, fired over social media in response to questions of why Senator Elizabeth Warren was silenced on the floor of the United States Senate, for daring to read aloud the words of Coretta Scott King. As this message was transmitted across the globe, it has become a galvanizing cry for people of all genders in recognition of the struggles that women have faced throughout history.Three short lines, which read as if they are the opening passage to an epic and ageless tale.We have assembled this flash fiction collection featuring several of the best writers in SF/F today, including Seanan McGuire, Charlie Jane Anders, Maria Dahvana Headley, Jo Walton, Amal El-Mohtar, Catherynne M. Valente, Brooke Bolander, Alyssa Wong, Kameron Hurley, Nisi Shawl and Carrie Vaughn. Together these authors share unique visions of women inventing, playing, loving, surviving, and – of course – dreaming of themselves beyond their circumstances.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    Showing us the war as we have never seen it before, here is a world not only of soldiers and assassins, hostages and car bombers, refugees and terrorists, but also of madmen and prophets, angels and djinni, sorcerers and spirits. Blending shocking realism with flights of fantasy, The Corpse Exhibition offers us a pageant of horrors, as haunting as the photos of Abu Ghraib and as difficult to look away from, but shot through with a gallows humor that yields an unflinching comedy of the macabre. Gripping and hallucinatory, this is a new kind of storytelling forged in the crucible of war.