A traveling salesman consigned to a late-night bus ride. A prison inmate stripped of everything but his pride. A teenage runaway. Mismatched lovers. In his debut collection of short fiction, award-winning novelist Craig Lancaster returns to the terrain of his Montana home and takes on the notion of separation in its many forms - from comfort zones, from ideas, from people, from security, from fears. These ten stories delve into small towns and big cities, into love and despair, into what drives us and what scares us, peeling back the layers of our humanity with every pag

    Abbott, "Cheever's true heir, our major American short story writer" (William Harrison).Here are stories about fathers and sons, stories about men and women, and stories about the relationships between men by one of our most gifted story writers. The narrator of "The Who, the What and the Why," begins breaking into his own house as a sort of therapy after his daughter dies. In "The Human Use of Inhuman Beings," the main character realizes that his closest relationship is to an angel, who appears to him only to announce the death of loved ones. All Things, All at Once reminds us why Lee K. Abbott is to be treasured: his perfect pitch for tales of hapless Southwesterners, his way with sympathetic irony, his eye that skillfully notes the awkward humiliations—common heartbreak, fractured families—and records it all in lyrical, affectionate language. In tales new and from previous collections Abbott examines lived life and the lies we necessarily tell about it.

    Short story from "If it bleeds".

    Intelligent and brutally direct talk to a reader about our times, Russia, the Russians, and much more.

    Chronicles of her strategies for surviving civilization's decline -- herbal remedies, macrobiotics, a bit of Xanax -- have established her as one of the most captivating and eagerly read voices in modern literature. In this new collection of stories, Julie Hecht reclaims the darkly funny, existential territory for which she is known: "People say 'Good morning,' but don't believe them. It's just something to say." The uniquely eccentric narrator reappears in Happy Trails to You and recounts her perplexed engagements with our society and the larger world -- whether she's attempting to withdraw money from a bank machine, worrying about Paul McCartney, or seeking a nonexistent place of calm on Nantucket, where nail guns and chain saws have replaced the sounds of birds singing. Appalled by life in our times, the narrator recounts innumerable artifacts from a now vanished America (civility, idealism, Elvis Presley, well-made appliances). She is also exquisitely attuned to the absurdities of our culture; her acute observations illuminate every subject, from the dangers of microwave ovens to the disappearing ozone layer. With deadpan wit, the author reveals the truths of a new century. Happy Trails to You is a radically distinctive work of American fiction.

    Growing up amongst a family of men, she is the treasured gem at the heart of a large and boisterous clan of cops.After the heart-breaking death of her mother, Allison has thrown herself into her work—but then she meets Mike. Neither one of them is prepared for the power and intensity of their love for each other.So when tragedy strikes again, Allison’s life is derailed. Her overprotective family have looked out for her all her life, but they cannot protect her from herself…

    The Goon Squad 2014 Summer Special contains an introduction to the Squad, and four short stories: "Red Wolf, Red Wolf, Does Whatever a Red Wolf Can," "Changes," "No-No Dojo," and "Tale of Terror." Join Puppet Girl, the Revenant, Red Wolf, and Talos as they protect the fairly innocent, are sharply critical about modern newspapers, talk to a door in Salford, and recount the day the city nearly blew up.

    Why does Mr Kipling bake such exceedingly good cakes? Is Jeremy Beadle really the devil incarnate? What happens when advertising turns you into a monomaniac? This title allows you to find out the answers.

    A story about a very spoiled young man who must decide what to do with the $1000 his deceased uncle has given to him.

    Gautier’s stories explore the lives of young African Americans who might all be classified as “at-risk,” yet who encounter different opportunities and dangers in their particular neighborhoods and schools and who see life through the lens of different family experiences.Gautier’s focus is on quiet daily moments, even in extraordinary lives; her characters do not stand as emblems of a subculture but live and breathe as people. In “The Ease of Living,” the young teen Jason is sent down south to spend the summer with his grandfather after witnessing the double murder of his two best friends, and he is not happy about it. A season of sneaking into as many movies as possible on one ticket or dunking girls at the pool promises to turn into a summer of shower chairs and the smell of Ben-Gay in the unimaginably backwoods town of Tallahassee. In “Pan Is Dead,” two half-siblings watch as the heroin-addicted father of the older one works his way back into their mother’s life; in “Dance for Me,” a girl on scholarship at a posh Manhattan school teaches white girls to dance in the bathroom in order to be invited to a party.As teenagers in complicated circumstances, each of Gautier’s characters is pushed in many directions. To succeed may entail unforgiveable compro­mises, and to follow their desires may lead to catastrophe. Yet within these stories they exist and can be seen as they are, in the moment of choosing.

    Sometimes it feels like we are all on a different planet earth. Sometimes we are!

    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.

    Determined to stop the thief, Angus uses everything he’s got and more. This fast paced story will have you running alongside him right up until the surprise ending that you won’t see coming.(A Christmas short-story for kids 9-12 years.)

    

    Told from the perspective of a young wife who’s become increasingly frustrated with her mild-mannered husband, “The Trespassers” begins as a quiet domestic drama and quickly escalates into a nightmare. When Evan refuses to confront men who are illegally hunting on the couple’s remote homestead, Chris takes matters into her own hands, with terrifying results. Written in 1958, when Leonard was working at a Detroit advertising agency and writing short stories on the side, “The Trespassers” shows the emerging talent of a man whose spare style and dark wit would redefine a literary genre. Filled with as much sexual menace as Sam Peckinpah’s classic thriller “Straw Dogs,” this timelessly relevant story delivers a sly surprise that could only come from the mind of Elmore Leonard. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elmore Leonard wrote forty-five novels across his six-decade career, including the bestsellers “Road Dogs,” “Up in Honey’s Room,” “The Hot Kid,” “Mr. Paradise,” “Tishomingo Blues,” and the critically acclaimed collection of short stories “When the Women Come Out to Dance.” Many of his books have been made into movies, including “Get Shorty,” “Out of Sight,” and “Jackie Brown.” “Justified,” the hit series from FX, is based on Leonard’s character Raylan Givens, who appears in “Riding the Rap,” “Pronto,” the short story “Fire in the Hole,” and the novel “Raylan.” Leonard received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN USA, and the Grand Master Award of the Mystery Writers of America. He was known to many as the “Dickens of Detroit” and had lived in the Detroit area since 1934. PRAISE FOR ELMORE LEONARD “Elmore Leonard can write circles around almost anybody active in the crime novel today.” —The New York Times Book Review “There is no greater writer of crime fiction than Elmore Leonard, and no one who has more resplendent energy.” —The Guardian (UK) “Elmore ‘Dutch’ Leonard is more than just one of the all-time greats of crime fiction. He’s … an authentic American icon.” —The Seattle Times “People look on writers that they like as an irreplaceable resource. I do. Elmore Leonard, every day I wake up and—not to be morbid or anything, although morbid is my life to a degree—don’t see his obituary in the paper, I think to myself, ‘Great! He’s probably working somewhere. He’s gonna produce another book, and I’ll have another book to read.’ Because when he’s gone, there’s nobody else.” — Stephen King “The King Daddy of crime novelists.” —The Seattle Times “As crime fiction goes, Leonard has few living equals. His characters leap from the page with a few short keystrokes, like a form of bloodstained haiku.” —The Cleveland Plain Dealer “[Leonard’s] finely honed sentences can sound as flinty/poetic as Hemingway or as hard-boiled as Raymond Chandler. His ear for the way people talk—or should—is peerless.” —The Detroit News “A master of narrative … A poet of the vernacular … Leonard paints an intimate, precise, funny, frightening, and irresistible mural of the