Book picks similar to
Wet Places at Noon by Lee K. Abbott


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Iron House Station: A father's love runs deep...


Kelly Cameron - 2020
    

The Best Part of Me


Staci Brush - 2010
    The pair have been through rough times, so they decide a vacation is in order. Expecting to find a comfortable getaway, they encounter a phenomenon neither has ever experienced; True Love. Watch them grow and bloom as you experience their love with them.

Tamar: Before He Was King


Shan - 2014
    He started from the bottom, but at a very early age, he always knew that he would one day run the streets--with his crew by his side. Take a look at how it all began for them all. From before he met Rozalyn, to when he was with Shalea, and before he was crowned king.

The Sheriff


Charles Hirsch - 2017
    He can't figure out why the thought is there, why he's thinking that way, after all he's only sixty years old and in good shape. A series of weird crimes confront him, challenging him at a time he feels most vulnerable. Eventually, assisted by a reliable deputy and a young, heavily-tattooed, former drug-running woman, the mysteries deepen. The clues are few and far between, the violence vicious and seemingly unwarranted. Eventually things slip out of control, until a small, seemingly unimportant detail surfaces that brings into focus what might be happening. Filled with exciting action, great dialogue and a very real sense of place, this book offers much for the mystery and action lover. And, at only 213 pages, it's a fast, exciting read, a "two-nighter," or perfect for a vacation read.

Tongues of Flame


Mary Ward Brown - 1986
    With Tongues of Flame, her first collection of short stories, Brown bares the awkward, sometimes hopeful, and often tragic suffering of people caught in changing times within a timeless setting.Here we meet such memorable characters as a dying black woman who seeks the advice of a now-alcoholic white doctor whom she knew in better years; a young woman, jilted at the altar, driven crazy by an illuminated cross erected by the church opposite her house; and a 95-year-old woman buying a tombstone for her long-deceased husband only to discover that he had been adulterous throughout their marriage. Brown constructs her characters in a disarmingly plain style while breathing life into them with compassion and honesty as they confront the large moments of their lives.First published by E. P. Dutton in 1986 to immediate critical acclaim, Tongues of Flame won the 1987 PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award. The judges commended Brown for "seeing life whole, without prejudice, without sentimentality, without histrionics. Her voice may be quiet-sometimes she speaks in a whisper-but her words are, nevertheless, always forceful, clear, and ultimately lasting." With this new publication of Tongues of Flame and its inclusion in the University of Alabama Press's Deep South Books series, a whole new generation of readers may once more discover Mary Ward Brown's profound stories of pain, loss, and hope.

The Merciful Angel of Death


Lawrence Block - 2012
    The first novel, The Sins of the Fathers, appeared in 1975, and A Drop of the Hard Stuff - the 17th and most recent - was published in 2011. Over the years Scudder has also been featured in 11 short works of fiction. The Merciful Angel of Death is the fifth of these; it frst appeared in 1993 in The New Mystery, Jerome Charyn's anthology of stories by members of the International Association of Crime Writers.The story was written during the depth of the AIDS epidemic, and reflects its time.The Merciful Angel of Death is included in The Night and the Music, my collection of all 11 Matthew Scudder short stories, available for Kindle or in handsome trade paperback form.

Night Terrors III


Theresa DillonPaul Tremblay - 2014
    A wave of sinkholes appears on the anniversary of a rural tragedy, and local residents begin to hear the voices of the dead. A woman encounters a predator from her youth—and a chance to turn the tables. A child’s inner beast takes on a sinister life of its own. An undetectable serial killer raises tensions on a college campus. Experimental physics reveals another world, and it might mean the end of ours. Shrouded in darkness, lurking in the shadows, NIGHT TERRORS III awaits you. The third installment of the chilling Night Terrors anthology series includes stories from Jack Ketchum, Steve Rasnic Tem, Dennis Etchison, Taylor Grant, Eric J. Guignard, Aric Sundquist, Jennifer Brozek, John McNee, Simon McCaffery, Patty Templeton, and many more!

The Case of the Misdelivered Valentine


Emily Queen - 2020
    1920’s LondonIn this prequel to The Case at Barton Manor, Rosemary Lillywhite solves her first case.When Rosemary receives an unexpected gift on Valentine's day, a gift that was not meant for her, she sets out to solve the mystery of the mistaken delivery.

The False Sun


R. Scott Bakker - 2012
    A story set in the far antiquity of Bakker's fictional world world of Eärwa, the setting for his Prince of Nothing and Aspect Emperor series.

How Shall I Know You?: A Short Story


Hilary Mantel - 2014
    She had a face of feral sweetness, its color yellow; her eyes were long and dark, her mouth a taut bow, her nostrils upturned as if she were scenting the wind."In "How Shall I Know You?," a melancholic and ailing writer reluctantly travels east of London to give a lecture before a literary society. Mr. Simister, the organization's secretary, lures the world-weary novelist turned biographer with promises of a modest stipend and lodging at a charming bed-and-breakfast for her trouble. Nevertheless, on that rainy day she meets Mr. Simister at the train station, she wonders why she ever agreed to come in the first place. Driving past steel-shuttered windows and Day-Glo banners, Mr. Simister takes the writer to her hotel for the evening, which turns out to be crumbling and isolated rather than picturesque. As she crosses the threshold into the dank stench of Eccles House she is faced with the feral porter, Louise, and suffers through an evening that may be more than she bargained for.From Hilary Mantel's brilliant and darkly comic collection of contemporary stories, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, comes a tale told with her distinctive blend of subversive wit and gimlet-eyed characterization. "How Shall I Know You?" showcases the extraordinary genius of Hilary Mantel, called one of our "greatest living novelists" (NPR).

Inkling: A Short Story Compilation


N.F Afrina (Nur Fatin Afrina) - 2019
    A girl sins and expects a thunder to strike her. Two grown up souls in the rain. The twist of heart of a heartbreak motel’s founder. A doctor prescribes daily dose of “I love you”s to cure Alzheimer. A boy gets hit by Ugg boots multiple times. A chocolate prince turns to ice. The ocean girl and her secret meetings with the desert boys mother.

The Pre-War House and Other Stories


Alison Moore - 2012
    In between, Moore’s stories have been shortlisted for more than a dozen different awards including the Bridport Prize, the Fish Prize, the Lightship Flash Fiction Prize, the Manchester Fiction Prize and the Nottingham Short Story Competition. The title story won first prize in the novella category of The New Writer Prose and Poetry Prizes.

The Boat


Alistair MacLeod - 1977
    

How To Exit Your Body: and Other Strange Tales


Christopher Maxim - 2018
    This book is guaranteed to horrify you in the best way possible. Open it up, turn the page, and take a journey to a world consumed with mystery in madness.

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006


Laura Furman - 2006
    The stories range in style from the gritty noir of David Means' "Sault Ste. Marie" to the mesmerizing mythmaking of Louise Erdrich's "The Plague of Doves," while the settings include a village perched on top of an enormous whale (David Lawrence Morse's "Conceived") as well as a swank suite at the Plaza Hotel (Xu Xi's "Famine"). The three most powerful stories seem to have in common the ability to immerse readers in a character's sudden, searing moment of self-knowledge and the way that insight impacts the course of a life. In Edward P. Jones' elegiac, masterful "Old Boys, Old Girls," a hard-bitten con comes to see that redemption is within his reach. Deborah Eisenberg delicately deconstructs a young girl's attraction to an abusive man in the haunting "Windows." And, finally, the storied Alice Munro, in "Passion," conveys the complex inner world of a teenager who discovers she values risk over security.