ClubA Washington Post Notable BookAn NPR Great Read of 2013From the author of the novel Swamplandia!—a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—comes a magical and uniquely daring collection of stories that showcases the author’s gifts at their inimitable best. Within these pages, a community of girls held captive in a Japanese silk factory slowly transmute into human silkworms and plot revolution; a group of boys stumble upon a mutilated scarecrow that bears an uncanny resemblance to a missing classmate that they used to torment; a family’s disastrous quest for land in the American West has grave consequences; and in the marvelous title story, two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove try to slake their thirst for blood and come to terms with their immortal relationship.Vampires in the lemon grove --Reeling for the Empire --Seagull army descends on Strong Beach, 1979 --Proving up --Barn at the end of our term --Dougbert Shackleton's rules for Antarctic tailgating --New veterans --Graveless doll of Eric Mutis

    John, a single mother, is reeling from grief: Three months ago, her twenty-one-year-old son, Cully, died in an avalanche near their home in the ski resort town of Breckenridge, Colorado. As Sarah tries her best to go through the stages—the anger, the sadness, the letting go—she has trouble keeping her grief at bay and moving on with life. Her father, a retiree who has become addicted to QVC, urges Sarah to go back to work at Breckenridge’s local morning show. Her best friend, a recent divorcee who always manages to say the wrong things, convinces Sarah to sort through Cully’s belongings. Slowly, she comes to terms with a world without the swish of her son’s ski pants or the rolling of his skateboard outside her window. Then a girl named Kit appears on Sarah’s doorstep—and she’s carrying Cully’s child. The Possibilities is a tender and darkly funny story about the fracturing and healing that takes place within a family after tragedy. Told in Kaui Hart Hemmings’s unsentimental and refreshingly wry style—praised as “audaciously comic” by The New Yorker—this uplifting novel asks difficult questions about what we risk to keep our loved ones close.

    But it was fun. And I felt like getting a bit of my own back on some of the people who'd conned and flattered me into wasting all those years.'

    

    Stylish, intricate and sensuous, these five wickedly inventive stories are a rich combination of humour and horror: exploring questions of literature, love, madness and memory.

    'The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.'Written with barely controlled fury after she was confined to her room for 'nerves' and forbidden to write, Gilman's pioneering feminist horror story scandalized nineteenth-century readers with its portrayal of a woman who loses her mind because she has literally nothing to do.Also contains The Rocking-Chair and Old Water.

    He is stuck in his bedroom, where the world comes to him through TV, the internet and Julie's visits. Julie, meanwhile, is brilliant, kind and could be changing the world. Unfortunately she is too terrified of aeroplane crashes, road accidents and potentially life-threatening bacteria to leave her home town. When someone contacts Luke and claims that he can cure him, Luke and Julie have to deal with their fears and face the world outside. With four friends, wellies and a homemade space suit, they set off in a VW Camper van along Britain's B-roads. It is a journey that might just change their lives.

    But when she meets a young Indian woman who tried to kill herself, her professional detachment disintegrates. Cut off from her family in India, Lakshmi is desperately lonely and trapped in a loveless marriage to a domineering man who limits her world to their small restaurant and grocery store. Moved by her plight, Maggie treats Lakshmi in her home office for free, quickly realizing that the despondent woman doesn't need a shrink; she needs a friend. Determined to empower Lakshmi as a woman who feels valued in her own right, Maggie abandons protocol, and soon doctor and patient have become close friends. But while their relationship is deeply affectionate, it is also warped by conflicting expectations. When Maggie and Lakshmi open up and share long-buried secrets, the revelations will jeopardize their close bond, shake their faith in each other, and force them to confront painful choices.

    Dave Eggers has been partly responsible for a rejuvenation of short fiction in the USA, and these short stories are as original and witty as any of his longer works.Contents"You Know How to Spell Elijah""This Certain Song""What the Water Feels Like to the Fishes""The Weird Wife""This Flight Attendant (Gary, Is It?) Is On Fire!""True Story -- 1986 --Midwest -- USA -- Tuesday""It is Finally Time to Tell the Story""A Circle Like Some Circles""On Making Someone a Good Man By Calling Him a Good Man""The Definition of Reg""How Long It Took""She Needed More Nuance""The Heat and Eduardo, Part I""Of Gretchen and de Gaulle""The Heat and Eduardo, Part II""Sleep to Dreamier Sleep Be Wed""On Seeing Bob Balaban in Person Twice in One Week""When He Started Saying 'I Appreciate It' After 'Thank You'""You'll Have to Save That For Another Time""Woman, Foghorn""How Do Koreans Feel About the Germans?""Georgia is Lost""They Decide To Have No More Death""Roderick Hopes"

    Absolutely not a romance.A short story about a child with a gift for seeing past the world.

    He died in 1989, at the age of 58. “The School,” which appeared first in the 1976 collection, Amateurs, is one of Barthelme’s more accessible stories. To describe it is to sound ridiculous: a very funny story about death and the negation of meaning, and the only story ever written, by anyone, in which a resurrected gerbil is the bringer of hope. - Steven Polansky, Author of Dating Miss Universe: Nine Stories About the Author: Donald Barthelme published seventeen books, including four novels and a prize-winning children's book. He was a longtime contributor to The New Yorker, winner of the National Book Award, a director of PEN and the Authors Guild, and a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He died in July of 1989. About the Guest Editor: Steven Polansky was born in New York City. He was educated at Wesleyan, Hollins, and Princeton. He has taught at St. Olaf College, Macalester, and the University of Minnesota. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Glimmer Train, Best American Short Stories, New England Review, and Minnesota Monthly. He has published two books: The Bradbury Report, a novel, and a book of short stories, Dating Miss Universe, which won the Sandstone Prize and the Minnesota Book Award. He has a wife, two sons, and a daughter. He lives in Wisconsin. About the Publisher: Electric Literature is an independent publisher amplifying the power of storytelling through digital innovation. Electric Literature’s weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading, invites established authors, indie presses, and literary magazines to recommended great fiction. Once a month we feature our own recommendation of original, previously unpublished fiction.

    She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally orbits into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before she really goes under.

    It tells the tale of a young woman who moves to Tokyo after the death of her mother, hoping to get over her grief and start a career as a graphic artist. She finds herself spending too much time staring out her window, though ... until she realizes she’s gotten used to seeing a young man across the street staring out his window, too. They eventually embark on a hesitant romance, until she learns that he has been the victim of some form of childhood trauma. Visiting two of his friends who live a monastic life beside a beautiful lake, she begins to piece together a series of clues that lead her to suspect his experience may have had something to do with a bizarre religious cult. . . . With its echoes of the infamous, real-life Aum Shinrikyo cult (the group that released poison gas in the Tokyo subway system), The Lake unfolds as the most powerful novel Banana Yoshimoto has written. And as the two young lovers overcome their troubled past to discover hope in the beautiful solitude of the lake in the country- side, it’s also one of her most moving.

    Paula recalls her contented childhood, the audacity she learned as a teenager, the exhilaration of her romance with Charlo, and the marriage to him that left her feeling powerless. Capturing both her vulnerability and her strength, Roddy Doyle gives Paula a voice that is real and unforgettable.

    St John Fox, celebrated novelist, hasn’t seen her in six years. He’s unprepared for her afternoon visit, not least because she doesn’t exist. He’s infatuated with her. But he also made her up.“You’re a villain,” she tells him. ‘A serial killer . . . can you grasp that?”Will Mr Fox meet his muse’s challenge, to stop murdering his heroines and explore something of love? What will his wife Daphne think of this sudden change in her husband? Can there be a happy ending – this time?