As the children of refugees carve out radical new paths for themselves in California, they shoulder the inherited weight of the Khmer Rouge genocide and grapple with the complexities of race, sexuality, friendship, and family.A high school badminton coach and failing grocery store owner tries to relive his glory days by beating a rising star teenage player. Two drunken brothers attend a wedding afterparty and hatch a plan to expose their shady uncle’s snubbing of the bride and groom. A queer love affair sparks between an older tech entrepreneur trying to launch a “safe space” app and a disillusioned young teacher obsessed with Moby-Dick. And in the sweeping final story, a nine-year-old child learns that his mother survived a racist school shooter.With nuanced emotional precision, gritty humor, and compassionate insight into the intimacy of queer and immigrant communities, the stories in Afterparties deliver an explosive introduction to the work of Anthony Veasna So.

    Screenwriter, director, and star of the acclaimed film Me and You and Everyone We Know, Miranda July brings her extraordinary talents to the page in a startling, sexy, and tender collection.

    With her own inexorable but utterly unpredictable logic and her almost uncanny ability to conjure the strange states of mind and emotion that constitute our daily consciousness, Eisenberg pulls us as if by gossamer threads through her characters—a tormented woman whose face determines her destiny; a group of film actors shocked to read a book about their past; a privileged young man who unexpectedly falls into a love affair with a human rights worker caught up in an all-consuming quest that he doesn't understand.In Eisenberg’s world, the forces of money, sex, and power cannot be escaped, and the force of history, whether confronted or denied, cannot be evaded. No one writes better about time, tragedy and grief, and the indifferent but beautiful universe around us.

    In Where the Money Went, he surprises us with stories about love and the desertion of love, all written from a man’s point of view. Rarely is a man so revealing.A narrator struggles with his abiding loyalty to his ex-wife, even when he finds love with another woman. A newly divorced man learns more than he wants to know about his friends’ long-term marriages. In these nine stories, which incisively touch on the complex nature of love, we find men as fathers, as husbands, and as lovers, trying their best in a world that stubbornly refuses to make sense. Canty, whose writing has been praised as “smart, gritty, unsentimental” (New York Times), “lovely and unforgiving” (Boston Globe), and “enchanting and painful” (USA Today), powerfully conveys both the bitterness that can afflict romantic relationships, and the moments of humor and tenderness that cut through it.

    It has become a feature of the designer's job to define the problems that exist in his network, choose and analyse several optimization parameters during the analysis process, and then prioritize and evaluate these parameters in the architecture and design of the system.

    The stories range from fantasy and fairy tale to horror and stark reality, and yet what pervades is the sense of humanity. The people of Lanagan's worlds face trials, temptations, and degradations. They swoon and suffer and even kill for love. In a dangerous world, they seek the solace and strength that comes from family and belonging. These are stories to be savored slowly and pondered deeply because they cut to the very heart of who we are

    “The literary ‘Oscars’ features twenty outstanding examples of the best of the best in American short stories.” — Shelf Awareness for ReadersThe Best American Short Stories 2014 will be selected by national best-selling author Jennifer Egan, who won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction for A Visit from the Goon Squad, heralded by Time magazine as “a new classic of American fiction.” Egan “possesses a satirist’s eye and a romance novelist’s heart” (New York Times Book Review).

    This collection of the 100 finest stories ever written ranges from the essential to the unexpected, the traditional to the surreal. Wide in scope, both beautiful and vast, this is the perfect companion for any fiction lover.Here are Man Booker Prize winners and Nobel Laureates, childhood favourites and neglected masters, twenty-first century wits and national treasures.Featuring an all-star cast of authors, including Julian Barnes, Angela Carter, Anton Chekhov, Roald Dahl, Penelope Fitzgerald, Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Ian McEwan, Alice Munro, V.S. Pritchett, Thomas Pynchon and Muriel Spark, THAT GLIMPSE OF TRUTH is the biggest, most handsome collection of short fiction in print today.- See more at: http://headofzeus.com/books/That+Glim...

    This new series aims to reprint the best short stories published in the previous calendar year by British writers, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. The editor’s brief is wide ranging, covering anthologies, collections, magazines, newspapers and web sites, looking for the best of the bunch to reprint all in one volume. Neither genre nor Granta shall be overlooked in the search for the very best new short fiction.The first book of the series includes stories published in 2010 by the following authors: David Rose, Hilary Mantel, Lee Rourke, Leone Ross, Claire Massey, Christopher Burns, Adam Marek, SJ Butler, Heather Leach, Alan Beard, Kirsty Logan, Philip Langeskov, Bernie McGill, John Burnside, Robert Edric, Michèle Roberts, Dai Vaughan, Alison Moore and Salley Vickers.Table of Contents:Flora – David RoseWinter Break – Hilary MantelEmergency Exit – Lee RourkeLove Silk Food – Leone RossFeather Girls – Claire MasseyForeigner – Christopher BurnsDinner of the Dead Alumni – Adam MarekThe Swimmer – SJ ButlerSo Much Time in a Life – Heather LeachStaff Development – Alan BeardThe Rental Heart – Kirsty LoganNotes on a Love Story – Philip LangeskovNo Angel – Bernie McGillSlut’s Hair – John BurnsideComma – Hilary MantelMoving Day – Robert EdricTristram and Isolde – Michèle RobertsLooted – Dai VaughanWhen the Door Closed, It Was Dark – Alison MooreEpiphany – Salley Vickers

    The House at Belle Fontaine is at once unexpected and familiar, and wholly memorable for its spare depiction of characters on the brink of transformation.The powerfully intimate stories within The House at Belle Fontaine span the better part of the twentieth century and almost every continent, laying bare apprehensions, passions, secrets, and tragedies that resonate across time and space. In crisp, spare, and penetrating prose, Lily Tuck unveils and suppresses personal truths as her characters navigate exotic locales and immediate emotional territory: an artist learns that her deceased ex-husband had an especially illicit affair seventeen years before his death; a young couple living in Thailand worries about the mental stability of their best friend, a U. S. army captain; on a ship bound for Antarctica, a retired couple strains to hold together their forty-year-old marriage; and a French family flees to Lima in the 1940s with devastating consequences for their daughter’s young nanny.The House at Belle Fontaine reveals the extraordinary in the everyday and the perpetuity of the past. With a deft and expert hand, Tuck excavates the opportunities that arise from loss, and the moments that knock lives into a collision course and an uncertain future.

    -- New York NewsdayWritten over a period of twenty-five years, the more than sixty stories in this volume are funny and sardonic, sensuous and evocative, streaked with terror and cruelty. Richly varied in tone and subject -- ghost story, murder mystery, sexual farce, political satire, culture-clash parable -- all glow with Paul Theroux's intelligence, elegance, and ironic wit; with his marvelous sense of place; with his ear for dialogue; and with his tragicomic vision.Theroux's canvas stretches from London to Southeast Asia, Boston to Paris, Africa to Eastern Europe, Moscow to the tropics. He portrays colonials, emigres, diplomats, students, would-be writers, academics, and children. Many are trapped in alien situations or loveless relationships, or are overwhelmed by larger cultural tremors. Full of suspense and the unexpected, this first major retrospective of Theroux's short fiction is "a welcomed second chance to read some of his best work" and confirms his reputation as "an irresistible storyteller"Content: World's endZombiesThe imperial icehouseYard saleAlgebraThe English adventureAfter the warWords are deedsWhite liesClapham junctionThe odd-job manPortrait of a ladyThe prison diary of Jack FaustA real Russian ikonA political romanceSinning with AnnieA love knotWhat have you done to our Leo?Memories of a curfewBiographical notes for four American poetsHayseedA deed without a nameYou make me madDog daysA burial at SurabayaPolvoLow tideJungle bellsWarm dogsThe consul's fileDependent wifeWhite ChristmasPretend I'm not hereLoser winsThe flower of MalayaThe autumn dogDengué FeverThe South Malaysia pineapple growers' associationThe butterfly of the LarutsThe tennis courtReggie WooConspiratorsThe Johore murdersThe tiger's suitCoconut gathererThe last colonialTriadDiplomatic relationsDear WilliamVolunteer speakerReceptionNamesakeAn English unofficial roseChildrenCharlie Hogle's earringThe exileTomb with a viewThe man on the Clapham omnibusSex and its substitutesThe honorary SiberianGone westA little flameFuryNeighborsFighting talkThe Winfield wallpaperDancing on the radioMemo.

    Her brilliantly etched characters confront life’s abrupt and unsettling changes with fear, courage, humor, and overwhelming grace. In the O. Henry Prize–winning story “The Visitor,” a VA hospital nurse’s aide contends with a family ghost and discovers the ways in which her own past haunts her. The reticent father in “Pond” is confronted with a Solomonic choice that pits his love for his daughter against his feelings for her young son. In “Night Train to Frankfurt,” first published in The New Yorker, a daughter travels to an alternative-medicine clinic in Germany in a gambit to save her mother’s life. And in the title story, a woman vacations in Morocco with her family while contemplating a decision that will both ruin and liberate them all. From “Temporary,” where a young woman confronts the ephemeral nature of companionship, to “Three Girls,” in which sisters trapped in a snowstorm recognize the boundaries of childhood, the nuanced voices of Alone With You bear the hallmarks of an instant classic from a writer with unerring talent and imaginative resource. Silver has the extraordinary ability to render her fictional inhabitants instantly relatable, in all their imperfections. Her stories have the singular quality of looking in a mirror. We see at once what is familiar and what is strange. In these stirring narratives, we meet ourselves anew.

    Each of the portraits in Close Range reveals characters fiercely wrought with precision and grace. These are stories of desperation and unlikely elation, set in a landscape both stark and magnificent.The half-skinned steer --The mud below --55 miles to the gas pump --The bunchgrass edge of the world --A lonely coast --Job history --Pair a spurs --People in Hell just want a drink of water --The governors of Wyoming --The blood bay --Brokeback Mountain

    Devious children, sparring lovers, capricious American girls, obtuse bachelors, sibylline spinsters, and charming Europeans populate these five fascinating nouvelles, which represent the author in both his early and late phases. From the apparitions of evil that haunt the governess in “The Turn of the Screw” to the startling self-scrutiny of an egotistical man in “The Beast in the Jungle,” the mysterious turnings of human behavior are coolly and masterfully observed—proving Henry James to be a master of psychological insight as well as one of the finest prose stylists of modern English literature.Includes “The Turn of the Screw” • Daisy Miller • Washington Square • “The Beast in the Jungle” • “The Jolly Corner”

    Inside you will find writing from the greatest of classic and contemporary authors; stories that will brighten and inspire, move and delight, soothe and restore in equal measure.This is an anthology to devour or to savour at your leisure, each story a perfectly imagined whole to be read and reread, and each a journey to transport the reader away from the everyday. Immersed in the pages you will follow lovers to midnight trysts, accompany old friends on new adventures, be thrilled by ghostly delights, overcome heartbreak, loss and longing, and be warmed by tales of redemption, and of hope and happiness.Whether as a cure for insomnia, to while away the hours on a midnight journey, or as a brief moment of escapism before you turn in, the stories contained in this remarkable collection provide the perfect antidote to the frenetic pace of modern life - a rich and calming selection guaranteed to see you through the night.Featuring stories by:Katherine Mansfield, Alice Munro, Anton Chekhov, Oscar Wilde, Haruki Murakami, Wilkie Collins, Kate Chopin, Elizabeth Gaskell, The Brothers Grimm, John Cheever, Arthur Conan Doyle, Virginia Woolf, Rudyard Kipling, Helen Simpson, Richard Yates, James Lasdun, Martin Amis, Angela Carter, Somerset Maugham and Julian Barnes