Henry Prize stories collection has offered an exciting selection of the best stories published in hundreds of literary magazines every year. Such classic works of American literature as Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers (1927); William Faulkner’s Barn Burning (1939); Carson McCuller’s A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud (1943); Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery (1949); J.D. Salinger’s For Esme with Love and Squalor (1963); John Cheever’s The Country Husband (1956) ; and Flannery O’Conner’s Everything that Rises Must Converge (1963) all were O. Henry Prize stories. An accomplished new series editor--novelist and short story writer Laura Furman--has read more than a thousand stories to identify the 20 winners, each one a pleasure to read today, each one a potential classic. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003 also contains brief essays from each of the three distinguished judges on their favorite story, and comments from the prize-winning writers on what inspired their stories. There is nothing like the ever rich, surprising, and original O. Henry collection for enjoying the contemporary short story.The Thing in the Forest A. S. Byatt The Shell Collector Anthony Doerr Burn Your Maps Robyn Jay Leff Lush Bradford Morrow God’s Goodness Marjorie Kemper Bleed Blue in Indonesia Adam Desnoyers The Story Edith Pearlman Swept Away T. Coraghessan Boyle Meanwhile Ann Harleman Three Days. A Month. More. Douglas Light The High Road Joan Silber Election Eve Evan S. Connell Irish Girl Tim Johnston What Went Wrong Tim O’Brien The American Embassy Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Kissing William Kittredge Sacred Statues William Trevor Two Words Molly Giles Fathers Alice Munro Train Dreams Denis Johnson

    She is incomplete without a man,” averred Kamala Das shortly before her death in May, 2009. One of the most controversial and celebrated Indian authors, she combined in her writings rare honesty and sensitivity, provocation and poignancy. The Kept Woman and Other Stories explores the man-woman relationship in all its dimensions. Deprived, depraved, mysterious, mystical and exalted, each character, culled from experience and observation, is an incisive study of love, lust and longing.

    The original inhabitants of India, these Adivasis still live in forests and hills, with religious beliefs, traditions and rituals so far removed from the rest of the country that they represent an anthropological wealth of our heritage.This book weaves together prose, oral narratives and Adivasi history to tell the stories of six remarkable tribes of India—reckoning with radical changes over the last century—as they were pulled apart and thrown together in ways none of them fathomed.

    They are the Hindi-Bindi Club, a nickname given by their American daughters to the mothers who left India to start anew—daughters now grown and facing struggles of their own.For Kiran, Preity, and Rani, adulthood bears the indelible stamp of their upbringing, from the ways they tweak their mothers’ cooking to suit their Western lifestyles to the ways they reject their mothers’ most fervent beliefs. Now, bearing the disappointments and successes of their chosen paths, these daughters are drawn inexorably home.Kiran, divorced, will seek a new beginning—this time requesting the aid of an ancient tradition she once dismissed. Preity will confront an old heartbreak—and a hidden shame. And Rani will face her demons as an artist and a wife. All will question whether they have the courage of the Hindi-Bindi Club, to hold on to their dreams—or to create new ones.An elegant tapestry of East and West, peppered with food and ceremony, wisdom and sensuality, this luminous novel breathes new life into timeless themes.

    Join fifteen of today’s most talented writers of young adult literature on a thrill ride through history with American girls charting their own course. They are monsters and mediums, bodyguards and barkeeps, screenwriters and schoolteachers, heiresses and hobos. They're making their own way in often-hostile lands, using every weapon in their arsenals, facing down murderers and marriage proposals. And they all have a story to tell.With stories by:J. Anderson CoatsAndrea CremerY. S. LeeKatherine LongshoreMarie LuKekla MagoonMarissa MeyerSaundra MitchellBeth RevisCaroline Tung RichmondLindsay SmithJessica SpotswoodRobin TalleyLeslye WaltonElizabeth Wein

    Tara Taneja lives in the small town of Siyaka, running Ultimate Mathematics Tuition Centre and working for Lalaji, her grandfather, at Lallan Sweets, his famous sweet shop. The laddoos sold at the shop are made using a secret family recipe that contains a magic ingredient known only to Lalaji.When Lalaji chooses to retire, he decides that Lallan Sweets will not be inherited but earned. He devises a quest for his three grandchildren-Tara, Rohit and Mohit-to discover the magic ingredient. Whoever finds it first will get to run the shop.It helps that Tara's long-time crush and neighbour, fun-loving and good-natured Nikku Sabharwal, returns to Siyaka after years. He joins Tara in her pursuit to outsmart her cousins. As the quest takes them from Mathura to Ludhiana, they must battle old secrets, family legacies and unexpected dangers. Yet, the toughest part will be acknowledging their feelings for each other. Will this journey bring them together or lead to a bittersweet end?

    The size of the Deol family – it put any Sooraj Barjatya movie to shame.2. The fertility of the Deol family – they reproduced faster than any other species known to mankind.It’s been four years since their wedding, and Mona and Ramit have done the unthinkable – they’ve remained childless. Of course, that also means that they’ve battled that one question day in and day out: ‘Koi Good News?’It doesn’t matter that they have been happy to be child-free – they are married; they are expected to make babies. After all, there are grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles, aunts and even colony aunties in waiting.Now, the truth is, Ramit and Mona had been trying to conceive for the past one year. But having a baby isn’t as easy as it’s made out to be.Finally, aided by the wine at their highly glamorous neighbours’ party, Mona gets pregnant. And so begins a crazy journey – complete with interfering relatives, nosy neighbours, disapproving doctors, and absolutely no privacy!Honest, relevant and thoroughly irreverent, Koi Good News? is the funniest book you’ll read this year.

    In other stories, a young woman battles with the cancers draining her body and her family; menacing undercurrents among a group of teenagers explode in violence on a winter night; a little girl tears through a house like a tornado, driving her babysitter to the brink; and couples feel out the jagged edges of connection, comfort, and cruelty.One of the breakout literary stars of 2020, Brandon Taylor has been hailed by Roxane Gay as "a writer who wields his craft in absolutely unforgettable ways." With Filthy Animals he renews and expands on the promise made in Real Life, training his precise and unsentimental gaze on the tensions among friends and family, lovers and others. Psychologically taut and quietly devastating, Filthy Animals is a tender portrait of the fierce longing for intimacy, the lingering presence of pain, and the desire for love in a world that seems, more often than not, to withhold it.

    Despite being part of the country's small Hindu community, that is terrorized at every opportunity by Muslim fundamentalists, they refuse to leave their country, as most of their friends and relatives have done. Sudhamoy, an atheist, believes with a naive mix of optimism and idealism that his motherland will not let him down... And then, on 6 December 1992, the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya in India is demolished by a mob of Hindu fundamentalists. The world condemns the incident but its fallout is felt most acutely in Bangladesh, where Muslim mobs begin to seek out and attack the Hindus... The nightmare inevitably arrives at the Duttas' doorstep - and their world begins to fall apart.

    With razor wit and compassionate insight, Egerton has a crafted a work that brilliantly explores the pain and wonder of life, knowing that with the turn of any corner death could be panhandling for your soul.

    The impact is at once harrowing and thrilling.An elderly inventor, burning with manic creativity, tries to reconcile with his estranged gay son. A bereaved boy draws a thuggish classmate into a relationship of escalating guilt and violence. A genteel middle-aged woman, a long-time resident of a psychiatric hospital, becomes the confidante of a lovelorn teenaged volunteer. Told with Chekhovian restraint and compassion, and conveying both the sorrow of life and the courage with which people rise to meet it, You Are Not a Stranger Here is a triumph of storytelling.

    When she is finally sent away to her husband's home as a young woman, she finds herself drawn deeply and powerfully towards the gruff and handsome Bheema. Bheema, however, is far from the ideal husband, and when he strays one time too many, Bhaunri's love for him begins to fester and grow into something dark and fearsome. Anukrti Upadhyay's short novel Bhaunri is a story of obsessive love and the destructive power of desire. Half-real and half-fable, and redolent with the songs and myths, the beauty and mystery of Rajasthan, it announces the arrival of a powerful new literary talent.

    Focusing on the magical folktales of West Africa, Babalola also reimagines Greek myths, ancient legends from the Middle East, and stories from long-erased places.With an eye towards decolonizing tropes inherent in our favorite tales of love, Babalola has created captivating stories that traverse across perspectives, continents, and genres.

    For this reason, she's obliged her old-fashioned grandmother by not doing well in school. She’s also resigned to remaining unwed; with three girls in the family, there’s simply not enough dowry to go around.Then a wedding alliance arrives for her oldest sister—a fair-skinned beauty. There's great rejoicing in their household. And, why not? The prospective father-in-law is the right-hand man of an important politician. As Pullamma helps ready the house for the bride-viewing—by washing the cow, by stringing flowers along doorways—she prays for the alliance to go through. Then something happens.Something so inconceivable, it will shape Pullamma's future in ways even the local soothsayer couldn’t have foretold.Tell A Thousand Lies is a sometimes sassy, sometimes sad but, ultimately, realistic look at how superstition, and the colour of a girl's skin, rules India's hinterlands.

    Be amazed and beguiled by a nursery story with a reverse twist, a futuristic take on TV cooking shows, a playscript with tentacles - and more, much more. Plunge in and enjoy!A collection of sci-fi and fantasy writing, including six graphic stories, showcasing twenty stellar writers and artists from India and Australia: Isobelle Carmody, Penni Russon, Justine Larbalestier, Margo Lanagan, Lily Mae Martin, Kuzhali Manickavel, Prabha Mallya, Annie Zaidi, Kate Constable, Vandana Singh, Mandy Ord, Priya Kuriyan, Manjula Padmanabhan, Samhita Arni, Alyssa Brugman, Nicki Greenberg and Amruta Patil.