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Terror in the Shadows: Volume 3


Ron Ripley - 2019
    A dark ritual turns a woman obsessed with supernatural powers against the people who love her most. A possessed TV proves that old B-Movie monsters can still terrify an unsuspecting audience…Scare Street’s roster of authors brings you eleven new tales of supernatural horror, in one blood-chilling volume. This macabre collection of short stories is guaranteed to get your pulse racing, and send shivers down your spine.Each deliciously dark tale will haunt your dreams, and keep you reading long past the witching hour. But wait…What was that noise? Did something move in the shadows?Just keep telling yourself… it’s only a story.

The Courtesan


Alexandra Curry - 2015
    To this day, Sai Jinhua is a legend in her native land of China, and this is her story, told the way it might have been.The year is 1881. Seven-year-old Jinhua is left an orphan, alone and unprotected after her mandarin father’s summary execution for the crime of speaking the truth. She is sold to a brothel-keeper and subjected to the worst of human nature. Will the private ritual that is her father’s legacy and the wise friendship of the crippled brothel maid be enough to sustain her? When an elegant but troubled scholar takes Jinhua as his concubine, she enters the close world of his jealous first wife. Yet it is Jinhua who accompanies him--as Emissary to the foreign devil nations of Prussia, Austro-Hungary, and Russia--on an exotic journey to Vienna. As he struggles to play his part in China's early, blundering diplomatic engagement with the western world, Jinhua’s eyes and heart are opened to the irresistible possibilities of a place that is mesmerizing and strange, where she will struggle against the constraints of tradition and her husband’s authority and seek to find “Great Love.”Sai Jinhua is an altered woman when she returns to a changed and changing China, where a dangerous clash of cultures pits East against West.

Lovers in the Age of Indifference


Xiaolu Guo - 2010
    Her personal, provocative and charming fables capture the sense of alienation thrown up by life in the modern world, and we join her characters in their search for human contact - and love - in rapidly-changing landscapes all around the globe.

To Hold Up the Sky


Liu Cixin - 2020
    From Cixin Liu, the New York Times bestselling author of The Three-Body Problem, To Hold Up the Sky is a breathtaking collection of imaginative science fiction.Stories included are:The Village TeacherThe Time Migration2018-04-01Fire In The EarthContractionMirrorOde To JoyFull Spectrum Barrage JammingSea of DreamsCloud of PoemsThe Thinker

Sour Heart


Jenny Zhang - 2017
    In this debut collection, she conjures the disturbing and often hilarious experience of adolescence through the eyes of Chinese American girls growing up in New York City. Her stories cut across generations and continents, moving from the fraught halls of a public school in Flushing, Queens, to the tumultuous streets of Shanghai, China, during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. In the absence of grown-ups, latchkey kids experiment on each other until one day the experiments turn violent; an overbearing mother abandons her artistic aspirations to come to America but relives her glory days through karaoke; and a shy loner struggles to master English so she can speak to God.Narrated by the daughters of Chinese immigrants who fled imperiled lives as artists back home only to struggle to stay afloat — dumpster diving for food and scamming Atlantic City casino buses to make a buck — these seven stories showcase Zhang's compassion and moral courage, and a perverse sense of humor reminiscent of Portnoy's Complaint. A darkly funny and intimate rendering of girlhood, Sour Heart examines what it means to belong to a family, to find your home, leave it, reject it, and return again.

The Painter From Shanghai


Jennifer Cody Epstein - 2008
    Her parents were taken from her at a young age, then her uncle sold her into prostitution; it was enough for many years just to cope and survive. One day, fate places a kind gentlemanin her path, and she begins to discover the city outside the brotheland the world beyond China's borders. As a larger canvas of life emerges, Pan realizes that she has something of value to say -- and a talent through which she can express herself. From Shanghai to Paris, Pan is challenged by the harsh realities in politics, art, and love, and must rely on her own strength to develop her talent. In so doing, she takes a relatively ordinary life and makes it extraordinary.A work of fiction -- but based on the life and work of a real artist -- The Painter from Shanghai transports readers to early-20th-century China, a culture marked by oppression. Epstein has proven herself a shining talent in this first novel, tackling such weighty questions as: How does a talented artist blossom, even under repressive conditions? What is art, and what is love? What makes a life well lived? The answers form a mesmerizing portrait of one young woman's journey to find herself and to nourish her creative talents despite appreciable odds.(Summer 2008 Selection)

Terror in the Shadows: Volume II


Emma Salam - 2019
    A party girl’s addiction gives birth to a monster within. Man’s best friend must fend off a woman’s greatest nightmare…Scare Street is proud to present eleven chilling tales of the supernatural, in one monstrous volume. Horror authors Ron Ripley, David Longhorn, Sara Clancy, and many more unite to bring you a terrifying collection of short stories, each one guaranteed to haunt your dreams. And each one more chilling than the last.Once you start reading you won’t be able to stop. Because when these authors sink their teeth into you, it’s already too late.The only way to escape from these nightmares… is to wake up screaming.

Interpreter of Maladies


Jhumpa Lahiri - 1999
    In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant.

Sparks Fly


Nicole Falls - 2017
    A simple touch sending currents of electricity flowing through a body. The feeling of coming home. Friends become lovers. Strangers become soulmates. The chemistry ignited when two people are falling in love is undeniable. Over the course of five short stories, follow these couples on journeys of passion and discover what happens when they decide to let sparks fly…

Bad People: Four terrifying short novels of suspense


Jeremy Bates - 2018
    After a night out with his girlfriend in one of the country's remote provinces, he wakes to find himself in a pitch-black coffin—and quickly running out of oxygen. With only his cell phone and his own wits to rely on, it's a race against time to escape the claustrophobic death trap. SIX BULLETS The end of civilization arrived in the form of a giant asteroid thirteen months ago. For Burt James, a survivalist, it was not a complete surprise. He'd spent much of his adult life prepping for such a catastrophe. Consequently, while the majority of the population scoured the post-apocalyptic landscape for water and food, regressing into primitive killers, he bunkered down in his fortified hilltop home in a small town in the middle of the Australian Outback. But now he's out of food and down to his last six bullets, and he will have to make the most difficult choice of his life. THE MAILMAN Los Angeles, 1985. Never was the motto sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll more apt than the scene on the legendary Sunset Strip with the arrival of the underground Hollywood glam bands. While Mick Freeman, a record executive with a major label, works tirelessly to sign five toxic rockers whom he believes might flip the entire music world on its head, his wife, Jade, spends her days bored and alone at home, struggling with a midlife crisis that threatens to topple their twenty-year marriage. And then she meets the new mailman. Young and handsome, he sweeps her off her feet—straight into a nightmare the likes of which she could never have imagined. RE-ROLL In the near future, breathtakingly humanoid robots called Mechs are for sale, and they're designed to fulfill whatever role you want: husband, wife, best friend, slave. Manufacturers allow new owners one free "roll" to randomly determine their Mech's three leading characteristics. But as everybody knows, scoring your ideal traits is a crapshoot, though you can always re-roll—at a price.

Home Remedies


Xuan Juliana Wang - 2019
    Young, reckless, and catapulted toward uncertain futures, here is the new face of Chinese youth on a quest for every kind of freedom.From a crowded apartment on Mott Street, where an immigrant family raises its first real Americans, to a pair of divers at the Beijing Olympics poised at the edge of success and self-discovery, Wang’s unforgettable characters – with their unusual careers, unconventional sex lives and fantastical technologies – share the bold hope that, no matter where they’ve come from, their lives too can be extraordinary.

Labyrinth: Short Stories


Mainak Dhar - 2012
    This is to keep you on the edge with each turn in the alleys of the Labyrinth.Labyrinth: Short Stories is an array of fifteen tales that cover genres like adventure, romance, paranormal, fantasy, history, and many more.Summary Of The BookLabyrinth: Short Stories, published in 2012, is a collection of fifteen short stories written by various Indian authors. Each tale belongs to a different genre and era, thereby giving this book a unique and refreshing feel. Labyrinth: Short Stories starts off with The Martyr, which has been written by Mainak Dhar. It revolves around young Kemal who finds himself in the middle of a war in Afghanistan. Puppet Show, by Aditi Chincholi, explains how a doctor cannot find a way to break a spell that has been cast over the natives of a valley.Bagheera Log Huts takes readers into the heart of an Indian jungle, where the search for a wild cat turns into an unexpected adventure. Shawn Pereira’s I'll Be Back describes an out-of-body experience, which shows how things can take a downward spiral when one is caught in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Aditi Chincholi’s second story, Sym World, is set in a fantasy land which the protagonist Kyoto has willingly entered, but cannot find a way out. In Mortified, written by Jeevan Varma, readers will find themselves in a small Indian township where a mortified Sharmaji is going to be attacked. This is followed by Crashing Impacts, a tale of love and sacrifice that spans almost ten years.Rishabh Chaturvedi’s The Night Of The Wokambee describes how Revant is in a quandary when a strange creature visits his house every night. Both Mists of Time by Niharika Puri, and Russkaya Rulyetka by Shawn Pereira, illustrate how a person makes impulsive decisions when he is overcome with rage and jealousy. Candies shows readers that the pursuit of love is filled with ups and downs. Travel Through The Night, authored by Rishabh Chaturvedi, follows the protagonist into dense sugarcane plantations, where he encounters strange spirits who block his path. A Day of Battle is set during the great epic battle of the Mahabharata, and the author Abhishek Dwivedi shares stories of the bravery of some of the best warriors that this world has ever seen. The next story, Farming On Facebook by Sushant Dharwadkar, takes a huge time leap, and shows how the present generation is unaware of the real world, as their focus lies only on the screens in front of them. About The AuthorsLabyrinth: Short Stories has been written by Mainak Dhar, Richard Fernandes, Jeevan Verma, Rishabh Chaturvedi, Niharika Puri, Aditi Chincholi, Abhishek Dwivedi, Sushant Dharwadkar, Rohit Das, and Shawn Pereira. They are a part of the initiative by Litizen.com. Professionally they are accountants, chefs, media professionals, doctors, and students.

Becoming Madame Mao


Anchee Min - 2000
    The unwanted daughter of a concubine, she refused to have her feet bound, ran away to join an opera troupe and eventually met Mao Zedong in the mountains of Yenan.

Happy Dreams


Jia Pingwa - 2007
    Traveling from his rural home in Freshwind to the city of Xi’an, Happy brings only an eternally positive attitude, his devoted best friend Wufu, and a pair of high-heeled women’s shoes he hopes to fill with the love of his life.In Xi’an, Happy and Wufu find jobs as trash pickers sorting through the city’s filth, but Happy refuses to be deterred by inauspicious beginnings. In his eyes, dusty birds become phoenixes, the streets become rivers, and life is what you make of it. When he meets the beautiful Yichun, he imagines she is the one to fill the shoes and his Cinderella-esque dream. But when the harsh city conditions and the crush of societal inequalities take the life of his friend and shake Happy to his soul, he’ll need more than just his unrelenting optimism to hold on to the belief that something better is possible.

The Concubine's Daughter


Pai Kit Fai - 2009
    Lotus Feet. He would give his daughter the dainty feet of a courtesan. This would enhance her beauty and her price, making her future shine like a new coin. He smiled to himself, pouring fresh tea. And it would stop her from running away…When the young concubine of an old farmer in rural China gives birth to a daughter called Li-Xia, or “Beautiful One,” the child seems destined to become a concubine herself. Li refuses to submit to her fate, outwitting her father’s orders to bind her feet and escaping the silk farm with an English sea captain. Li takes her first steps toward fulfilling her mother’s dreams of becoming a scholar — but her final triumph must be left to her daughter, Su Sing, “Little Star,” in a journey that will take her from remote mountain refuges to the perils of Hong Kong on the eve of World War II.