A town of spilled peaches fields its own game show. A mosquito fogger finds an unlikely friend. The stories in Mike Young's debut collection Look! Look! Feathers tap into the surreal and sad, the absurd and ragged dreams scratching at the edge of the American heart. Punks drive auctioned police cars, and necklaces of bluebird bones are sold from a roadside van. In these tales of the Pacific Northwest, Young finds magic burrowed under the moss of ordinary life.

    Welcome to the strange and startling world of Adam Marek; a menagerie of futuristic technology, sinister traditions, and scientifically grounded superpowers — a place where the absurd and the mundane are not merely bedfellows, but interbreed. At the core of Adam Marek’s much-anticipated second short story collection is a single, unifying theme: a parent’s instinct to protect a particularly vulnerable child. Whether set amid unnerving visions of the near-future or grounded in the domestic here-and-now, these stories demonstrate that, sometimes, only outright surrealism can do justice to the merciless strangeness of reality, that only the fantastically illogical can steel us against what ordinary life threatens. Bonus BackLit materials will include an interview and a list of Marek’s recommended books.

    In the short story collection Beautiful Blemish, Sampsell dives deep into the human psyche to reveal the layers of secret desire, loneliness and hope buried in our hearts. The stories in Beautiful Blemish display an American voice that mixes humor, experimentation, and unflinching pathos to full effect.

    The manuscript was runner-up in the 2010 Caketrain Chapbook Competition, as judged by Deb Olin Unferth.

    Dive into the second collection of Behind Dark Doors, filled with stories of suspense, horror, paranormal and supernatural, from the dark mind of short story award-winning author Susan May.SCENIC ROUTEWhen a young family stop overnight at a quaint country bed-and-breakfast what they don’t know is that something is wrong in Broken Springs, population 402.HIDE-AND-SEEKHenry doesn't like playing hide-and-seek because his siblings don’t play nicely. Until the day he discovers there are worse things than being found. Not being found.HARASSMENT DAYDammit, thinks Edwin, when he sees those people have followed him onto the train and they’ve even gotten off at his station. What can he do to be rid of them for good?THE MONSTER RULESWhen Harry’s best friend shares the Monster Rules he learns how to stay safe at night until he's awoken by strange, scratching noises. Luckily, he knows what to do.WHERE WE ONCE WERETamara dreamed of visiting her distant ancestors' 1897-time line for her PhD research paper. What she discovers is a family secret two hundred years in the making.DESPERATETwo agitated women run into freeway traffic. Both are horrifically injured and should be dead, but they’re determined to get to the other side. What awaits them there?⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Short stories at their best"⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "5.0 out of 5 stars It totally lived up to the hype!"⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "I absolutely loved this collection!"

    Three cycles. Fists and possums and gunfighters and penises and hookers and short buses and dead babies and fireworks. The stories in this collection originally appeared in: HOBART, FICTION INTERNATIONAL, KITTY SNACKS, TEXAS OBSERVER, NEW BORDER and THE PURITAN.

    Based on the Tamil Original Vikramaadityan Kadaigal. All the 24 riddles/stories that the Betal narrated to King Vikramaadityan. Also included is the story of the origin of the Betal - Who is the Betal? How did he/she become a Betal? What is its redemption?

    With a foreword by Robert Shapard and an afterword by Christopher Merrill, this book brings you fresh approaches to an exacting form that demands precision, a species of brevity that is surprisingly expansive. Writers say the pieces are hard to compose, but readers say they are easy to appreciate, a pleasure to envision, a wonder to watch life spun out and painted in small places. Real and surreal, lyrical and prosaic, here are 135 stories by 89 authors, certain to make you think.

    Why not try some microfiction short stories instead? These bite-sized, slice-of-life short stories are crafted with only one hundred words, so they go by in a flash. Perfect for time-challenged fiction lovers, these humorous yet thought-provoking stories can be read when you’re waiting in line, riding the bus, or whenever you need a short mental break. Go on. Try some flash fiction. Grab your copy of 100 Tiny Tales today! 100 Tiny Tales: Short Stories Told in Exactly One Hundred Words is written by K. Kris Loomis, a native South Carolinian and the author of the novels, The Sinking of Bethany Ann Crane and The Murder of Leopold Beckenbauer, as well as the short story collection, The Monster In the Closet and Other Stories. Kris is also a nonfiction author who writes books about yoga, meditation, and the time she spent living in South America, including After Namaste: Off-the-Mat Musings of a Modern Yogini and Thirty Days in Quito: Two Gringos and a Three-Legged Cat Move to Ecuador. When Kris isn’t at her standing desk writing, she can be found playing chess, folding an origami crane, or practicing a Beethoven sonata on the piano. She lives in Rock Hill, South Carolina with her husband and two cats. You can connect with Kris at her website, www.kkrisloomis.com or her Amazon Author page, or find her on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram @kkrisloomis.

    A retired public school teacher, Miss Budge embarks on a series of slice-of-life adventures that take readers into the intriguing and authentic lives of Southern church women. "What our readers love about Miss Budge is that they all know her personally. In fact, they all are her in one way or another. Daphne's stories are instantly recognizable to those in a church community, and that's where the real humour and real pathos comes from. Daphne is a keen observer of the strange and wonderful subculture of 'the church lady.'" Brett Alan Dewing The Christian Courier (Canada) "Mildred Budge is a forthright, almost larger than life, woman who challenges every reader's faith walk by being transparent about her own. She reminds us that Jesus loves us the way we are but He loves us too much to leave us as we are." Julie Innes Evangel

    Swirling voices and skeins of story, laughter and rage, ferocious attention to detail and sweeping nuttiness, tears and chortling—these stories will remind readers of the late giant David Foster Wallace, in their straightforward accounts of anything-but-straightforward events; of modern short story pioneer Raymond Carver, a bit, in their blunt, unadorned dialogue; and of Julia Whitty, a bit, in their willingness to believe what is happening, even if it absolutely shouldn’t be. Funny, piercing, unique, memorable, this is a collection of stories readers will find nearly impossible to forget:... The barber who shaves the heads of the thugs in Bin Laden’s cave tells cheerful stories of life with the preening video-obsessed leader, who has a bald spot shaped just like Iceland.... A husband gathers all of his wife’s previous boyfriends for a long day on a winery-touring bus.... A teenage boy drives off into the sunset with his troubled sister’s small daughters…and the loser husband locked in the trunk of the car.... The late Joseph Kennedy pours out his heart to a golf-course bartender moments before the stroke that silenced him forever.… A man digging in his garden finds a brand-new baby boy, still alive, and has a chat with the teenage neighbor girl whose son it is.... A man born on a Greyhound bus eventually buys the entire Greyhound Bus Company and revolutionizes Western civilization.... A mountainous bishop dies and the counting of the various keys to his house turns… tense.... A man discovers his wife having an affair, takes up running to grapple with his emotions, and discovers everyone else on the road is a cuckold too.And many others.

    While the bricks with which Chinquee constructs her fictions - failed or failing relationships, childhood friendships, and the intricacies of family life - are not uncommon, the architecture she creates with them is rare indeed: stories now full of light, now somber, now opening the reader's eyes to an utterly new space.

    Some move toward the future heartened by what they learn from those around them--a tattoo artist, an invented medicine man, zoo animals, strangers, fellow outsiders. Deftly rendered, these stories abound with oddness and grace.In “Tattooizm,” included in The Best American Short Stories 2006, a young woman struggles with a promise that her boyfriend is determined to make her keep. In the Nelson Algren Award–winning “Space,” a reluctantly undertaken errand forces a young man to finally confront the death of his mother. And in “The Medicine Man,” hailed by the Times (U.K.) as “perfectly pitched and perfectly written,” a man recounts his manic attachment to his sister.Moffett’s closely observed stories are candid and complex, funny and moving. The world of Permanent Visitors is an idiosyncratic and generous one, its inhabitants searching for constancy in a place crowded with contradiction.

    A couple hires a partner for a threesome to rejuvenate their relationship after the birth of their child. An assistant at a prestigious literary journal reconnects with a middle school frenemy and finds his carefully constructed world of refinement cannot protect him from his past. In these and other stories, Tom Bissell vividly renders the complex worlds of characters on the brink of artistic and personal crisis--writers, actors, and other creative types who see things slightly differently from the rest of us. Surreal, poignant, squirmingly awkward--and always just a little bit off--this collection is a brilliant new offering from one of the most versatile and talented writers in America today.

    With all the heartbreaking earnestness of a Wilco song, these eighteen stories by Chad Simpson roam the small-town playgrounds, blue-collar neighborhoods, and rural highways of Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky to find people who’ve lost someone or something they love and have not yet found ways to move forward. Simpson’s remarkable voice masterfully moves between male and female and adolescent and adult characters. He embraces their helplessness and shares their sad, strange, and sometimes creepy slices of life with grace, humor, and mounds of empathy. In “Peloma,” a steelworker grapples with his preteen daughter’s feeble suicide attempts while the aftermath of his wife’s death and the politics of factory life vie to hem him in.  The narrator of “Fostering” struggles to determine the ramifications of his foster child’s past now that he and his wife are expecting their first biological child. In just two pages, “Let x” negotiates the yearnings and regrets of childhood through mathematical variables and the summertime interactions of two fifth-graders. Poignant, fresh, and convincing, these are stories of women who smell of hairspray and beer and of landscapers who worry about their livers, of flooded basements and loud trucks, of bad exes and horrible jobs, of people who remain loyal to sports teams that always lose. Displaced by circumstances both in and out of their control, the characters who populate Tell Everyone I Said Hi are lost in their own surroundings, thwarted by misguided aspirations and long-buried disappointments, but fully open to the possibility that they will again find their way.