George Mackay Brown was steeped in the life and traditions of Orkney, a world set firmly between the sea and the sky, where time has an altogether different nature and significance from the rest of the world.'In Orkney,' wrote Edwin Muir, 'the lives of living men turn into legend.' The rich history of the islands – the succession of Neolithic man, Pict, Norsemen, Scot – leaves its impression upon the life of modern Orkney and is reflected in this finely wrought collection. Mingling past and present, the human world and the spiritual, George Mackay Brown brings together both the modern islanders and the Orcadians of centuries past, for the same lineaments are discernable in both.'Hawkfall', the central story, traces the vicissitudes, violence and hypocrisies which recur over many generations; in 'The Drowned Rose', the ghosts of dead lovers, still in love with the things of this world, mix with the living, while 'Sealskin' explored the relationship between legend, art and life. All stories are richly entertaining, poignant and moving, their universal themes realized in the context of their unique island setting.

    Ask any woman you know to tell you a drinking story, and she’ll come up with one—in fact, she may even come up with five. With friends and with coworkers, at date night and at ladies' night, and on special occasions ranging from Valentine’s Day to the Super Bowl, we encounter alcohol—yet when it comes to discussing the nature of our relationship with drinking, few of us do so honestly and openly.In Drinking Diaries, editors Leah Odze Epstein and Caren Osten Gerszberg take women's drinking stories out of the closet and into the light. Whether it’s shame, sober sex, and relapsing, or college drinking, bonding, and comparing the benefits of pot vs. booze, no topic related to alcohol is off limits in this illuminating anthology. With contributions from celebrated writers including Jacquelyn Mitchard, Daphne Merkin, Kathryn Harrison, Ann Hood, Ann Leary, Pam Houston, Jane Friedman, Elissa Schappell, Asra Nomani, Priscilla Warner, Rita Williams, and Joyce Maynard, Drinking Diaries is a candid look at the pleasures and pains of drinking, and the many ways in which it touches women’s lives.

    Sana Krasikov is one of those writers. Her first published story appeared in the New Yorker, her second in The Atlantic Monthly’s fiction issue. One More Year is her debut collection, made up of stories of people who hold out hope, despite the odds, that life will be kind to them.The characters who populate Krasikov’s stories are mostly women–some are new to America; some still live in the former Soviet Union, in Georgia or Russia; and some have returned to Russia to find a country they barely recognize and people they no longer understand. Mothers leave children behind; children abandon their parents. Almost all of them look to love to repair their lives, and when love isn’t really there, they attempt to make do with relationships that substitute for love.Like Jhumpa Lahiri and ZZ Packer, two writers whose fully-realized characters drive their fiction, Sana Krasikov is an exhilarating talent whose first collection puts her on the map with today's most talented young authors.

    The book concludes with a sampling of articles Thurber wrote for the New Yorker’s “The Talk of the Town,” demonstrating his often overlooked skill as a reporter.Mainly men and women : My friend Domesticus --The glass of fashion --Am not I your Rosalind? --The princess and the tin box --How to name a dog --Thix --The waters of the moon --Exhibit X --The lady on the bookcase --The ordeal of Mr. Matthews --The dewey dewey fog --A guide to the literary pilgrimage --Prehistoric animals of the middle west --Here come the tigers --Look homeward, Jeannie --A call on Mrs. Forrester --The beast in the dingle. Less alarming creatures : A new natural history --Extinct animals of Bermuda --A gallery of real creatures. Soapland : O pioneers! --Ivorytown, Rinsoville, Anacinburg, and Crisco Corners --Sculptors in ivory --The invisible people --The listening women

    It is a remoteness that both perplexes and enthralls him.    Through dazzling sleight of hand in which the public becomes private and the private becomes public, the entire book—clicking from confession to family-album photograph to family chronicle to sexual fantasy to pseudo-scholarly footnote to reportage to personal essay to stand-up comedy to cultural criticism to literary criticism to film criticism to prose-poem to litany to outtake —becomes both an anatomy of American culture and a searing self-portrait.    David Shields reads his own life—reads our life—as if it were an allegory about remoteness and finds persuasive, hilarious, heartbreaking evidence wherever he goes.Winner of the PEN / Revson Award?

    Channeling unexpected, eclectic voices in a collection perfectly suited to readers of Daniyal Mueenuddin, Alice Sebold, and Dave Eggers, Moffett delivers a nuanced, powerful, humorous, and moving meditation on the trials of transitions and liminal living in today’s modern world. Richard Russo says, “the first thing you notice reading the stories in Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events is the author’s extraordinary range—of expertise, technique, imagination and wit. There doesn’t seem to be much Kevin Moffett can’t do.”

    He writes with equal force about the blithe energies of youth ("Boys") and the rueful onset of middle age ("Hawaiian Night"), about Midwestern optimists ("Double Zero") and West coast strategists ("Baggage Carousel"), about visionary exhilaration ("Forecast from the Retail Desk") and delusional catharsis ("Surplus Value Books: Catalog Number 13.") The astounding title story, which has already been reprinted in four different anthologies, is a masterpiece of remembrance and thwarted love.Full of deep feeling and stunningly beautiful language, the stories in Demonology offer the deepest pleasures that fiction can afford.

    

    By placing ordinary characters in extraordinary situations, Adjei-Brenyah reveals the violence, injustice, and painful absurdities that black men and women contend with every day. These stories tackle urgent instances of racism and cultural unrest and explore the many ways we fight for humanity in an unforgiving world.

    Her first, "Make Someone Happy," did indeed make many people happy, and so, due to popular demand, she has put together a second volume, which includes “The Book of Homer,” a tribute to her beloved dog who recently died. "Still Happy," like "Make Someone Happy," exemplifies Berg’s gift, as the Boston Globe said, “in her ability to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, the remarkable in the everyday.”

    Kris Loomis offers a collection of down-to-earth personal essays that demonstrates the many ways yoga has transformed her life off the mat and why she keeps showing up every day for more. Not only has yoga improved her health and mental well-being, the study of this ancient practice has taught her to take personal responsibility for her actions and to focus on the bright side no matter what life hurls her direction.Whether you’re at the beginning of your yoga journey or if you’re already a ways down the path, you will find this book full of inspiring, encouraging, and often humorous lessons learned from someone who has walked the yoga walk, both as a teacher and dedicated practitioner, for two decades and counting.

    Boyle speaks to a brand-new audience in this anthology of his classic, richly imagined short fiction about teenagers.His many, varied novels are part of the American literary landscape--but one of the best ways to appreciate T. C. Boyle is through his richly imagined short fiction. Boyle's kaleidoscopic humor and wit, his keen, unforgiving take on American life, and his all-too-human protagonists all combine to make his a singular voice. Here is a collection of classic Boyle stories about teenagers (including the O. Henry Award-winning The Love of My Life) that will speak directly to them, as well as to anyone who was once a teenager. Includes the previously uncollected story, Almost Shooting an Elephant.Boyle repeatedly demonstrates his masterful grasp of human nature, exposing his characters' foibles and eccentricities.--Publishers Weekly

     Selected by five hundred writers, English professors, and creative writing teachers from across the country, this collection includes only the most highly regarded nonfiction work published since 1970. Contents:The fourth state of matter by Jo Ann BeardGetting along with nature by Wendell BerryThe pain scale by Eula BissThe unwanted child by Mary Clearman BlewTorch song by Charles BowdenEmbalming Mom by Janet BurrowayPhysical evidence by Kelly Grey CarlisleThe glass essay by Anne CarsonBurl's by Bernard CooperVisitor by Michael W. CoxLiving like weasels by Annie DillardReturn to sender by Mark DotyLeap by Brian DoyleSomehow form a family by Tony EarleyKissing by Anthony FarringtonThe beautiful city of Tirzah by Harrison Candelaria FletcherSun dance by Diane GlancyMirrorings by Lucy GrealyPresent tense Africa by William HarrisonReading history to my mother by Robin HemleyWorld on a hilltop by Adam HochschildA small place by Jamaica KincaidHigh tide in Tucson by Barbara KingsolverSmall rooms in time by Ted KooserThe essayist is sorry for your loss by Sara LevineMastering the art of French cooking by E. J. LevyPortrait of my body by Phillip LopateFlight by Barry LopezThe undertaking by Thomas LynchSorry by Lee MartinInterstellar by Rebecca McClanahanBad eyes by Erin McGrawThe search for Marvin Gardens by John McPheeThe date by Brenda MillerSon of Mr. Green Jeans by Dinty W. MooreCelibate passion by Kathleen NorrisThis is not who we are by Naomi Shihab NyeAutopsy report by Lia PurpuraWatching the animals by Richard RhodesShitdiggers, mudflats, and the worm men of Maine by Bill RoorbachRepeat after me by David SedarisImelda by Richard SelzerThe Pat Boone Fan Club by Sue William SilvermanA measure of acceptance by Floyd SklootBlack swans by Lauren SlaterThe love of my life by Cheryl StrayedMother tongue by Amy TanIf you knew then what I know now by Ryan Van MeterConsider the lobster by David Foster WallaceHawk by Joy Williams

    “There is a way to be cruel that seems Jamaican to me.” Tenderness and cruelty, loyalty and betrayal, ambition and regret—Alexia Arthurs navigates these tensions to extraordinary effect in her debut collection about Jamaican immigrants and their families back home. Sweeping from close-knit island communities to the streets of New York City and midwestern university towns, these eleven stories form a portrait of a nation, a people, and a way of life. In “Light Skinned Girls and Kelly Rowlands,” an NYU student befriends a fellow Jamaican whose privileged West Coast upbringing has blinded her to the hard realities of race. In “Mash Up Love,” a twin’s chance sighting of his estranged brother—the prodigal son of the family—stirs up unresolved feelings of resentment. In “Bad Behavior,” a mother and father leave their wild teenage daughter with her grandmother in Jamaica, hoping the old ways will straighten her out. In “Mermaid River,” a Jamaican teenage boy is reunited with his mother in New York after eight years apart. In “The Ghost of Jia Yi,” a recently murdered international student haunts a despairing Jamaican athlete recruited to an Iowa college. And in “Shirley from a Small Place,” a world-famous pop star retreats to her mother’s big new house in Jamaica, which still holds the power to restore something vital. The winner of The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for “Bad Behavior,” Alexia Arthurs emerges in this vibrant, lyrical, intimate collection as one of fiction’s most dynamic and essential young authors.

     All come together in Beginnings and Endings, a trilogy of short stories that will bring a lump to the throat. Grits Girl explores the beginning of a lifetime of love over a favorite bowlful of breakfast. The Accident is an ironic story of how life can change in the blink of an eye. In The End of Summer, two men come to terms with their past through an unexpected detour and the innocent joy of a child. Each story is layered with unexpected twists and turns, and there’s a bonus flash fiction, Pick Me, to bring you a smile that will last the day.