POST is a story about a group of friends, two of whom experience a collision two years apart.

    

    

    The second collection drawn together by editor Wendy Martin, these twenty-four exquisite examples of contemporary writing feature stories by Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, Mary Gaitskill, Alice Munro, Sandra Cisneros, and Lorrie Moore (to name a few).We Are the Stories We Tell is also available from Pantheon.

    

    

    These people tell us the truth–not only about themselves, their relationships, and their lives, but about ourselves as well. A Perfect Stranger powerfully and affectingly examines the complex, intricate network of experiences that binds us to one another. These stories are tender, raw, lovely, fine–and they reaffirm Roxana Robinson’s place at the forefront of modern literature.

    A perfume made from some very unusual ingredients becomes more effective than expected. A remarkable change in a woman's life leaves her family to make a decision. The secret and danger of high intelligence are revealed to a university student. A teacher discovers a way of making time stand still. And a book tells a young manager more than he wants to know.

    

    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

    

    She had a face of feral sweetness, its color yellow; her eyes were long and dark, her mouth a taut bow, her nostrils upturned as if she were scenting the wind."In "How Shall I Know You?," a melancholic and ailing writer reluctantly travels east of London to give a lecture before a literary society. Mr. Simister, the organization's secretary, lures the world-weary novelist turned biographer with promises of a modest stipend and lodging at a charming bed-and-breakfast for her trouble. Nevertheless, on that rainy day she meets Mr. Simister at the train station, she wonders why she ever agreed to come in the first place. Driving past steel-shuttered windows and Day-Glo banners, Mr. Simister takes the writer to her hotel for the evening, which turns out to be crumbling and isolated rather than picturesque. As she crosses the threshold into the dank stench of Eccles House she is faced with the feral porter, Louise, and suffers through an evening that may be more than she bargained for.From Hilary Mantel's brilliant and darkly comic collection of contemporary stories, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, comes a tale told with her distinctive blend of subversive wit and gimlet-eyed characterization. "How Shall I Know You?" showcases the extraordinary genius of Hilary Mantel, called one of our "greatest living novelists" (NPR).

    She was found abandoned on a park bench in Glasgow, Scotland when she was only two years old. Being unable to talk or explain herself meant that growing up within the Scottish welfare system was depressingly harsh.This all changes the day a young social worker named Kim comes into seven-year-old Emily's life. Kim suspects that there is definitely more to Emily than the workers in the social system have surmised. A suspicion that Emily is no ordinary sufferer of domestic trauma. Emily, through Kim, finds hope, guidance and the chance of a normal life. But when a teenaged Emily becomes a victim of assault, leading to the death of her attackers, it fires off an urgent need to find out who she actually is.Through the first person accounts of a social worker, a teenager, a gymnastics coach, an investigative agent and a sickly, elderly man, we observe Emily's often-perilous journey to discover her true identity and what led to her abandonment in the first place--what she eventually finds may be truly extraordinary.

    NippleJesus was his own contribution, featuring "a bruiser (who) finds out that guarding modern art is far more hazardous than controlling the velvet ropes at a nightclub".