From a newlywed caught in an inscrutable marriage, to private eyes working a baffling case in South Florida, to a teenager who assists her magician mother and steals from the audience, the characters in these bewitching stories are at once vulnerable and dangerous, bighearted and ruthless, and they will do what it takes to survive.Each tale is spun with elegant urgency, and the reader grows attached to the marginalized young women in these stories—women grappling with the choices they've made and searching for the clues to unlock their inner worlds. This is the work of a fearless writer whose stories feel both magical and mystical, earning her the title of "sorceress" from her readers. Be prepared to fall under her spell. An NPR Best Book of 2013

    Broken bowls, belligerent cows, swanky aubergines, trembling moonrises and horrifying sunsets, the physical world depicted in these stories is unsettling yet intimately familiar and soon takes on a life of its own. Captivated by the stellar charms of seclusion but restless with desire, the woman’s relationship with her surroundings becomes boundless and increasingly bewildering. Claire-Louise Bennett’s startlingly original first collection slips effortlessly between worlds and is by turns darkly funny and deeply moving.

    the integrity of vision coruscating; the whole driven by the author's restless experimentation with form. And at least two stories, "Blood" itself and "Fearless", will certainly end up in anthologies: not Best Scottish Writers, or Best Women Writers, but quite simply, Best." - New Statesman and Society"I remember reading a story by Janice Galloway for the first time; its urgency of voice, that certainty of expression, I wondered why I hadn't heard of her before; then discovered that she was altogether new to writing. It was some debut. She really is a fine writer." - James Kelman"A salutary collection... a marvelous revelation. A writer of passion and virtuosity shines through." - Scotland on Sunday"Genuinely unnerving... she is a fierce, troubling new writer." - Observer"Galloway flecks her hard-edged realism with impressionist grace-notes, a potent mixture that confirms her... as one of Scotland's best young writers." - Sunday Telegraph"There is ample proof in Blood of Galloway's unassailable talent. Marvellously funny and beautifully paced." - Glasgow Herald

    Wolf men, dolphin women, defiant old ladies, and middle-aged manufacturers of erotic leatherwear -- in Jigs & Reels the miraculous goes hand in hand with the mundane, the sour with the sweet, and the beautiful, the grotesque, the seductive, and the disturbing are never more than one step away. Whether she's exploring the myth of beauty, the pain of infidelity, or the wonder of late-life romance, Joanne Harris once again proves herself a master of the storyteller's trade.

    When the firm of Meadows, Meade & Grindley hires Dougal Douglas (a.k.a. Douglas Dougal) to do "human research" into the private lives of its workforce, they are in no way prepared for the mayhem, mutiny, and murder he will stir up. "Not only funny but startlingly original," declared The Washington Post, "the legendary character of Dougal Douglas...may not have been boasting when he referred so blithely to his association with the devil." In fact this Music Man of the thoroughly modern corporation changes the lives of all the eccentric characters he meets, from Miss Merle Coverdale, head of the typing pool, to V.R. Druce, unsuspecting Managing Director.

    In these ten bracingly transgressive tales, all her gifts of characterisation and observation are fully engaged, ushering concealed horrors into the light. Childhood cruelty is played out behind the bushes in 'Comma'; nurses clash in 'Harley Street' over something more than professional differences; and in the title story, staying in for the plumber turns into an ambiguous and potentially deadly waiting game.Whether set in a claustrophobic Saudi Arabian flat or on a precarious mountain road on a Greek island, these stories share an insight into the darkest recesses of the spirit. Displaying all of Mantel's unmistakable style and wit, they reveal a great writer at the peak of her powers.

    With this collection, "A Bit of Singing and Dancing," she establishes herself as one of the very few novelists practising the art of the short story with total success. Whether she is relating the tragic series of events in the conservatory, or conjuring up the pathos of an unusual lodger, or portraying the ineffable Ossie in Venice, her powers of description are sharp, compassionate, and subtle. A French village, an English seaside town out of season, a hospital ward, these are some of her varied backgrounds. The eleven stories in this collection are a clear indication of Susan Hill's unique skill.

    * 'Direct, unpretentious, humorous' SUNDAY TIMES

    The stories in Fresh Complaint explore equally rich­­—and intriguing—territory. Ranging from the bitingly reproductive antics of “Baster” to the dreamy, moving account of a young traveler’s search for enlightenment in “Air Mail” (selected by Annie Proulx for Best American Short Stories), this collection presents characters in the midst of personal and national emergencies. We meet a failed poet who, envious of other people’s wealth during the real-estate bubble, becomes an embezzler; a clavichordist whose dreams of art founder under the obligations of marriage and fatherhood; and, in “Fresh Complaint,” a high school student whose wish to escape the strictures of her immigrant family lead her to a drastic decision that upends the life of a middle-aged British physicist. Narratively compelling, beautifully written, and packed with a density of ideas despite their fluid grace, these stories chart the development and maturation of a major American writer.Complainers --Air mail --Baster --Early music --Timeshare --Find the bad guy --The oracular vulva --Capricious gardens --Great experiment --Fresh complaint

    Faber’ s characters in these 17 fictions are often dislocated— fragile beings confronting moments of fracture— in worlds that are both real and surreal. From the achingly sad lives of “ The Safehouse” to the moments of exquisite happiness in “ Vanilla-right Like Eminem” to the futuristic savagery of “ The Fahrenheit Twins,” these are fearless stories that crack our humanity wide open. With his brilliant characterization and pitch-perfect prose, Michel Faber has produced a short story collection that will seal his reputation as one of our most arresting and gifted writers.

    These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity by delineating the office politics surrounding a magazine profile of an artist who produces miniature sculptures in an anatomically inconceivable way ("The Suffering Channel"). Or capture the ache of love's breakdown in the painfully polite apologies of a man who believes his wife is hallucinating the sound of his snoring ("Oblivion"). Each of these stories is a complete world, as fully imagined as most entire novels, at once preposterously surreal and painfully immediate. Oblivion is an arresting and hilarious creation from a writer "whose best work challenges and reinvents the art of fiction" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).Mister squishy --The soul is not a smithy --Incarnations of burned children --Another pioneer --Good old neon --Philosophy and the mirror of nature --Oblivion --The suffering channel

    Andre Dubus treats his characters--a bereaved father stalking his son's killer; a woman crying alone by her television late at night; a devout teenager writing in the coils of faith and sexuality; a father's story of limitless love for his daughter--with respect and compassion. He turns fiction into an act of witness.

    A college student visiting her brassy, unconventional aunt stumbles on an astonishing secret and its meaning in her own life. An incorrigible philanderer responds with unexpected grace to his wife’s nursing-home romance. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage is Munro at her best, tirelessly observant, serenely free of illusion, deeply and gloriously humane.

    Screenwriter, director, and star of the acclaimed film Me and You and Everyone We Know, Miranda July brings her extraordinary talents to the page in a startling, sexy, and tender collection.

    The only writing I have ever been jealous of.' Virginia Woolf Virginia Woolf was not the only writer to admire Mansfield's work: Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, and Elizabeth Bowen all praised her stories, and her early death at the age of thirty-four cut short one of the finest short-story writers in the English language. This selection covers the full range of Mansfield's fiction, from her early satirical stories to the subtly nuanced comedy of 'The Daughters of the Late Colonel' and the macabre and ominous 'A Married Man's Story'. The stories that pay what Mansfield calls 'a debt of love' to New Zealand are as sharply etched as the European stories, and she recreates her childhood world with mordant insight. Disruption is a constant theme, whether the tone is comic, tragic, nostalgic, or domestic, echoing Mansfield's disrupted life and the fractured expressions of Modernism. This new edition increases the selection from 27 to 33 stories and prints them in the order in which they first appeared, in the definitive texts established by Anthony Alpers.