Weather workers. Time benders. When two people so determined have opposing desires, it's hard to say who will win - or even what victory might look like. This stunning, haunting short story from rising star Alyssa Wong explores the depth and fierceness of love and the trauma of family.

    A beckoning mansion in a dark clearing. A short modern-day retelling of Hansel and Gretel by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dear Martin.It’s bad enough that Hazel and Gray have defied the demands of Hazel’s foul stepfather. The Monster has forbidden their romance. Now they’ve awakened in the forest, phones dead, hours past curfew. But not far away is a grand estate in the middle of nowhere. The door is open. In this short story about choosing your own path, the fury of the Monster that awaits them back home may be nothing compared to what lies ahead.

    They are going back to Russia to see Dimitri's family, something that both of them sorely need. Dimitri had finally been restored into a Dhampir, after being forcibly changed into Strigoi. His family needs to see him for themselves, and Rose needs to go back to Russia and face her trauma from the trip she made before.(Published in the Foretold: 14 Tales of Prophecy and Prediction collection)

     In Magical Mr. Goat, a young girl's imaginary friend yearns to become "more than friends." In Unprotected, an unused prophylactic recalls his years spent trapped inside a teen boy's wallet. The stories in Simon Rich's new book are bizarre, funny, and yet...relatable. Rich explores love's many complications-losing it, finding it, breaking it, and making it-and turns the ordinary into the absurd. With razor-sharp humor and illustrations, and just in time for Valentine's Day, Rich takes readers for an exhilarating, hilarious ride on the rollercoaster of love.

    A banker and a young lawyer make a bet with each other about whether the death penalty is better or worse than life in prison.

    Each volume’s series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected — and most popular — of its kind.The Best American Short Stories 2012 includesThe last speaker of the language / Carol Anshaw --Pilgrim life / Taylor Antrim --What we talk about when we talk about Anne Frank / Nathan Englander --The other place / Mary Gaitskill --North Country / Roxane Gay --Paramour / Jennifer Haigh --Navigators / Mike Meginnis --Miracle polish / Steven Millhauser --Axis / Alice Munro --Volcano / Lawrence Osborne --Diem Perdidi / Julie Otsuka --Honeydew / Edith Pearlman --Occupational hazard / Angela Pneuman --Beautiful monsters / Eric Puchner --Tenth of December / George Saunders --The sex lives of African girls / Taiye Selasi --Alive / Sharon Solwitz --M&M world / Kate Walbert --Anything helps / Jess Walter --What's important is feeling / Adam Wilson

    Doerr explores the human condition in all its varieties-metamorphosis, grief, fractured relationships, and slowly mending hearts-and conjures nature in both its beautiful abundance and crushing power. Some of his characters contend with tremendous hardship; some discover unique gifts; all are united by their ultimate deference to the mysteries of the universe outside themselves.

    The Mars of the movies and the imagination, an endless bastion of opportunities for a colonist with some guts. But she’s trapped in Mexico City, enduring the drudgery of an unkind metropolis, working as a rent-a-friend, selling her blood to old folks with money who hope to rejuvenate themselves with it, enacting a fractured love story. And yet there’s Mars, at the edge of the silver screen, of life. It awaits her.Note: official publication date is December 2017 but only for IndieGoGo backers. Wide release for everyone else on July 2018.

    She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. In Glitches, a short prequel story to Cinder, we see the results of that illness play out, and the emotional toll that takes on Cinder. Something that may, or may not, be a glitch…

    Now, in Stay Awake, Chaon returns to that form for the first time since his masterly Among the Missing, a finalist for the National Book Award.In these haunting, suspenseful stories, lost, fragile, searching characters wander between ordinary life and a psychological shadowland. They have experienced intense love or loss, grief or loneliness, displacement or disconnection—and find themselves in unexpected, dire, and sometimes unfathomable situations.A father’s life is upended by his son’s night terrors—and disturbing memories of the first wife and child he abandoned; a foster child receives a call from the past and begins to remember his birth mother, whose actions were unthinkable; a divorced woman experiences her own dark version of “empty-nest syndrome”; a young widower is unnerved by the sudden, inexplicable appearances of messages and notes—on dollar bills, inside a magazine, stapled to the side of a tree; and a college dropout begins to suspect that there’s something off, something sinister, in his late parents’ house.Dan Chaon’s stories feature scattered families, unfulfilled dreamers, anxious souls. They exist in a twilight realm—in a place by the window late at night when the streets are empty and the world appears to be quiet. But you are up, unable to sleep. So you stay awake.

    But it's Zikora's demanding, self-possessed mother, in town for the birth, who makes Zikora feel like a lonely little girl all over again. Shunned by the speed with which her ideal life fell apart, Zikora turns to reflecting on her mother's painful past and struggle for dignity. Preparing for motherhood, Zikora begins to see more clearly what her own mother wants for her, for her new baby, and for herself.©2020 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc, all rights reserved.

    Ingeniously plotted, with richly drawn characters and Jeffrey Archer's trademark of deliciously unexpected conclusions, this new collection has the added bonus of thirteen charming illustrations by the internationally acclaimed artist Ronald Searle. Some of these twelve stories were inspired by the two years Jeffrey Archer spent in prison, including the story of a company chairman who tries to poison his wife while on a trip to St. Petersburg---with unexpected consequences. "The Red King" is a tale about a con man who discovers that an English lord requires one more chess piece to complete a set that would be worth a fortune. In another tale of deception, "The Commissioner," a Bombay con artist ends up in the morgue after he uses the police chief as bait in his latest scam. "The Perfect Murder" reveals how a convict manages to remove an old enemy while he's locked up in jail, and then set up two prison officers as his alibi. In "Charity Begins at Home," an accountant realizes he has achieved nothing in his life, and sets out to make a fortune before he retires. And then there is Archer's favorite, "In the Eye of the Beholder," in which a handsome star athlete falls in love with a three-hundred-pound woman . . . who happens to be the ninth-richest woman in Italy. Jeffrey Archer is the only author to have topped international bestseller lists with his fiction, nonfiction, and short stories. "Cat o'Nine Tales" is Archer at his best: witty, poignant, sad, surprising, and unforgettable.

    All you have is the disconnected voice of an attentive caretaker. Dr. Kuhn is there to help you—physically, emotionally, and psychologically. She’ll help you remember everything. She’ll make sure you reclaim your lost identity. Now answer one question: Are you sure you want to?Paul Tremblay’s The Last Conversationis part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

    A Human Stain by Kelly Robson is a disturbing horror novelette about a British expatriate at loose ends who is hired by her friend to temporarily care for his young, orphaned nephew in a remote castle-like structure in Germany.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    When Rex encounters a band of stick-wielding separatists on the planet Chicolini, he thinks he’s found the buyers he’s been looking for. But Rex’s greed knows no bounds, and he’s determined to scam the separatists out of their cargo so that he can re-sell his black-market booty a few more times before leaving the planet. As the complications in Rex’s plan multiply, he becomes a target of not only the separatists, but also of paramilitary thugs, the local cops, and even the Ursa Minor mafia. Will Rex’s long-suffering robot companion talk some sense into him before he gets them both killed? Or will Rex, the self-described “greatest wheeler-dealer in the galaxy,” finally succeed in outsmarting himself?