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Where Have You Been?
Joseph O'Connor - 2008
Ranging from urgently contemporary London and Dublin to New York's Lower East Side in the nineteenth century, from dark comedy to poignancy, from the wryly provocative to the quietly beautiful, these stories offer a gathering of dreamers and lost souls who contend with the confusions of living. Here are men without women, children parenting parents, residents of the Broke-bank Mountain that is Ireland after the Celtic Tiger, emigrants, travellers, cheats and lovers, families, friends and foes. The focus is on those moments of the everyday when possibility seems to appear. A football match becomes an occasion of hard-won acceptances. An old acquaintance re-encountered plays mind-games in a bar. A fling between people who have almost nothing in common alters their lives forever. In Dublin, a desperately ill woman meets a tour guide in a hotel. A civil servant drives his father into Wicklow to say a final goodbye. A boy comes of age in a seaside town where everything is about to change. Where Have You Been? is a powerfully moving, entertaining and life-affirming read, from the internationally acclaimed author of Star of the Sea, Redemption Falls and Ghost Light.
Delta of Venus
Anaïs Nin - 1977
In Delta of Venus Anaïs Nin penned a lush, magical world where the characters of her imagination possess the most universal of desires and exceptional of talents. Among these provocative stories, a Hungarian adventurer seduces wealthy women then vanishes with their money; a veiled woman selects strangers from a chic restaurant for private trysts; and a Parisian hatmaker named Mathilde leaves her husband for the opium dens of Peru. Delta of Venus is an extraordinarily rich and exotic collection from the master of erotic writing.Part of the Quality Paperback Book Club series with limited-edition art cover. Cover art painted by Monica Elias.
Baby, You're Gonna Be Mine: Stories
Kevin Wilson - 2018
“Scroll Through the Weapons” is about a couple taking care of their underfed and almost feral nieces and nephews. “Signal to the Faithful” follows a boy as he takes a tense road trip with his priest. And “Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine,” the title story, is about a narcissistic rock star who moves back home during a rough patch. These stories all build on each other in strange and remarkable ways, showcasing Wilson’s crackling wit and big heart.Filled with imagination and humor, Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine is an exuberant collection of captivating and charmingly bizarre stories that promise to burrow their way into your heart and soul.
The Sense of Touch
Ron Parsons - 2013
A brilliant but troubled Bangladeshi physics student searches for balance, acceptance, and his own extraordinary destiny after his father disappears. When a Halloween blizzard immobilizes Minneapolis, a young woman is forced to confront the snow-bound nature of her own relationships and emotions. During an excursion to an idyllic swimming hole hidden in the Black Hills, two old friends unexpectedly compete for the affections of an irresistible, though married, Lakota woman. Like a mythical expedition to reach the horizon or the quest to distill truth from the beauty around us, the revelation confirmed by these imaginative stories - elegant, sometimes jarring, always wonderfully absurd - is that the very act of reaching is itself a form of touch.“The quiet plains of the North Country serve as a perfect backdrop for Parsons’ moving debut, a collection of short stories whose characters often live deeply solitary, if not always lonely, lives.”-- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“Eloquently written and replete with a continual stream of un-hackneyed twists and turns, Parsons’ collection is superbly crafted. Engaging, riveting, and at times, mind-boggling, The Sense of Touch is earmarked to become a literary classic.”-- San Francisco Book Review (five-star review)"Parsons has made himself a man to watch in the literary world. Each of these stories is as thrilling as the next." -- Portland Book Review (five-star review)"Each story is honed with purpose and infused with subtle energies. He creates delicate lines between the frigid cosmos and the warmth that can be generated among people. Parsons' writing has a strong pulse. This debut assortment heralds his promising career." -- The US Review of Books (Top-Rated Recommended Review)
Great Apes
Will Self - 1997
With Great Apes, Self takes readers into a sort of "Planet of the Apes" with a twist. Simon Dykes is a London painter whose life suddenly becomes Kafkaesque. After an evening of routine debauchery, traipsing from toilet to toilet and partaking in a host of narcotics, the middle-aged painter wakes to discover that his girlfriend, Sarah, has turned into a chimpanzee. Simon is also a chimp, but he does not accept this fact—he is convinced that he is still human.He is then confined to an emergency psychiatric ward and placed under the care of alpha-psychiatrist Dr. Zack Busner. Simon finds chimp behavior a bit unnatural; he can't bring himself to use gestures rather than speech to communicate. He also finds it difficult to mate publicly or accept social grooming. Dr. Zack Busner—also a medical doctor, radical psychoanalyst, maverick axiolytic drug researcher, and former television personality—is prepared to help Simon get used to "chimpunity". It is during Simon's gradual simianization that Self's true satirical genius shines, as he examines anthropology, the trendy art world, animal rights, and much more.
Seasonal Work: Stories
Laura Lippman - 2022
In a suspenseful collection of stories featuring fierce women--including one never-before-published novella--New York Times bestseller Laura Lippman showcases why she is one of today's top crime writers.The award-winning master of psychological suspense is in top form in this collection of diverse and diabolically clever stories.In the never-before-published "Just One More," a married couple--longing for that old romantic spark--creates a playful diversion that comes with unexpected consequences.Lippman's beloved Baltimore PI Tess Monaghan keeps a watchful eye on a criminally resourceful single father in "Seasonal Work," while her mother, Judith, realizes that the life of "The Everyday Housewife" is an excellent cover for all kinds of secrets.In "Slow Burner," a husband's secret cell phone proves to be a dicey temptation for a suspicious wife.A father's hidden past piques the curiosity of a young snoop in "The Last of Sheila-Locke Holmes."Plus seven other brilliantly crafted stories of deception, murder, dangerous games, and love gone wrong--irrefutable evidence that Laura Lippman's riveting fiction will more than satisfy any crime reader.
Lot: Stories
Bryan Washington - 2019
He's working at his family's restaurant, weathering his brother's blows, resenting his older sister's absence. And discovering he likes boys.This boy and his family experience the tumult of living in the margins, the heartbreak of ghosts, and the braveries of the human heart. The stories of others living and thriving and dying across Houston's myriad neighborhoods are woven throughout to reveal a young woman's affair detonating across an apartment complex, a rag-tag baseball team, a group of young hustlers, the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, a local drug dealer who takes a Guatemalan teen under his wing, and a reluctant chupacabra.Bryan Washington's brilliant, viscerally drawn world leaps off the page with energy, wit, and the infinite longing of people searching for home. With soulful insight into what makes a community, a family, and a life, Lot is about love in all its unsparing and unsteady forms.Lockwood --Alief --610 North, 610 West --Shepherd --Wayside --Bayou --Lot --South Congress --Navigation --Peggy Park --Fannin --Waugh --Elgin
Five Tuesdays in Winter
Lily King - 2021
A bookseller's unspoken love for his employee rises to the surface, a neglected teenage boy finds much-needed nurturing from an unlikely pair of college students hired to housesit, a girl's loss of innocence at the hands of her employer's son becomes a catalyst for strength and confidence, and a proud nonagenarian rages helplessly in his granddaughter's hospital room. Romantic, hopeful, brutally raw, and unsparingly honest, some even slipping into the surreal, these stories are, above all, about King's enduring subject of love.
Stay Up With Me
Tom Barbash - 2013
The newly single mother in The Break interferes with her son's love life over his Christmas vacation from college. The anxious young man in Balloon Night persists in hosting his and his wife's annual watch-the-Macy's-Thanksgiving-Day-Parade-floats-be-inflated party, while trying to keep the myth of his marriage equally afloat. Somebody's Son, tells the story of a young man guiltily conning an elderly couple out of their home in the Adirondacks, and the young narrator in The Women watches his widowed father become the toast of Manhattan's mid-life dating scene, as he struggles to find his own footing.The characters in Stay Up with Me find new truths when the old ones have given out or shifted course. In the tradition of classic story writer like John Cheever and Tobias Wolff, Barbash laces his narratives with sharp humor, psychological acuity, and pathos, creating deeply resonant and engaging stories that pierce the heart and linger in the imagination.
Pale Horse, Pale Rider
Katherine Anne Porter - 1939
This collection gathers together the best of her Pulitzer Prize-winning short fiction, including 'Pale Horse, Pale Rider', where a young woman lies in a fever during the influenza epidemic, her childhood memories mingling with fears for her fiancé on his way to war, and 'Noon Wine', a haunting story of tragedy and scandal on a small dairy farm in Texas. In all of the compelling stories collected here, harsh and tragic truths are expressed in prose both brilliant and precise.
Barbara the Slut and Other People
Lauren Holmes - 2014
She tackles eros and intimacy with a deceptively light touch, a keen awareness of how their nervous systems tangle and sometimes short-circuit, and a genius for revealing our most vulnerable, spirited selves. In “Desert Hearts,” a woman takes a job selling sex toys in San Francisco rather than embark on the law career she pursued only for the sake of her father. In “Pearl and the Swiss Guy Fall in Love,” a woman realizes she much prefers the company of her pit bull—and herself—to the neurotic foreign fling who won’t decamp from her apartment. In “How Am I Supposed to Talk to You?” a daughter hauls a suitcase of lingerie to Mexico for her flighty, estranged mother to resell there, wondering whether her personal mission—to come out—is worth the same effort. And in “Barbara the Slut,” a young woman with an autistic brother, a Princeton acceptance letter, and a love of sex navigates her high school’s toxic, slut-shaming culture with open eyes. With heart, sass, and pitch-perfect characters, Barbara the Slut is a head-turning debut from a writer with a limitless career before her.
Girl Trouble
Holly Goddard Jones - 2009
A lonely woman reflects on her failed marriage and the single act of violence, years buried, that brought about its destruction. In these eight beautifully written, achingly poignant, and occasionally heartbreaking stories, the fine line between right and wrong, good and bad, love and violence is walked over and over again.In "Good Girl," a depressed widower is forced to decide between the love of a good woman and the love of his own deeply flawed son. In another part of town and another time, thirteen-year-old Ellen, the central figure of "Theory of Realty," is discovering the menaces of being "at that age": too old for the dolls of her girlhood, too young to understand the weaknesses of the adults who surround her. The linked stories "Parts" and "Proof of God" offer distinct but equally correct versions of a brutal crime--one from the perspective of the victim's mother, one from the killer's.
North American Lake Monsters
Nathan Ballingrud - 2013
Monsters, real and imagined, external and internal, are the subject. They are us and we are them and Ballingrud's intense focus makes these stories incredibly intense and irresistible.These are love stories. And also monster stories. Sometimes these are monsters in their traditional guises, sometimes they wear the faces of parents, lovers, or ourselves. The often working-class people in these stories are driven to extremes by love. Sometimes, they are ruined; sometimes redeemed. All are faced with the loneliest corners of themselves and strive to find an escape.Nathan Ballingrud was born in Massachusetts but has spent most of his life in the South. He worked as a bartender in New Orleans and New York City and a cook on offshore oil rigs. His story "The Monsters of Heaven" won the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with his daughter.
One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories
Chris BrazierPetina Gappah - 2009
All belong to one world, united in their diversity and ethnicity. And together they have one aim: to involve and move the reader.The range of authors takes in such literary greats as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Jhumpa Lahiri, and emerging authors such as Elaine Chiew, Petina Gappah, and Henrietta Rose-Innes.The members of the collective are:Elaine Chiew (Malaysia)Molara Wood (Nigeria)Jhumpa Lahiri (United States)Martin A Ramos (Puerto Rico)Lauri Kubutsile (Botswana)Chika Unigwe (Nigeria)Ravi Mangla (United States)Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria)Skye Brannon (United States)Jude Dibia (Nigeria)Shabnam Nadiya (Bangladesh)Petina Gappah (Zimbabwe)Ivan Gabirel Reborek (Australia)Vanessa Gebbie (Britain)Emmanual Dipita Kwa (Cameroon)Henrietta Rose-Innes (South Africa)Lucinda Nelson Dhavan (India)Adetokunbo Abiola (Nigeria)Wadzanai Mhute (Zimbabwe)Konstantinos Tzikas (Greece)Ken Kamoche (Kenya)Sequoia Nagamatsu (United States)Ovo Adagha (Nigeria)From the Introduction:The concept of One World is often a multi-colored tapestry into whichsundry, if not contending patterns can be woven. for those of us who workedon this project, ‘One World’ goes beyond the everyday notion of the globeas a physical geographic entity. Rather, we understand it as a universal idea,one that transcends national boundaries to comment on the most prevailingaspects of the human condition.This attempt to redefine the borders of the world we live in through theshort story recognizes the many conflicting issues of race, language, economy,gender and ethnicity, which separate and limit us. We readily acknowledge,however, that regardless of our differences or the disparities in our stories, weare united by our humanity.We invite the reader on a personal journey across continents, countries,cultures and landscapes, to reflect on these beautiful, at times chaotic, renditionson the human experience. We hope the reach of this path will transcend theborders of each story, and perhaps function as an agent of change.Welcome to our world.
American Innovations
Rivka Galchen - 2014
In another, the narrator feels compelled to promise to deliver a takeout order that has incorrectly been phoned in to her. In a third, the petty details of a property transaction illuminate the complicated pains and loves of a family.The tales in this groundbreaking collection are secretly in conversation with canonical stories, re-imagined from the perspective of female characters. Just as Wallace Stevens’s “Anecdote of the Jar” responds to John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” Galchen’s “The Lost Order” covertly recapitulates James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” while “The Region of Unlikeness” is a smoky and playful mirror to Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Aleph.” The title story, “American Innovations,” revisits Nikolai Gogol’s “The Nose.”By turns realistic, fantastical, witty, and lyrical, these marvelously uneasy stories are deeply emotional and written in exuberant, pitch-perfect prose. Whether exploring the tensions in a mother-daughter relationship or the finer points of time travel, Galchen is a writer like none other today.