In her eagerly anticipated new collection, Ochsner deftly examines the harrowing moments after a life or love slips away and discovers that the human heart can be large enough for anything.A Russian couple come to accept their infertility by bidding farewell tot he ghosts of the children they never had. A disgruntled husband buys a talking bird that he hopes will restore love to his marriage. Twin sisters learn to prepare bodies for burial in their Hungarian parents' funeral home, but when faced with a death of their own, they must learn to prepare the soul. Glowing with warmth and sparkling with imagination, these stories are rendered with a deep understanding of human resilience as well as an unerring belief in small, daily miracles.

    

    With no family and no marriage prospects, she answers an advertisement for a mail-order bride. She travels to Wyoming Territory with every intention to marry Slade Holcolmb. But there is something about Slade that he didn't mention in his letter. Sarah is shocked and dismayed to discover the truth of her soon-to-be husband. So shocked, that she is uncertain if she can still marry him. He gives her one week to decide. She makes her decision and as she adapts to a new life, the feared Wright Gang makes an appearance. Will a band of outlaws be the catalyst to cause Slade and Sarah to admit their love? Dear Reader: Please note this is a novelette of 40 pages.

    Whether he's dropping into the lives of two teachers―and their love lost and found―in "Nine Inches", documenting the unraveling of a dad at a Little League game in "The Smile on Happy Chang's Face", or gently marking the points of connection between an old woman and a benched high school football player in "Senior Season", Perrotta writes with a sure sense of his characters and their secret longings.Nine Inches contains an elegant collection of short fiction: stories that are as assured in their depictions of characters young and old, established and unsure, as any written today.

    Some move toward the future heartened by what they learn from those around them--a tattoo artist, an invented medicine man, zoo animals, strangers, fellow outsiders. Deftly rendered, these stories abound with oddness and grace.In “Tattooizm,” included in The Best American Short Stories 2006, a young woman struggles with a promise that her boyfriend is determined to make her keep. In the Nelson Algren Award–winning “Space,” a reluctantly undertaken errand forces a young man to finally confront the death of his mother. And in “The Medicine Man,” hailed by the Times (U.K.) as “perfectly pitched and perfectly written,” a man recounts his manic attachment to his sister.Moffett’s closely observed stories are candid and complex, funny and moving. The world of Permanent Visitors is an idiosyncratic and generous one, its inhabitants searching for constancy in a place crowded with contradiction.

    However, though I think some of them are great, some aren’t, and some are profoundly dated. I am aware that there are those out there, who will just buy these without a second thought, so I have to edit, be selective, and I damned well have to show some respect for my readers. Kindle in this respect can be a danger for a known writer, because you can publish any old twaddle and someone will buy it. Time and again, I’ve had fans, upon hearing that I have this and that unpublished in my files, demanding that I publish it at once because surely they’ll love it. No they won’t. A reputation like trust: difficult to build and easy to destroy. I’ve therefore chosen stories other people have published here and there, and filled in with those I really think someone should have published. Here you’ll find some Polity tales, some that could have been set in the Polity (at a stretch) and some from the bleak Owner universe. Enjoy! Neal Asher 04/06/18

    Brite.The classic horror tale is about fear. But in the last few years a new literature of the macabre has arisen, one that goes deeper than horror, beyond fear, to explore our darkest, most intimate hungers. The ones even lovers are forbidden to share.Acclaimed dark fantasy author Poppy Z. Brite has brought together this genre's most powerful and seductive authors in an original collection of vampiric erotica, a shameless celebration of unspeakable intimacies. It is not for everyone.But neither is the night.

    A woman reconsiders her decision to join a fundamentalist compound and enter a polygamous marriage; a Somali refugee takes a job at the local mill to support her family; a college student attempts to right her world through the lens of mathematics; an Iraq War vet struggles to regain his compromised relationships. In spare yet vivid prose, Anderson explores loss and desire, regret and hope. Everywhere we are reminded of all that a single life contains.

    But when the president of the synagogue absconds with a small fortune, far deeper—and more troubling—rifts emerge...In "The Closet," Evelyn's sister flees her family to take up residence in the attic—while the shunned Evelyn finds herself slipping into the waters of her sister's soul....In "Wish List," an expert on terrorism, vacationing at an academic retreat in England,receives a late-night phone call from National Public Radio. Asked for commentary on a hostage situation of which he is ignorant, Ed can whisper only: "It's unspeakable."Total ImmersionIn these and other exquisite stories, Allegra Goodman fills rooms with laughter and voices, captures dinner parties, seaside picnics, academic grudges, shul politics, and the kind of hurts that only families and lovers can know. Featuring two new stories previously published in The New Yorker, Total Immersion is Allegra Goodman's first collection of short fiction—a masterful work from one of the most powerful and eloquent voices on the American literary landscape.

    Devious children, sparring lovers, capricious American girls, obtuse bachelors, sibylline spinsters, and charming Europeans populate these five fascinating nouvelles, which represent the author in both his early and late phases. From the apparitions of evil that haunt the governess in “The Turn of the Screw” to the startling self-scrutiny of an egotistical man in “The Beast in the Jungle,” the mysterious turnings of human behavior are coolly and masterfully observed—proving Henry James to be a master of psychological insight as well as one of the finest prose stylists of modern English literature.Includes “The Turn of the Screw” • Daisy Miller • Washington Square • “The Beast in the Jungle” • “The Jolly Corner”

    Thomas presents interesting heroines: there's the girl in "Sisters" who hates her younger sibling for (among other things) her precise memory. In "Seeing Things," Maude, who "wants to be tan the whole year round," and whose "great ambition is to be whistled at on the street," is told by her younger sister, "You look ridiculous smoking with the chicken pox." And then there are the four stories about Buddy and Virginia, who have to drop out of school and get married after she gets pregnant. From sibling rivalry to marital strife, Thomas uncovers the pain, the poignancy, and the belief in love that lie in the hearts of her heroines.

    

    A father struggles to forge an independent identity as his blind daughter prepares for college. A mother comes to terms with her adult daughter’s infidelity, even as she keeps a disturbing secret of her own. An artist mourns the end of a romance while painting a dying man’s portrait. An accident on a trip to Italy and an unexpected connection with a stranger cause a woman to question her lifelong assumptions about herself.Brilliant, hopeful, and fearlessly honest, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You. This illuminates the truths of human relationships, truths we come to recognize in these characters and in ourselves.

    ----- From the mind of pulp great, H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and that the universe is fundamentally alien. He's developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Christian humanism. -----48 Stories included in this volume: The Beast in the Cave; The Alchemist; The Tomb; Dagon; A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson; Sweet Ermengarde; Polaris; The Green Meadow; Beyond the Wall of Sleep; Memory; Old Bugs; The Transition of Juan Romero; The White Ship; The Doom that Came to Sarnath; The Statement of Randolph Carter; The Terrible Old Man; The Tree; The Cats of Ulthar; The Temple; Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn; The Street; Poetry and the Gods; Celephais; From Beyond; Nyarlathotep; The Picture in the House; The Crawling Chaos; Ex Oblivione; The Nameless City; The Quest of Iranon; The Moon-Bog; The Outsider; The Other Gods; The Music of Erich Zann; Herbet West: Reanimator; Hypnos; What the Moon Brings; Azathoth; The Horror at Martin's Beach; The Hound; The Lurking Fear; The Rats in the Walls; The Unnamable; The Festival; The Shunned House; The Horror at Red Hook; He; In the Vault ---- Full of intrigue, romance and adventure, this collection is a must for pulp literature fans!

    Marisa Silver's singular voice makes us care deeply about their everyday desperations and hard-won hopes.