Meanwhile, all's not well on the unassuming Midwestern streets of Bloggs: with local children vanishing at an alarming rate, our hero, his lady friend, and a motley assortment of poets, butchers, and punk librarians prepare to battle the darkness on the edge of town.

    Set in the Gulf Coast over the course of a year torn halfway by the arrival of Hurricane Katrina, these stories, filled with humor, restraint, and verve, follow the lives of an assembly of unforgettable characters. An exonerated ex-con who may not be entirely innocent, a rabbit farmer in mourning, and an earnest young mariner trying to start a new life with his wife—all are characters that populate the spirited cities and drowsy parishes in Horack’s marvelous portrait of the South. "A knockout winner" for guest judge Antonya Nelson, The Southern Cross marks the arrival of a standout new voice.

    The table of contents has been slightly modified: "Phalaenopsis" has been replaced by "Her Mother's Ghosts," which first appeared in 2004 in The Rose and Twelve Petals and Other Stories, released by Small Beer Press."The Rose in Twelve Petals""Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold""The Rapid Advance of Sorrow""Lily, With Clouds""Miss Emily Gray""In the Forest of Forgetting""Sleeping with Bears""Letters from Budapest""The Wings of Meister Wilhelm""Conrad""A Statement in the Case""Death Comes for Ervina""The Belt""Her Mother's Ghosts""Pip and the Fairies""Lessons with Miss Gray"

    All of his prodigious gifts of language, character, and setting in these eleven exquisite stories transport the reader to an Ireland both timeless and recognizably modern. Shot through with dark humor and the uncanny power of the primal and unchanging Irish landscape, the stories in That Old Country Music represent some of the finest fiction being written today.

    Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and The Best American Short Stories of 2000 (selected by E.L.Doctorow.) These are provocative, often shocking, tales of obsession, love, racism, addiction, betrayal, even murder, but told in such sensuous, richly-textured prose each story is rendered magical and timeless. A young girl obsessed with her tattooed, Yakuza uncle wit-nesses his horrific ending. A woman is condemned to death for loving a man outside her culture. Two cousins learn the terrible toll of drug addiction. A boy with amputated legs is introduced to love by an older woman. A girl of mixed-race heritage discovers her white father's racist background, and spends her life trying to 'run her genes off, like fat.' Two beautiful sisters, professional taxi-dancers, abandon their daughters, leaving them with no clues or codes on how to survive. A house of dysfunctional and wounded people are finally redeemed by the strength of love.The stories are set in islands across the Pacific where the author has lived and traveled extensively - Hawaii, Papua New Guinea, Nauru, Fiji, Vanuatu - parts of of the world only barely ex-plored in contemporary literature. Davenport offers her readers not just mesmerizing writing, but also brings them bulletins from an ancient, yet seemingly brave, new world. *****Of Davenport's writing, ALICE WALKER has said, "She ex-hibits the character great writers must have, passionate love of people, dedication to the memory of people who have suffered. You can't read Kiana Davenport without being transformed." ISABEL ALLENDE has said, "Reading Davenport is an over-whelming experience. Her prose is sharp and shining as a sword, yet her sense of poetry and love of nature permeate each line."A Sampling of Reviews of Stories in this Collection:"The story, HOUSE OF SKIN, transcends the very good and achieves the beautiful. It describes what is essentially a love story between the uncle, aunt and niece. After the tattooed uncle finally dies comes an ending as appropriate and mortifying as any I have ever read." - W.P. Osborn, Manoa, Journal of International Writing"THE LIPSTICK TREE had a magical effect on me. The pro-tagonist's dream of a better life, and her determination to go to the furthest extremes to achieve it, is heroic. The price of freedom is mitigated with grievous loss and bittersweet victory." - Thom Jones, author of Pugilist at Rest"DRAGON SEED is a spooky tale of addiction and self-destruction." - Jeff Yang, Reviewer, The Village Voice"The haunting, junkie ecstasy of Davenport's DRAGON SEEDis both abhorrent and beautiful." - Jessica Hagedorn, author of Dog Eaters"Hypnotic and amazing tales. Her writing is astonishing. Along the way, we learn about important and under-represented cultures. BONES OF THE INNER EAR still haunts me, and I believe some of these stories will stand as long as there is written language." - Tillie Olsen, author of Silences, Tell Me a Riddle *****

    There's something horrible in that storm over the ocean. What does "feed the pig" mean? What are those ropes in the sky? Why is Dad acting so funny? In these dark tales you will experience every type of horror imaginable. It is so gruesome, frightening, and demented that only the bravest of readers will make it through these pages.

    99 words. 100% horror!

    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

    This collection of delightfully twisted, supernatural short stories will captivate your imagination and entertain your darker side. A monster with a love of bakery, an old woman living in fear with her ex-con nephew, a widow with only one chance left, and a demon with a dark and powerful heart, are some of the characters wrestling with their darker selves in this enjoyable collection.

    Like the flaming projectiles his protagonists often launch into the sky, these stories crackle with energy and violence and a furious beauty. Benjamin Percy is a force. -- Anthony Doerr

    These are but some of the men and women who fill this searingly imaginative and emotionally taut collection of short stories by Mark Haddon, that weaves through time and space to showcase the author's incredible versatility.     Yet the collection achieves a sum that is greater than its parts, proving itself a meditation not only on isolation and loneliness but also on the tenuous and unseen connections that link individuals to each other, often despite themselves. In its titular story, the narrator describes with fluid precision a catastrophe that will collectively define its victims as much as it will disperse them—and brilliantly lays bare the reader's appetite for spectacle alongside its characters'. Cut with lean prose and drawing inventively from history, myth, fairy tales, and, above all, the deep well of empathy that made his three novels so compelling, The Pier Falls reveals a previously unseen side of the celebrated author.

    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.

    From birth until their claiming ceremonies, this is the story of the three sisters’ lives…before they were at stake.The Oracle QueenEveryone knows the legend of Elsabet, the Oracle Queen. The one who went mad. The one who orchestrated a senseless, horrific slaying of three entire houses. But what really happened? Discover the true story behind the queen who could foresee the future…just not her own downfall.