“This gripping first novel announces the arrival of a strong, distinct and fully evolved new voice,” said Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of A Visit from the Goon Squad. Sara Gruen, New York Times bestselling author of Water for Elephants called Keener, “An amazing new literary voice.”Now Jessica Keener returns with this collection of nine stories that thematically address variations of love – love of self, family, and sexual relationships – from loneliness and isolation, desperation and rejection – to need and passion, forgiveness and, finally, to love found.“Secrets” follows a young woman that gets involved with a female friend who pushes her boundaries around sex, love, and intimacy.In “Papier Mache,” a college student who loses brother to suicide is grieving and gets entangled with a professor who is a critic and over-intellectualizes everything. The student challenges the professor and vice versa in a strange power dance with emotional fallout.“Boarders” tells the story of a young college student who drops out to be with her narcissistic lover. She lives in grim boarding house with desolate, lonely men until she realizes that she must flee to find something better, healthier, more nurturing and loving.“Woman with Birds in her Chest” involves a woman who leaves her social worker job and realizes she has never truly nurtured herself. Her ensuing breakdown puts her loving marriage to the test.“Recovery” tells of a young woman in a hospital room who witnesses death, escapes her own, and comes to terms with life’s uncertainties and the unexpected power of sibling love.In “Shoreline,” a woman leaves her husband, goes to a cottage on the beach, and has a flirtation with a client. She soon discovers that she must end her marriage before she can move on to find a new love.In “Bird of Grief,” a grad student recovering from a broken relationship projects her anger and grief onto a new man, eventually coming to terms with letting go.“Forgiveness” is a spare, stark story of two sisters, family violence, and the quest for forgiveness.In “Heart,” a woman meets her lover in a Paris hotel room and goes through a cycle of anxiety, worry, and the expectation that things will not work out, only to be surprised by the goodness that emerges.Poignant, surprising, funny and profound, and always perceptive and gorgeously written, Women in Bed is a rich collection of moving tales that will engage you from the first page.

    POST is a story about a group of friends, two of whom experience a collision two years apart.

    With his unflinching attention to emotional detail, Redhill proves once again to be "a writer of considerable humanity and insight" (A.L. Kennedy) .

    These eleven sparkling, uninhibited stories address her favorite subject: women who take matters into their own hands. McCorkle has yet again produced irrepressibly frank and funny portraits of remarkable characters.

    Her unabashed faith shines through as she shares details of her life as an adviser to her best friend, Beatrice, and as a voice of reason to her women's Sunday school class, the Willing Workers. The pettiness of the women at the Apostolic Bible Church gets under Esmeralda's skin, but when she rallies them to the side of an impoverished mother with AIDS, the very best of human love and compassion is portrayed.Told in delightfully eccentric first-person narration, this story will inspire, uplift, amuse, and move readers to tears. Despite Esmeralda's lack of education and sophistication-or perhaps because of it-she is used mightily by God and meets everyday challenges with gumption, humor, and grace. Her struggle to maintain her faith in the midst of pain and suffering is a timeless and universal theme with which many will identify, and the love and mercy the story unfolds will delight both young and old.

    From kidnapping to bank robbing, pursuing rainbow trout to unspeakable monsters, from the deserts of Texas to the desolate forests of Oregon, Our Love Will Go the Way of the Salmon is about the extreme measures people take to recapture the ones that got away.

    Frieda Lewis, a doctor’s daughter and a runaway, becomes the muse of an ill-fated rock star. And beautiful Bryn Evans is set to marry an Englishman while secretly obsessed with her ex-husband. At the heart of the novel is Lucy Green, who blames herself for a tragic accident she witnessed at the age of twelve, and who spends four decades searching for the Third Angel–the angel on earth who will renew her faith.Brilliantly evoking London’s King’s Road, Knightsbridge, and Kensington while moving effortlessly back in time, The Third Angel is a work of startling beauty about the unique, alchemical nature of love.

    Among other fine works, the collection also includes “Wunderkind,” McCullers’s first published story written when she was only seventeen about a musical prodigy who suddenly realizes she will not go on to become a great pianist. Newly reset and available for the first time in a handsome trade paperback edition, The Ballad of the Sad Café is a brilliant study of love and longing from one of the South’s finest writers.

    . .Kate, an attractive single parent, is in a desperate situation. Her young son Charlie suffers from a rare eye disease that will soon cause him to go blind unless he can receive the cutting-edge new treatment that's offered by just one private clinic in London. The cost is out of Kate's league and she needs to raise the cash - fast.When her best friend suggests that she should find employment as a freelance female decoy, Kate initially rejects the idea. But realising what the potential earnings could mean for Charlie, she reluctantly goes to work, getting paid by female clients wanting to put the fidelity of their partners to the test. Business is good. It won't be long before Kate has the money she needs.But after being hired by a wealthy new client to investigate a suspected cheating husband, Kate's world suddenly turns upside-down and she discovers too late that deception can have deadly consequences . . .

    With power and precision, humanity and insight, Supporting Cast captures the extraordinary moments in our ordinary lives, and the darkness and the joy of the everyday.

    Nevertheless, it is often whispered by those who claim knowledge of such things, that a number of these Elder Gods - the lower rank and file, if you will - decided to hold this ground, so enamored were they by the cults who spilled blood in their names.Those times are all but forgotten, obscured by the shifting mists of history.Fast forward to today, and a wrong turn on a country lane is about to expose Jennifer Bueller, and her daughter Megan, to an unpleasant truth: Yes, times have changed, but ancient deities will adapt in order to thrive.Abandoned space gods, an unfaithful husband, a sociopath rapist, and a broken society with a social welfare system that presents horrors of its own; lastly, though by no means least in this eclectic collection of stories, a flash fiction homage to James Herbert, featuring his most infamous creation.

    Captivated by Delia, Travis watches her attempt to find a place for herself in the socially stunted, gossip-driven town. Delia's secrets go beyond what Travis can understand, but he believes that he alone can save her--a belief that not only forces him to grow up fast, but one that builds to a dangerous and disturbing climax. In trying to free Delia from her past, Travis leads her into a shocking present and a most uncertain future.In a work at once honest, chilling and compulsively addictive, author Sterling Watson has created a time and place where rock 'n' roll hums from AM radios, steam rises from a secluded riverbed and violent summer storms threaten the peace of silent nights. Watson's characters are brought vividly to life through Travis's touching, powerful and intensely personal voice. A dark and evocative coming of age tale, Sweet Dream Baby begins steeped in innocence and ends in a dramatically different place."I can't remember a book that sneaked up and grabbed me the way Sweet Dream Baby did. It's a real shocker by a very good writer." --Elmore Leonard"Sterling Watson's Sweet Dream Baby is one of the finest novels I've read in years, an incandescent blend of gothic noir, Faulknerian dreamscape and bittersweet coming-of-age story. Months after reading it, it haunts me still." -Dennis Lehane"Sterling Watson's Sweet Dream Baby brings us the words and music, the tastes and smells of that special time-as well as its heartache and secret shame. I was utterly absorbed in these fierce pages." -Fred Chappell, author of Look Back All the Green Valley"Sweet Dream Baby is a beautiful book. Sterling Watson is surehanded and telling in a story that is as elegiac as it is gripping." -Michael Connelly, author of Chasing the Dime"Some delicious page-turning."-Kirkus ReviewsA Book Sense 76 Top 10 SelectionNamed to Top Ten Crime Books of 2002, Toronto Globe and Mail"Watson proves himself a first-rate storyteller."-Publishers Weekly"A comprehensive work of art that is as thought-provoking as it is disturbing."-Orlando Sentinel

    Humorous, touching, creepy, but most of all entertaining, this collection is superb." — Tracy Michelle Anderson *** If you're a fan of Roald Dahl or Gillian Flynn you'll love this collection of unsettling stories with a twist in the tale. Get it now.

    A Pound of Steam presents seven poems exploring identity and alienation, a philosophical bent that can be found in her song lyrics, but here goes further to unearth truths about the human condition.