Book picks similar to
The Edge of Marriage by Hester Kaplan


short-stories
fiction
fiction11
flannery-o-connor-award-winners

God Bless America: Stories


Steve Almond - 2011
    His stories are without equal in their beautiful terrible honesty. Stylish and finely wrought, these are tales with the force of life itself.

Blood


Janice Galloway - 1991
    the integrity of vision coruscating; the whole driven by the author's restless experimentation with form. And at least two stories, "Blood" itself and "Fearless", will certainly end up in anthologies: not Best Scottish Writers, or Best Women Writers, but quite simply, Best." - New Statesman and Society"I remember reading a story by Janice Galloway for the first time; its urgency of voice, that certainty of expression, I wondered why I hadn't heard of her before; then discovered that she was altogether new to writing. It was some debut. She really is a fine writer." - James Kelman"A salutary collection... a marvelous revelation. A writer of passion and virtuosity shines through." - Scotland on Sunday"Genuinely unnerving... she is a fierce, troubling new writer." - Observer"Galloway flecks her hard-edged realism with impressionist grace-notes, a potent mixture that confirms her... as one of Scotland's best young writers." - Sunday Telegraph"There is ample proof in Blood of Galloway's unassailable talent. Marvellously funny and beautifully paced." - Glasgow Herald

Tales Around the Jack O'Lantern III: A Mary O'Reilly Short Story


Terri Reid - 2016
    Join the O'Reilly family once again as they meet around the Jack O'Lantern on Halloween night and share ghost stories that will make you shiver and have you looking over your shoulder to see if there is "a little something extra" wandering through your home tonight.

Perfect Recall


Ann Beattie - 2000
    It is a riveting commentary on the way we live now by a spectacular prose artist.Ann Beattie published her first short story in The New Yorker in 1972. Twenty-eight years later, she received the 2000 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She is, as the Washington Post Book World said, "one of our era's most vital masters of the short form." The eleven stories in her new work are peopled by characters coming to terms with the legacies of long-held family myths or confronting altered circumstances -- new frailty or sudden, unlikely success. Beattie's ear for language, her complex and subtle wit, and her profound compassion are unparalleled. From the elegiac story "The Famous Poet, Amid Bougainvillea," in which two men trade ruminations on illness, art, and servitude, to "The Big-Breasted Pilgrim," wherein a famous chef gets a series of bewildering phone calls from George Stephanopoulos, Perfect Recall comprises Beattie's strongest work in years. It is a riveting commentary on the way we live now by a spectacular prose artist.

Pretending the Bed is a Raft


Nanci Kincaid - 1997
    Watching the mysterious transformation of your mother as she dolls herself up for a night on the town--with a man other than your father. Watching your best friend fall for the bad boy in town. Wondering if the man at work you're secretly in love with means something by the hand he lets linger on your arm. Kissing a man named Gable on a moonlit night when you've just found out you have only a few months left to live.With an irresistible narrative voice that captures both the humor and heartbreak of love, Nanci Kincaid paints a portrait of women's lifelong courtship with men that will make you laugh and cry in recognition.

The Courts of Love: Stories


Ellen Gilchrist - 1996
    Now living happily in Berkeley, married and the mother of twins, Nora Jane is back in college, pregnant again, launching a new career, and facing circumstances that imperil her domestic bliss.The nine stories that follow explore the hazards of recapturing and reviving old affairs. Featuring both new and familiar Gilchrist characters, all of these stories shed brilliant new light on the oldest emotion.

The Lost Coast: A Homecoming Serial


Eli Horowitz - 2017
    The Lost Coast is a six-part novella, written to accompany the six episodes of the second season of Homecoming, an audio series starring Catherine Keener, David Schwimmer, and Oscar Isaac.The two works are designed to be read in alternating installments - Episode One of the podcast, then Chapter One of the book, then Episode Two, and so on - but other sequences are probably fine too.

The Love Song of A. Jerome Minkoff: And Other Stories


Joseph Epstein - 2010
    These fourteen tales map a very particular world—Jews whose lives are anchored in Chicago—in rich, revealing detail even as they brim with universal longings: complex love affairs and unspoken rivalries, family triumphs and private disappointments. Epstein, who “happens to possess a standup comic’s gift for punch lines” (New York Times Book Review), brings his emphatically grown-up characters to witty, rueful, and charming life. The Love Song of A. Jerome Minkoff is a marvelous collection from a master of the short form and one of the most distinctive writers working in America today.

Of Cats and Men: Stories


Nina de Gramont - 2001
    Prowling through every story, these enigmatic creatures expose the truth that lies beneath the surface of every encounter between women and the men they love.A young woman finds two dark surprises in her home: a magpie dismembered by her mischievous cat, and an unsettling glimpse of her fiancé's secret inclinations...A pregnant housewife quietly suffers a visit from her troubled brother-in-law while her hidden anger comes to life in the suddenly hostile behavior of her docile house cat...A frustrated newlywed clings to the last vestige of her well-appointed upbringing — a pampered Himalayan high point — until a rangy stray cat shows her the true meaning of marriage...As clever, finessed, and keen as the feline disposition it celebrates, Of Cats and Men marks the arrival of an exciting new voice in fiction.

Chickens


Laurence Shames - 2014
    This is a little story about a fateful confrontation of a very feisty rooster vs. Bert the Shirt and his chihuahua. Which side will back down? Who will come away with the neighborhood crowing rights? Who's the chicken, after all?

Christmas at the Grand Hotel: White Pine Island Novellas #1 and #2


Amie Denman - 2016
    Many residents call the island home year-round, but day visitors and tourists bring plenty of excitement with them. Like other resort islands, there are quaint shops, cool restaurants, and friendly bars. There are several resorts on the island, but the queen of them all is the elegant Grand Hotel on a bluff with an ocean view. Owned by the extensive, multi-generational Phillips family, the Grand Hotel offers elegant service, five course dinners, and plenty of romance. White Pine Island Novella #1: Ned & Bethany Sometimes the heart hits a hole in one… Bethany Hinkle arrives at White Pine Island’s Grand Hotel for her sister’s wedding and to do a little environmental snooping. She snaps pictures of the hotel’s pristine golf course to ensure its compliance with EPA standards. Soon, she realizes that the course’s manager is as attractive as the course he so carefully protects. Ned Phillips feels the weight of family expectations squarely on his broad shoulders. The Phillips Family has owned and operated the Grand Hotel for three generations. For now, he manages the hotel’s golf course and makes plans for its future—plans that could be destroyed by Bethany’s spying. He gets close to the lovely environmentalist to watch for her next move until he gets too close to let her go. ***** White Pine Island Novella #2: Ellen & Pete What happens when you fall in love with your best friend just when it’s too late? All her life, Ellen Phillips has loved working for her family’s Grand Hotel on White Pine Island. Flying the hotel’s airplane and piloting the island ferryboat while knowing someday she will inherit the luxurious resort is a fairy tale existence she has no desire to change. She’s always loved Pete McCormack, too. After all, he’s her best friend, confidante, and playmate. Until she suddenly sees him in a different light just before Christmas. Pete McCormack has made sacrifices for his family’s golf cart rental business on the island, choosing to stay home and run it instead of pursuing his dream of his own career on the mainland. When his parents announce their plans to sell the business so Pete can leave the island, he has to choose between the future he thought he always wanted and his newfound love for the woman he would be leaving behind.

World Glimpses: Parasite


Sara King - 2014
    In Planetside and Opening Night at the Naturals Preserve, you get to look into her upcoming new world of After Earth. In Parasite, for which this edition is titled, you have the chance to read into some of the background and history of one of the brilliant characters from Sara's Millennium Potion series, of which you can find the first novel, Wings of Retribution, right here on Amazon!

React


Jack Harding - 2021
    A crowded fairground. A simple sequence of numbers that appear over and over again... and a horrible feeling that something is very, very wrong.Nina Vogel is haunted by a recurring nightmarish vision - but what does it mean?In this powerful short story by Jack Harding, step into this nerve-racking, fast-paced fever dream that blurs the lines between the real and the unreal.

Squandering the Blue: Stories


Kate Braverman - 1990
    Long a celebrated West Coast cult figure, Kate Braverman now gives voice to Squandering the Blues, a distinctive and uncompromising collection of characters living out urban fairy tales and nightmares in the highly atmospheric landscape of Los Angeles.

Love, in Theory: Ten Stories


E.J. Levy - 2012
    In ten captivating and tender stories, E. J. Levy takes readers through the surprisingly erotic terrain of the intellect, offering a smart and modern take on the age-old theme of love--whether between a man and woman, a man and a man, a woman and a woman, or a mother and a child--drawing readers into tales of passion, adultery, and heartbreak. A disheartened English professor's life changes when she goes rock climbing and falls for an outdoorsman. A gay oncologist attending his sister's second wedding ponders dark matter in the universe and the ties that bind us. Three psychiatric patients, each convinced that he is Christ, give rise to a love affair in a small Minnesota town. A Brooklyn woman is thrown out of an ashram for choosing earthly love over enlightenment. A lesbian student of film learns theories of dramatic action the hard way--by falling for a married male professor. Incorporating theories from physics to film to philosophy, from "Rational Choice" to Thorstein Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class," these stories movingly explore the heart and mind--shooting cupid's arrow toward a target that may never be reached.