American Fiction Short Stories

A Heartfelt Short Story SeriesLiving in the hood of Birmingham is not some childhood fantasy. It’s a harsh reality for teenager Draya, and her younger sis Porsha. They’ve witnessed things kids shouldn’t see, and heard things kids shouldn’t hear! Raised by a trick h**, and an alcoholic; Draya vows to be nothing like her mama Trixie. Determined to be a better person, Draya’s main focus is school, and her younger sister Porsha. Secretly, Draya has developed a hatred for all men. Mainly, because of her mama’s despicable lifestyle. All she’s ever seen is a horny man between her ...

Anthony Bourdain chases the fumigation truck in Bergen County, New Jersey. Dave Eggers tells it straight: Illinois is Number 1. Louise Erdrich loses her bikini top in North Dakota. Jonathan Franzen gets waylaid by New York's publicist...and personal attorney...and historian...and geologist. John Hodgman explains why there is no such thing as a "Massachusettsean."

From former Green Beret and USA Today best-selling author Jason Kasper comes a gripping set of thrillers.

Ayesha Shetty lost her brother seven years ago, the same time she lost everything else important to her: her dreams, her fierce independence, and the man she loved. Not wanting to see her mother hurt anymore, she put her wild self away and became the dutiful daughter her mother needed and took on her brother’s role in the family business. Now her best friend’s big, fat Indian wedding is a chance to get away from her endless duties at the restaurant and maybe even have some fun (if she remembers how).

Absolution was written by USA Today Bestselling Author Reana Malori... Julian Saving lives is his calling, or so he thought. When doing what he loves turns into his greatest fear, the lines between black and white turn gray. A little boy who needs to be saved, and a beautiful mother he can’t stay away from, bring him back from the darkness. Life and death are a part of his daily life, but Julian must find his own road to Absolution before he loses the one person he never realized he needed. Kori Raising her son was her only focus. When their lives are shattered by a devastating event, she...

Havana, 1939: It’s opening night at the famed Tropicana nightclub. Cuban American college student Natalie Trainer, on vacation from Miami, is watching from the sidelines—as usual. Then comes an invitation to dance from a handsome stranger named Antonio. Normally cautious and reserved, Natalie somehow finds herself saying yes. A tiny thrill of rebellion, of taking a chance, and Natalie’s in heaven. Will her first step into this unfamiliar realm set a new course for her life, or only tonight?

The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.

From "one of the funniest writers in America" comes a collection of stories culled from the front lines of the millennial culture wars. Rife with failing rock bands, student loans, and participation trophies,

Spoiled Brats is about a generation of narcissists - and the well-meaning boomers who made them that way.

Leo Carrington and Anthony Black have been enemies since their friendship ended when Leo came out to Anthony. Throughout high school, Anthony and his friends made Leo’s life miserable due to his sexual orientation, and their harassment persisted into his adulthood. Leo had noticed Anthony’s attractiveness over the years and hated that he was drawn to his former best friend. During his summer break from college, Anthony made Leo a proposition he couldn’t refuse. But would their deal hurt Leo’s feelings instead of benefiting him?

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. A new century dawns, one in which America would become pre-eminent as its industrial might and military power rose above all others. In literature too its authors tackled new forms and new ideas, they shied away from little, immersing themselves and their readers in the promise of a new Century.

Oscar Casares' debut collection of short stories was selected as an ALA Notable book and received tremendous praise from publications ranging from the New York Times and the Washington Post to Entertainment Weekly. These nine stories follow a collection of unforgettable characters trying to get by while living in the South Texas border town of Brownsville.

Here, gathered in one volume, are the stories that made Clarice a Brazilian legend. Originally a cloth edition of 86 stories, now we have 89 in all, covering her whole amazing career, from her teenage years to her deathbed. In these pages, we meet teenagers becoming aware of their sexual and artistic powers, humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies, old people who don't know what to do with themselves - and in their stories, Clarice takes us through their lives - and hers - and ours.

America’s most talented storytellers share their most interesting, engaging, unputdownable work in a collection made for story lovers. Praised early on by numerous award-winning and bestselling authors, COOLEST AMERICAN STORIES 2023 is the second volume of the annual short story anthology whose guiding philosophy is that a collection of widely appealing short stories can make for common ground that could unite rather than divide Americans. Toward this end, COOLEST AMERICAN STORIES 2023 features a previously uncollected heartbreaking story by Morgan Talty, author of the widely acclaimed ...

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church's double standards and their own needs and passions.

A grieving mother makes a spreadsheet of everyone she’s lost. Elsewhere, a professor develops a troubled intimacy with her hairdresser. And every year, a restless woman receives an email from a strange man twice her age and several states away. In Yiyun Li’s stories, people strive for an ordinary existence until doing so becomes unsustainable, until the surface cracks and the grand mysterious forces—death, violence, estrangement—come to light. And even everyday life is laden with meaning, studded with indelible details.

Take a ride down Route 66 in a '55 Crown Vic. Shield your nose and eyes from the dust as Okies leave for California. Drink strong coffee in an all-night diner. Hear a haunting train whistle in Gallup, New Mexico. Investigate a death on old 66. Take a last ride on a faithful Apaloosa and watch the sunset over a majestic saquero cactus. Feel Andy Payne's pain as he pounds the road to New York. Lost on Route 66 is an anthology of essays and short stories about the fabled highway that is filled with mystery, suspense, adventure and humor. Don't miss it.

In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on first through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008 recession, living in a house so cursed that the pet fish launches itself out of its own tank rather than stay. But even as things fall apart, the family remains motivated, often to its own detriment, by what their younger son, Trelawny, calls “the exquisite, racking compulsion to survive.”

Here is the preface to 12 magnificent stories, originally part of The John Cheever Audio Collection, in which John Cheever celebrates - with unequaled grace and tenderness - the deepest feelings we have.

Returning to the city that inspired his first prize-winning book, Lost in the City, Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city's power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens.

En Eva Luna, su tercera novela, Isabel Allende recupera su país a través de la memoria y la imaginación. La cautivadora protagonista de esta historia constituye un nostálgico álter ego de la autora, que se llama a sí misma «ladrona de historias» precisamente porque en las historias radica el secreto de la vida y el mundo.