American Fiction Short Stories

Desa Rae Jenkins and her 20-something-year-old playmate are back with drama only the two of them can bring. Roc has been released from prison, and he's trying to show Desa Rae that his past life is well behind him, but his baby mama and his playa-hating uncle want Desa Rae out of the picture. Chyanne Johnson has tried to steer clear of drama since she was old enough to be out on her own. She's content with her mundane position at Atlanta's top marketing firm, but all of that changes when sexy CEO Aric McHale promotes her to be his executive assistant.

A Spicy BWWM Interracial Romance Jazmine: Of all the things I thought I would be doing at twenty-four, hiring a male escort was not one of them, but it was the only thing I could think of to help me prepare for my big date and little did I know, how life-changing it would be. Daniel: I tried to tell myself that she was just a client but she wasn't. The moment I saw Jazmine, I knew what I was feeling was different. I didn't want to be her practice, I wanted her to be mine. A Spicy & Sweet Interracial Love Story Love Practice is a steamy interracial instalove romance that will make the ...

From one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists comes Certain American States, whose insightful and lonely stories beg you to discover the emotional universes hiding at their cores. Catherine Lacey brings her narrative mastery to Certain American States, her first collection of short stories. As with her acclaimed novels, she gives life to a group of subtly complex, instantly memorable characters whose searches for love, struggles with grief, and tentative journeys into the minutiae of the human condition are simultaneously gripping and devastating.

"In a world where loyalty and survival clash, Shaylean finds herself caught between family drama and the enticing lifestyle of Detroit Black and his father, the notorious 'Johnny the Party Maker.' Struggling to escape her sister Sandy's anger and desperate for a fresh start, she gets swept up in a whirlwind of cash, secrets, and unexpected alliances. As she navigates this new path, Bobby, a soldier stationed in Vietnam, holds onto thoughts of her, hoping to return to a life that seems further out of reach. In the backdrop of money, power, and past lives, each character must find their place...

Kyron Santos, Kaylin's older brother, was used by Tasha Macklin to get back at Trae for his infidelities, a relationship that ultimately ended in pregnancy, murder, broken relationships, and mistrust. No one knew about the court-ordered sessions that Kyron was forced to attend. At least not until Mari, his woman who stuck by him throughout the majority of his prison bid, dropped the recordings off to Trae Macklin, Tasha's husband.

To see her is to want her. To touch her is to crave her. To love her is to give her everything you are. Jasmine has always been the strong one, the person everyone else depends on. She never thought to take care of herself first. But now it's time for her to give over control to someone else. For just one night, she needs to be taken care of in all the ways she deserves and she's going to love every moment. Ian knew this was his opportunity and there was no stopping him. He'd given Jasmine time to understand just how good they would be together, but she’s resisted their attraction. If he ...

Nathaniel is a well-intentioned, if naive, British cleric feeling blessed to educate a West African village about the benevolent power of God. But as slavers encroach, Nathaniel’s endeavor is daunted by the realities unfolding on the beautiful homeland of his congregation. It seems the Devil has power too. What follows for Nathaniel is a profound spiritual upheaval as he questions his purpose and even his humanity.

Beyond—The Door of No Return An emotional, dark, and gripping historical fiction novella 1501 AD, Senegal. The land awakens under a golden sunrise—lush, untamed, alive. The cries of exotic birds echo above the mighty baobabs, lions roar in longing, and hippos yawn beside watchful crocodiles. In a Serer village nestled north of the Gambia River, life flourishes in harmony with nature and spirit. Dembe, a revered hunter and spiritual leader, awakens with his family in their earthen hut, unaware that the final day of their world is beginning. As drums sound and rituals stir the village in ...

Set in Northern New Mexico, an astonishing, beautifully rendered debut about living in a landscape shaped by love, loss, and violence. With intensity, dark humor, and emotional precision, Kirstin Valdez Quade's unforgettable stories plunge us into the fierce, troubled hearts of characters torn between their desires to escape the past and to plumb its depths.

In this heart-warming short story, meet wife and mother Eugeena Patterson. Eugeena has always been the glue keeping her fragmented family together. When her teenage daughter is rushed to the hospital, Eugeena’s usual attempts to maintain peace in her family reach a breaking point. Will her troubled teenage daughter rip the family apart?

“CHILLING HISTORICAL HORROR” “Wildly imaginative” A delicious mix of history, horror, and love. Three early American gothic tales, including America’s last witch trial in 1730, the birth of the Jersey Devil in 1735, and the true origin of the Headless Horseman in 1776. In 1730 Ben Franklin published a story about a witch trial in Mount Holly, in The Pennsylvania Gazette. But did he tell the complete story, or was it a coverup of more sinister and frightening events? Emmet, an aspiring reporter, takes his first assignment for Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette and travels to New ...

“Short stories have to accomplish a nearly impossible magic trick: to introduce a world often much stranger than our own and make you care about it in a matter of pages,” writes R. F. Kuang in her introduction. “The most important part of this magic trick is just a willingness to get weird.” The stories in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023 are brimming with bizarre and otherworldly premises.

Detroit Life After 15 Years: Volume 7 In the gripping seventh installment of the Detroit Life After 15 Years series, tensions reach a fever pitch as old grudges ignite and new alliances form in the unforgiving streets of Detroit. As the city’s underworld continues to evolve, characters grapple with shifting loyalties and the harsh consequences of their actions. From explosive confrontations to heart-wrenching betrayals, this volume dives deep into the complexities of survival in a world where trust is scarce and danger lurks around every corner. Secrets long buried are unearthed, and ...

A special Christmas Collection of delightful old West romance stories all in one binge-worthy collection. A Tin Star for Christmas - A temporarily blinded sheriff! A woman secretly in love! Both set to marry someone else. Can this Christmas get any worse? Candy Cane Christmas - A grieving sibling, a man without hope and two orphans that bring them together. Viola - Angel Creek Christmas Brides - A Southern Belle looking for peace after the war - An outlaw turned rancher, determined to start over - Can two people from opposite worlds find happiness together in Angel Creek this Christmas? ...

The Snow family continues to push through their issues, until Pastor Snow takes a special interest in a prostitute named Candy. His wife, Lady Snow is dying of cancer and that doesn't seem to make him cut ties with Candy, although his reputation is on the line. Will the family have another meltdown or will they persevere? A Christian Fiction Novella that offers healing, deliverance, and restoration.

Best friends since second grade, Fiona Lin and Jane Shen explore the lonely freeways and seedy bars of Los Angeles together through their teenage years, surviving unfulfilling romantic encounters, and carrying with them the scars of their families' tumultuous pasts. Fiona was always destined to leave, her effortless beauty burnished by fierce ambition—qualities that Jane admired and feared in equal measure. When Fiona moves to New York and cares for a sick friend through a breakup with an opportunistic boyfriend, Jane remains in California.

From the royal wedding to boring airplane companions, Samuel Beckett to Margaret Thatcher, "senior moments" to life as a waitress, Maeve's Times gives us wonderful insight into a changing Ireland as it celebrates the work of one of our best-loved writers in all its diversity - revealing her characteristic directness, laugh-out-loud humor, and unswerving gaze into the true heart of a matter.

The heralded Queen of Hip-Hop Lit presents an addictive collection of celebrated urban authors with their fingers on the pulse of the streets. Street lit’s finest female voices—Keisha Starr, Tysha, LaKesa Cox, and Monique S. Hall—deliver searing stories about women who make hard sacrifices to stay on top of their hustle and seize the power, money, and fame they can’t live without.

A striking mosaic of prose, poetry, and dramatic dialogue, Jean Toomer’s Cane has come to be considered a masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance. Structured as a series of vignettes ripe with longing, passion, violence, and revenge, the haunting novel gives a powerful voice to the interior lives of African Americans in the rural South and urban North. Championed for its unsparing honesty and psychological insight by such luminaries as Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Alice Walker, and Maya Angelou, Cane shines as a beacon to generations of African-American writers.

Opal Chen reunites with her Chinese sisters after forty years; newly cosmopolitan Lulu Koo wonders why Americans “like to walk around in the woods with the mosquitoes”; Hong Kong parents go to extreme lengths to reestablish contact with their “number-one daughter” in New York; and Betty Koo, brought up on “no politics, just make money,” finds she must reassess her mother’s philosophy. With their profound compassion and equally profound humor, these eleven linked stories trace the intimate ways in which humans make and are made by history.