American Fiction Short Stories

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.

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.

“When love turns lethal, who will save you—and who will watch you burn?” Lost in the Crowd: Symphony & Roman (A Westbrook High Series Short, Book #5) Roman is on the edge of total collapse. Kicked off the football team, tangled up in a toxic situationship he never saw coming, and spiraling into an addiction that could cost him everything. Desperate and out of options, he turns to Symphony—the one girl he swore he’d never need again. But is she willing to help him when his downfall proves she was right all along? Symphony has her own chaos. Stripped of her cheer captain crown, ...

An incident at a TSA security check point sows chaos and rumors, creating a chain of events that impacts twelve young Asian Americans in a crowded and restless airport. As their disrupted journeys crisscross and collide, they encounter fellow travelers—some helpful, some hostile—as they discover the challenges of friendship, the power of courage, the importance of the right word at the right time, and the unexpected significance of a blue Stratocaster electric guitar.

Examining the borders between one nation and another, between one person and another, Urrea reveals his mastery of the short form. This collection includes the Edgar-award winning "Amapola" and his now-classic "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses," which had the honor of being chosen for NPR's "Selected Shorts" not once but twice.

Veteran authors Ashley and JaQuavis offer up their first solo efforts, and they're hotter than ever! Along with Ayana Ellis, they introduce listeners to some "real sistas" who know how to get what they want at all costs. For these women, if it's dangerous it just means the payout will be that much sweeter.

“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 ...

Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories brings together 15 stories that span Hisaye Yamamoto's 40-year career. It was her first book to be published in the United States. Yamamoto's themes include the cultural conflicts between the first generation, the Issei and their children, the Nisei; coping with prejudice; and the World War II internment of Japanese Americans.

Queen is a young woman living by her own rules. But she has things that she would like to change. One is her circumstances and the other is her relationship with her abusive boyfriend Ness. She thinks that she will never be able to fully be rid of him, until she meets Logan. Logan introduces her to a world that she always knew she was meant for. Even though the way there isn't exactly legal. Queen learns the game quickly and starts to live up to her given name. "Careful how you play your cards when you have a queen in your hand."- Queen

Critics have compared her work to that of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, but J. California Cooper has a warm, witty style that’s definitely her own. Each of her short stories is a gem of downhome wisdom, polished with a bit of gossip, some heartbreak, and lots of humor.

Eighteen of the very best American short stories, each a classic in its own right. Stories include "The Little Frenchman and his Water Lots", by George Pope Morris; "The Angel of the Odd", by Edgar Allan Poe; "The Schoolmasters’s Progress", by Caroline M.S. Kirkland; "The Watkinson Evening", by Eliza Leslie; "Titbottom’s Spectacles", by George William Curtis; "My Double and "How He Undid Me", by Edward Everett Hale; "A Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed Punsters", by Oliver Wendell; and more.

In a town struggling to survive, can love bring two people together? At the tender age of eight, Christmas Macy’s life takes a dramatic turn when her parents suddenly die. She’s forced to live in an orphanage near Denver, Colorado, with a woman who doesn’t take kindly to children, and most definitely not to Christmas. Now in her twenties, Christmas is heartbroken. The place she’s called home for over fourteen years is being stripped away, along with her best friend. She travels to the drought-ridden town, not knowing what her future holds. Being told over and over she’s unworthy ...

In the series of linked stories at the heart of Filthy Animals, set among young creatives in the American Midwest, a young man treads delicate emotional waters as he navigates a series of sexually fraught encounters with two dancers in an open relationship, forcing him to weigh his vulnerabilities against his loneliness.

As a 41-year-old man confronts his own mortality in this collection's title story, he recalls his Spokane Indian father's chilling death from alcoholism and diabetes. Another tale features an eccentric salesman pursuing a married woman from airport to airport. And then there's the film editor who sees nothing wrong with altering footage to fit preconceived views - until he becomes the target of media distortion.

To Chinese American teenager Chuntao, New Lake is a beautiful haven where she can hunt for treasures once swallowed up by a big flood. But when she’s caught scavenging by her biology teacher, a woman whose own past has been swept away, Chuntao is faced with an imponderable question: Which world was better - the ideal one she never knew or the destroyed one that now belongs to her?

In Temple Folk, Black Muslims contemplate the convictions of their race, religion, economics, politics, and sexuality in America. The ten “beautiful and vivid” (Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award­–winning and New York Times bestselling author) stories in this collection contribute to the bounty of diverse narratives about Black life by intimately portraying the experiences of a community that resists the mainstream culture to which they are expected to accept and aspire to while functioning within the country in which they are born.

In ancient mythology, the Titan Prometheus was punished by the gods for bringing man the gift of fire - an event that set humankind on its course of knowledge. As punishment, Prometheus was bound to a rock. But in The Gift of Fire, those chains cease to be, and the great champion of man walks from that immortal prison into present-day South Central Los Angeles. Disheveled and lost, he is thrown in jail, where he meets lifelong criminal Nosome Blane....

In her introduction to this year’s The Best American Essays, guest editor Vivian Gornick states that her selections “contribute materially to the long and honorable history of the personal essay by way of the value they place on lived experience.” Provocative, daring, and honest at a time when many writers are deliberately silencing themselves in the face of authoritarian and populist censorship movements, the twenty-one essays collected here reflect their authors’ unapologetic observations of the world around them.

(en-tan-gle-ment): noun- a complicated or compromising relationship or situation  Five couples, five stories about friendships, trust issues, forgiveness, and love that resolved over time. In Dare to Love, Sapphire and Zaiden hook up one time. Three years later, when Zaiden returns to the states, he finds out that he has a three-year-old daughter. Will they find their way back to each other, or will they remain cordial because of their daughter? In Retail Love, Manny notices Sienna. Manny has FWBs (Friends with Benefits), not relationships. Sienna falls for Manny. One night and many more ...

A new president has just been elected and has promised to clean America of illegal immigrants. Johnny, an American citizen, and the son of an illegal immigrant, finds his world turned upside down as he and his family are forced to leave their home in search of safety. They must escape, not only from the police, but also from the hate and violence that has gripped the nation.