American Short Fiction

Deon doesn’t know who she wants, her girlfriend Mya of four years or the one person she has loved her whole life; but didn’t know it until they made a deal to a Fake Engagement. They each agreed on the terms for their own selfish reasons, but they would soon realize that they were falling hard in love with each other. The one thing Keven didn’t want to do was admit his feelings for Deon, yeah she was his best friend for years but he cared for her more than a friend and when the opportunity came up for him to be in a fake engagement with her he took it. He knew that then and there he ...

Before Jack Kerouac expressed the spirit of a generation in his 1957 classic On the Road, he spent years figuring out how he wanted to live and, above all, learning how to write. Atop an Underwood brings together more than sixty previously unpublished works that Kerouac wrote before he was twenty-two, ranging from stories and poems to plays and parts of novels, including an excerpt from his 1943 merchant marine novel, The Sea Is My Brother. These writings reveal what Kerouac was thinking, doing, and dreaming during his formative years and reflect his primary literary influences.

Are you ready to embark on a thrilling journey of self-discovery? Dive into "17-Years," a mesmerizing short story that will leave you questioning the boundaries of time and the power of the human spirit. Immerse yourself in this captivating short story that will leave you inspired, questioning the essence of time, and reflecting on the boundless potential within us all. Don't miss out on the chance to experience the remarkable tale of "17-Years" – a story that will stay with you long after you read the final page.

Take a trip into theheart of passion as seductive samba rhythms pulse in the warm evening breezes. Escape and savor these three scintillating stories set against the beautifulbackdrop of Brazil.... Two weeks in Rio - surely that's enough time for marketing VP Sydni Lawson to forge a lucrative merger. But instead of sweet-talking real estate mogul Gabriel St. James, she's being swept away by their sizzling and unexpected attraction.

From a single mother who gets lured into her pastor’s twisted den of lies, to a deadly revenge plot gone wrong, and an illicit affair that leaves a bloody trail of evidence, author and filmmaker N’Tyse presents Chain of Fools: Prison Bids, her most gripping, collaborative work thus far - featuring crime-of-passion tales served by best-selling authors Briana Cole, Shakir Rashaan, Brandie Davis, Erick S. Gray, and India Williams.

On the heels of the best seller success of her novel The Wedding, Dorothy West, the last surviving member of the Harlem Renaissance, presents a collection of essays and stories that explore both the realism of everyday life, and the fantastical, extraordinary circumstances of one woman's life in a mythic time.

This long-awaited story collection from Wesley Brown summons up the smoky clubs and gritty streets of a long-gone New York City, one that moved in the frenetic rhythms of jazz. A more innocent city fueled by cool, not money. We meet Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins, Cab Calloway, and many giants of the era in these sharply observed, carefully intertwined stories. In Brown's deft hands, these legends become real - like we've never seen them before.

Available as a value box amazon.com/dp/B07Y2B5HJG (copy and paste the link into your browser) Join Emily from Marshall Manor as she prepares for a wedding she doesn’t want to go through with and find out what happens when her entire life changes in a span of a week. It’s a crisp autumn evening and the weather in Chicago is not the only reason for the chill in the air. Promised to an older man when she was just a young girl, Emily has now come of age and is forced to face a long-delayed reality. Living in Marshall Manor has been an exceptional blessing for Emily and her fellow orphan ...

Innocence is lost to unforgettable experience in these brilliant stories by E. L. Doctorow, as full of mystery and meaning as any of the longer works by this American master. In "The Writer in the Family", a young man learns the difference between lying and literature after he is induced into deceiving a relative through letters. In "Wili", an early-20th-century idyll is destroyed by infidelity. In "The Foreign Legation", a girl and an act of political anarchy collide with devastating results. These and other stories flow into the novella "Lives of the Poets".

In her dynamic debut, Halle Hill’s Good Women delves into the lives of twelve Black women across the Appalachian South. A woman boards a Greyhound bus barreling toward Florida to meet her sugar daddy’s mother; a state fair employee considers revenge on a local preacher; a sister struggles with guilt as she helps her brother plan to run away with a man he's seeing in secret; a young woman who works for a scam for-profit college navigates the lies she sells for a living.

She needs a partner. He needs an advocate. With her sister happily married and running the restaurant for over three years, Daisy Haven finds herself at a loss. An opportunity arises, sparking a desire in her heart to not only see women’s rights increased in the country, but to have someone to partner with in her new endeavor. When it appears the newest member of town is the one who agrees with her cause, she’s annoyed at having to work so closely with the man who sets her teeth on edge. New to Pinewood, Colorado, Jordan Porter wants nothing more than continue the cause near to his ...

Based on traditional Vietnamese folk tales told to Violet Kupersmith by her grandmother, these fantastical, chilling, and thoroughly contemporary stories are a boldly original exploration of Vietnamese culture, addressing both the immigrant experience and the lives of those who remained behind. Lurking in the background of them all is a larger ghost—that of the Vietnam War, whose legacy continues to haunt us.

Goodbye, Columbus is the story of Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin, he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills, who meet one summer and fall into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love. The novella is accompanied by five short stories - sometimes iconoclastic, sometimes elegiac - that crackle with irreverent originality and display Roth's blazing early talent.

A short read (very short - 21 pages) set in January 1921 in New York City. Join Sadie Brown, investigative reporter, and Roger Siebert, photographer, on their picture-perfect honeymoon. At least it started out as perfect. But, when a large steamer trunk mysteriously appears in their honeymoon suite, it's the beginning of a cozy mystery. The strange trunk and its even stranger owner draw the newlyweds into a scheme involving stolen goods, a ransom note, and blackmail.

So many things have made Melanie think that her man has been cheating on her. But time and time again she is proven wrong. After a confrontation with a mystery woman Melanie has found herself questioning her man yet again. This time she gets an immediate answer to her questions. But is that enough to get things back on track? Just as Melanie thinks she has everything figured out some devastating news lands in her lap. Does she have it in her to fight for the love of her life? Or will this be the end of Melanie and Xavier? Xavier has been fighting for Melanie's love since he laid eyes on her...

From the remarkable Ha Jin, winner of the National Book Award for his celebrated novel Waiting, comes this collection of comical and deeply moving tales of contemporary China that are as warm and human as they are surprising, disturbing, and delightful. In the title story, the head of security at a factory is shocked, first when the handsomest worker on the floor proposes marriage to his homely adopted daughter, and again when his new son-in-law is arrested for the "crime" of homosexuality.

Trapped in a London flat, Beth remembers a transgressive love affair in 1960s Paris. The most famous writer in Russia takes his last breath in a stationmaster’s cottage, miles from Moscow. A father, finally free of his daughter’s demands, embarks on a long swim from his Canadian lakeside retreat. And in the grandest house of all, Danni the Polish housekeeper catches the eye of an enigmatic visitor.Rose Tremain awakens the senses in this diverse collection of short stories.

In the fifteen masterful stories that make up this collection, Jai Chakrabarti crosses continents and cultures to explore what it means to cultivate a family today, across borders, religions, and race.

Xuan Juliana Wang's remarkable debut introduces us to the new and changing face of Chinese youth. From fuerdai (second-generation rich kids) to a glass-swallowing qigong grandmaster, her dazzling, formally inventive stories upend the immigrant narrative to reveal a new experience of belonging: of young people testing the limits of who they are, in a world as vast and varied as their ambitions. In stories of love, family, and friendship, here are the voices, faces, and stories of a new generation never before captured in fiction.

Sasha is a single mother and the youngest of her two sisters. Drama followers her everywhere and her sister, Stacey and Randi are fed up with her short temper and untamed tongue. Their relationship with Sasha seems toxic due to her unbearable irresponsible lifestyle. She faces many trails but relies on her good looks to get her out of trouble. Until she finally gets a wake up call.