American Short Fiction

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.

Symone Davenport is a 22-year-old college senior who has set herself up for a very secure future, but all her achievements feel more like a duty than a labor of love. It takes the help of Jaylen Richards, the handsome new choir director, to not only unlock her talent and try to bring her into the spotlight but to unlock her heart. Janice was never very thin. With a gorgeous face, personality, and brains, she isn't lacking friends, but her insecurities about her weight gain get in the way of things reaching the next level with men.

Here are 10 unabridged stories by the greatest American authors. These treasured stories from the most influential authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries were selected for their literary importance as well as their dramatic oral qualities.

Electronic Gags presents a chilling portrait of a dystopian United States ruled by a tyrant. After a military coup, the United States of America becomes an autocracy. To tighten his grip on power, President Brandon Ward, the megalomaniac at the helm of military dictatorship, introduces a new surveillance system that can monitor people’s offline conversations. Privacy is dead. Freddie’s life changes when the government arrests his best friend, Michael, for attending an opposition meeting. Michael’s mother accuses Freddie of betraying her son. Against all odds, Freddie must prove his ...

Some treasures can't be measured in silver. In 1880s Idaho Territory, Boston-trained assayer Katherine Lobmeyer is determined to prove her worth in her ailing father's Silver City office, even if it means challenging every convention about a woman's proper place. Matthew Sterling, owner of the richest silver mine in the Owyhees, doesn't believe a woman belongs in the scientific world of mineral testing—until Katherine's brilliant mind and fierce dedication force him to question everything he thought he knew about a lady's capabilities. When theft and sabotage threaten the mining community...

In the city of Houston - a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America - the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He's working at his family's restaurant, weathering his brother's blows, resenting his older sister's absence - and discovering he likes boys.

This cross-genre anthology written by superstar YA authors from across the Latin American diaspora offers bold new thrills for every monster fan. In these fifteen original short stories, bloodthirsty vampires are hunted by a quick-witted slayer; children are taken from their beds by “el Viejo de la Bolsa” while a military dictator steals their parents; and anyone you love might be a monster waiting to strike. The sinister worlds of these narratives are also magical ones, where supernatural beings can be avatars for justice, vengeance, sisterhood, and empowerment.

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...

Madeline Harper, an 87-year-old career-focused woman who spent her life chasing ambition, has a sudden accident while preparing for Thanksgiving. When she wakes, she is thrust into a vivid, dreamlike experience where she is hosting the Thanksgiving of her dreams—filled with family, love, and bittersweet humor. But reality hits hard when she wakes up in a hospital to find she has no one to take her home. What follows is a heartfelt, funny, and emotional journey as Madeline reconnects with the only person who ever held her heart, finding hope and love when she thought all was lost.

Detrás de esta selección de cuentos y sátiras de H. Zumbado (La Habana, 1932-2016) se encuentra un criterio casi exclusivamente editorial, un criterio seguro, que deleitará a los lectores a través de lo divertido y lo profundo, dos términos que en el caso de Zumbado, siempre van de la mano. Sus admiradores de siempre, volverán a encontrarse con cuentos tan queridos como “Amor a primer añejo” o “Imagínate tú”, o con sátiras breves tan lúdicas y plenas de lucidez como “Chapucio”, “Ausencio” o “Festivaldo”.

A rural town finds itself under the authoritarian sway of a tree that punishes children. A pair of old friends navigate their fraught history as strange happenings escalate in a Mexican restaurant. A pair of narcissistic friends wreak havoc on an activist community. An aloof young man finds himself living through his lover’s memories. And a day of LARPing takes a cosmic turn.

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.

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.

Being a P.I. with a new fiance and side-kick isn't easy. Greyson and Sarah’s wedding planning comes to a halt when they must find a missing girl. Will Greyson get a chance to start over with Sarah after all they’ve been through? Will their search for the missing girl foil their romance and pending wedding? Sarah Starting Over (Siletz Bay #1) ends with some unanswered questions for a P.I. and a widowed mom. Greyson Starting Over is (Siletz Bay # 2) takes place one year later in the sleepy seaside town of Siletz Bay.

Karlie Houston hasn't seen a raise in forever, but the payday loan office she manages is raking in the cash. So why not get what she's rightfully owed by masterminding a heist? Once her lover Sidney's boys hit all the company's locations at one time, there's a fortune to split. But suddenly bodies start dropping - and Karlie better devise the perfect plan to survive.

The stories in this collection are drawn mainly from those tribes which lived in the northern and central areas of North America. These represent the linguistic groups gerneally referred to as Algonquian, Iroquois, and Sioux. A final chapter covers the tales of the northwest Pacific Coast.

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.

What does it mean to be other? What does it mean to love in a world determined to keep us apart? These questions murmur in the heart of each of Brenda Peynado’s strange and singular stories. Threaded with magic, transcending time and place, these stories explore what it means to cross borders and break down walls, personally and politically.

From sultry international jungles to the rugged terrain of the American Southwest, join the larger-than-life, scorching-hot alpha heroes of the Bureau of American Defense, Black Ops, Inc., and the US Navy SEALs for all the pulse-pounding, heart-racing, toe-curling excitement. They're cool under pressure, steamy under the sheets, and when the enemy strikes, there's not a lethal mission these gorgeous men can't handle.