American Short Fiction

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.

For Unique, life is good until her dope-dealing boyfriend, Took, is arrested and winds up in jail. Now she's broke as a joke, trying to put every petty hustle into play to chase hard times away from the door. With an empty refrigerator, a stack of bills piling up, a tenth-grade education, a big butt and a smile, it doesn't take long for her to learn to pull the wool over the eyes of any fool who's blinded by her good looks.

When Cohn Holland sets his sights on Eliza Allen, he’s captivated and is drawn to her dark beauty. The new divorcée is hurting from her ex-husband’s betrayal and trying to build a new life of independence; finding love again is the last thing on Eliza’s mind. Sensing Eliza’s pain and mistrust, Cohn tries to prove that he can be all the man she will ever need— in and out of the boardroom, even if he is younger. Cohn doesn’t give up easily and will annihilate Eliza’s doubts and fears one by one until he makes her his for good. This is an older woman and younger man romance with...

In these buoyant and inventive stories, Karen Tei Yamashita transfers classic tales across boundaries and questions what an inheritance - familial, cultural, emotional, artistic - really means. In a California of the '60s and '70s, characters examine the contents of deceased relatives' freezers, tape-record high school locker-room chatter, or collect a community's gossip while cleaning the teeth of its inhabitants.

Ever wonder what goes on in the world of your favorite author? Come follow the life of Best Selling Urban author and publisher, ZION. A world where lines get crossed and things happen as people follow their hearts, lust and greed on their way to the top. Zion and his business partner are down for whatever it takes to sign new and proven talent to their highly successful publishing house, 'Rich Gang Publishing'. With the literary industry at his feet and six figures coming in monthly, nothing and no one is out of his reach and Zion plans to partake in it all. But what happens when art ...

From the bustling streets of America to the quiet mountain towns in rural China, this captivating collection of short stories spans continents and cultures, weaving a tapestry of universal human experiences. Each tale offers a unique glimpse into lives shaped by love, betrayal, and the search for identity. These stories, by turns humorous and poignant, explore the intricate threads that connect us all—the joy of friendship, the pain of betrayal, the challenges of coming of age, and the bittersweet realities of leaving one's homeland. With its rich diversity of settings and emotions, this ...

Hot Mr. Scrooge is my neighbor. Hope The man loathes Christmas. What person doesn’t warm up to the best holiday of the year? The cabin I purchased mentioned it needed light work, not a gut renovation. Looks nothing like the picture. The brooding beast next door said he’d help spruce up the place if it will get me to leave him alone. Deal. Because who wants to be around the Grinch longer than they have to? Even if he’s tall. Has a gorgeous face you can stare at all day. And a body you’d love to mount on your sleigh repeatedly. Then I wondered could I help Mr. Non-Christmas ...

Here are four unforgettable stories by Yann Martel, the New York Times best-selling author of Life of Pi. In the exquisite title novella, a very young man dying of AIDS joins his friend in fashioning a story of the Roccamatio family of Helsinki, set against the yearly march of the 20th century.

Living in the same neighborhood sometimes brings people together. Even when there was a time that you thought you had absolutely nothing in common with someone. Damiko was home, fresh off doing a 12-year stretch in the penitentiary. Things had changed drastically. Everybody from the old days were gone. The hood was now run by a bunch of faces that he did not recognize. He did run into two recognizable faces from the days of old though. Mack and Armani. They were not actually friends back in the day, but being the last of a dying breed bought the three together. The three were feeling the ...

I am THAT wife. I am Suzy Homemaker. I don't go anywhere; don't do much of anything. I stay home, I cook, I clean, I take care of my man. I am faithful to my man. I am a fraud. I'm not happy, least not completely. I am unfulfilled. I'm missing something. My husband is a great man but he doesn't get my motor running or my heart racing. And when was the last time he made my panties wet? Has he ever made my panties wet? Our sex life, when it happens, is vanilla at best. But I make it work, you know? Because that's what wives do. But then one day, I am accosted by a sexy, demanding, enticing ...

Roxie Stillwater’s father gets her a job with his oldest friend, the CEO of a software company, Griffin Graham. Roxie and Griff form an instant attraction and connection – but Griff is old enough to be her father. How can she have a love relationship with her boss? What will her father say? Roxie knows her dad will kill them both if he finds out. And yet more trouble arrives when Griff’s ex-wife decides she wants Griff for her own. Sneaking behind her father’s back makes Roxie very uncomfortable, but she’s helplessly falling in love with Griff. Nor does she dare tell her dad. How ...

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.”

C. J. Box, #1 New York Times best-selling author of the hugely popular Joe Pickett series, selects the best short mystery and crime fiction of the year in this annual “treat for crime-fiction fans” (Library Journal).

Una saga épica a través del tiempo y las eras. Una década. Luego un siglo. Y así, hasta el fin de los tiempos. Crónicas de una leyenda te sumerge en una serie de cuentos que narran momentos clave en la historia de una civilización y sus personajes. Cada etapa transforma el mundo, pero su esencia permanece inalterable. Descubre los hitos que forjan el destino de una civilización. Vive las historias de personajes que trascienden el tiempo. Reflexiona sobre tu lugar en la historia: ¿En qué época vives tú? Ideal para amantes de la fantasía épica y las narrativas históricas. ...

Louis L'Amour's world is built on those dramatic moments when men and women cast their fears, doubts, and pasts behind them and plunge into the unknown. Nowhere is that more evident than in this latest collection of stories set on the American frontier. These selections include "The Nester and the Piute"; "Big Man"; "Waltz Him Around Again"; "Shadow"; "Barney Takes a Hand"; "When a Texan Takes Over"; and "No Trouble for the Cactus Kid".

Like the small towns J. California Cooper has so vividly portrayed in her previous novels and story collections, Wideland, Oklahoma, is home to ordinary Americans struggling to raise families, eke out a living, and fulfill their dreams. In the early 20th century, Irene and Val fall in love in Wideland. While carving out a home for themselves, they also allow neighbors Bertha and Joseph to build a house and live on their land.

With accomplished precision and gentle eloquence, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the crosscurrents set in motion when immigrants, expatriates, and their children arrive, quite literally, at a cultural divide. The nine stories in this stunning debut collection unerringly chart the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations.

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.

In Enigma Variations, Aciman maps the most inscrutable corners of passion, proving to be an unsparing reader of the human psyche and a master stylist. With language at once lyrical, bare-knuckled, and unabashedly candid, he casts a sensuous, shimmering light over each facet of desire to probe how we ache, want, and waver, and ultimately how we sometimes falter and let go of those who may want to offer only what we crave from them.

The son of Maya Angelou, Guy Johnson is a critically acclaimed author and poet in his own right. Echoes of a Distant Summer is the story of Jackson St. Clair Tremain, a San Francisco civil servant who thought he had left his old life far behind. In 1982, Jackson is summoned to Mexico to confer with his dying grandfather, the brutal hustler King Tremain. When King dies, Jackson inherits $50 million - and the unwanted attentions of a malevolent bayou crime lord named Pug DuMont.