American Short Fiction

Milo is a free spirit that does what he wants and can have who he wants. But he wants to start a life with Bailey and she's not ready. He doesn't understand why he can't have her but he'll find out one way or another. Bailey is young and full of life. The twinkle of everyone's eye especially the love of her life, Milo. But she keeps many secrets that are slowly killing her. She needs to rid herself of her demons before it's too late. Kierra is Bailey's best friend and a single mother who just wants to come up by any means necessary. But all money isn't good money and she knows this. Will ...

“Call me Miss B*tch. Yes, I screw married men, so what? I love my life. I worked damn hard to get to where I am. I’m a lawyer in a huge law firm and I pay my own bills, besides the ones they pay. Yes, I enjoy what I do and who I do.” Tracy is single and living her best life in California. Coming from a small town in South Carolina, it’s a welcomed change of scenery. It’s also an escape from her past. She is no longer the small town girl with a broken heart; she’s the corporate attorney with several players on her team. Rich, successful players at that. Though her life is ...

In the collection's title story, a pack of girls raised by wolves are painstakingly reeducated by nuns. In "Haunting Olivia", two young boys make midnight trips to a boat graveyard in search of their dead sister, who set sail in the exoskeleton of a giant crab. In "Sleepaway Camp for Disordered Dreamers", a boy whose dreams foretell implacable tragedies is sent to a summer camp for troubled sleepers (Cabin 1, Narcoleptics; Cabin 2, Sleep Apneics; Cabin 3, Somnambulists . . . ).

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.

Davis Steele is intrigued when a mysterious, handsome man comes to the bookstore where he works, never buying a single book for two weeks straight. After work, Davis encounters him at a packed McDonald’s, where he stops to get something to eat before heading home. The mysterious man offers Davis a seat with him, and they hit it off immediately, discovering many common interests. Later that night, after a passion-filled encounter at Davis’ apartment, he believes he has finally found the perfect guy for him. When Davis sees the man at the bookstore the next day, he is cold toward Davis ...

A Steamy BWWM, Close Proximity Instalove Romance Angela: I never expected to catch the eye of a man like him—a heartbreakin' male escort watching me from across the street like I was his next meal. But the more I tried to fight it, the harder it became to ignore the way he pulled me in—was I about to fall into temptation or should I keep my distance? Angel: She didn’t know I watched her—day after day, night after night—from my balcony, like she was made just for me. My own private little show. I was a paid lover with a cold heart, but the shy, beautiful woman across the street had...

Transgressive, foulmouthed, and brutally funny, Brontez Purnell’s 100 Boyfriends is a revelatory spiral into the imperfect lives of queer men desperately fighting the urge to self-sabotage. As they tiptoe through minefields of romantic, substance-fueled misadventure - from dirty warehouses and gentrified bars in Oakland to desolate farm towns in Alabama - Purnell’s characters strive for belonging in a world that dismisses them for being Black, broke, and queer. In spite of it - or perhaps because of it - they shine.

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church's double standards and their own needs and passions.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. A new century dawns, one in which America would become pre-eminent as its industrial might and military power rose above all others. In literature too its authors tackled new forms and new ideas, they shied away from little, immersing themselves and their readers in the promise of a new Century.

A remarkable talent far ahead of her time, Diane Oliver died in 1966 at the age of 22, leaving behind these crisply told and often chilling tales that explore race and racism in 1950s and 60s America. In this first and only collection by a masterful storyteller finally taking her rightful place in the canon, Oliver’s insightful stories reverberate into the present day.

Major Key Publishing presents a collection of four short phenomenal stories written by six extraordinary authors that will blow your mind. Each story is filled with a combination of bad boys, sex, drugs, lust, and love-- but not necessarily in that order. All is fair in love and war, and many of these characters are determined to fight until the end just to get their own version of a happily ever after.

A grieving mother makes a spreadsheet of everyone she’s lost. Elsewhere, a professor develops a troubled intimacy with her hairdresser. And every year, a restless woman receives an email from a strange man twice her age and several states away. In Yiyun Li’s stories, people strive for an ordinary existence until doing so becomes unsustainable, until the surface cracks and the grand mysterious forces—death, violence, estrangement—come to light. And even everyday life is laden with meaning, studded with indelible details.

Termed the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the southwestern Indians and the first protest novel of California, Ramona is the story of 3 cultures - Indian, Mexican, and Anglo - locked in combat. The upheaval and injustice are humanized through the romance of a beautiful half-Indian orphan who grow up as the ward of Señora Moreno in privileged surroundings, then falls in love with an Indian and joins him in a life of poverty and tragedy. The Ramona Pageant in Hemet, California, based on this romance, has played each year since 1923, reenacting the transition period between Mexican traditions and the new U.S. and state governments.

In Mules and Men, some of the rich cultural heritage of black America is revealed and preserved. In the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston returned to her home town of Eatonville, Florida, to collect and record the oral histories, songs, and sermons, many dating back to slavery times, that she remembered hearing as a child. These highly metaphorical folktales, "big old lies", and powerful songs helped her to recover her history, and preserve an important part of American culture.

A collection of the year’s best mystery and suspense short fiction selected by #1 New York Times bestselling author and guest editor Jess Walter and series editor Steph Cha.

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".

From one of the greatest writers of our age comes a collection of stories and parables unlocking the mysteries of the human condition. Gathered from Paulo Coelho’s daily column of the same name, Maktub, meaning “it is written,” invites seekers on a journey of faith, self-reflection, and transformation. As Paulo Coelho explains, “Maktub is not a book of advice—but an exchange of experiences.”

With this, his first collection of stories, Raymond Carver breathed new life into the American short story and instantly became both the recognized master of the form and one of our best-loved fiction writers. Carver shows us the humor and tragedy that dwell in the hearts of ordinary people; his stories are the classics of our time.

Marvelous creations, including a short story set in the world of The Matrix and others set in the worlds of gothic fiction and children's fiction, can be found in this extraordinary collection, which showcases Gaiman's storytelling brilliance as well as his entertaining (and dark) sense of humor.

At twenty one years old, Kandy Kane is young, and the epitome of beauty. Growing up in a small, town, called Gadsden, Alabama; she had everything she's ever wanted. As the only child, of a notorious Drug Lord; she never wanted for nothing. Unfortunately, everything changed ten years ago, when her father was brutally murdered by his best friend. Craving her old lifestyle, Kandy started using what she had, to get what she wanted. She knew she'd hit a diamond mine, after one freaky night with Dr. Nikolas Kane, he proposed the very next day. The doctor thought it was love at first sight; but in...