American Short

Most people love Atlanta, but Diamond isn’t most people. The first chance she got, she left Atlanta behind to live her best college life in Maryland, but the past has a way of showing up uninvited-rude as hell-when you least expect it. What is supposed to be a long overdue, yet quick trip home for the holidays turns out to be chaos and confusion. One thing’s for sure: this will be a holiday Diamond never forgets. Breon is a man of few words, but much action and long paper. When he meets Diamond, he’s ready to lock her down, cut all his hoes loose and make her his main chick. But ...

A piercingly raw debut story collection from a young writer with an explosive voice; a treacherously surreal and, at times, heartbreakingly satirical look at what it's like to be young and black in America.

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.

This is Raymond Carver's third collection of stories, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, including the canonical titular story about blindness and learning to enter the very different world of another. The 12 stories in Cathedral mark a turning point in Carver's work.

With a diverse selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor Rebecca Roanhorse, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022 explores the ever-expanding and changing world of contemporary science fiction and fantasy.

Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, and an intriguing interpretation of British history - these are just some of the themes embraced by the anonymous authors of the eleven tales that make up the Welsh medieval masterpiece known as The Mabinogion. They tell of Gwydion the shape-shifter, who can create a woman out of flowers; of Math the magician whose feet must lie in the lap of a virgin; of hanging a pregnant mouse and hunting a magical boar.

Lovers Rock stars Jamaica: its language, its landscape, its vibe, its humor, its edge and its persistent, dogged beauty. These seven stories imagine strange, quirky, familiar and delicious encounters between people in search of romantic love in the twenty-first century. Featuring characters from of all walks of life, each story is connected by the unique vibe of Jamaican desire.

“Imparting some piece of yourself—any part—is arduous and warrants some kind of commendation,” writes guest editor Wesley Morris in his introduction. Both personal and personable, the essayists in this volume use their own vulnerability to guide listeners on excursions that unfold on uncomfortable edges. From contemplating the nuances of memory to exploring the complexities of family, romance, gender identity, illness, and death, Morris’s selection of essays presents a roundup of the thinkers who masterfully grapple with the issues of our time.

“These are dangerous stories. The kind that warp reality and threaten to change the world” warns guest editor Hugh Howey in his introduction. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024 promises a treasure trove of audacious characters, daring worldbuilding, and twisted realties. A sibling duo of supernatural hitmen. A traveling spellbreaker and his trusty alligator mount. Superheroes registering for work. Sentient spaceships with an AI-human interface grow up together with their human pilots.

In the nine expansive, searching stories of A Lucky Man, fathers and sons attempt to salvage relationships with friends and family members and confront mistakes made in the past.

His Name is Snake. He Wants to Be King of the Streets. He’s put in the work and is on his way up in the drug game. When he meets Charity Jones, a sexy, younger white woman, his world is shaken to the core. His crew, his baby mama, and even his mother do NOT want him to get in a relationship with Charity. Her name is at odds with his career. After a night of passion, they fall for each other. Come what may, they are determined to make the best of what they have in their life. Will they be able to escape the dope game? BMWW Interracial Romance

From early slave rebels to radical reformers of the Civil War era and beyond, the struggle to end slavery was a diverse, dynamic, and ramifying social movement. In this succinct narrative, Richard S. Newman examines the key people, themes, and ideas that animated abolitionism in the 18th and 19th centuries in the United States and internationally. Filled with portraits of key abolitionists - including Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Anthony Benezet, Toussaint L'Ouverture, Elizabeth Heyrick, Richard Allen, and Angelina Grimke - the book highlights abolitionists' focus on social and political action.

Ranging from the earliest Native American settlers to the presidency of Barack Obama, this Very Short Introduction offers an illuminating account of politics, diplomacy, and war as well as the full spectrum of social, cultural, and scientific developments that shaped our country.

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.

Meet the women of American Housewife: They wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it's cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. They pump the salad spinner like it's a CPR dummy. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies out of the oven. These 12 irresistible stories take us from a haunted prewar Manhattan apartment building to the set of a rigged reality television show, from the unique initiation ritual of a book club to the getaway car of a pageant princess on the lam.

J Jackson Bentley and others have contributed their American homeland short stories for this anthology. There are thrillers, murder mysteries and feel good dramas. Beautifully written and descriptive they are each a mini novel in the vein of the traditional and much loved short story writers of yesteryear. JJB kicks off the book with a tribute to the Great American Short Story, reminding us all of the great stories we now take for granted and which have spawned films and TV series that we know and love. The essay also pays homage to graphic novels and comics. There are fifteen stories ...

Concrete Roses – A Powerful Story of Love, Redemption, and Second Chances 💎 He’s fighting for a new life. She’s sworn off love. But some battles are worth the risk. 💎 After spending years behind bars, Tyrell Johnson is determined to turn his life around. He’s staying clean, keeping his head down, and trying to rebuild the relationships he lost—including the one with his children. But the streets of Dallas aren’t quick to forget, and neither are the people from his past. Enter Evelyn Serrano, a sharp-minded, no-nonsense retired detective who’s seen too many men like Ty ...

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.

*ALSO AVAILABLE AS PART OF A BOX SET* Do you like true crime stories? You should love these tales then Originally authentic police files, True American Crime Stories are from the 1920s through to the 1950s - the era of gangster, molls and prohibition. Almost (but not quite), lost in the mists of time, these tales romp along with plenty of action and recreate the atmosphere of this exciting and dangerous era using the vernacular of the times. You may not have heard much about some of these bad guys, but they were real, ruthless hoodlums and all had their "15 minutes of fame", leaving trails ...

At once fiercely immediate and complex in their implications, “The Shawl” and “Rosa” succeed in imagining the unimaginable: the horror of the Holocaust and the emptiness of its aftermath. They were written in 1977 but were first published in the early 1980s in The New Yorker. Both “The Shawl” and “Rosa” won first prize in the O. Henry Prize Stories and were chosen for Best American Short Stories.