American Short

Queen Amira has suffered her husband's neglect and disdain since she came to be his wife. His attitude only softening the slightest bit with the birth of the two princes and heirs. With that, she has retained some of her power and love at court. But, she is still lonely and dreams of a true love of her own. Though she dare not dream it will ever come. King Deron loves women. His wife that was sent for him was barren for years. He thought he made a mistake in marrying her. He even took her lady as his mistress and had a child with her. A child that he flaunted under the queen's nose as he ...

Take a ride down Route 66 in a '55 Crown Vic. Shield your nose and eyes from the dust as Okies leave for California. Drink strong coffee in an all-night diner. Hear a haunting train whistle in Gallup, New Mexico. Investigate a death on old 66. Take a last ride on a faithful Apaloosa and watch the sunset over a majestic saquero cactus. Feel Andy Payne's pain as he pounds the road to New York. Lost on Route 66 is an anthology of essays and short stories about the fabled highway that is filled with mystery, suspense, adventure and humor. Don't miss it.

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.

“Short stories have to accomplish a nearly impossible magic trick: to introduce a world often much stranger than our own and make you care about it in a matter of pages,” writes R. F. Kuang in her introduction. “The most important part of this magic trick is just a willingness to get weird.” The stories in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023 are brimming with bizarre and otherworldly premises.

“The People Could Fly,” the title story in Virginia Hamilton’s prize-winning American Black folktale collection, is a fantasy tale of the slaves who possessed the ancient magic words that enabled them to literally fly away to freedom. And it is a moving tale of those who did not have the opportunity to “fly” away, who remained slaves with only their imaginations to set them free as they told and retold this tale.

Stepping Stone and Love Machine are but two of six fragments in the Crosstown to Oblivion short novels in which Walter Mosley entertainingly explores life’s cosmic questions. From life’s meaning to the nature of good and evil, these tales take us on speculative journeys beyond the reality we have come to know. In each tale, someone in our world today is given insight into these long pondered mysteries. But how would the world really receive the answers?

The American literary tradition has, in a far shorter span of time than others throughout history, achieved a glowing and glittering reputation. From its transatlantic roots it has absorbed the sons and daughters of other cultures, other lands and made them part of her own. Within this melting pot of styles, genres and wordplay one fact stands out: In the American short story, literary tradition has a strong, vibrant and almost inclusive history, if you know where to look.

It doesn't matter how good a person try to be... Dante Savage and Gary Mercier are two men who are in love with one woman. One had her, and another is set on making her his for life. But with one man out to take back his wife, what choice will Kohara Mercier make? In the midst of love, war of the heart, and betrayal, lessons are learned, hearts are broken, but in the end, a lifelong love will be found. Come along and journey on this tale of heartbreak, betrayal, and the cost of one's actions, in Stolen By A Savage 3 Books Collection.

In Temple Folk, Black Muslims contemplate the convictions of their race, religion, economics, politics, and sexuality in America. The ten “beautiful and vivid” (Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award­–winning and New York Times bestselling author) stories in this collection contribute to the bounty of diverse narratives about Black life by intimately portraying the experiences of a community that resists the mainstream culture to which they are expected to accept and aspire to while functioning within the country in which they are born.

A Spicy AMBW Interracial Romance Liya: When you're in a love drought, what would you do? Take up a new hobby? Travel somewhere you always wanted to? For me, it was hiring a male escort to accompany me for a night out in the city and all I can say, is that he was worth every penny. Kai: The first rule of being a male companion is to never let your feelings get involved with a client. It was an easy rule for me to follow, but that was until I got a request from a woman named Liya. Love Drought is a steamy interracial instalove romance that will make the perfect quickie in between longer works...

Deep within the cold, primordial forest and the Algonquin people's consciousness lives the Wendigo: a towering, emaciated being with translucent skin draped over its skeletal frame like a veil of mortality. Its hollow eyes gleam like fiery coals, emanating a malevolent crimson glow that mirrors its unquenchable craving for human flesh. An extraterrestrial shifter, stranded on our planet millennia ago, assumes the forms of not only humans but also hideous creatures in order to survive. The story of the Wendigo spans millennia, entwining native folklore with modern-day mysteries.

Ocean Ray is a country girl at heart but has no choice but to embrace the city life after losing her father. Moving to New York to live with her auntie was her mother’s best option for herself and her children until her mother passed away from cancer. Now that Ocean has learned the city, she is making new friends. Not being used to befriending people outside of her race, she will soon learn that a person’s color doesn’t determine their values. Even after several traumatizing experiences, Ocean finds herself falling for the one person who will never understand her struggle in life but ...

El 26 de octubre de 1949 el reportero Gabriel García Márquez fue enviado al antiguo convento de Santa Clara, que iba a ser demolido para edificar sobre él un hotel de cinco estrellas, a presenciar el vaciado de las criptas funerarias y a cubrir la noticia. Se exhumaron los restos de un virrey del Perú y su amante secreta, un obispo, varias abadesas, un bachiller de artes y una marquesa.

A collection of short stories, including many photos, of the author's experiences building, buying, enjoying, fixing, showing, racing, and selling classic cars, while being active in his local car culture as a family man. There is an underlying thread, which follows the successful build of a built-from-scratch fake Lotus 7 "Locost", a project which took over six years to be roadworthy. The author infuses some humor into the writing, but maintains an appreciation and respect for American car culture.

You know who I am You know what I can do I am something Get your mind out the gutter I am a Trillionaire And I am worth it I saw an angel I want an Heir My son hurt her in San Francisco He'd pay for hurting an angel And she will see what it means To be with a Real Man

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.”

John LeBrock is the greatest MMA fighter on Earth. He takes on all opponents and destroys them with ease. He is rich, good-looking, and oozes charisma. He wants for nothing, and life is good. John will soon find out that a seemingly perfect life can change in the blink of an eye. The MMA world champion will be given the opportunity to travel through a cosmic doorway that leads to the other side of the universe to a strange but beautiful world called Azura.

For those readers of his poetry and inspired by his increasingly vital work as advocate for rational land use and the right-size life, these stories of Wendell Berry's offer entry into the fictional place of value and beauty that is Port William, Kentucky. Berry has said it's taken a lifetime for him to learn to write like an old man, and that's what we have here, stories told with grace and ease and majesty. Wendell Berry is one of our greatest living American authors, writing with the wisdom of maturity and the incandescence that comes of love.

When Anna Tibbits' new brother-in-law refuses to honor his promise to also provide for her, she is cast out with only a few dollars to her name, nowhere to go and no way to earn a living. Desperate, she agrees to become a mail-order bride to a farmer in Coldwater Creek, Montana. With hope in her heart, she travels west, only to discover that the man she agreed to marry is not the kind of man he seemed to be in his letters. Glenn Pruitt, Coldwater Creek’s only doctor, has no plans to marry. He’s far too busy to court a woman, even if there was one in town he was interested in. But his ...

High school sweethearts, Monica and Robert fight to save their marriage when Robert decided to take his relationship with God seriously. His new commitment to his new found faith forces Monica to feel judged and alone. Refusing to support Roberts life changing efforts, Monica becomes rebellious and negligent as a wife and mother. She is desperate to keep her unhealthy marriage and questions the God who she feels is tearing them apart.