Asian Short Stories

Frances and Ginger Park, authors of both children's books and young adult novels, based this inspiring and deeply affecting tale on their own mother's childhood. Winner of the International Reading Association Award, My Freedom Trip features a courageous girl named Soo who makes a desperate bid for freedom by journeying from North Korea to South Korea. Her father awaits across the border, but to achieve her new life, Soo must leave her mother behind.

This fantasy and science fiction teen anthology edited by Samira Ahmed and Sona Charaipotra contains a wide range of stories from fourteen bestselling, award-winning, and emerging writers from the South Asian diaspora that will surprise, delight, and move you. So listen on, for after all, magic has no borders.

From Middle Eastern storyteller, Hussin Alkheder, comes a collection of short stories influenced by the four major cities he’s lived in: Damascus, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, and Shanghai. These four grand ladies have played important roles in his life journey. In the Four Ladies, we find three stories based in Damascus, the cradle of history: Hand Made Crutches makes us feel the suffering of a mother with four daughters and a disabled son; The Green Bus gives a glimpse of Damascus both before and after the war; Love in the Time of Corona portrays the way some Middle Eastern deal with the virus....

A boy searches for his father, a prison guard, on Sakhalin Island. In Barcelona, a woman is tasked with spying on a prizefighter who may or may not be her estranged son. A samurai escorts an orphan to his countrymen in the Edo Period. A formerly incarcerated man starts a new life in a small town in upstate New York and attempts to build a family. The Hive and the Honey is a “virtuosic” (Vanity Fair) collection by celebrated author Paul Yoon, one that portrays the vastness and complexity of diasporic communities, with each story bringing to light the knotty inheritances of their characters.

Opal Chen reunites with her Chinese sisters after forty years; newly cosmopolitan Lulu Koo wonders why Americans “like to walk around in the woods with the mosquitoes”; Hong Kong parents go to extreme lengths to reestablish contact with their “number-one daughter” in New York; and Betty Koo, brought up on “no politics, just make money,” finds she must reassess her mother’s philosophy. With their profound compassion and equally profound humor, these eleven linked stories trace the intimate ways in which humans make and are made by history.

THIS IS A SHORT STORY The Reliable Man is tasked with a highly political assassination in his own back yard. He's unsure whether to take the job but finally agrees. For this one he is planning to use the Sig Sauer SSG 3000 sniper rifle, not his usual weapon of choice but there are particular reasons why it is an effective tool. However, as always, things don't entirely go to plan.

Gripping and compassionate, Land of Big Numbers traces the journeys of the diverse and legion Chinese people, their history, their government, and how all of that has tumbled—messily, violently, but still beautifully—into the present. Cutting between clear-eyed realism and tongue-in-cheek magical realism, Chen’s stories coalesce into a portrait of a people striving for openings where mobility is limited.

Jie’s superior senses have made her the perfect lookout. Now, as the adopted daughter of the Black Lotus Clanmaster, she wants to prove her pointed ears aren’t a liability when she’s tasked to infiltrate a rebel lord’s castle. In this prequel novelette to Songs of Insurrection, Jie must decide between her duty to the emperor and her sense of compassion toward the downtrodden. No matter her choice, it will have explosive consequences for her, the realm, and the upcoming war.

Maurice Carlos Ruffin has an uncanny ability to reveal the hidden corners of a place we thought we knew. These perspectival, character-driven stories center on the margins and are deeply rooted in New Orleanian culture. These stories are intimate invitations to hear, witness, and imagine lives at once regional but largely universal, and undeniably New Orleanian, written by a lifelong resident of New Orleans and one of our finest new writers.

Christmas has never been more complicated! Goldie Gill works in a recruiting firm in Toronto and has had it with his mother's single-minded desire to see him married off to a nice girl. Goldie has no wish to find himself a nice girl - he is perfectly happy living the life and hanging out with his cat, Billy. It takes a chance encounter with a dusky, doe-eyed, scatter-brained beauty, just before Christmas, for Goldie to seriously reconsider his plans. But then, he learns that his meeting with the girl isn't a happy coincidence - somebody has been meddling. What is the conspiracy and how is ...

Former felon, Kelly Rhee works as a confidential informant with LAPD officer Jason Smith. The two had a romantic past, but Jason ended things early as he was afraid of being judged by his fellow officers for dating a felon. Months later, Kelly gives Jason a tip about a local drug deal in K-town. Afraid of gang blow back, Jason promises to Kelly that he would protect her. When the gang finds out that Kelly ratted, Jason saves her, only realizing his true love for her. To Protect and Serve an interracial AWBM short romance. It is for mature readers only.

In this eye-opening short story, a tech reporter’s mistake unites two women eight thousand miles apart. One in New Jersey, one in the Philippines. Same name: Sandra Guzman. Same job: content moderators for a mega social media website. What transpires between them is a friendship that changes their perceptions of each other’s privilege and challenges the power of the very industry they work for.

Kelly Song is primarily focused on finishing up her last year at UCLA. Her finals don't allow her the luxury to get into the latest K-Dramas like her friends can. To make matters even more laughable, they’re star-struck over many of the lead actors, which Kelly finds ridiculous.

It's just supposed to be for one night--EnJOY, the biggest K-Pop band in the world, is playing in New York and they need a make-up artist STAT. Like any good YouTuber, I need juicy content, and Desiree, the best assistant in the world, figures this will drag me out of the emotional slump I've been stuck in. But when Taemin and I meet, sparks fly... I don't want to jeopardize my career, so how can I say yes? And how could anyone in their right mind say no? This short erotic story features consenting adults doing the following: dubcon with D/s play, some S/M, front and back penetration with ...

THIS IS A CHRISTMAS SHORT STORY It’s 2019 and Bill Jedburgh, no longer the Reliable Man but still a gun for hire, has one last assignment to complete before he can eat his Christmas dinner. As he traverses the Swiss alps in search of his quarry, a carol forces him to remember the ghosts of past kills. But will a partridge in a pear tree elude him?

When nothing’s going right, someone’s gotta give. Three unusual stories of perseverance, tenacity and cleverness, with surprising endings. Dignity Formerly published in Writer's Guild. A journalist has a chance encounter with a young woman in a government office. The woman's disturbing past makes the journalist question everything she believes in and stands for. Paper Cut Formerly published in The Junction. In a rich neighbourhood of Mumbai, two scrap dealers are facing destitute times. Supply is limited, costs are rising, and they’re competing against each other on the same turf. But...

It's Christmas 1999 and the Reliable Man has taken time off from his usual work to spend the holidays with his buddy Ed Cleveland in Los Angeles. But before they get a chance to hit the hot nightspots there is another party going down at the airport ...

When a wealthy politician’s twelve-year-old son disappears, the family’s driver witnesses the aftermath. A field investigator for the World Health Organization travels the globe giving presentations about a biomedical enzyme that will lead to the extinction of the human race. And Father Augusto Saenz, the Jesuit priest and forensic anthropologist from Smaller and Smaller Circles, returns to investigate the murder of a woman whose secretive life holds the key to her death.

The collected fantasy stories of World Fantasy Award winner S.P. Somtow — a half century of his acclaimed work brought together in a single volume. From rural America to exotic Bangkok, from ancient history to contemporary times — and sometimes both within the same story — Somtow's world betray a limitless imagination and the finely honed writing that has brought him numerous awards during his half-century writing career. Beginning with his first fantasy story from the 1970s, Fire from the Wine-dark Sea to his most recent tales, this collection is a a treasure chest.

★A spine-chilling techno-thriller novella. For those who like their minds bent.★ Five went up the mountains. None returned. And it wasn’t the cold or the climb that killed them. At fifteen thousand feet, an army rescue operation finds buried underneath snow dunes five trekkers, dead in their campsite. One of the dead is Indian movie star Kirti Pandit. Another is her boyfriend, and the rest are her entourage. No one can say how they died. It could’ve been due to intense cold, perhaps the sudden snowstorm, or merely altitude sickness. Only, their symptoms were unusual. The snowfall ...