Asian Short Stories

To Chinese American teenager Chuntao, New Lake is a beautiful haven where she can hunt for treasures once swallowed up by a big flood. But when she’s caught scavenging by her biology teacher, a woman whose own past has been swept away, Chuntao is faced with an imponderable question: Which world was better - the ideal one she never knew or the destroyed one that now belongs to her?

THIS IS A SHORT STORY It's 2004 and Bill Jedburgh, formerly with the Royal Hong Kong Police but now a gun for hire, is visiting the island of Bohol to assassinate a prominent politician who is coming to visit. But then he is offered a Trifecta, three jobs all rolled into one. Will he be able to pull it off or will the Reliable Man's reputation be tarnished?

★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 ...

THIS IS A SHORT STORY It's 2003 and Bill Jedburgh, formerly of the Royal Hong Kong Police, is on a scuba diving holiday in Phuket, Thailand with his American buddy Ed Cleveland. After enjoying the nightlife for a few days they head out on a live-aboard to the Mergui Archipelago. But this dive trip is not going to end well.

THIS IS A SHORT STORY Bill Jedburgh, formerly of the Royal Hong Kong Police and now a gun for hire is chilling out in Phuket shortly before Christmas, enjoying the nightlife and teaching an Open Water Scuba Diving Course. He strikes up a friendship with a charming codger called Clarence who makes him an unusual proposition. The Reliable Man is inclined to help but when some dodgy Russian gangsters turn up and start muddying the waters his blood begins to boil.

THIS IS A SHORT STORY The Reliable Man is tasked to take out a corrupt banker in Frankfurt. Or so he thinks. As he starts doing his reconnaissance he comes to the notice of the German domestic intelligence agency. That is not a good thing and when bullets start flying, bodies start dropping and his anonymity comes under threat, Bill Jedburgh begins to get angry. Has someone set him up to be the fall guy?

I finally worked up the nerve to ask out Serenity, the cute little blonde girl from my college. The only problem is that the only way she'll date me is if I date her best friend Ada as well. I've never seen this girl before, but, for better or worse, I agree to date both of them...

These eight original tales by Chitra Soundar task two clever boys, Prince Veera and his best friend, Suku, with outwitting the kingdom's greediest, wiliest subjects.

To begin with Roderick Pang was dead. Dead as a door-nail. Bill Jedburgh meets three Ghosts and has to decide what the future might hold for him. His sniper rifles range from the Lee Enfield Enforcer with the Parker-Hale sight, across the Heckler & Koch PSG1 with the Brugget & Thomet optics and finally he gets to use the Barrett M82 with a Leupold sight. You might very well say: Bah, humbug!

THIS IS A SHORT STORY It's 2006 and Bill Jedburgh, formerly of the Royal Hong Kong Police but now a gun for hire, is having dinner by himself in Patpong, Bangkok, when a young lady comes along and makes him an indecent proposal. Will the Reliable Man decline the invitation or will he rise to the occasion?

It's 1999 and Bill Jedburgh, formerly of the Royal Hong Kong Police but now a gun for hire, is sent to Portugal to deal with a sensitive matter ahead of the handover of Macau to China. But who is he really working for? The Triads, some American mobsters, Singapore’s intelligence services or his old friend Harry Bolt?

THIS IS A SHORT STORY It's 1999 and Bill Jedburgh, formerly with the Royal Hong Kong Police but now a gun for hire, has flown up to Shanghai to sort out a tricky problem involving computers. At first it's a bit confusing but eventually Jedburgh gets his man. There are also four women involved but that's the least you expect when it comes to the Reliable Man.

Bill Jedburgh, formerly of the Royal Hong Kong Police but now a gun for hire, is tasked by Brigadier Wee of Singapore's Security & Intelligence Division to work with a man known as the Hairy Filipino. It should have been a simple assassination but, as often happens in life, the best laid plans of mice and spooks go oft awry.

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 SHORT STORY It's 1999 and Bill Jedburgh, formerly of the Royal Hong Kong Police but now a gun for hire, visits Kuala Lumpur to untangle a complication in his love life. A chance encounter in the Hard Rock Cafe leads to an unexpected assignment and a slew of dead bodies.

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.

We have all taken a rollercoaster ride on the ebb and flow of emotions. Moving on after leaving behind a crumbling relationship, a deceased partner or the forsaken past entails the fortitude nobody is born with. Janet James' new collection of short stories deal with liberation of the souls - freedom from the encased circumstances and the realization that every agony that beset us is orchestrated to teach us a lesson in life. The process through which we navigate the hostile circumstances chisels our personality and blooms us into an impeccable creature that we are destined to become.

Kirkus Reviews writes: "Two richly textured, captivating tales of inappropriate romance. Young's two tales explore families, school groups, and small towns beset by buried secrets and unspoken desires." Joseph and Mary: A Family Romance is set in Phoenix in 1978 and Rec Park: A Small-Town Romance in a coastal community outside of Los Angeles in the early years of the twenty-first century. These two short novels are by the author of the highly praised Blue and Other Stories.

Meng Jin’s critically acclaimed debut novel, Little Gods, was praised as “spectacular and emotionally polyphonic (Omar El-Akkad, BookPage), “powerful” (Washington Post), and “meticulously observed, daringly imagined” (Claire Messud). Now Jin turns her considerable talents to short fiction, in ten thematically linked stories.

From one of China’s most famous contemporary writers, here is a stunning collection of stories, selected from the best of Yu Hua’s early work, that shows his far-reaching influence on a pivotal period in Chinese literature. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Yu Hua and other young Chinese writers began to reimagine their national literature. Departing from conventional realism in favor of a more surreal and subjective approach inspired by Kafka, Faulkner, and Borges, the boundary-pushing fiction of this period reflected the cultural changes sweeping the world’s most populous nation.