Showing results by narrator "Cindy Kay" in All Categories

A collection of the year’s best short stories, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Sean Greer and series editor Heidi Pitlor.

Most will see only a cosy ramen restaurant. And just the chosen ones – those who are lost – will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets. Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop's new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike other customers. For he offers help, instead of seeking it.

Tokyo, 1979. Yoriko Shindo, a workhorse of a woman who has been an outcast her whole life, is kidnapped and dragged to the lair of the Naiki-kai, a branch of the yakuza. After she savagely fends off a throng of henchmen in an attempt to escape, Shindo is only permitted to live under one condition: that she will become the bodyguard and driver for Shoko Naiki, the obsessively sheltered daughter of the gang’s boss.

Grace M. Cho grew up as the daughter of a White American merchant marine and the Korean bar hostess he met abroad. They were one of few immigrants in a xenophobic small town during the Cold War, where identity was politicized by everyday details - language, cultural references, memories, and food. When Grace was 15, her dynamic mother experienced the onset of schizophrenia. Tastes Like War is a hybrid text about a daughter’s search through intimate and global history for the roots of her mother’s schizophrenia.

Since Peaches woke up in a fantasy world full of monsters and fae, she’s been treated like a piece of tasty human meat. After six years as a blood slave to vampires and the evil Unseelie queen—beholden to all, and master of none—there’s nothing left but a broken shell with a fractured soul. Until a deadly warrior turns up unannounced in her room. Vampire Haze is the muscle of the Fae Guardians elite cadre of 12. He is a spy, a protector of the weak, hammer and sword, a rigid enforcer of rules. He allows no one close to his heart, lest they see the shame driving him.

In Let the Samurai Be Your Guide, life coach and motivational speaker Lori Tsugawa Whaley traces the far-reaching legacy of the Samurai and their meaning in the modern world. The Bushido - the traditional code of the Samurai - has permeated all aspects of life and society in Japan, and its influences are still deeply felt today. In contemporary Japan, bushido concepts of bravery and skill in battle are now brought to bear on less martial realms, in the corporate and sports worlds, for example.

Every action has a consequence, and Claire Ward knows it. And yet, even knowing that her decision to swap places with her identical twin sister, Lia, for a night could be disastrous, she still does it. Why? Because it will give her an evening with the man she’s been crushing on for years, Lia’s best friend, Finn. Miss Straight-A Student has thought through all the angles. And everything would have been fine if Finn had been the one to show up at her door. But it wasn’t. Bauer Davis - Finn’s half brother and his exact opposite...is the one waiting for her instead.

In her second collection from Trepidatio Publishing, award-winning author Gemma Files takes her listeners on journeys out beyond safe borders—from the trackless depths of the sea, to the empty desert frontiers of the Weird West, even to the edges of cracks between worlds. Here, in these narrow spaces between the known and the unknown, behind the paper-thin curtains of reality, lurk monsters both human and ancient: selkies and avenging revenants, voodoo priestesses and pirate sorcerers, ghosts and vampires, and the most famous murderer of all time.

Set in the fictional town of Steeplejack, nestled in the Bitterroot Mountains, Hazel Mackenzie provides law enforcement with sketch art and victim reconstruction following suspected crimes. Hazel is catapulted from observer to participant when her husband dies in an accident and then soon after, her gay twin brother Kento is shot by a member of Steeplejack's growing anti-LGBTQ community during a gender reveal party for his child.

New York City, 1953: Louise Leithauser's star is on the rise. She's filed some of the best pieces at her boyfriend Joe's brand-new literary magazine, Downtown (albeit under a male pseudonym), her relationship still makes her weak at the knees, and the science-fiction romance she's writing on the side, "The Lunar Housewife," is going swimmingly. But when she overhears Joe and his business partner fighting about listening devices and death threats, Louise can't help but investigate, and she quickly finds herself wading into dangerous waters.

Princess Lina has a life any kid would envy. She lives in a massive palace in the clouds. Everyone in her family has the power to control the wind and weather. On a good day, she can even fly! She loves making lemons into lemon ice, riding wind gusts around the sky, and turning her bedroom into a real life snow globe. There's just one thing Lina wants: to go to regular, non-magical school with her best friend Claudia.

In the village of Yiwei, a fallen wasp nest unfurls into a beautifully accurate map. In a field in Louisiana, birdwatchers forge an indelible connection over a shared glimpse of a Vermilion Flycatcher, and fall. In Nineveh, a judge who prides himself on impartiality finds himself questioned by a mysterious god. On a nameless shore, a small monster searches for refuge and finds unexpected courage.

The heavenly defenses struggle to hold against the combined might of the Eastern and Western demon hordes. The god of War Xuan Wu is now at full strength - but is his might enough to safeguard the realm when half the heavens are already in their hands? John and Emma fight a last-ditch desperate struggle to conserve their kingdom and their protect their families.

In the Alaskan wilderness, there’s only one way to track a serial killer: a K-9. For police captain Bre Dayton, that means working with her ex, search and rescue worker Griffin Knight. With her niece missing and possibly kidnapped, Bre has to find the murderer known as the Echo Pass Hunter—fast. Even if it means trusting the man who broke her heart…and putting herself in the killer’s crosshairs.

A vow. A contract. A marriage of fire and ice. But just when Eric de Vries and I found our forever, the entire world conspired to keep us apart. A kidnapping. A trial. A madman bent on revenge. Now caught in a web of our own passion and a father's obsession, the harder we struggle, the tighter we're caught. They say love conquers all, but it feels like we're the conquest. As the walls close in, I have to wonder...are we really meant to be? Or is this love just a trap?

Deputy fire chief Oliver Wolfe had everything he ever wanted. A beautiful wife, two adorable (if rambunctious) sons, a job he loved, a comfortable home, and family and friends in his hometown of St. Caroline, Maryland…until the day he had to stand by helplessly and watch his wife’s unconscious body get cut from the mangled wreckage of her car.

In 11 propulsive and deeply felt chapters, Chai recounts her investigations into SARS quarantine wards, a childhood suicide epidemic, the human cost of industrial pollution, and organized crime, while looking back at her growth as a journalist. Chai Jing shares the philosophical and emotional complexity of the ethical challenges that are always present in such revealing reporting, while she also finds hope and purpose, time and again, in the vital and intimate stories of her interviewees.

How does time shape consciousness and consciousness, time? Do we live in time, or does time live in us? Uncommon Measure explores these questions from the perspective of a young Korean American who dedicated herself to perfecting her art until performance anxiety forced her to give up the dream of becoming a concert solo violinist. Anchoring her story in neuroscience and quantum physics, Natalie Hodges traces her own passage through difficult family dynamics, prejudice, and enormous personal expectations to come to terms with the meaning of a life reimagined.

Sirscha Ashwyn comes from nothing, but she's intent on becoming something. After years of training to become the queen's next royal spy, her plans are derailed when shamans attack and kill her best friend, Saengo. And then Sirscha, somehow, restores Saengo to life. Unveiled as the first soulguide in living memory, Sirscha is summoned to the domain of the Spider King. For centuries, he has used his influence over the Dead Wood - an ancient forest possessed by souls - to enforce peace between the kingdoms.

When racist curriculum "goes viral" on social media, it is typically dismissed as an isolated incident from a "bad" teacher. Educator Bree Picower, however, holds that racist curriculum isn't an anomaly. It's a systemic problem that reflects how Whiteness is embedded and reproduced in education. In Reading, Writing, and Racism, Picower argues that White teachers must reframe their understanding about race in order to advance racial justice and that this must begin in teacher education programs.