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Psychology and Other Stories
By C. P. Boyko. 2012
FINALIST FOR THE ETHEL WILSON FICTION PRIZEFINALIST FOR THE VICTORIA BUTLER BOOK PRIZE"C.P. Boyko's second offering is brilliantly bold. Playful…
and dire and scholarly all at once, Psychology may well be the most audaciously original collection of Canadian fiction, ever. Mr. Mustard alone is worth the price of admission."-Bill Gaston, author of Mount Appetite"Very revealing."-Hubert T. Ross, PhD, PsyD, DPsyPsychologists are people we admire and resent. At best, they're compassionate detectives of the human soul, healers and diagnosticians, assessing the internal machinations that structure our lives and behavior. At worst, however, they're smug, hyper-educated, bombastic, yappy, socially deaf, thrice-divorced and twice-separated spouse-swapping cat-torturing perverts. Plus, they're all in this book. And so are their patients. C.P. Boyko's Psychology and Other Stories is replete with analysts, attorneys, criminals, Freudians, wardens, and self-help gurus. From Dr. Pringle's treatment-resisting young patient in "Reaction-Formation" to the philandering forensic psychiatrist of "The Blood-Brain Barrier," Psychology is a droll dissection of industry archetypes-as well as a brilliant study of mental illness, mental health, and the people who try to tell them apart.Trust Me
By John Updike. 1987
The theme of trust, betrayed or fulfilled, runs through this collection of short stories: Parents lead children into peril, husbands…
abandon wives, wives manipulate husbands, and time undermines all. Love pangs, a favorite subject of the author, take on a new urgency as earthquakes, illnesses, lost wallets, and deaths of distant friends besiege his aging heroes and heroines. One man loves his wife's twin, and several men love the imagined bliss of their pasts; one woman takes an impotent lover, and another must administer her father's death. Bourgeois comforts and youthful convictions are tenderly seen as certain to erode: "Man," as one of these stories concludes, "was not meant to abide in paradise."From the Trade Paperback edition.Bull Head
By John Vigna. 2012
"A heartbreaking portrait of what it means to be a man in a world where violence trumps reason, and bad…
decisions begin with good intentions. With wit, tenderness, and intelligence, Bull Head exposes the raw underbelly of male experience."-Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love StoryA line-dancing aficionado visits his brother in jail in hopes of mending their relationship, and instead discovers his own unwitting role in his brother's failed life. After the death of his wife and children, a logger tries to survive the Thanksgiving weekend on his own. A delinquent teen's life is changed forever by a work-camp placement with a violent older boy. A truck driver seeks sanctuary from his abusive wife in a fantasy world of strip clubs and personal ads.Bristling with restlessness and brutality, these linked stories set in the Pacific Northwest catapult readers into the gritty lives of social outcasts lost in purgatories of their own making. John Vigna tempers raw and at times cruel rural masculinity with graceful prose and breathtaking tenderness to illuminate the plight of men living in small towns and backwoods who belong neither to history nor the future. A startling homage to the great Southern Gothic tradition, Bull Head is a dazzling debut that heralds a powerful and exciting new literary voice.John Vigna is an alumnus of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His fiction and non fiction have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines. John lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife, writer Nancy Lee.Burning Chrome
By William Gibson. 1986
Best-known for his seminal sf novel Neuromancer, William Gibson is actually best when writing short fiction. Tautly-written and suspenseful, Burning…
Chrome collects 10 of his best short stories with a preface from Bruce Sterling, now available for the first time in trade paperback. These brilliant, high-resolution stories show Gibson's characters and intensely-realized worlds at his absolute best, from the chip-enhanced couriers of "Johnny Mnemonic" to the street-tech melancholy of "Burning Chrome."Instant Love
By Jami Attenberg. 2006
"We are all walking around this city with our hearts sadly swimming in our chests, like dying fish on the…
surface of a still pond. It's enough to make you give up entirely." --from Instant LoveBut we don't give up. We keep trying. We're either too stupid to learn from our mistakes or we honestly believe that the next time will be different; it's hard to say which. Driven by the mad hopefulness that is part of the human condition, we are constantly falling in and out of love with a slightly different version of the person who came before. Jami Attenberg chronicles those exact moments with heartbreaking realism in her powerful debut, Instant Love. Told through the eyes of three young women and their friends and lovers, Instant Love explores what it means to be in love, what it means to be lonely, and what it means to be both at the same time. Holly turns to computer dating to find love even as she thinks wistfully of a former boyfriend who loved her well and fed her ice cream. Maggie recounts the story of her one crazy summer to her disbelieving husband and feels the distance between them grow wider than the void across their king-sized bed. And Sarah Lee remembers the one who got away and the one she ran away from, all the while moving toward the one she can actually love.As Holly, Maggie, and Sarah Lee move through the rituals of modern love, they have to decide who is worth taking a chance on in a world where things don't fall into place easily, people are often difficult, and disappointment is the rule. Through their stories, Attenberg presents a rare, honest look at love.Also available as an eBook.From the Hardcover edition.At the Reunion Buffet
By Alexander Mccall Smith. 2015
In this warm, intelligently observed novella, Isabel Dalhousie, Alexander McCall Smith's wonderful heroine, learns valuable lessons about inviting the past…
(and everyone in it) back into your life.Isabel Dalhousie--philosopher, mother and friend--has generously agreed to host the opening dinner for her school reunion weekend. Twenty-five former classmates will descend upon her Edinburgh home, bringing with them new names new looks, and old reputations. While some see the reunion as an opportunity to forge new friendships and reaffirm old ones, others aren't interested in changing their minds about the past. One particular classmate, Barbara Grant, was known as an especially mean girl who bullied the others relentlessly. As hostess, Isabel feels compelled to help her guests on the path toward reconciliation, but bitter feelings and long-held secrets threaten to derail her efforts entirely. With her trademark insight and compassion, Isabel Dalhousie may find a way to navigate the treacherous waters of mean "girls", with mercy and forgiveness.Short Cuts: Selected Stories
By Raymond Carver. 1993
A movie tie-in edition to the brilliant new film by Robert Altman, based on these nine stories by Carver, "one…
of the great short story writers of our time--of any time" (Philadelphia Inquirer).Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose
By Raymond Carver. 2000
A VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES ORIGINAL A literary event: Raymond Carver's complete uncollected fiction and nonfiction, including the recently discovered "last" stories,…
found a decade after Carver's death and published here in book form for the first time. Call If You Need Me includes all of the prose previously collected in No Heroics, Please, four essays from Fires, and those five marvelous stories that range over the period of Carver's mature writing and give his devoted readers a final glimpse of the great writer at work. The pure pleasure of Carver's writing is everywhere in his work, here no less than in those stories that have alreadey entered the canon of modern literature.Death in Venice and other Tales
By Thomas Mann, Joachim Neugroschel. 1998
In this new, widely acclaimed translation that restores the controversial passages that were cut out of the original English version,…
"Death in Venice" tells about a ruinous quest for love and beauty amid degenerating splendor. This volume also includes eleven other stories by Mann. All of the stories collected here display Mann's inimitable use of irony, his subtle characterizations, and superb, complex plots.What We Talk About When We Talk About Love / Beginners
By Raymond Carver. 2009
A Vintage Shorts "Short Story Month" SelectionFrom one of the most celebrated short-story writers in American literature, the story that…
launched a thousand homages, in word and film--a haunting meditation on love and companionship, and finding one's way through the dark."What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is included here with its unedited version, "Beginners," which was originally submitted to Carver's editor, Gordon Lish. In this eShort, readers can compare both versions of this iconic work of fiction, gaining insight into Carver's aesthetic and the foundations of the contemporary American short story.In Another Country
By David Constantine. 2015
"I started reading these stories quietly, and then became obsessed, read them all fast, and started re-reading them again and…
again. They are gripping tales, but what is startling is the quality of the writing. Every sentence is both unpredictable and exactly what it should be. "—A. S. Byatt, The Guardian "Rich and allusive and unashamedly moving. "—The Independent "Spellbinding. "—The Irish Times "An uneasy blend of the exquisite and the everyday . . . the beatific, the ordinary, the rebarbative even, are almost indistinguishable . . . intelligent and well-turned. "—The Times Literary Supplement "Perhaps the finest of contemporary writers in this form. "—The Reader The first American publication by one of the greatest living fiction masters, In Another Country spans David Constantine's remarkable thirty-year career. Known for their pristine emotional clarity, their spare but intensely evocative dialogue, and their fearless exposures of the heart in moments of defiance, change, resistance, flight, isolation, and redemption, these stories demonstrate again and again Constantine's timeless and enduring appeal. David Constantine is an award-winning short story writer, poet, and translator. His collections of poetry include The Pelt of Wasps, Something for the Ghosts (shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Prize), Nine Fathom Deep, and Elder. He is the author of one novel, Davies, and has published four collections of short stories in the United Kingdom, including the winner of the 2013 Frank O'Connor Award, Tea at the Midland and Other Stories. He lives in Oxford, where, until 2012, he edited Modern Poetry in Translation with his wife Helen.Lovely, Dark, Deep
By Joyce Carol Oates. 2014
From the legendary literary master, winner of the National Book Award and New York Times bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates,…
a collection of thirteen spellbinding stories that maps the eerie darkness within us allInsightful, disturbing, and mesmerizing in their lyrical precision, the stories in Lovely, Dark, Deep display Joyce Carol Oates's astonishing ability to make visceral the fear, hurt, and uncertainty that lurks at the edges of ordinary lives.In "Mastiff," a woman and a man are joined in an erotic bond forged out of terror and gratitude. "Sex with Camel" explores how a sixteen-year-old boy realizes the depth of his love for his grandmother--and how vulnerable those feelings make him. Fearful that her husband is vanishing from their life, a woman becomes obsessed with keeping him in her sight in "The Disappearing." "A Book of Martyrs" reveals how the end of a pregnancy brings with it the end of a relationship. And in the title story, the elderly Robert Frost is visited by an interviewer, a troubling young woman who seems to know a good deal more about his life than she should.A piercing and evocative collection, Lovely, Dark, Deep reveals Joyce Carol Oates at her most imaginative and unsettling.The Whitechapel Fiend
By Maureen Johnson, Cassandra Clare. 2015
Jack the Ripper stalks through London, and only the Shadowhunters can stop him. One of ten adventures in Tales from…
the Shadowhunter Academy.Simon learns the truth behind the Jack the Ripper murders--"Jack" was stopped by Will Herondale and his institute of Victorian Shadowhunters.This standalone e-only short story follows the adventures of Simon Lewis, star of the #1 New York Times bestselling series The Mortal Instruments, as he trains to become a Shadowhunter. Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy features characters from Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments, Infernal Devices, and the upcoming Dark Artifices and Last Hours series. The Whitechapel Fiend is written by Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson.The Poison Eaters
By Holly Black. 2010
Pick your poison: Vampires, devils, werewolves, faeries, or . . . ? Find them all here in Holly Black's amazing…
first collection.In her debut collection, New York Times best-selling author Holly Black returns to the world of Tithe in two darkly exquisite new tales. Then Black takes readers on a tour of a faerie market and introduces a girl poisonous to the touch and another who challenges the devil to a competitive eating match. Some of these stories have been published in anthologies such as 21 Proms, The Faery Reel, and The Restless Dead, and many have been reprinted in many "Best of " anthologies.The Poison Eaters is Holly Black's much-anticipated first collection, and her ability to stare into the void-and to find humanity and humor there-will speak to young adult and adult readers alike.A Junior Library Guild Pick. Illustrated by Theo Black.Holly Black is the author of Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale (an ALA Best Book for Young Adults) and two related novels, Valiant (Norton Award winner) and New York Times bestseller Ironside. Her latest novel, Black Heart is the third of a new series, The Curseworkers. She and Tony DiTerlizzi created the best-selling Spiderwick Chronicles. Holly lives in Massachusetts with her husband, Theo, in a house with a secret library.Time Ages in a Hurry
By Martha Cooley, Antonio Tabucchi, Antonio Romani. 2014
As the collection's title suggests, time's passage is the fil rouge of these stories. All of Tabucchi's characters struggle to…
find routes of escape from a present that is hard to bear, and from places in which political events have had deeply personal ramifications for their own lives. Each of the nine stories in Time Ages in a Hurry is an imaginative inquiry into something hidden or disguised, which can be uncovered not by reason but only by feeling and intuition, by what isn't said. Disquieted and disoriented yet utterly human in their loves and fears, the characters in these vibrant and often playful stories suffer from what Tabucchi once referred to as a "corrupted relationship with history." Each protagonist must confront phantoms from the past, misguided or false beliefs, and the deepest puzzles of identity--and each in his or her own way ends up experiencing "an infinite sense of liberation, as when finally we understand something we'd known all along and didn't want to know."Going Anywhere
By David Armstrong. 2014
"Controlled, poetically laconic prose . . . a perfect distillation of the ways that grief seems unfathomably large and mysterious."--Lev…
Raphael, author of Rosedale in Love"Armstrong's characters are . . . elevated to the heights of tragedy through careful attention to detail and voice."--Las Vegas WeeklyThese stories occupy the space between dark realities and the fantastic leaps of faith people make to survive. Connecting them is the journey: people searching for solace, insight, purpose; gathering up their lives into discernible pieces of fact and conviction, hoping to get it right.David Armstrong had received many awards for his stories, which have been widely published in literary journals. He is fiction editor of Witness Magazine and a recipient of the Black Mountain Institute Fellowship.Confidence
By Russell Smith. 2015
"A poisonously funny portrait of the so-hip-it-hurts fashion, food, and bar scene. "--Maclean's In the stories of Confidence, there are…
ecstasy-taking PhD students, financial traders desperate for husbands, owners of failing sex stores, violent and unremovable tenants, aggressive raccoons, seedy massage parlors, experimental filmmakers who record every second of their day, and wives who blog insults directed at their husbands. There are cheating husbands. There are private clubs, crowded restaurants, psychiatric wards. There is one magic cinema and everyone has a secret of some kind. Russell Smith is the author of Girl Crazy and How Insensitive. Confidence is his US debut.Stranger Things Happen
By Kelly Link. 2001
"An alchemical mix of Borges, Raymond Chandler and Buffy the Vampire Slayer."--Salon.com (Best of the Year)"A delightful collection."--Cleveland Plain Dealer"My…
favorite fantasy writer."--Alan Cheuse, All Things Considered"Link's stories defy explanation, or at least, brief summary, instead working on the plane between dream and cognitive dissonance. They are true to themselves: witty, beautiful, funny, and startling."--Rain Taxi"Link uses the nonsensical to illuminate truth, blurring the distinctions between the mundane and the fantastic to tease out the underlying meanings of modern life."--Booklist "The 11 fantasies in this first collection from rising star Link are so quirky and exuberantly imagined that one is easily distracted from their surprisingly serious underpinnings of private pain and emotional estrangement."--Publishers WeeklyKelly Link's collection of stories, Stranger Things Happen, really scores.--Daniel Mendelsohn, New York Magazine"A tremendously appealing book, and lovers of short fiction should fall over themselves getting out the door to find a copy."--Washington Post Book World"Stylistic pyrotechnics light up a bizarre but emotionally truthful landscape. Link's a writer to watch."--Kirkus Reviews"A set of stories that are by turns dazzling, funny, scary, and sexy, but only when they're not all of these at once. Kelly Link has strangeness, charm and spin to spare. Writers better than this don't happen."--Karen Joy Fowler"Kelly Link is probably the best short story writer currently out there, in any genre or none. She puts one word after another and makes real magic with them-funny, moving, tender, brave and dangerous. She is unique, and should be declared a national treasure, and possibly surrounded at all times by a cordon of armed marines."--Neil Gaiman"Kelly Link is the exact best and strangest and funniest short story writer on earth that you have never heard of at the exact moment you are reading these words and making them slightly inexact. Now pay for the book."--Jonathan LethemThe eleven stories in Kelly Link's debut collection are funny, spooky, and smart. They all have happy endings. They were all especially written for you. A Best of the Year pick from Salon.com, Locus, The Village Voice, and San Francisco Chronicle. Includes Nebula, World Fantasy, and Tiptree award-winning stories.Kelly Link is the author of three collections of short fiction Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, and Pretty Monsters. Her short stories have won three Nebula, a Hugo, and a World Fantasy Award. She was born in Miami, Florida, and once won a free trip around the world by answering the question "Why do you want to go through the world?" ("Because you can't go through it.")Link lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, run Small Beer Press, co-edit the fantasy half of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and play ping-pong. In 1996 they startd the occasional zine Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet.Mr. Right Is Dead
By Rona Jaffe. 1965
Often regarded as her finest and most literary work, Mr. Right Is Dead is Rona Jaffe's collection of short stories…
from 1965. Containing five stories and one novella, each story has the savvy and sharp tone that characterize the best of Rona Jaffe's writing. The title novella centers on a call girl with "a heart of gold," who acquires lovers and money with her innocent charm, and closes with "Rima The Bird Girl," about a woman who assumes a new identity each time she has an affair. Each story carries its own unique and engaging voice; altogether they are about women looking for self-fulfillment and salvation through lovers, money, and fleeting worldly pleasures. Mr. Right Is Dead is about those searching desperately for "the best of everything" and learning a great deal about love, and its falsities, along the way.Problems with People
By David Guterson. 2014
Ten sharply observed, funny, and wise new stories from the best-selling author of Snow Falling on Cedars: stunning explorations of…
the mysteries of love and our complex desire for connection. Ranging from youth to old age, the voices that inhabit Problems with People offer tender, unexpected, and always tightly focused accounts of our quest to understand each other, individually, and as part of a political and historical moment. These stories are shot through with tragedy--the long-ago loss of a young boyfriend, a son's death at sea; poignant reflections upon cultural and personal circumstances--whether it is being Jewish, overweight and single, or a tourist in a history-haunted land; and paradigmatic questions about our sense of reality and belonging. Spanning diverse geographies--all across America, and in countries as distant as Nepal and South Africa--these stories showcase David Guterson's signature gifts for characterization, psychological nuance, emotional and moral suspense, and evocations of small-town life and the natural world. They celebrate the ordinary yet brightening surprises that lurk within the dramas of our daily lives, as well as the return of a contemporary American master to the form that launched his astonishing literary career. From the Hardcover edition.