Anthologies & Short Stories

Book SynopsisBrings to the forefront immigrant women making their way in the world as mothers, wives, as outliers, and as rebels.Table of ContentsHome Fires The Secret Women of Vietnam The Bonny Hills of Scotland Almost Theides Temporary Shelters Chiaroscuro Isfahan Is Half The World Triptych, With Interruptions The Gentle Cycle Tintinnabulations Simulacra

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Book SynopsisA compelling and varied compilation that pays testament to a master writer.

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Book SynopsisStunning collection of stories engaging with the nuance of African women’s histories.Table of ContentsRed Cloth, White Giraffe Second Place is the First Loser Home Became a Thing with Thorns The Carnivore's Lollipop Swimming with Crocodiles Ugly Hamsters: A Triptych Plumtree: true stories The Friendship Bench Water Bites Back Turtle Heart The Soul Would Have No Rainbow Three Deaths & The Ocean of Time When Death Comes to Find You Drinking from Graveyard Wells Acknowledgements

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2020 Drue Heinz Literature Prize.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"You'll sense, by the end [of The Image ], that even in our age of mechanical reproduction there is more than matter mixed in with the mortar and more than happenstance in these disparate lives arranged in a strange and mysterious union." National Catholic Register"When you begin reflecting on the themes of the bookthe way Faulkner has lined up his artistic effects, the depiction of the course of events over the centuries of the narrativea much larger picture emerges, dare I say an iconic one." Catholic World Report

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Book SynopsisComprising stories from other volumes as well as never-before-published tales, this collection of short stories mixes wit with warmth. Anderson's rich characters are set against a range of locations and time periods, from New Zealand's country farms of the mid-20th century to contemporary hair salons and everything in between.Trade ReviewBarbara Anderson is a born writer." — Nick Hornby, author, About a Boy and A Long Way Down

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Book SynopsisIn this eclectic compendium of translated international stories, a wide range of voices present connections with different ethnicities and provide an opportunity to see the world in a new light. From Spain and Switzerland to Korea, Tahiti, and Mexico, these multicultural stories include a young boy from a backcountry town who struggles with the mysteries and inconsistencies of adult behavior, a French mayor and his community who try desperately to maintain the appearance of normalcy, a scrawny rooster who turns out to be a champion cock fighter, and a young girl who travels to Seoul and is dazzled and disappointed by what she finds. Filled with fresh voices, many of which appear in English for the first time, this collection is a memorable literary sojourn around the world.

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Book SynopsisBrings together award-winning poet and author Geoff Cochrane's two slim volumes of short stories, originally published in limited editions, his early novella Quest Clinic, and more recent stories.

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Book SynopsisWinner of the Rea Award for Short Fiction Winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters’ Prize for Fiction Finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award "A rare and true master" (Richard Ford), the celebrated author of The Light in the Piazza returns with these spellbinding stories.Trade Review"There seems to be nothing this extraordinary writer can’t do… Spencer recounts the details and doings of her characters in such spare, unfussy, almost conversational prose that she sounds at first like nothing so much as a shrewd family storyteller…. Spencer’s great gift is her ability to take ordinariness and turn it inside out, to find focus in a muddle…Dazzling…a work of genius." -- Malcolm Jones - New York Times Book Review"Spencer [is] an elegant and subtle writer.… Like Chekhov, the moments of most acute misery—those achingly common things that nearly kill us all—are offstage.… There are nine stories here, all wonderful, subtle and complex—which makes the cumulative effect all the more alarming." -- Ann Beattie - San Francisco Chronicle"Spencer’s stories dance with the illusion of happiness but swell with unspoken sadness. Humor bubbles to the surface in the most unexpected ways …but that humor, too, is fragile….Starting Over is a veritable Whitman’s sampler of bite-sized stories stitched together by their shared stillness." -- Michelle Moriarity Witt - The Charlotte Observer"She is, as she ever was, one of America’s best short story writers, with her invention and craft undimmed. Next time they bring out Spencer’s Selected Fiction they will have to wedge in at least two more masterpieces from Starting Over." -- Wilton Barnhardt - Slate"Spencer’s first work of fiction, a novel titled Fire in the Morning, was published in 1948, and, as affirmed by her new collection of short fiction, these many years have not dulled the sharpness of her prose nor inched her into out-of-date perceptions of the world. Grand dame of southern letters that Spencer is, she remains a vital, passionate, contemporary-issues writer. [These stories] show the control and ease of a master; each story has superb qualities of artistry and social relevance." -- Brad Hooper - Booklist (starred review)"Spencer has a special gift for the nuances in 'ordinary' human relationships; she creates suspense via anticipation more than through interactions themselves…. Spencer’s strength lies in highlighting human truths in captured moments." -- Publishers Weekly"Spencer’s elegant stories are more about what doesn’t happen than what does…. Quiet and spare prose ferries tiny but explosive clues which point to powerful insights lurking between the lines…. In Spencer’s world, the emotional debt ceiling is always on the rise." -- Kirkus Reviews

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Book SynopsisLonglisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award Brooklyn is dead. Long live the Bronx! In Bitter Bronx, Jerome Charyn returns to his roots and leads the literary renaissance of an oft-overlooked borough in this surprising new collection.Trade Review"A borough native wrestles with con men, gangsters and the biggest villain of all—Robert Moses…. One is left with no doubt that Jerome Charyn’s shriek, his war cry, his own peculiar music, was born [in the Bronx]." -- Abraham Socher - Wall Street Journal"[Jerome Charyn] is to the Bronx what Saul Bellow, early in his career, was to Upper Broadway—bard, celebrant, mythologizer." -- Jonathan Yardley - Washington Post"It is no small achievement to be the Babel of the Bronx." -- Leslie Epstein - New York Times Book Review"Sharp-edged short stories…Charyn’s narrative sleight of hand is wonderfully at play…. Despite the hard edges, and there are many, a rich sweetness flows just below the surface of Bitter Bronx." -- Wendell Jamieson - New York Times Book Review"[T]here are certain constants in Charyn’s work: an energetic, urbane prose, a playful approach to narrative, a fascination with history, and a downbeat, noir-ish perspective. This fatalistic outlook coexists comfortably with the ebullient verve and propulsion of his prose…. Whether writing about Yiddish theatre or silent film or movie palaces or old Bronx neighborhoods, Charyn is the curator, celebrant, and mourner of lost worlds…. The prose impresses with its accumulation of apt details, fresh diction, and serpentine syntax…. Is Charyn truly a romantic or a trickster? Hard to say on the basis of these entertaining stories: probably both. They are written with confidence, fluidity, mischievous aplomb, and a lifetime’s worth of acquired literary skill. A light ironic touch peeps through these tales of doomed passion, as though the septuagenarian Charyn were mocking his own former searching for a movie-type love, his previous ‘constant adolescence’ of hungering for dream women." -- Phillip Lopate - New York Review of Books"In this collection of stories, Charyn’s characters leave blighted streets only to boomerang back to a part of New York ‘in permanent recession.’ With echoes of Walt Whitman’s fantastical city and the hard-broiled territory of Mickey Spillane, Bitter Bronx elevates the borough’s stoops and sidewalks into the realm of myth." -- O Magazine"Jerome Charyn is one of the most important writers in American literature." -- Michael Chabon"Jerome Charyn is merely one of our finest writers, with a polymorphous imagination and crack comic timing. Whatever milieu he chooses to inhabit, his characters sizzle with life, and his sentences are pure vernacular music, his voice unmistakable." -- Jonathan Lethem"Memories and imagination mingle to particularly edgy and bewitching effect in [Charyn’s] Bronx fables, which echo the Jewish gangster stories in The Odessa Tales by Isaac Babel…. Charyn’s dark, sexy, droll, and lacerating urban folktales of gangster tyranny, thwarted desire, and desperate measures are wizardly and bittersweet." -- Donna Seaman - Booklist, Starred review"Charyn, like Nabokov, is that most fiendish sort of writer—so seductive as to beg imitation, so singular as to make imitation impossible." -- Tom Bissell"Jerome Charyn's Bronx is a landscape of magic and passion. With…American yearning and a stage full of unforgettable characters." -- BookPage"Grifters, gangs, vamps, and lost souls pursue gritty lives in ‘the brick wilderness of the Bronx’ in this collection of tales by a veteran storyteller and native of the New York borough…. Charyn's staccato style is full of jolts, surprising observations, and turns of phrase. It works well with the rough struggle for survival and success…." -- Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review"Tough on the outside but tender at heart, the 13 stories in this volume serve as a nostalgic elegy to the Bronx of the past…. Mixing equal parts grit and charm, there’s no need to have set foot in the Bronx to enjoy these stories." -- Publishers Weekly"With an almost breathless style, Charyn gives readers compelling characters who are restless, reckless and desperate…. Every single tale here is short, brutal, harrowing, heartbreaking, mesmerizing and altogether unforgettable." -- Sarah Rachel Egelman - Bookreporter.com"Charyn constructs hella work, powerful images in condensed language. While some stories are set in the near or distant past, others feel timeless to the point of taking place just yesterday." -- Douglas Lord - Library Journal

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Book SynopsisA collection of 13 early stories from the 1930s and 1940s.Trade Review... fascinating to see a splendid talent grow its wings... - John Updike ""This is still a book well worth having, showing the earliest work of a writer who went on to greater things but who even in his creative youth showed ample evidence of his gifts. It is always good to see a great writer advancing in his craft..."" - Publishers Weekly ""A fascinating example of one writer's beginning..."" - Library Journal

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Book SynopsisHailed by Frank O''Connor as one of 'the greatest living storytellers,' J. F. Powers, who died in 1999, stands with Eudora Welty, Flannery O''Connor, and Raymond Carver among the authors who have given the short story an unmistakably American cast. In three slim collections of perfectly crafted stories, published over a period of some thirty years and brought together here in a single volume for the first time, Powers wrote about many things: baseball and jazz, race riots and lynchings, the Great Depression, and the flight to the suburbs. His greatest subject, however—and one that was uniquely his—was the life of priests in Chicago and the Midwest. Powers''s thoroughly human priests, who include do-gooders, gladhanders, wheeler-dealers, petty tyrants, and even the odd saint, struggle to keep up with the Joneses in a country unabashedly devoted to consumption.These beautifully written, deeply sympathetic, and very funny stories are an unforgettable record of the prec

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Book SynopsisIn her short lifetime, Flannery O’Connor became one of the most distinctive American writers of the twentieth century. By birth a native of Georgia and a Roman Catholic, O’Connor depicts, in all its comic and horrendous incongruity, the limits of worldly wisdom and the mysteries of divine grace in the “Christ-haunted” Protestant South. This Library of America collection, the most comprehensive ever published, contains all of her novels and short-story collections, as well as nine other stories, eight of her most important essays, and a selection of 259 witty, spirited, and revealing letters, twenty-one published here for the first time.Her fiction brilliantly explores the human obsession with seemingly banal things. It might be a new hat or clean hogs or, for Hazel Motes, hero of Wise Blood (1952), an automobile. “Nobody with a good car needs to be justified,” Hazel assures himself while using its hood for a pulpit to preach

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Book SynopsisThis second Library of America volume of Washington Irving brings together for the first time three collections of his stories and sketches. Written at the peak of his popularity, these three works reveal Irving’s remarkable diversity, his skill at adapting European legends to his own style, and the talent for entertainment that made him America’s first literary celebrity.Bracebridge Hall (1822) was published, like The Sketch Book, under the pseudonym Geoffrey Crayon, and centers on an English manor, its inhabitants, and the tales they tell. Interspersed with witty, evocative sketches of country life among the English nobility is the well-known tale “The Stout Gentleman” and stories based on English, French, and Spanish folklore, vividly recounted with Irving’s inimitable blend of elegance and colloquial dash. Tales of a Traveller (1824), written after a year-long stay in Germany, is a pivotal work i

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Book SynopsisIn The Pilot (1824) and The Red Rover (1828), James Fenimore Cooper invented a new literary genre: the sea novel. Collected here in a single Library of America volume, they are among his finest works. Bold, vigorous, original, each is a tale of high adventure that vividly captures the majesty and power of the seafaring life. Cooper drew on his direct knowledge of ships and sailors to present a truer picture of life on the sea than had ever before achieved in literature. As a boy of seventeen he had sailed before the mast on a merchantman bound from New York to London and then to Spain. On board he experienced the life of a common seaman, learned the craft of sailing, encountered terrifying storms, was chased by pirates, and watched the impressment of crew members by a British man-of-war. He later served as an officer in the United States Navy.The Pilot is loosely based upon stories of John Paul Jones’s daring hit-

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Book SynopsisThis Library of America volume, with its companion, brings together for the first time all of Zora Neale Hurston’s best writing in one authoritative set. When she died in poverty and obscurity in 1960, all of her books were out of print. Today Hurston’s groundbreaking works, suffused with the culture and traditions of African Americans and the poetry of black speech, have won her recognition as one of the most significant modern American writers.Hurston’s fiction is free-flowing and frequently experimental, exuberant in its storytelling and open to unpredictable and fascinating digressions. Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934), based on the lives of her parents and evoking in rich detail the world of her childhood, recounts the rise and fall of a powerful preacher torn between spirit and flesh in an all-black town in Florida.“There is no book more important to me than this one,” novelist Alice Walker has written about Th

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