Anthologies & Short Stories

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Book SynopsisMicro-stories of modern monsters and other horrors.This collection of twenty-six dark but often humorous short stories features a pantheon of disturbed and disturbing characters, human and otherwise. Many of the stories are modern takes on classic monsters crafted with twisted plots and Twilight Zone-esque endings. For example, ""Wolfman and Janice"" is about a werewolf who is doing the best he can under very trying circumstances, especially when confronted with eating his elderly neighbor's cat. There's an adolescent vampire-wannabe who is suffering badly: in love for the first time. ""Frankenstein and His Mother"" is a terrifying story of a grown man who wears a Frankenstein mask and lives with his mother watching TV and eating corn chips all day while being afraid of work. ""Dracula's Daughter"" turns a pretentious hippie into an honest ghost. And Bigfoot—lonely, sexually frustrated—tells all. Other stories feature characters who seem perfectly normal until they're alone. Phil, for instance, is never so happy as when he's with his inflatable girlfriend Vanessa—until she tells him the devastating truth about himself. Elderly Ellen is running out of patience with her dead husband George, who's turned prankish. ""Bob and Todd"" tells the story of a hitchhiking ride gone bad that will have readers squirming in their seats. More than just standard monster stories, the tales in But You Scared Me the Most reveal much more about about human nature and will appeal to a wide range of fans of smart, funny short fiction.

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Book SynopsisMcCorkle, author of the New York Times bestselling Life After Life and the widely acclaimed Hieroglyphics ("One of our wryest, warmest, wisest storytellers" -Rebecca Makkai), brings us a breath-taking collection of stories that offers an intimate look at the moments when a person's life changes forever.Old Crimes delves into the lives of characters who hold their secrets and misdeeds close, even as the past continues to reverberate over time and across generations. And despite the characters' yearnings for connection, they can't seem to tell the whole truth. In "Low Tones," a woman uses her hearing impairment as a way to guard herself from her husband's commentary. In "Lineman," a telephone lineman strains to connect to his family even as he feels pushed aside in a digital world. In "Confessional," a young couple buys a confessional booth for fun, only to discover the cost of honesty.Profoundly moving and unforgettable, for fans of Alice Munro, Elizabeth Strout, and Lily King, the stories in Old Crimes reveal why McCorkle has long been considered a master of the form, probing lives full of great intensity, longing and affection, and deep regret."Jill McCorkle has had an extraordinary ear for the music of ordinary life since the beginning of her career, able to work with the voices we know so well to write these stories about what they will not tell us, what they would rather not tell us, what they hope to tell us, what too often goes unsaid. And this collection is a new wonder." -Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

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Book Synopsis"Larry Brown wrote the way the best singers sing: with honesty, grit, and the kind of raw emotion that stabs you right in the heart. He was a singular American treasure." —Tim McGrawA career-spanning collection, Tiny Love brings together for the first time the stories of Larry Brown’s previous collections along with those never before gathered. The self-taught Brown has long had a cult following, and this collection comes with an intimate and heartfelt appreciation by novelist Jonathan Miles. We see Brown's early forays into genre fiction and the horror story, then develop his fictional gaze closer to home, on the people and landscapes of Lafayette County, Mississippi. And what’s astonishing here is the odyssey these stories chart: Brown’s self-education as a writer and the incredible artistic journey he navigated from “Plant Growin’ Problems” to “A Roadside Resurrection.” This is the whole of Larry Brown, the arc laid bare, both an amazing story collection and the fullest portrait we’ll see of one of the South’s most singular artists.Trade Review“Blunt, brilliant tales of hardscrabble lives.” —The New York Times Book Review “Drawn in gritty, deceptively simple prose, his characters drink too much, smoke too much, and flout the law when they can. But Brown proves that the coarsest material can produce the most affecting art.” —Men’s Journal “The complete collection of Brown’s darkly comic short stories starring smart and salty workaday Southerners . . . Now counted among the titans of modern Southern storytellers, Brown lived a life that proclaimed the power of writing your own dream.” —Garden Gun “This collection showcases the depth of Brown’s work and his evolution as a Mississippi artist and writer.” —Deep South Magazine “There is a stark, stripped-down quality to Brown’s writing. His language is blunt and sometimes coarse. It is the pitch-perfect voice for telling the indelible stories of these working-class men and women who strive to do right but who often prove to be their own worst enemies.” —Atlanta Journal Constitution? “A thorough testament to his loving eye for rural minutiae. The details in each story . . . could only be the work of someone who’d shared an Old Milwaukee or two with his characters . . . Tiny Love showcases Brown’s singular, unconditional empathy for the drunk and neglectful, the depraved but helpless, the ornery yet resigned—all the dogs that don’t make it across the highway.” —INDY Week “Threads of humor and grace run through the tales of violence, infidelities, and alcoholism, masterfully introducing an unexpected compassion. Brown excels at capturing psychological complexity with spare, humane prose in an original voice that was sadly lost to us far too soon.” —Booklist “[An] outstanding, capacious volume . . . Whether exploring the underbelly of love or the despair of editorial rejection, Brown’s stories drip with often uncomfortable detail as he describes the crass, the ugly, and the broken in ways unique and captivating.” —Publishers Weekly “Larry Brown was a celebrated writer of the grit lit genre who wrote spare, brutal stories about hard-drinking, love-hungry barflies, Vietnam vets, hunters, bricklayers and loggers.” —Atlanta Journal Constitution “A career-spanning collection by a master of American realism . . . Compassionate and gritty and lyrical—a master class.” —Kirkus Reviews “When I discovered Big Bad Love, I went back and read everything. That man could write. He moved through life with a discerning eye and a capacity for language that I wanted. How did he do that? Story makes sense of what cannot make sense just by showing you the broken tragic heart that goes on beating. Which he did so beautifully. And with a sense of humor, Lord save us . . . I could read Larry Brown anytime, even though I know what’s coming, even though I know he’s going to break my heart again.” —Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina “Larry Brown wrote stories that captured both the beauty and the brokenness of life. He never blinked at life’s darkness, but drew you into it with his characters. Larry Brown wrote the way the best singers sing: with honesty, grit, and the kind of raw emotion that stabs you right in the heart. He was a singular American treasure.” —Tim McGraw“Blunt, brilliant tales of hardscrabble lives.” —The New York Times Book Review “Drawn in gritty, deceptively simple prose, his characters drink too much, smoke too much, and flout the law when they can. But Brown proves that the coarsest material can produce the most affecting art.” —Men’s Journal “The complete collection of Brown’s darkly comic short stories starring smart and salty workaday Southerners . . . Now counted among the titans of modern Southern storytellers, Brown lived a life that proclaimed the power of writing your own dream.” —Garden Gun “This collection showcases the depth of Brown’s work and his evolution as a Mississippi artist and writer.” —Deep South Magazine “There is a stark, stripped-down quality to Brown’s writing. His language is blunt and sometimes coarse. It is the pitch-perfect voice for telling the indelible stories of these working-class men and women who strive to do right but who often prove to be their own worst enemies.” —Atlanta Journal Constitution​ “A thorough testament to his loving eye for rural minutiae. The details in each story . . . could only be the work of someone who’d shared an Old Milwaukee or two with his characters . . . Tiny Love showcases Brown’s singular, unconditional empathy for the drunk and neglectful, the depraved but helpless, the ornery yet resigned—all the dogs that don’t make it across the highway.” —INDY Week “Threads of humor and grace run through the tales of violence, infidelities, and alcoholism, masterfully introducing an unexpected compassion. Brown excels at capturing psychological complexity with spare, humane prose in an original voice that was sadly lost to us far too soon.” —Booklist “[An] outstanding, capacious volume . . . Whether exploring the underbelly of love or the despair of editorial rejection, Brown’s stories drip with often uncomfortable detail as he describes the crass, the ugly, and the broken in ways unique and captivating.” —Publishers Weekly “Larry Brown was a celebrated writer of the grit lit genre who wrote spare, brutal stories about hard-drinking, love-hungry barflies, Vietnam vets, hunters, bricklayers and loggers.” —Atlanta Journal Constitution “A career-spanning collection by a master of American realism . . . Compassionate and gritty and lyrical—a master class.” —Kirkus Reviews “When I discovered Big Bad Love, I went back and read everything. That man could write. He moved through life with a discerning eye and a capacity for language that I wanted. How did he do that? Story makes sense of what cannot make sense just by showing you the broken tragic heart that goes on beating. Which he did so beautifully. And with a sense of humor, Lord save us . . . I could read Larry Brown anytime, even though I know what’s coming, even though I know he’s going to break my heart again.” —Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina “Larry Brown wrote stories that captured both the beauty and the brokenness of life. He never blinked at life’s darkness, but drew you into it with his characters. Larry Brown wrote the way the best singers sing: with honesty, grit, and the kind of raw emotion that stabs you right in the heart. He was a singular American treasure.” —Tim McGraw

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Book SynopsisMike McCormack's new novel Solar Bones is longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize.In his second collection of short stories, Mike McCormack joins head and heart in a series of tales which weave a fluid vision of a world morphing between the real and the hyperreal.Amid much hollow laughter a prisoner is drawn from his cell in the middle of the night to play a video game; two rural guards ponder the security threat posed by the only man in Ireland not to have written his memoirs; a child tries to offset his destiny as a serial killer by petitioning his father for a beating; a late night American cop show becomes a savage analysis of a faltering marriage in the west of Ireland; two men turn up at the door of a slacker to give him news of his death and recruit him to some mysterious surveillance mission; an older brother worries about the health of his younger sibling; the prodigal son returns to reveal the fear and hypocrisy which lies at the heart of his brothers life.In twelve stories McCormack’s characters find themselves trying to hold onto their identities in a world where love is too often and too easily obscured.

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Book SynopsisHere we have Matt Bell at his most inventive and uncanny: parents and children, murderers and monsters, wild renditions of the past, and stunning visions of the present, all of which build to a virtuoso reimagining of our world.A 19th-century minister builds an elaborate motor that will bring about the Second Coming. A man with rough hands locks a boy in a room with an albino ape. An apocalyptic army falls under a veil of forgetfulness. The story of Red Riding Hood is run through a potentially endless series of iterations. A father invents an elaborate, consuming game for his hospitalized son. Indexes, maps, a checkered shirt buried beneath a blanket of snow: they are scattered through these pages as clues to mysteries that may never be solved, lingering evidence of the violence and unknowability of the world.A Tree or a Person or a Wall brings together Bell’s previously published shorter fiction—the story collection How They Were Found and the acclaimed novella Cataclysm Baby—along with seven dark and disturbing new stories, to create a collection of singular power.

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Book SynopsisA collection of 13 short stories spanning two decades in the lives of van de Wetering's Amsterdam Cops Amsterdam isn’t exactly a hotbed of violent crime, but wrongdoing does occur, and the most bizarre cases tend to be passed to Grijpstra and de Gier. In one they investigate the death of a handsome oceanographer whose corpse is found amidst his tanks of shiny living mussels. In another they strong-arm a brutal crime lord whose henchman threatens the sergeant’s cat. Yet another leads them to uncover a most unusual murder weapon: a chocolate Easter bunny. With the curious blend of wit and the macabre readers have come to expect from the pen of Janwillem van de Wetering, the Amsterdam Cops have a way of seeing to it that justice, ultimately, is done.

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Book SynopsisSamrat Upadhyay’s new collection vibrates at the edges of intersecting cultures. Journalists in Kathmandu are targeted by the government. A Nepali man studying in America drops out of school and finds himself a part of the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. A white American woman moves to Nepal and changes her name. A Nepali man falls in love with a mysterious foreign black woman. A rich kid is caught up in his own fantasies of poverty and bank robbery. In the title story, a powerful woman, the owner of a construction company, becomes a political prisoner, and in stark and unflinching prose we see both her world and her mind radically remade. Through the course of the stories in this collection, Upadhyay builds new modes of seeing our interconnected contemporary world. A collection of formal inventiveness, heartbreak and hope, it reaffirms Upadhyay’s position as one or our most important chroniclers of globalization and exile.

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Book SynopsisAn extensive compendium of Diane Williams' works.

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Book SynopsisWest Africa enters the Noir Series arena, meticulously edited by one of Nigeria's best-known authors.

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Book SynopsisObejas's stories of contemporary Cuba explore how history and fate intrude on even the most ordinary of lives.

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Book SynopsisFollowing in the footsteps of Los Angeles Noir, San Francisco Noir, San Diego Noir, Orange County Noir, and Oakland Noir, this new volume further reveals the seedy underbelly of the Left Coast.

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Book SynopsisLee Child recruits Joyce Carol Oates and others to reveal nicotine's scintillating alter egos.

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Book SynopsisThe relationships among human and non-human animals goes back to the beginning of time-and the ways in which these relationships have evolved (and sometimes not) is the inspiration for this collection of contemporary short fiction, penned by writers from across the globe.

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Book SynopsisPraise for Ysabeau S. Wilce's previous books: "This fresh and funky setting is rich with glorious costumes, innovative language, and tantalizing glimpses of history."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review These inter-connected stories are set in an opulent quasi-historical world of magick and high manners called the Republic of Califa. The Republic is a strangely familiar place--a baroque approximation of Gold Rush era-California with an overlay of Aztec ceremony--yet the characters who populate it are true originals: rockstar magicians, murderous gloves, bouncing boy terrors, blue tinted butlers, sentient squids, and a three-year-old Little Tiny Doom and her vengeful pink plush pig. By turn whimsical and horrific (sometime in the same paragraph), Wilce's stories have been characterized as "screwball comedies for goths" but they could also be described as "historical fantasies" or "fanciful histories" for there are nuggets of historical fact hidden in them there lies. Ysabeau S. Wilce is the author of Flora Segunda, Andre Norton Award--winner Flora's Dare, and Flora's Fury, and she has published work in Asimov's, Steampunk!, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. She lives in San Francisco, California.Trade ReviewEarly reader reaction: "Reading Ysabeau Wilce is like discovering a new language, dark and magical and far more fun than the one you grew up speaking. Califa and her denizens sizzle to life on the page in all of their blood-soaked, candy-colored glory; Prophecies, Libels and Dreams is a wonder." -- Kelly Braffet, author of Save Yourself "The Republic of Califa differs from the American West Coast in a number of small details, of course: the egregores and praterhumans, the Magick and Gramatica, the peculiar dynastic struggles of the Pontifexa Georgiana and her decadent postbears. But all these are the subtle and minuscule discrepancies of a parallel yet proximate reality, easily overlooked by the casual reader. Where Ms. Wilce shines is in her use of the larger effects--those of tone, style, and voice--which make her world so much richer than our own." -- Paul Park "Ysabeau Wilce is an original American fantasist. Unique in vision, rare in quality, Califa is one of the few truly American fantasy worlds, owing as much to the Wild West, San Francisco Bay and Mexican folklore as to Shakespeare, Dickens and Tolkien. Read and enjoy!" -- Ellen Kushner Praise for Ysabeau S. Wilce's previous books: "This fresh and funky setting is rich with glorious costumes, innovative language and tantalizing glimpses of history."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)Table of ContentsThe Biography of a Bouncing Boy Terror! Quartermaster Returns Metal More Attractive The Lineaments of Gratified Desire Lovelocks Hand in Glove The Shavetail

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Book SynopsisWinner of the inaugural Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award These are the best Americans, the worst Americans. In these stories (these cities, these people) there are labyrinths, rivers, wildernesses. Voices sound slightly different than expected. There's humor, but it's going to hurt. In "On Paradise," a petshop manager flies with his cat to Las Vegas to meet his long-lost mother and grandmother, only to find that the women look exactly like they did forty years before. In "The Spooky Japanese Girl is There For You," the spooky Japanese girl (a ghost) is there for you, then she is not. These refreshing and invigorating stories of displacement, exile, and identity, of men who find themselves confused by the presence or absence of extraordinary women, jump up, demand to be read, and send the reader back to the earth changed: reminded from these short stories how big the world is.Trade Review“In his longest and best stories, Martinez mines both the small details and the large absurdities of life to show us our own strange world in a new way.”— Lincoln Michel, New York Times Book Review “A master of the absurd who serves up contemporary American life in rare, blistering slices.” Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble“Filled with droll, cunning, funny, and formally innovative stories that fall somewhere between stand-up comedy and literary fiction. These excellent works mark him as a writer both to read and watch.” — Tom Bissell“These 24 wide-ranging stories are the gut-punch kind: intense, innovative tales that skew your vision for the rest of the day. Martinez writes with a sharp eye and a sharp tongue, and his characters — often alone and unloved, often haunted — are worthy observers of both the horrors and wonders of this world.” — Rebecca Makkai, author of Music for Wartime“I feel sure that some smart and appreciative person will praise Juan Martinez for his ‘skewed vision,’ but Martinez’s view of the world is startlingly clear. It’s just that the rest of us haven’t caught up yet. Deep and comic and deeply comic, his is a collection of wonders for any human to enjoy.” — Jack Pendarvis, author of Movie Stars“A little out of the ordinary. . . . He takes this very unnatural environment and changes it into a landscape.” — Hannah Tinti“I loved it.” — Etgar Keret“Twenty-four semiexistential short stories that have appeared in the likes of McSweeney’s and Selected Shorts from Colombia-born writer Martinez. The author has an interesting way of injecting absurdity into everyday life and humor into the phantasmagorical in this wide-ranging, mostly engaging collection of tall tales. . . . there are also occasional moments of grace. . . . Some are just flat-out funny. . . . Martinez even makes the frightening funny. . . . promising debut collection of short stories, some unique in their execution.” — Kirkus ReviewsShortlisted for the Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards “A master of the absurd who serves up contemporary American life in rare, blistering slices.” Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble “Filled with droll, cunning, funny, and formally innovative stories that fall somewhere between stand-up comedy and literary fiction. These excellent works mark him as a writer both to read and watch.” — Tom Bissell “These 24 wide-ranging stories are the gut-punch kind: intense, innovative tales that skew your vision for the rest of the day. Martinez writes with a sharp eye and a sharp tongue, and his characters — often alone and unloved, often haunted — are worthy observers of both the horrors and wonders of this world.” — Rebecca Makkai, author of Music for Wartime “I feel sure that some smart and appreciative person will praise Juan Martinez for his ‘skewed vision,’ but Martinez’s view of the world is startlingly clear. It’s just that the rest of us haven’t caught up yet. Deep and comic and deeply comic, his is a collection of wonders for any human to enjoy.” — Jack Pendarvis, author of Movie Stars “A little out of the ordinary. . . . He takes this very unnatural environment and changes it into a landscape.” — Hannah Tinti “I loved it.” — Etgar Keret “Twenty-four semiexistential short stories that have appeared in the likes of McSweeney’s and Selected Shorts from Colombia-born writer Martinez. The author has an interesting way of injecting absurdity into everyday life and humor into the phantasmagorical in this wide-ranging, mostly engaging collection of tall tales. . . . there are also occasional moments of grace. . . . Some are just flat-out funny. . . . Martinez even makes the frightening funny. . . . promising debut collection of short stories, some unique in their execution.” — Kirkus ReviewsTable of ContentsRoadblock Strangers on Vacation: Snapshots Machulín In L.A. On Paradise Domokun in Fremont The Women Who Talk To Themselves Customer Service at the Karaoke Don Quixote Your Significant Other’s Kitten Poster Well Tended Souvenirs from Ganymede The Coca-Cola Executive in the Zapatoca Outhouse Correspondences between the Lower World and Old Men in Pinstripe Suits The Lead Singer Is Distracting Me Errands Liner Notes for Renegade, the Opening Sequence Hobbledehoydom My Sister’s Knees The Spooky Japanese Girl Is There For You Big Wheel, Boiling Hot After the End of the World: A Capsule Review Debtor Forsaken, the Crew Awaited News from the People Below Northern Best Worst American

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Book SynopsisIn the tales gathered in An Agent of Utopia: New and Selected Stories you will meet a Utopian assassin, an aging UFO contactee, a haunted Mohawk steelworker, a time-traveling prizefighter, a yam-eating Zombie, and a child who loves a frizzled chicken—not to mention Harry Houdini, Zora Neale Hurston, Sir Thomas More, and all their fellow travelers riding the steamer-trunk imagination of a unique twenty-first-century fabulist.From the Florida folktales of the perennial prison escapee Daddy Mention and the dangerous gator-man Uncle Monday that inspired "Daddy Mention and the Monday Skull" (first published in Mojo: Conjure Stories, edited by Nalo Hopkinson) to the imagined story of boxer and historical bit player Jess Willard in World Fantasy Award winner "The Pottawatomie Giant" (first published on SciFiction), or the Ozark UFO contactees in Nebula Award winner "Close Encounters" to Flannery O’Connor’s childhood celebrity in Shirley Jackson Award finalist "Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse" (first published in Eclipse) Duncan’s historical juxtapositions come alive on the page as if this Southern storyteller was sitting on a rocking chair stretching the truth out beside you.Duncan rounds out his explorations of the nooks and crannies of history in two irresistible new stories, "Joe Diabo's Farewell" — in which a gang of Native American ironworkers in 1920s New York City go to a show — and the title story, "An Agent of Utopia" — where he reveals what really (might have) happened to Thomas More’s head.Trade Review"Reading Duncan can feel like being taken on a tour of your own dusty attic and being shown treasures you didn’t know you had." — Chicago Tribune "Must rank as one of this year’s best collections. It’s on bookstore shelves now and deserves to be on your shelves soon." — Tor.com “Whatever the topic, all of Duncan’s fictions are united by an evocative, playful, and deeply accomplished storytelling style. Highly recommended for fans of Kelly Link or other slipstream writers, and for any reader looking to lose themselves in an engaging and fun reading experience.” — Booklist (starred review) "Zany and kaleidoscopic, the 12 stories in Duncan’s third collection draw on Southern traditions of tall tales and span time periods, continents, and the realm of human imagination to create an intricate new mythology of figures from history, literature, and American folklore. . . . This is a raucous, fantastical treat." — Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A rare book that blends fun with fury and tomfoolery with social consciousness." — Kirkus Reviews “An Agent of Utopia is all the proof you’ll need to see that Andy Duncan is one of the very best short story writers in Science Fiction, Fantasy, or anywhere else. It’s a sure bet that you’re holding in your hand the best story collection of the year.”— Jeffrey Ford, author of A Natural History of Hell "Duncan will get you to bust a a gut laughing. He'll make you teary, and put a shiver up your spine. But most importantly, his stories ask questions you might not know how to answer, and leave you looking inside yourself long after you've read the last line of his singing prose.” — Lara Elena Donnelly, author of Amberlough “Andy Duncan’s unique voice shines through in his third collection. You’ve not read him yet? Shame on you! Go out now and buy An Agent of Utopia: New and Selected Stories. You’ll thank me.” — Ellen Datlow, award-winning editor "Andy Duncan is one of the most hilarious and poignant writers of short stories that we have. He effortlessly forges dreamlike and nightmarish tales with wit and wisdom that rivals Mark Twain.” — Christopher Barzak, author of Wonders of the Invisible World “Andy Duncan is the Andy Duncan of Andy Duncanland, and we are all lucky to have access to that fabled locale via the portal between his brain and these pages. The stories in this collection drip with magic and mayhem and time and place and personhood, along with the most creative cussing this side of anywhere. Each one is a microcosm, a moment from our own history, real or imagined, passed along to us by a master storyteller. “ — Sarah Pinsker “Andy Duncan is the best storyteller of our generation. Every page is breathtaking, down-to-earth magical.” — Ellen Klages “Andy Duncan’s work bursts on the tongue. Every word is a rhythm, perfectly shaped to thrum in the throat, to twang in the mouth, to dance on beats of breath. His dialogue drums savory dialects. His prose is a brass instrument, trumpeting stories like songs. Like blues, like jazz, his stories are written to an American tempo, her checkered history, her bright syncopation, her cacophony of Southern storytellers and conjuring women. He is a musician, magician, mythmaker, a raconteur of marvels.” — Rachel SwirskyTable of ContentsAn Agent of Utopia Joe Diabo's Farewell Beluthahatchie The Map to the Homes of the Stars The Pottawatomie Giant Senator Bilbo The Big Rock Candy Mountain Daddy Mention and the Monday Skull Zora and the Zombie Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse Slow as a Bullet Close Encounters

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Book SynopsisPhilip K. Dick Award finalist In the title novella, Cotman imagines a group of near-immortals living in Pittsburgh in an uneasy truce with Lord Decay. Their truce is threatened when one of them takes pity on a young woman who knows their secret. In “Among the Zoologists,” a game writer on their way to a convention falls in with a group of rogue Darwinists whose baggage contains a great mystery. A volleyball tournament devolves into nightmare and chaos in “Mine.” In Cotman’s hands, the conventions of genres from fairytales to Victorian literature to epic fantasy and horror give shape to marvelously new stories.Trade Review"Elwin Cotman’s third collection of short fiction is only six stories long, but each story is packed with rich depth, like jeweled fruits glinting in wet loam. Mixing mythic and contemporary, humor and horror, melancholy and optimism, Cotman’s stories range from present-day Pittsburgh to fantasy Africa, with a beautifully flexible polyvocal prose. My two favorite stories make up about half the book: 'Seven Watsons' and the title story both deliver all the sophistication and complexity of a novel at a third of the length, and center Black joy and endurance." — NPR Best Books of the Year "Karen Russell’s cover blurb praises Cotman as 'a synthesizer … of lewd dialect and high lyricism.' I’ll speak instead of Cotman’s high dialect and lewd lyricism, of how his fashioning of character voices is superbly disciplined, lit from within, while his lyricism is the realm of bawdy jokes and opacity, a kind of literary trolling. “She was tall and wide like a sonnet,” one character notes — and you’ll just have to trust me on the contrast with the bawdy bits, none of which my editor will let me cite. "The core of the book is a cleareyed survey of the complexities of Black American experience, distilled in a few lines from the title story: 'I hated the powers for what they had done. But I learned the pride. That I was of a people who could take all the hate and poison of this world, and laugh, and go dance on Saturday.'” — Amal El-Mohtar, New York Times Book Review "Cotman utilizes the entire spectrum of fantasy and speculative fiction to write powerful stories on race, power, and human nature. The title novella is particularly stellar, about a group of immortals in Pittsburgh who can extend their life (and limbs) by growing and consuming certain fruit. It’s a timely collection filled with wit and beautiful language." — Lyndsie Manusos, Book Riot “The landscapes of Elwin Cotman are mythical, searching, and stimulated by haunting fanaticism. Among his third and most ambitious story collection are tales of magical scope—they do more than simply spellbind; they seduce, invite, crack open the extraordinary. . . . In the mold of Octavia Butler and Karen Russell, Dance on Saturday is a bold leap of speculative fiction.” — Jason Parham, Wired, 2020 Summer Reading List “Inventive, incandescent stories, rich in strangeness. Elwin Cotman’s writing is a tonic to ward off drabness and despair.” — Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble “Cotman blends humor, emotional clarity, and wild imagination to bring life to stories about identity, power, and human nature.” — Arianna Rebolini, Buzzfeed, 29 Summer Books You Won’t Be Able To Put Down “Fantastically weird short stories infused with elements from Black culture. . . . Each story provides a singular and riveting reading experience.” — Margaret Kingsbury, Buzzfeed, 17 Summer Must-Reads For Fantasy Lovers “Cotman (Hard Times Blues) wields biting wit, powerful emotion, and magic large and small throughout these six superlative stories. . . . Readers will be blown away. . . . Cotman’s bold and timely speculative fiction marks him as a writer to watch.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review “Fun, inventive fiction that refreshes the fantasy genre with elements of black heritage and culture.” — Kirkus Reviews Praise for Elwin Cotman’s books: "Elwin Cotman is one of the most original new voices you will encounter—he is a synthesizer of the domestic and the fantastic, of soaring myth and the grittiest realities, of lewd dialect and high lyricism. His stories are profound engagements with suffering of every stripe—they will also make you hoot with laughter. I was amazed by the force of Mr. Cotman's pinwheeling imagination.” — Karen Russell, author of Orange World “Remarkable stories that are as ambitious as they are personal. Cotman is a first-class stylist with a heart and a wit to match.” — Paul Tremblay, author of Survivor Song “With its intoxicating blend of rock and roll and the supernatural, crazed religion and visionary prose, Hard Times Blues is a wild ride down the same shadowy American sideroads traveled by the likes of Cormac McCarthy, Greil Marcus and Samuel R. Delany. A marvelous collection by a strikingly original new voice in contemporary fiction.” — Elizabeth Hand, author of Errantry “With hyperbolic, technicolor imagery and engrossing characters that radiate intrigue, these modern tales comprise a new book of essential fables for our time—read it, close your eyes, and delight in the words still glowing hot inside your brain.” — Alissa Nutting, author of Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls “Starbursts of talent . . . and a knack for biting and imaginative language.” — Lauren O’Neal, The Rumpus “Proves that magic and grit don't have to be mutually exclusive.” — Christine Stoddard, Quail Bell Magazine “Cotman’s interests are wide-ranging: Punk rock intersects with D.C.’s Dominican community, African-American folktale intersects with Greek myth, Goth teen suburban angst in 1990s Ohio sits side by side with racist atrocity in the pre-Civil Rights South . . . Yeah, there’s magic in some of these stories, but the real magic is in Cotman’s words themselves—stark and deadpan one moment, lushly descriptive the next.” — Michael S. Begnal, author of Ancestor Worship “This is not always a comfortable book to read, but it is a magnificent one. The Jack Daniels Sessions EP: A Collection of Fantasies is comprised of short stories and vignettes that flow into one another like the Mississippi rushes over the Delta. Elwin Cotman is a writer, an activist, a performance artist and above all, an impeccable storyteller. . . . With raw and sometimes shocking authenticity, Cotman turns the ordinary into the sublime. There is no pretension here, just a million-watt light shining into corners of the human condition that many people would prefer forgotten, with a large helping of fantastic creatures, classical myth, and modern mayhem.” — Erzebet YellowBoy, Cabinet des Fées "Elwin Cotman's carefully wrought, gracefully accomplished, and lyrical narratives range in tone and style from picaresque and carnivalesque to elegiac, ironic, and melancholy. Yet, while tonally distinctive and aesthetically vivid, his stories are not so much driven by style or voice, as they are by love in the largest sense. For love does not exclude chaos nor avoid the vicissitudes of history and neither do Cotman's socially engaged, brilliantly crafted stories.” — Miranda MellisTable of ContentsDance on Saturday Seven Watsons Mine The Son’s War Among the Zoologists The Piper’s Christmas Gift

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Book Synopsis"Flawless. . . . Readers of John Crowley, Ray Bradbury, and Sally Rooney alike will find a home."—Publishers Weekly (starred review) Remember the girl you once knew, the theater kid? Now she’s become the Queen, and you might need to rescue her. There’s the historic house, where someone once saw a ghost and you almost fell in love. An ornithopter hangs in the lobby of your corporate workplace: your co-worker thinks he might be able to operate it. Once you found a tunnel under your old high school, and couldn’t resist going to see where it led.Sometimes a door will open into a new world, sometimes into the past. Putting on a costume might be the restart you are half hoping for. There are things buried here. You might want to save them. You might want to get out of the way.Butner’s allusive and elusive stories reach into the uncanny corners of life—where there are no job losses, just HCAPs (Head Count Allocation Procedures), where a tree might talk to just one person, where Death’s Fool is not to be ignored.Trade Review“Consistently one of my favorite short story writers.” — Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble "Landscapes and memories alter, gentrify, and crumble in Butner’s flawless debut collection, which wends ghosts, virtual futures, and the intricacies of friendship into 16 breathtaking, intimate stories. . . . Readers of John Crowley, Ray Bradbury, and Sally Rooney alike will find a home in this beautiful, grounded exploration of pasts and futures—and the people suspended between them."—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “The collection opens with ‘Adventure,’ with a long-overdue visit to an old friend and a tale told about a stranger, which may be just fantasy, but, setting the tone for the collection, the reality is not entirely clear-cut. . . . All in all, a worthwhile collection.” — Booklist “A resemblance to George Saunders’ and Carmen Maria Machado’s work, though Butner has his own thematic obsessions. . . . In his best stories, Butner effectively merges the strange setups with a bracing mix of humor and dread.” — Kirkus Reviews “Grounded by concrete pop culture details, each strange narrative makes what’s familiar seem eerie.” — Foreword Reviews (starred review)“At last, one of the contemporary masters of the uncanny and darkly humorous, Richard Butner, has his stories in one place where we can get at them. With a toe (just a toe) in the literary pool, and the rest of him splashing happily in the spec fic/sci-fi/surreal swimming hole, Butner’s tales deal in the deadly habits of nostalgia, and the surprises waiting for the wistful and the obsessive whose march forward obliges a look backward. Linkean, Barthelmean, Saundersean . . . hm, okay, these guys do NOT lend themselves to sonorous adjectivization but, nonetheless, they’ll have to welcome a new storyteller beside them on the shelf.”—Wilton Barnhardt, author of Emma Who Saved My Life and Lookaway, Lookaway “A Richard Butner story is an invitation to discovery alongside his characters. It’s a left turn off of reality’s highway and into its old business district: defiantly shabby, casually weird, and occasionally surreal, perfect in every grounding detail. Every story zigs when you expect it to zag. You only think you know where they are going, but it turns out you are on the same adventure as the protagonist, discovering as you go that the world is stranger than it was the minute before, and the minute before that. Well worth the journey.”—Sarah Pinsker, author of We Are Satellites "Richard Butner's stories are funny, scary, personal, dispassionate, satirical, and heartfelt, if those incompatible adjectives can be assembled to describe the same work. He writes about the subtle losses we suffer (often without noticing) as we get older, about love and loyalty, about how the past is never completely past and can come sweeping back over you at the slightest opportunity like a tidal wave, so you'd better be ready lest you drown."—John Kessel, author of Pride and Prometheus Reviews of Richard Butner's stories “Captivating and gripping.”—Bookotron “In the face of even the most absurd scenario, Butner’s writing remains cool and understated; he treats the bizarre as if it were commonplace, eventually convincing the reader that nothing is too far from the real. Indeed, many of the stories’ most bizarre moments are simply exaggerations of the inanities of our world, thrust into the forefront of the plot as a sort of social criticism. . . . Butner picks up the absurdities of high-speed America and throws them back in its face, reveling in the wild, wonderful mess he creates.”—New Pages Review "A powerful story of obsession.”—Lois Tilton, Locus “The saddest ghost story you’ll read this year.”—Charlie Jane Anders, Gizmodo "Haunting and heartbreaking.”—iHorror.com “Wry, caustic, calculated, impulsive…. Gems of gorgeous weirdness.”—Asimovs “Finely wrought fiction that earns its effects. Evocative and passionate, meaningful and filled with wonders.”— SF Site“Butner’s meticulous prose lays a cool surface over some twisty terrain. Understated and profound, deft and smooth, these stories sneak up on you and then don’t let go. Boxes within boxes, wheels within wheels.”—Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves“In the work of writers who have truly burrowed in, often I’ve a sense of there being not many stories but one continuous, ongoing story, ever growing, ever increasing, turning this way and that in shifting light—which is how I feel about Richard Butner’s.”—James Sallis, author of Sarah Jane “Richard Butner writes gorgeous, heartfelt stories that are completely his own, each propelled by an inner logic that may or may not match consensus reality, each ringing utterly true. He is unafraid of tough questions and even tougher answers. His characters sweat, grieve, exult, and struggle for understanding, and even when they terrify, they never fail to touch me.”—Lewis Shiner, author of Outside the Gates of EdenTable of ContentsAdventure Holderhaven Scenes from the Renaissance Ash City Stomp Horses Blow Up Dog City The Master Key Circa At the Fair Pete and Earl The Ornithopter Stronghold Delta Function Give Up Chemistry Set Under Green Sunnyside

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