Anthologies & Short Stories

Book SynopsisA surprising and exciting new collection of speculative and experimental stories that explore animal intelligences, gender, and the nature of stories. The Privilege of the Happy Ending collects award-winning writer Kij Johnson’s speculative fiction from the last decade. The stories explore gender, animals, and the nature of stories, and range in form from classically told tales to deeply experimental works. The collection includes the World Fantasy Award-winning “The Privilege of the Happy Ending” and “The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe,” as well as two never-before published works.Trade Review “This collection of speculative stories feels like being in a vivid dream that you don’t want to wake up from. Kij Johnson’s imaginative narratives are utterly surreal and somewhat dark, yet laced with wit. Their language is highly literary, almost poetic, and draws the reader deeper into Johnson’s world. . . . It’s immersive and supernatural enough to appeal to diehard fantasy fans, but also addresses universal themes like family relationships and loss. The literary prose and character-driven stories (you won’t find hard magic systems here) mean it might make a good introduction to the fantasy genre for those who usually read more grounded contemporary works. It’s simultaneously creepy and cozy, making it perfect to curl up with on a crisp autumn day.” — Jillian Bell, BookBrowse “In these strange and speculative stories, Johnson, who teaches fiction writing at the University of Kansas, plays with form and narrative voices in a way that’s designed to raise questions about how much we really know about one another, the past, or the nature of stories themselves.” — Daily Hampshire Gazette★ “While the entries are uniformly excellent in pacing and prose, the standouts may be the collection’s opener and closer. 'Tool-Using Mimics' spins out a half-dozen explanations for a vintage photo of a young girl with tentacles that lead to piercing questions about how much we can know about the past, other species, and each other. The titular novella, which also won a World Fantasy Award, is a compelling fairy tale about a little orphan girl and her talking hen that poignantly interrogates the ways we determine which stories take center stage. A strange and glimmering jewel for any genre fiction collection.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)★ "Hugo and Nebula award winner Johnson (The River Bank) returns with 14 dazzling speculative shorts. . . . The devastating title tale follows another young girl and her cherished talking hen as they barely escape a swarm of monsters who devour anything with flesh. Johnson’s keen eye for the mysteries of human nature shines as her characters experience love, loss, growth, and betrayal, all made delightfully strange. These boundary-pushing, magic-infused tales are sure to wow."— Publishers Weekly (starred review)Praise for Kij Johnson’s stories: “Wondrously strange and sinister stories of other worlds, future times, and everyday life gone haywire.” — Dan Kois, Slate “The best short-story collection I read this year was Kij Johnson’s At the Mouth of the River of Bees.” — Adam Roberts, The Guardian “Ursula Le Guin comes immediately to mind when you turn the pages of Kij Johnson’s first book of short stories, her debut collection is that impressive. The title piece has that wonderful power we hope for in all fiction we read, the surprising imaginative leap that takes us to recognize the marvelous in the everyday.” —Alan Cheuse, NPR “For all the distances traveled and the mysteries solved, those strange, inexplicable things remain. This is Johnson’s fiction: the familiar combined with the inexplicable. The usual fantastic. The unknowable that undergirds the everyday.” —Sessily Watt, Bookslut “In her first collection of short fiction, Johnson (The Fox Woman) covers strange, beautiful, and occasionally disturbing territory without ever missing a beat. . . . Johnson’s language is beautiful, her descriptions of setting visceral, and her characters compellingly drawn. These 18 tales, most collected from Johnson’s magazine publications, are sometimes off-putting, sometimes funny, and always thought provoking.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “[The] stories are original, engaging, and hard to put down. . . . Johnson has a rare gift for pulling readers directly into the heart of a story and capturing their attention completely. Those who enjoy a touch of the other in their reading will love this collection.” —Library Journal (starred review) “When she’s at her best, the small emotional moments are as likely to linger in your memory as the fantastic imagery. Johnson would fit quite comfortably on a shelf with Karen Russell, Erin Morgenstern and others who hover in the simultaneous state of being both 'literary' and 'fantasy' writers.” — Shelf Awareness “The book overflows with stories that, sentence by sentence, scene by scene, can never be taken for granted; they change in your hands, turn and shift, take on new faces, new shapes. Their breathing grows heavy, soft, then heavy again. You lean in close.”—James Sallis, F&SF “Kij Johnson has won short fiction Nebula awards in each of the last three years. All three winning stories are in this collection; when you read the book, you may wonder why all the others didn’t win awards as well. “Ponies”, to pick just one, is a shatteringly powerful fantasy about the least lovely aspects of human social behaviour… and also about small girls and their pet horses. Evocative, elegant, and alarmingly perceptive, Johnson reshapes your mental landscape with every story she writes.” —David Larsen, New Zealand Herald “Apparently, Johnson publishes in fantasy and SF mags because they’re the only ones who’d have her, though New Yorker should be so lucky.” — PopMatters "'Ponies’ . . . reads like the sort of thing that might have happened if Little Golden Books had inadvertently sent a contract to Chuck Palahniuk. . . . It’s not surprising that ['The Man Who Bridged the Mist'] won the Nebula Award and garnered Hugo, Sturgeon, and Locus nominations, since it’s a stunning example of what Johnson does best – using the materials of SF, fantasy, myth, and even romance not as genres to inhabit, but as tools for building or, you could say, as a kind of story kit. ”— Locus Table of ContentsTool-Using MimicsMantis WivesButterflies of Eastern TexasFive Sphinxes and 56 AnswersRatatoskrCoyote Invents the Land of the DeadThe Ghastly Spectre of Toad HallCertain Lorebooks for Apartment Dwellers— Bestiary— Stavebook— Alphabetical DreambookThe Dream-Quest of Vellitt BoeNoah’s RavenCrows Attempt Human-Style Riddles, and One JokeThe Privilege of the Happy Ending

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Book SynopsisA collection of bold stories set in downtown Los Angeles that examine large issues like love, class, and race, and how they influence and define our most intimate moments.With deep insight into character, intimate relationships, and the modern search for personal freedom, In the Not Quite Dark is powerful collection of stories that feels both urgent and timeless from Dana Johnson, the author of the prize-winning collection Break Any Woman Down.In The Liberace Museum, a mixed–race couple leave the South toward the destination of Vegas, crossing miles of road and history to the promised land of consumption; in Rogues, a young man on break from college lands in his brother's Inland Empire neighborhood during a rash of unexplained robberies; in She Deserves Everything She Gets, a woman listens to the strict advice given to her spoiled niece about going away to college, reflecting on her own experience and the night she lost her best friend; and in the collection's title story, a man setting down roots in downtown L.A. is haunted by the specter of both gentrification and a young female tourist, whose body was found in the water tower of a neighboring building.

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Book Synopsis“In these 35 stories, one struggles to find a sentence that is anything less than jewel-box perfect.” —The New York Times Book ReviewGina Berriault is known for the complexity and compassion with which she weaves her characters, and her stories are such models of economy that they seem almost telepathic. In this reissue of her collected stories—twenty years after its first publication—with a new introduction by renowned author and devoted Berriault advocate Peter Orner—we see the deft hand of this well-loved master of the short story at its best.Berriault employs her vital sensibility—sometimes subtly ironic and sometimes achingly raw—to touch on the inevitability of suffering and the nature of individuality, daring to see into the essence of our predicaments. What moves us? What dictates our behavior? What alters us? Her writing is spare, evanescent, pulsing with life and shimmering with life's strange hope. Her stories illustrate the depth of her emotional understanding.“Half the women in the world are right now in bed, theirs or somebody else's, whether it's night or day, whether they want to be or not...” With Women in Their Beds, Berriault's prose—moving, honest, and wise—achieves a mastery of the short story form that was in evidence every step of her long career. She was a completely modern writer, blessed with an exquisite sense of the potency of words and the ability to create moments of empathy that are both disturbing and mysteriously amusing.

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Book SynopsisCartoonist Meredith McClaren (Hinges) tells five short, sexy stories featuring superheroes, supervillains, sidekicks, and the people who love them. Showing consent and character-driven erotic relationships, Super Fun Sexy Times answers the age-old question: what happens when the mask comes off? Two sidekicks on opposite sides get stuck in an underground lab together, and find a great way to pass the time. A tactician and superhero discuss their desires, limits, and kinks before their first time, and perhaps get a little too excited in the process. A pair of supervillains explore gender and sex together, while growing closer in their relationship. Lesbian heroes try out a kinky rolepaying scenario, and discover how to make it work for both of them. And an exhausted assassin relaxes after a long day with the kind (yet firm) attentions of his husband.Told with care, sex-positivity, and humor, and featuring a wide variety of sexualities and bodies, Super Fun Sexy Times aims to create an erotic reading experience that lives up to its name!

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Book SynopsisFinalist for the National Jewish Book AwardsFinalist, National Translation Award in Prose An exquisitely original collection of darkly funny stories that explore the panorama of Jewish experience in contemporary Poland, from a world-class contemporary writer “These small, searing prose pieces are moving and unsettling at the same time. If the diagnosis they present is right, then we have a great problem in Poland.” —Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel Prize laureate and author of Flights Mikołaj Grynberg is a psychologist and photographer who has spent years collecting and publishing oral histories of Polish Jews. In his first work of fiction—a book that has been widely praised by critics and was shortlisted for Poland’s top literary prize—Grynberg recrafts those histories into little jewels, fictionalized short stories with the ring of truth. Both biting and knowing, I’d Like to Say Sorry, but There’s No One to Say Sorry To takes the form of first-person vignettes, through which Grynberg explores the daily lives and tensions within Poland between Jews and gentiles haunted by the Holocaust and its continuing presence. In “Unnecessary Trouble,” a grandmother discloses on her deathbed that she is Jewish; she does not want to die without her family knowing. What is passed on to the family is fear and the struggle of what to do with this information. In “Cacophony,” Jewish identity is explored through names, as Miron and his son Jurek demonstrate how heritage is both accepted and denied. In “My Five Jews,” a non-Jewish narrator remembers five interactions with her Jewish countrymen, and her own anti-Semitism, ruefully noting that perhaps she was wrong and should apologize, but no one is left to say “I’m sorry” to. Each of the thirty-one stories is a dazzling and haunting mini-monologue that highlights a different facet of modern Poland’s complex and difficult relationship with its Jewish past.Trade ReviewPraise for I’d Like to Say Sorry, but There’s No One to Say Sorry To:"Sean Gasper Bye’s crisp phrasing renders in poignant English Grynberg’s tales of missed connections and disconnection. Here, whole lives seem to shift within pithy sentences—between sentences, even. These brief stories mesmerize with vignettes and short sharp phrases whose truth exceeds an all-too-neat binary of fiction/nonfiction. With a photographer’s eye and a historian’s gift for teasing out patterns, Grynberg tempts us into a rapprochement with our own, troubled pasts, with the parts of our pasts we most shudder to recall. To read these stories is to see humanity at its worst and yet never to lose a conviction about what we might long for."—Jury of the 2023 National Translation Award“Drop everything and get a copy of Mikołaj Grynberg’s collection of short vignettes, I’d Like to Say Sorry, but There’s No One to Say Sorry To.”—Religious News Service“Grynberg’s fiction debut is a sobering glimpse into a particularly difficult kind of diaspora life. For Grynberg, the book is a way of asserting belonging in a country that has tried to deny its Jewish history and its complicity in Jewish persecution.”—The Forward “Grynberg’s writing is sharp, edged with a sarcastic wit and a touch of black humour, yet underlined by an air of tragedy. . . . I’d Like to Say I’m Sorry is not only insightful, but also an important read.”—Canadian Jewish News“I’d Like to Say Sorry, but There’s No One to Say Sorry To revisits the plight of the second and third post-Holocaust generations without any documentary constraints. . . . These soliloquies of doubt, grief, rage or sheer bewilderment appear without gloss or commentary, as minimalist micro-dramas. . . . [Mikołaj Grynberg’s] speakers span many stages of life and states of mind, flexibly captured in the salty, speedy English prose of Sean Gasper Bye.”—The Wall Street Journal“Wrenching, astonishing, surprisingly humorous. . . . Polish photographer/psychologist Mikołaj Grynberg alchemizes his documentary nonfiction into a superb collection of 31 short stories poignantly revealing the Polish Jewish experience.”—Shelf Awareness“This is a real bomb of a book. . . . Written with an amazing eye for detail, with crisp conciseness. . . . And everything here is seasoned with a heavy sprinkling of spot-on black humour.”—European Literature Network“The vital English-language debut from Grynberg, a photographer, psychologist, and oral historian, features thirty-one first-person vignettes narrated by Jews and gentiles in Poland who belong to the generation born after the Holocaust. . . . Grynberg knows the value of capturing a moment in time; through these narratives, the reader sees, as translator Bye notes, ‘something we might not have seen with our own eye.’ These views of a tragic past are brought sharply into focus.”—Publishers Weekly“A moving and often wryly funny portrait of Polish Jewishness. . . . At times witty, at others devastating, Grynberg’s first foray into fiction is a major triumph.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“Grynberg writes with a careful, almost stoic format. . . . His style is both erudite and cautious. . . . Like cracking an egg open, Grynberg peels away the outer, protective layers of ego, leaving bare the pathos of bigotry and the relentless striving toward understanding.”—New York Journal of Books “A poignant short story collection about being a Polish Jew.”—Foreword Reviews“Grynberg renders the specific and universal messiness of individuals and families trying to connect, avoiding connection, and longing to find some kind of peace in complexity.”—Maia Ipp, contributing editor of Jewish Currents “Mikołaj Grynberg’s characters yearn for connection, though the relationships with their family, their people, and their country, are fraught. One of the most brutal of Grynberg’s vignettes describes the casual inherited anti-Semitism of children. But what becomes of these children when their parents, late in life, reveal that they are Jewish? How do they make sense of who they are and where they belong in the world? An absolutely gripping, emotionally exhausting book. Highly recommended.”—Goldie Goldbloom, author of On Division “The incredible vividness of these monologues, the realism, the sadness and the black humor, all combine into an enthralling, multi-faceted story of Jewish and Polish fate. . . . I’ll come back to this book, and I’m sorry I can’t take any of these stories as fiction. All of it is true. Unfortunately.”—Wojciech Szot, Zdaniem Szota “It is with a lump in my throat that I read these luminous cameos. Such a range of voices, often revealing for the first time what had been hidden for a lifetime. In Grynberg, psychologist and artist by equal measure, they have found a vessel into which they can pour their hearts. With exquisite clarity, his spare prose lays bare the conundrums with which they have lived and died—as Jews in postwar Poland.”—Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

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Book SynopsisHopeful and forward-looking futuristic short stories that explore how the power of storytelling can help create the world we need “This is a glorious book that challenges our conceptions of bookmaking as much as it questions our conceptions of world-building. We, as earthlings, will be better to the earth after experiencing this book. That is not hyperbole.” —New York Times bestselling author Kiese LaymonAfterglow is a stunning collection of original short stories in which writers from many different backgrounds envision a radically different climate future. Published in collaboration with Grist, a nonprofit media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions, these stirring tales expand our ability to imagine a better world. Inspired by cutting-edge literary movements, such as Afrofuturism, hopepunk, and solarpunk, Afterglow imagines intersectional worlds in which no one is left behind—where humanity prioritizes equitable climate solutions and continued service to one’s community. Whether through abundance or adaptation, reform, or a new understanding of survival, these stories offer flickers of hope, even joy, as they provide a springboard for exploring how fiction can help create a better reality. Afterglow welcomes a diverse range of new voices into the climate conversation to envision the next 180 years of equitable climate progress. A creative work rooted in the realities of our present crisis, Afterglow presents a new way to think about the climate emergency—one that blazes a path to a clean, green, and more just future.Trade ReviewPraise for Afterglow:“[Afterglow] approaches climate change with hope for the radically different futures humans might create.”—The New York Times Book Review"This short story collection radiates radical imagination. . . . If you’re feeling bouts of climate anxiety or even apocalypse fatigue, Afterglow will remind you to keep the faith."—Sierra magazine“The twelve stories in the anthology Afterglow: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors . . . take readers into the future and across the globe to witness how humanity has persevered in the face of climate-crisis-induced destruction.”—ZYZZYVA“This sparkling anthology of 12 climate fiction stories distinguishes itself with its hopeful bent. . . . Offering a glimpse at imagined futures across the globe, this is a welcome lift to the spirits to those who may be struggling to see any brightness amid climate fears.”—Publishers Weekly“The art of storytelling is not only an act of memory and imagination, but one of hope and faith. These vivid and provocative stories represent a dreaming, a collective vision of future worlds where humanity has gathered itself, shared resources and wisdom, to arrive at a place of intentional action, health, and thriving. It is no small feat on the page or beyond to engage in such brave work. The tales of Afterglow offer the glimmers of possibility, the hard choices to be made, and the radiance of worlds not yet known but deeply needed.”—Sheree Renée Thomas, author of Black Panther: Panther’s Rage and Nine Bar Blues“Ultimately, I hope these stories reveal how our imaginations can help build a better reality—not only to serve as a guiding light, but to serve as a balm for these current, difficult times.”—Morgan Jerkins, bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing

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Book SynopsisThe fourth volume of the Bikes in Space series of feminist science fiction stories about bicycling.

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Book SynopsisIn his debut collection, The Fight for Space, Roberto Ontiveros explores the modes of art and obsession with eleven stories that run from fabulist comedy to surrealist noir. The tales-focusing on the inner lives of adult caregivers, deliver drivers, and painters-trace how the ubiquity of media (the world of sitcoms, talk radio, and superhero comics) comes to flood the working class with a dream-like dread. In this book, a budding con artist tries to sell a house that does not belong to her, an anti-social memoirist pens the fates of his friends, and a comic book-obsessed warehouse employee follows a man who wears a gas mask. Atmospheric and erotic, the stories in The Fight for Space, recall the literary mysteries of James M. Cain by way of Twin Peaks.

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Book SynopsisJohn Perryman’s latest collection of stories, Wait at Wood’s Edge, dramatizes varieties of reckonings familiar to Texans, and Americans, in the early twenty-first century. In his stories, flawed but earnest figures struggle to come to terms with the unexpected: betrayal, murder, shattered dreams, failed efforts at redemption, and—even worse—failure to recognize opportunities for redemption. In these deftly written pages, Perryman’s characters seek various forms of reconciliation between conflicting forces across a wide spectrum of the American landscape, navigating the economic, religious, social, and cultural tensions of today. From a pair of desperate grandparents trying their best to raise a haunted granddaughter, who early one morning bears a strange witness at wood’s edge, to a reimagining of the final days of the life of the skeptical Henry Adams, these tales dramatize the unexpected face of redemption with which we are sometimes met. And, as is often the case in the real world, these attempts at reconciliation, though honestly ventured, are not always welcomed or successful. But in this collection of tales, these all-too human lives always strive after a measure of dignity. And in that alone, perhaps, there is reason for hope.

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Book SynopsisLight at the Edge of the Field keeps readers wanting more as a pitcher’s girlfriend confronts her lover, not about his obsession with baseball but about their relationship and future together. After watching a traveling African American baseball team, a father is forced to inform his innocent young son about small-town racism. A diligent catcher—content with being the stable anchor for his team—can catch pitches for hours, but drops the ball in his relationship with his girlfriend. A disadvantaged, fleet-footed player in Mexico dreams of making it to the Major Leagues. These are just a few of the compelling characters readers discover as they step into the batter’s box. A tour de force of baseball short stories that reveal more than relations about the game of life. Like a baseball’s cushioned cork core, these stories illuminate what’s central to our lives—our dreams, both those that can be reached, and those which remain unreachable.

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Book SynopsisInadequacies is a collection of stories, small in scope and large in impact. Each of Morris’ short stories question identity, and examine the ways in which we are unavoidably ourselves. Spanning a range of stories and narrative approaches, the characters in these stories are unable to move forward without first coming to terms with the identities they struggle against. Inadequacies focus on themes of identity and self, while also incorporating a conflict against the elements for each story’s protagonist.

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Book SynopsisSohrab Homi Fracis’s innovative new collection tells a spectrum of stories under a paradoxical new umbrella category: True Fiction. Monotony is banished from this book. At a Florida coffee shop, an immigrant’s voice opens up even as a hipster musician’s shuts down. An underpaid bank teller in the age of ATMs is fired and goes postal. In the title story, on whose premise the book pivots away from realism, a professor recalls his favorite communication ever—and it’s utterly silent. A loving husband and father finds himself inexplicably transformed into a woman. In another world, the protagonist simultaneously faces his end and a new beginning. A budding female messiah confronts a non-gendered godhead. And a bastard prince of ancient Turkey (whose legendary Persian name lives on in the author’s) invades Persia to seek his father. Yet we can see ourselves in them all. Even as the resident magician in Five Points Coffee & Spice regales his fellow customers, Fracis’s literary dexterity takes us on a darkly beguiling magic-carpet ride. “Sohrab Homi Fracis’s new collection, True Fiction, is a tour de force. Showcasing his great gifts as a stylist and his deliciously unfettered imagination, the collection ranges across genres, transgresses expectation, creates with beauty, grace, humor, and insight a compassionate portrait of our essential humanness in these eight eclectic stories that surprise and delight.” —Rilla Askew, author of Fire in Beulah (American Book Award) and Kind of Kin "Fracis is the keen voice of the outsider looking in, telling stories that we all need to hear." —E.C. Osondu, author of Alien Stories (BOA Short Fiction Prize) and Voice of America (Caine Prize for African Writing)

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Book Synopsis"Michael Harney's translation of Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares is the most authoritative and accurate rendering of Cervantes's classic tales to date and promises to be the translation against which future translations will be measured. Harney skillfully portrays the nuanced and complex world of the Exemplary Novellas in a translation that is faithful to the letter and spirit of the original. An erudite and informative Introduction presents a general overview of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, the life of Cervantes, and a detailed analysis of the Exemplary Novellas. Before each story, Harney provides a brief synopsis, an analysis of the novella’s themes, motifs, and generic affinities, and a bibliography for further reading. In addition, numerous footnotes complement the background information Harney provides in the Introduction and prior to each novella." —Michael J. McGrath, Georgia Southern UniversityTrade Review"Harney maintains the richness of language and the narrative flavor of the assortment of tales, admirable in their range and power of allusion. Cervantes captures much of the spirit of his age, and Harney's eminently readable translation conveys the essence of the original material. The general Introduction and brief commentaries on each text are clear and useful, as are the generous notes that students and instructors should appreciate." —Edward H. Friedman, Vanderbilt University

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Book Synopsis"Michael Harney's translation of Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares is the most authoritative and accurate rendering of Cervantes's classic tales to date and promises to be the translation against which future translations will be measured. Harney skillfully portrays the nuanced and complex world of the Exemplary Novellas in a translation that is faithful to the letter and spirit of the original. An erudite and informative Introduction presents a general overview of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, the life of Cervantes, and a detailed analysis of the Exemplary Novellas. Before each story, Harney provides a brief synopsis, an analysis of the novella’s themes, motifs, and generic affinities, and a bibliography for further reading. In addition, numerous footnotes complement the background information Harney provides in the Introduction and prior to each novella." —Michael J. McGrath, Georgia Southern UniversityTrade Review"Harney maintains the richness of language and the narrative flavor of the assortment of tales, admirable in their range and power of allusion. Cervantes captures much of the spirit of his age, and Harney's eminently readable translation conveys the essence of the original material. The general Introduction and brief commentaries on each text are clear and useful, as are the generous notes that students and instructors should appreciate." —Edward H. Friedman, Vanderbilt University

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Book SynopsisSusan Muaddi Darraj’s short story collection about the inhabitants of a Palestinian West Bank village, Tel al- Hilou, spans generations and continents to explore ideas of memory, belonging, connection, and, ultimately, the deepest and richest meaning of home.Trade Review“Susan Muaddi Darraj’s brilliant attention to the details of individual and collective experiences of love, occupation, immigration, and loss over the span of several decades creates an immensely powerful, intimate, and complex portrait of Palestinian lives, both at home and in the diaspora.” — Carol Fadda- Conrey“A Curious Land places Muaddi Darraj with other hybrid- American authors of African, Latin American, Jewish, and other heritages who ensure that our understandings of notions of identity and home remain diverse and complex.” — Electronic Intifada“There is a no judgment or anger in the stories. Darraj shows us one side of a decades- long conflict, with characters struggling for the peace and happiness we all want for ourselves.”— Amina Gautier, The Rumpus“The author’s empathy for the large cast of embattled characters is miraculous.” — Jaime Manrique, author of Our Lives Are the Rivers“Utterly unique.” — Lalita noronha, author of Where Monsoons Cry and Her Skin Phyllo- Thin“Chatty, generous, and often hilarious, this book is full of characters you won’t want to leave behind.” — Randa Jarrar, author of A Map of Home: A Novel“The stories in A Curious Land dissolve the boundaries that can separate people.” — Hayan Charara, author of The Sadness of Others“A Curious Land humanizes a political situation.” — Necessary Fiction“A superb collection and a perfect selection for public libraries.” — Booklist

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Book SynopsisFrom a nurse who sees a rattlesnake in the pediatric ICU to an animal control officer convinced she's found her abducted daughter in the house of a dog hoarder, the thirteen stories in Freak Weather are as unpredictable as the atmospheric changes that give this collection its name. With dark and raucous humor, Mary Kuryla creates female characters who, at times, combine a violent urgency with lack of introspection as they struggle to get out from under the thumb of a perceived authority. The intricate language is inseparable from the narrator's conviction; the characters lie with such bravado they're soon tangled up in their own webs. This brand of romanticism in a female character is little tolerated, and Freak Weather's mission - Kuryla's artistic mission overall - is to scratch at the intolerable. Call it bad instructions for moral behavior.

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Book SynopsisExploring the vagaries of life, human connection, and desire, the twelve stories of Safe Places navigate the fault lines of existence. Shifting from New York and Chicago to the American West and the Australian outback, Kerry Dolan's characters move through an uncertain and unpredictable world, confronting situations that are alternately menacing, tragic, and funny. An aspiring anthropologist falls under the sway of her fortuneteller. An American tourist catches opal fever in an Australian mining town and binds herself to a man she despises. Two hitchhiking teens take a ride with a mysterious stranger, while an unstable graduate student stalks the object of his affections across Berkeley. Assured and distinctive, the voice-driven stories of this debut collection capture the restless heart of characters in a state of flux, as they try—and frequently fail—to move beyond chance and circumstance.

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