Anthologies & Short Stories

Book SynopsisDesert Death-Song compiles some of Louis L’Amour’s greatest stories, many of which have been hard to find in book form. Whether he was writing under his early pen name, Jim Mayo, or his own, L’Amour’s stories are unforgettable, touching on rough and rugged American ideals and set in the untamable frontier of the Western United States.Nearly a dozen stories are presented here that represent the best of L’Amour’s yarn-spinning writing, a choice collection handpicked from the variety of pulp Western magazines in which the author first became known. The most popular author of Westerns the world has ever known, L’Amour writes stories full of mavericks, outlaws, romantics, and heroes. His characters follow the unspoken laws and morals of the Wild West, and the pictures he paints are unrivaled in their authenticity. From gold prospectors to sheriffs, characters of L’Amour tales will never be forgotten.

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Book Synopsis“L’Amour is popular for all the right reasons. His books embody heroic virtues that seem to matter now more than ever.”—The Wall Street JournalEdge-of-your-seat thrillers from the greatest Western author ever.There will never be another Western writer like Louis L’Amour. A legendary author and indisputably the greatest storyteller in his genre of all time, L’Amour captivated millions of readers and has sold well over three hundred million copies of his works, which includes nearly ninety novels and countless short stories.Mistakes Can Kill You highlights an essential selection featuring nine of L’Amour’s earlier short stories, sometimes written under the pen name Jim Mayo, that exemplify the rugged morality of the best Western writing. In “Black Rock Coffin-Makers,” two men ready to kill over ownership of a ranch get more than they bargain for when a stranger is caught in the crossfire. And in “Four- Card Draw,” Allen Ring wins a ranch in a poker game, only to find out an unsolved murder was committed there years ago and law enforcement thinks Ring knows more about it than he’s letting on.L’Amour made his characters come alive on the page, and his ability to capture the spirit and authenticity of the Wild West is unrivaled. Mistakes Can Kill You transports you to a world you’ll never want to leave, and proves that Louis L’Amour will always be the king of spinning a classic Western yarn. Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction that takes place in the old West. Westerns—books about outlaws, sheriffs, chiefs and warriors, cowboys and Indians—are a genre in which we publish regularly. Our list includes international bestselling authors like Zane Gray and Louis L’Amour, and many more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

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Book SynopsisThe Ancient Magus’ Bride: The Golden Yarn and The Ancient Magus’ Bride: The Silver Yarn are collections of prose short stories that expand the beloved world and characters from The Ancient Magus’ Bride. In addition to stories by Kore Yamazaki herself, the books include works by prominent authors such as Yuuichirou Higashide, writer on Fate/Apocrypha and Fate/Grand Order, and Yoshinobu Akita, author of Sorcerous Stabber Orphen. Each self-contained volume is a unique and magical addition to any bookshelf.

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Book SynopsisPhilip Wylie’s enthralling tales of saltwater fishing have been entertaining readers of the Saturday Evening Post since 1939. Captain Crunch Adams, skipper of the charter boat Poseidon, and his friend and partner Des Smith adventure high and low in the waters of Florida, coming face-to-face with big fish and bigger personalities along the way. Featuring twenty-two of Wylie’s best Crunch and Des stories, this is a delightful compendium of every thrill fishing has to offer.These beloved adventures include:• “Widow Voyage”• “Light Tackle”• “Fifty-Four, Forty and Fight”• “The Way of All Fish”• “The Affair of the Ardent Amazon”• “Smuggler’s Cove”• And more favorite classics!With each Crunch and Des story selected by the author’s daughter, these tales begin a journey of saltwater nostalgia, marine adventure, and warmhearted personalities that will last far beyond the last page.Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for fishermen. Our books for anglers include titles that focus on fly fishing, bait fishing, fly-casting, spin casting, deep sea fishing, and surf fishing. Our books offer both practical advice on tackle, techniques, knots, and more, as well as lyrical prose on fishing for bass, trout, salmon, crappie, baitfish, catfish, and more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

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Book SynopsisThis compilation contains three complete novels and eight major short stories from the canon of one of the twentieth century’s most enduringly popular fiction writers.From London to Hong Kong, from Paris to Pago Pago, in Samoa or Malaya or on a Tahitian tropical isle, the men and women in this collection of masterfully crafted tales inhabit exotic, mysterious worlds—and at their own peril invade the dark territory of the human heart.Somerset Maugham, a noted English novelist, playwright, and author of masterly short stories, spent several months in the Pacific in 1916 and 1917 during an interlude in his service in British intelligence during World War I. Several of his works have been made into movies and plays, including Razor’s Edge, Of Human Bondage, Cakes and Ale, Rain, and The Moon and Sixpence.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

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Book SynopsisSaga of Brutes draws together three confronting and darkly stories: “Between Dog Fights and Pig Slaughter,” “The Dirty Work of Others,” and “carbo animalis,” published in one volume for the first time. Ana Paula Maia’s no-holds-barred narrative pulls few punches, describing the shocking reality of the lives of the invisible workingmen who, like Atlas, are forced to carry society’s burdens. These heroes of vile circumstance—coal miners, firemen, garbage collectors, crematorium workers—are the soot-covered supermen who risk their lives performing difficult and dangerous work for others. But in the end, they, too, amount to nothing but carbo animalis—notwithstanding the impure relation of coal to diamonds. Despite their straightforwardness, Ana Paula Maia’s stories are filled with great insight and compassion for the lives of the men who live on the edge of a society built with their own sweat.Trade ReviewA sense of duty seems to be the main thing distinguishing man from beast in these three long, thematically linked stories, the first of the Brazilian novelist’s work to be published in America. * Kirkus Reviews *

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Book SynopsisFour pairs of stories-four “double rooms”-sit side by side in the latest work of fiction by one of Spain’s most compelling writers. A publisher wonders about the voices that haunt her; a scriptwriter receives an unexpected gift; a dinner party is shaken by a mysterious guest; a father seeks to atone for his son’s crimes. Ranging from Madrid to Milwaukee, and from prose fiction to drama to essay, the chapters of this “narrative installation” echo one another, revealing a carefully layered composition of humor and foreboding. Double Room is a subtle meditation on the bonds between parents and children, the burdens of illness and grief, and the places we make our home.Trade Review"Double room is one of the events of the year." -La Nueva Spain"Luis Magrinyà is renowned as a highly idiosyncratic observer of Spain's social strata." -Times Literary Supplement

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Book SynopsisBeauty Looks Down On Me is a collection of by turns sad and funny stories about the thwarted expectations of the young as they grow older. HeeKyung’s characters are misfits who by virtue of their bodies or their lack of social status are left to dream of momentous changes that will never come. Unsatisfied with work, with family, with friends, they lose themselves in diets, books, and blogs. Heekyung’s collection humorously but humanely depicts the loneliness and monotony found in many modern lives.

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Book SynopsisLife often seems to be little more than a droning continuum irregularly interrupted by moments of intense feeling, excitement, and insight. In Cut Up on Copacabana, three interlocking sets of texts by professional boxer and professor of French literature David Scott (“Travel Notes,” “Boxing Rings,” and “Schoolboy Rites of Passage”) explore such singular moments. Whether he is examining Mt. Fuji in the footsteps of Hokusai, reflecting on the “firsts” of childhood, or meditating on the meaning of the violence and rigorous discipline of boxing, Scott writes with extraordinary verve and candor.

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Book SynopsisRazor-sharp social commentary, Jane Austen for contemporary feminists unafraid to confront a dark worldIn her latest translated volume of collected short fiction, Rumena Bužarovska delivers more of what established her as “one of the most interesting writers working in Europe today.” Already a bestseller across her native Macedonia, I’m Not Going Anywhere is an unsentimental and hyperrealist collection in which Macedonians leave their country of origin to escape bleakness—only to find, in other locales, new kinds of desolation in theses dark, biting, and utterly absorbing stories.Trade Review“Bužarovska belongs to the highest ranks of contemporary women writers—here I think it’s completely justified to appraise her in the global context and to place her side by side with the most renowned, say, English-speaking authors like Alice Munro, although this young Macedonian author, of course, has a lot of writing to do before being compared to a body of work of this extent, but the thing is you can clearly see how she could do it, that type of material is here—brought to light by the dark, carefully shaded places of foremostly human, not exclusively female existence, in such a way that the reader is at the same time necessarily frightened and thrilled by what’s in front of them: first because of what they recognize in themselves and those close to them, and secondly because . . . let’s say because it has never been brought to light in that way.”—Teofil Pančić, Globus

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Book SynopsisCandid and unfettered, Sven Popović’s Last Night is a playfully existential meditation on youth and the search for the self.Acclaimed in his native Croatia, Popović’s unique blend of intimacy and contemplation has garnered him a following in the alternative literary scene of Zagreb—and beyond. With an intellectualism that never takes itself too seriously, an unaffected fluidity of form, and a keen eye for the smallest, strangest moments that color our lives, his stories weave an offbeat tapestry of urban life.Last Night is the first short story collection from Sven Popović, whose writing was previously featured in Dalkey Archive Press’s Best European Fiction 2017, and his first full work to be released in English. Slickly translated by Vinko Zgaga, Popović’s sometimes-dreamlike, sometimes-conversational vignettes offer a shrewd, original outlook on life’s absurdities.Trade Review"Like all great writers, Sven Popovic is not only a master storyteller but also a conjurer of atmospheres. Reading this book is like hanging out with friends during one of those long and dreamy European summer days, where night and day eventually merge into each other and you are taken in by the subtle surrealism of youth. A book, yes, but more importantly a powerful experience.” —Carlos Fonesca, author of Natural History and Austral "Sven's stories are not burdened by reality, as much as reality isn’t burdened with our generation. It’s hard to talk about generations, but if there is a cohesive thread that binds these forever-post-forever-inbetween people (who, instead of Proust’s Madelaines have toilet seats of rundown bars), Popović found it. These stories are permeated with melancholy and irony, they wear a tired sneer that never goes into cynicism, and they ask the following question: who is that “we” that we talk about? This is literature that dares to do what a lot of contemporary fiction shrinks away from—dream.” —Lana Bastašić, author of Catch the Rabbit

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Book SynopsisTravers Corners, if visited by a dedicated urbanite, would be seen as nothing more than a windblown gas station of a town that would make the middle of nowhere look like Metropolis. It’s a town of 329 beloved residents, from Dolores, who runs the beauty parlor, to Junior McCracken, the worst fisherman to never give up the sport, to Judson C. Clark, boatbuilder and Carrie Creek’s occasional guide.But Travers Corners is more than just a gas station of a town. It’s a destination for fly fishing—a paradise made of the finest trout waters ever seen, with rivers and creeks sweeping past cattle ranches, tall grasses, and off into the timbered mountains.In Scott Waldie’s Return to Travers Corners are stories of small town friendships and fights, of famous fishermen and unlucky anglers, of trout so big they’re practically mythical, and of the ones that got away—in love and on the water. The tales of Travers Corners hearken to a simpler, more enticing world of wild places, good deeds, and the friends made along the way.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

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Book SynopsisCombining hard-edged prose and savage Southern charm, Mary Miller showcases biting contemporary talent at its best. Fast on the heels of her "terrific" (New York Times Book Review) debut novel, The Last Days of California, she now reaches new heights with this collection of shockingly relatable, ill-fated love stories. Acerbic and ruefully funny, Always Happy Hour weaves tales of young women-deeply flawed and intensely real-who struggle to get out of their own way. They love to drink and have sex; they make bad decisions with men who either love them too much or too little; and they haunt a Southern terrain of gas stations, public pools, and dive bars. Though each character shoulders the weight of her own baggage-whether it's a string of horrible exes, a boyfriend with an annoying child, or an inability to be genuinely happy for a best friend-they are united in their unrelenting suspicion that they deserve better. These women seek understanding in the most unlikely places: a dilapidated foster home where love is a liability in "Big Bad Love," a trailer park littered with a string of bad decisions in "Uphill," and the unfamiliar corners of a dream home purchased with the winnings of a bitter divorce settlement in "Charts." Taking a microscope to delicate patterns of love and intimacy, Miller evokes the reticent love among the misunderstood, the gritty comfort in bad habits that can't be broken, and the beat-by-beat minutiae of fated relationships. Like an evening of drinking, Always Happy Hour is a comforting burn, warm and intoxicating in its brutal honesty. In an unforgettable style that distinguishes her within her generation, Miller once again captures womanhood in "a raw...and heartbreaking way" (Los Angeles Review of Books) and solidifies her essential role in American fiction.Trade Review"Brutally honest, it is nevertheless a comforting read." -- Five of the Best American Short Story Collections - Country & Town House

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Book SynopsisRaising the literary bar to a new level, Jerome Charyn re-creates the voice of Theodore Roosevelt, the New York City police commissioner, Rough Rider, and soon- to-be twenty-sixth president through his derring-do adventures, effortlessly combining superhero dialogue with haunting pathos. Beginning with his sickly childhood and concluding with McKinley’s assassination, the novel positions Roosevelt as a “perfect bull in a china shop,” a fearless crime fighter and pioneering environmentalist who would grow up to be our greatest peacetime president. With an operatic cast, including “Bamie,” his handicapped older sister; Eleanor, his gawky little niece; as well as the devoted Rough Riders, the novel memorably features the lovable mountain lion Josephine, who helped train Roosevelt for his “crowded hour,” the charge up San Juan Hill. Lauded by Jonathan Lethem for his “polymorphous imagination and crack comic timing,” Charyn has created a classic of historical fiction, confirming his place as “one of the most important writers in American literature” (Michael Chabon).Trade Review"A rendering of Teddy Roosevelt's early life that spotlights formative moments in colorful, entertaining episodes. Charyn makes artful use of historical fact and fiction's panache to capture the man before he became one of the great U.S. presidents and a face on Mount Rushmore." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"Undeniably, a marvel.... Charyn’s empathetic first-person strategy keeps the tone sprightly positive." -- Jean Zimmerman, New York Times Book Review"Marked from beginning to end by restlessness and adventure.... A ripping, enjoyable yarn." -- Keir Graff, Booklist"Who wouldn’t want to grow old like Jerome Charyn? Now in his 80s, the prolific writer seems ever more daring. Charyn has found a path all his own — neither a substitute for biography nor a violation of it.... For fans of Roosevelt, this is tremendous fun.... One of the melancholy pleasures of this novel is the contrast it continually presents to our current president. The reviewer’s handbook says I’m not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but I have to offer some praise for this unusually witty dust jacket. It strikes just the right tone, as does this delightful novel." -- Ron Charles, The Washington Post"Graced with vivid, vigorous writing.... [Charyn] has written the rousing yarn advertised in his title and dust jacket, and he has written it well." -- Gerard Helferich, The Wall Street Journal"Warning: don't turn to the first page of Jerome Charyn's remarkable new work of fiction The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King unless you have time to be utterly swept away for the next ___ hours." -- Joyce Carol Oates"Jerome Charyn has long been one of our most rewarding novelists, and he has upped the ante in The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King, his frolic about Teddy Roosevelt in the West." -- Larry McMurtry"Charyn captures Roosevelt’s doubts, aspirations and ebullient spirit.... A lively, warts-and-all portrait of an irrepressible man." -- Mary Ann Gwinn, Newsday"Jerome Charyn is a one off: no other living American writer crafts novels with his vibrancy of historical imagination. If you think his novels about Dickinson and Lincoln are virtuosic works of art, The Cowboy King will astonish you anew. Here is Teddy Roosevelt as you’ve never before experienced him, and as you won’t soon forget him." -- William Giraldi, author of American Audacity: In Defense of Literary Daring"For TR, Mr. Charyn pulls out the stops offering up the man in his own voice, a magnificent mashup of macho and aristocrat.... Cowboy King is a novel at its best: engaging, immersive and compelling." -- Comics Grinder"No one rewrites America's strange history-- or its maverick characters-- with more flair, sharp-shooting wit, and compassion than the many-sided Jerome Charyn. And in The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King, he's done it again: he's written a raucous, poignant, charming novel about a raucous, poignant, charming Teddy Roosevelt, a man of his time, and ours. Don't miss it." -- Brenda Wineapple, author of Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877

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Book SynopsisMary Miller combines hard-edged prose and savage Southern charm. Claustrophobic and lonesome, acerbic and magnetic, the women in Always Happy Hour seek understanding in the most unlikely places—a dilapidated foster home where love is a liability and the empty corners of a dream home bought after a bitter divorce. Miller evokes the particular gritty comfort found in bad habits as hope turns to dust.Trade Review"...enjoyable... a meditation on the stories a person tells herself." -- The New York Times Book Review"...a tipsy glow surrounds [Miller’s] Southern women as they [nurse] an inner ache they can’t booze away. In lucid, vivid prose, Miller renders them alive to lust and, however improbably, to love." -- O, The Oprah Magazine"You tune into each of [Miller's] narrators as though you’d missed their first two sentences, and the tempo guilts you into full attention. You don’t look away before the story ends, and it leaves you admiring how sparingly it’s been told." -- The Telegraph

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Book SynopsisEstablished by the leaders of the country’s only successful slave revolt in the mid-nineteenth century, Cross River still evokes the fierce rhythms of its founding. In lyrical prose and singular dialect, a saga beats forward that echoes the fables carried down for generations—like the screecher birds who swoop down for their periodic sacrifice, and the water women who lure men to wet deaths. Among its residents—wildly spanning decades, perspectives, and species—are David Sherman, a struggling musician who just happens to be God’s last son; Tyrone, a ruthless PhD candidate, whose dissertation about a childhood game ignites mayhem in the neighboring, once-segregated town of Port Yooga; and Jim, an all-too-obedient robot who serves his Master. As the book builds to its finish with Special Topics in Loneliness Studies, a fully-realized novella, two unhinged professors grapple with hugely different ambitions, and the reader comes to appreciate the intricacy of the world Scott has created—one where fantasy and reality are eternally at war. Contemporary and essential, The World Doesn’t Require You is a “leap into a blazing new level of brilliance” (Lauren Groff) that affirms Rion Amilcar Scott as a writer whose storytelling gifts the world very much requires.Trade Review"Bizarre, tender and brilliantly imagined, The World Doesn't Require You isn't just one of the most inventive books of the year, it's also one of the best." -- Michael Schaub, NPR.org"Scott’s Cross River has been compared to other authors’ imagined places, from Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County to Jesmyn Ward’s Bois Sauvage (and I would add Nisi Shawl’s Everfair, as well as Black Panther’s Wakanda), but it’s completely his own, forged of deep roots, racial conflict and humor so mordant you’ll do double takes.... These stories range from satire (“The Electric Joy of Service”) to fantasy (“Numbers”) to horror (“Rolling in My Six-Fo’?”) and not one of them strikes a false note. There are angry notes. Even, perhaps, hostile ones. But none that are unwarranted. A few readers may be shocked by Scott’s use of cultural epithets, but those are far from unnecessary. We have so far to go and so little time to get there, Scott seems to say. Maybe spending a few hours in Cross River will help build a bridge. Or blow one up, if need be." -- Bethanne Patrick, Washington Post"Rion Amilcar Scott proves himself an impressive myth-slayer and fable-maker... The World Doesn’t Require You reminds us that having to fight racism has a strange way of distorting everything one touches.... With two books under his belt, Scott seems to have barely skimmed the surface of the many more characters and conflicts he could explore in Cross River." -- Salamishah Tillet, New York Times Book Review"A rich, genre-splicing mix of alternate history, magical realism and satire that interrogates issues of race, sexism and where both meet here in the real world." -- Chris Barton, Los Angeles Times"We know Cross River, Maryland, the setting of Rion Amilcar Scott’s stories, is fictional because it’s supposed to have been founded by slaves who successfully overthrew their masters. We also know this because God was resurrected there, which we learn from his progeny in ‘David Sherman, the Last Son of God,’ and because in another futuristic story, slave history is reenacted by cyborgs. Scott joins a growing tradition of African-American authors fusing the folksy dystopian humor of George Saunders with the charged satire of Ishmael Reed and expands on it brilliantly." -- Boris Kachka, New York Magazine"A bold new talent emerges with this boundary-shattering collection of linked stories set in fictional Cross County, Maryland, founded by the leaders of America’s only successful slave uprising. Characters range from robots to sons of God in these magical realist stories about race, religion, and violence. Think of it as Faulkner meets Asimov." -- Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire"Powerful and revelatory." -- Erin Keane, Salon"A bleak and beautiful collection of short stories.... Scott demonstrates the skill and long-range vision of a writer we need right now. The World Doesn’t Require You requires a commitment from readers, one that will be greatly repaid in literary satisfaction." -- Emily Gray Tedrowe, USA TODAY"You'll no doubt find yourself highlighting passages over and over again, consistently marveling over the author's storytelling genius." -- Quinn Keaney, Popsugar"Scott’s interweaving story collection covers generations and defies genre restrictions in a series of wry, magically tinged character studies. The book affirms Scott, who won awards for his first collection Insurrection, as a major unique literary talent." -- Entertainment Weekly"Scott makes his stories feel singular.... [The] high level of energy and humor, which Scott maintains throughout, makes the novella a standout.... He bends expectations throughout the book, frequently demonstrating this idea from the aforementioned public speaker: ‘Everything horrible is just a little bit ridiculous, and vice versa.’ And despite how clear Scott is about this modus operandi, he constantly surprises, pushing things just a little further in either direction.... Though God may have forsaken [these characters], Scott does not. The World Doesn’t Require You is full of horrible, ridiculous people, but it’s full of grace, too." -- Bradley Babendir - A.V. Club"Rich and extraordinary.... Scott, whose 2016 debut collection, Insurrections, introduced readers to Cross River, has created a fictional mini-world so detailed that, for all its surreality, you begin to feel you could draw it on a map. But what he’s also tracing here is a history of oppression — and not just in the slavery that Cross River’s 19th-century founders escaped with their successful revolt, known as the Insurrection. The persistence of racism in American culture is central, but other entrenched forms of domination are here, too: the toxic hierarchies that humans, even those fleeing their own subjugation, so dependably replicate." -- Laura Collins-Hughes, Boston Globe"Rion Amilcar Scott doesn’t hold back or tiptoe around issues about race. He’s the most courageous writer I know; and this collection is an excellent example and significant achievement. He’s now made his mark as a force to reckon with." -- Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Patsy"Scott’s signature blend of tenderness and world-weary wise-cracking and magical realism buoys the reader with strength and a deeply intelligent hope. You won’t find Cross River on any map, but its people and their stories are real and solid and demand to be heard." -- Cari Luna, author of The Revolution of Every Day"I've been a fan of Rion Amilcar Scott's for years, but I was astonished by The World Does Not Require You, which seems a leap into a blazing new level of brilliance: it is a wild, restless, deeply intelligent collection of stories, each of which resists and subverts the limits of categorization. What a beautiful book." -- Lauren Groff, author of Florida and Fates and Furies"Mischievous, relentlessly inventive stories whose interweaving content swerves from down-home grit to dreamlike grotesque.... Mordantly bizarre and trenchantly observant, these stories stake out fresh territory in the nation's literary landscape." -- Kirkus Reviews [starred review]"Scott’s bold and often outlandish imagination makes for stories that may be difficult to define, but whose emotional authenticity is never once in doubt." -- Publishers Weekly [starred review]"Each time I open to a passage I love, I think this man is a national treasure of a writer… What brilliance between the pages." -- Jacqueline Woodson, author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming"Reminiscent of classic isolated-world fantasies like The Martian Chronicles (1950) and Kirinyaga (1998).... Scott’s imagery and unique voice blend horror, satire, and magical realism into an intoxicating brew." -- Lesley Williams - Booklist"Surreal, intertextual, and darkly comical stories... Rion Amilcar Scott writes in the tradition of George Schuyler and Ishmael Reed but with a distinctive wry, playful voice that is wholly his own. With breathtaking cruelty and devastating humor, Scott adduces the whole world in one community." -- Nafissa Thompson-Spires, author of Heads of the Colored People"The World Doesn't Require You is a wholly inventive, mesmerizing, genre-bending whirlwind of a book. I am utterly blown away by Rion Amilcar Scott's boundless talent and imagination." -- Jami Attenberg, author of All Grown Up"In the midst of a renaissance of African American fiction, Rion Amilcar Scott's stories stand at the forefront of what's possible in this vanguard. Funny, sad, and always moving, these stories explore what it means to call a place like America home when it treats you with indifference or terror. The people in these stories are unforgettable, their lives recognizable, their voices, as written by Scott, wholly original." -- Kaitlyn Greenidge, author of We Love You, Charlie Freeman"Flat-out unputdownable. The fictional town of Cross River, MD sits at the heart of this dazzling collection—home to water-women and a wayward lecturer secretly dwelling in the basement of a university building and the last son of god, to myth and wonder and sorrow. With these innovative, refreshing, and altogether thrilling stories, Rion Amilcar Scott once again shows his readers that he is a blazingly original talent, a vital voice." -- Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel"This soaring collection firmly places Cross River within the canon of American literature and confirms Scott as one of the most unique, powerful writers of his generation. We are so lucky." -- Randa Jarrar, author of Him, Me, Muhammad Ali: Stories

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Book SynopsisAcclaimed as “the greatest writer ever produced in Latin America” by Susan Sontag, as well as “another Kafka” by Allen Ginsberg, Machado de Assis (1839-1908) was famous in his time for his psychologically probing tales of fin-de-siecle Rio de Janeiro. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson, “the accomplished duo” (The Wall Street Journal) behind the “landmark...heroically translated” volume (The New Yorker) of The Collected Stories of Machado de Assis (ISBN 978 0 87140 496 1), include twenty-six chronologically ordered stories, Machado de Assis affirms Machado’s status as a literary giant who must finally be fully integrated into the world literary canon.Trade Review"To Machado, your identity and the contours of your world are formed not just by your circumstances but by what you think about habitually. You are what you contemplate, so choose wisely. These stories are a spectacular place to start." -- The New York Times

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Book Synopsis“When you look over your own library, who do you see?” Since founding the beloved Well-Read Black Girl book club in 2015, Glory Edim has emerged as a literary tastemaker for a new generation. Continuing her life’s work to brighten and enrich American reading lives through the work of legendary Black authors, she now launches her Well-Read Black Girl Library Series with On Girlhood. This meticulously selected anthology features a wide range of unique voices, finally illuminating a distinctly robust sector of contemporary literature: groundbreaking short stories that explore the thin yet imperative line between Black girlhood and womanhood. Divided into four themes—Innocence, Belonging, Love, and Self-Discovery—the unforgettable young protagonists within contend with the trials of coming of age that shape who they are and what they will become. With this tradition in mind, Innocence opens with Jamaica Kincaid’s searing “Girl,” in which a mother offers fierce instructions to her impressionable daughter. This deceptively simple yet profound monologue is followed by Toni Morrison’s first and only published short story, the now-canonical “Recitatif,” about two neglected girls who come together in youth only to find themselves on opposite picket lines in adulthood. In Belonging, Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Lesson” follows rambunctious students on a field trip where they are exposed to a new world of luxury. In Love, Dana Johnson’s “Melvin in the Sixth Grade” captures the yearning of a lovesick teen smitten with the only boy who looks her way. And in Self-Discovery, Edwidge Danticat’s “Seeing Things Simply” charts the creative awakening of Princesse, a young woman with a hunger to be fully seen. These inspiring tales of world builders and rule breakers conclude with Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” a personal essay brimming with wit and strength: “When covered by the waters, I am; and the ebb but reveals me again.” At times heartbreaking and at times hilarious, these stories boldly push past flat stereotypes and powerfully convey the beauty of Black girlhood. In bringing together an array of influential authors—past and present—whose work remains timeless, Glory Edim has created an indispensable compendium for every home library and a soul-stirring guide to coming of age. Featuring stories by Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Morrison, Dorothy West, Rita Dove, Camille Acker, Toni Cade Bambara, Amina Gautier, Alexia Arthurs, Dana Johnson, Alice Walker, Gwendolyn Brooks, Edwidge Danticat, Shay Youngblood, Paule Marshall, and Zora Neale Hurston.Trade Review"An expansive, decades-spanning view of Black girlhood.... The collection is genuinely riveting; the stories narrate the lives of indelible characters with humor, irony, and immense skill. And while each story differs greatly in setting and tone, through lines arise... A profound, prismatic collection." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred review

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Book SynopsisA towering figure in the pantheon of twentieth-century literature, Thomas Mann has often been perceived as a dry and forbidding writer—“the starched collar,” as Bertolt Brecht once called him. But in fact, his fiction is lively, humane, sometimes hilarious. In these fresh renderings of his best short work, award-winning translator Damion Searls casts new light on this underappreciated aspect of Mann’s genius. The headliner of this volume, “Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow” (in its first new translation since 1936)—a subtle masterpiece that reveals the profound emotional significance of everyday life—is Mann’s tender but sharp-eyed portrait of the “Bigs” and “Littles” of the bourgeois Cornelius family as they adjust to straitened circumstances in hyperinflationary Weimar Germany. Here, too, is a free-standing excerpt from Mann’s first novel, Buddenbrooks—a sensation when it was first published. “Death in Venice” (also included in this volume) is Mann’s most famous story, but less well known is that he intended it to be a diptych with another, comic story—included here as “Confessions of a Con Artist, by Felix Krull.” “Louisey”—a tale of sexual humiliation that gives a first glimpse of Mann’s lifelong ambivalence about the power of art—rounds out this revelatory, transformative collection.Trade Review"Searls infuses the prose of Nobel laureate Mann (1875–1955) with momentum and energy in this excellent collection. English-language readers will find the humor and digressive appeal of Mann’s prose enhanced... A well-chosen excerpt from the novel Confessions of a Con Artist, by Felix Krull exhibits a connection between the title character, a peripatetic young man, and Mann’s other protagonists: “What a royal gift the imagination is, and what pleasure it affords us!” Felix narrates. Throughout, the characters are linked by their unspeakable desires, and their inner worlds are just as significant as, and often more so than, their actions. Scholars as well as those new to Mann will find much to appreciate in Searls’s stimulating approach." -- Publishers Weekly"Searls' superb translations of Mann’s most essential short works emphasize moments of despair and levity, breathing fresh humanity into the stories of the famously solemn German literary giant . . . Searls is meticulous in his attention to German-language nuance but intuitive in channeling the tensions and rhythms of his source material. His introduction reveals a deep fascination with Mann’s complexities, and an anxiety that Mann might soon be dismissed as a twentieth-century relic with little relevance to today’s readers. His work here goes a long way toward preventing that from happening." -- Brendan Driscoll - Booklist"In his witty, insightful, and charming introduction, Searls makes some useful observations about why Mann’s personal life is worth addressing . . . It’s a useful reminder of the subversive power of cultural hybridity — a writer whose Germanness was central to his public identity in fact contained multitudes." -- Matt Hanson - Arts Fuse"[A] trip into timeless themes of youthful innocence; the perpetual struggle between discipline and desire; and more. Readers turn to Mann not for lickety-split action but to take a literary amble through poetic sentences; those in the market for old-school leisure won't be disappointed." -- Michael Magras - Shelf Awareness"I have long loved Thomas Mann's subtlety, erudition, and elegant mind, but it wasn't until reading these newly translated stories that I picked up the range of the author's irony and humor. The art of translation seems to me the most delicate and precise of literary arts, and Damion Searls stands at the very apex of translators into English." -- Lauren Groff, author of Matrix"Damion Searls has produced the perfect Mann translation; the author’s erudition and aesthetic sensibility are mutually enhanced instead of one being sacrificed for the other. Mann has never been more readable in English, and the English reader never more aware of the shining beauty of the source." -- Anton Hur, translator"Although Mann’s stories are more than a century old, Damion Searls’s new translations capture the writer’s sly humor and warmth, making these short masterpieces feel wholly modern. Readers who know Mann will see him anew; for those who haven’t read him yet, this collection is a superb introduction to one of the greats." -- Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind"Searls’s selections of this funny, ironic, exceptionally readable 20th-century writer’s work are as inspired as his engaging and lucid translations: here we have the slow-burning torment and humiliation of 'Louisey,' the charming irony of 'Confessions of a Con Artist, By Felix Krull,' the startling emotional acuity of 'A Day in the Life of Hanno Buddenbrook,' and the great rediscovery, 'Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow,' which condenses a novel’s worth of empathy, family conflict, and fine-grained observation into a riveting story less than forty pages long. Towering above all is 'Death in Venice'—the extraordinary pandemic tale, refreshed and haunting in its best-ever translation. I’ve spent years waiting for the Mannaissance—the publication of New Selected Stories will, at last, bring it into being." -- Mark Krotov, coeditor, n+1"In this vigorous new version . . . Searls takes pains to bring Mann’s decades-old prose to life without anachronism or false breeziness . . . A well-chosen, confidently translated gathering of stories that casts new light on its author." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred review

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Book SynopsisBaseball and the people who live and breathe it will seem closer and more vivid than ever.Painting the Corners Again is Bob Weintraub’s second marvelous collection of baseball stories. It goes directly to the core of what America’s pastime does for us when we watch it being played on the field. Weintraub shows us that baseball has its heroes and its villains, and that they can reach into a person’s life and remain a part of us for the rest of our days.Told from various perspectives, Painting the Corners Again offers the personal experiences of the baseball player, manager, general manager, coach, scout, owner, writer, broadcaster, and fan. Each strives for its own sense of authenticity and is full of characters that we recognize and want to spend time with.In this collection, the author digs beyond the statistics and numbers that sometimes dominate our view of a sport to get to the true humanity of baseball. W. P. Kinsella, author of Shoeless Joe (the novel on which Field of Dreams was based) says, “Weintraub has executed a triple play: savvy baseball writing, unforgettable characters, and a home run ending for each tale.”Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.Trade Review“Weintraub has executed a triple play: savvy baseball writing, unforgettable characters, and a home run ending for each tale.” —W. P. Kinsella, author of Shoeless Joe“Great storytelling for fans and nonfans alike. Bob Weintraub has big-league talent.” —Dan Shaughnessy, author of The Curse of the Bambino and columnist for the Boston Globe“Weintraub has executed a triple play: savvy baseball writing, unforgettable characters, and a home run ending for each tale.” —W. P. Kinsella, author of Shoeless Joe“Great storytelling for fans and nonfans alike. Bob Weintraub has big-league talent.” —Dan Shaughnessy, author of The Curse of the Bambino and columnist for the Boston Globe

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