American English Fiction

You’re Not a Girl in a Movie is a new collection of powerful poems by Hala Alyan, winner of the Arab American Book Award in Poetry and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In these nine extraordinary poems, Alyan wrestles with the intimate themes that have driven her acclaimed body of work to date: the aching loss of homeland, the image and worth of women, and the violence of love. In Beirut, Brooklyn, and roads in the American West, she unravels the effects of decades of war and displacement on love and human worth and identity.

From Heathrow Airport to around the world, this set of steamy standalone novels follow passengers whose lives—and hearts—take unexpected turns. Adventure, passion, and love await them at every destination. Buckle up, because someone is always flying somewhere, but these men are all headed for one thing: their happily ever after.

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans - though no one calls them that anymore. His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the "Transition". Now, eating human meat - "special meat" - is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Strathnaver, Scotland, summer 1792. The Highland Clearances abruptly destroy Artis MacKay's idyllic world. Patrick Steller, the Countess of Sutherland's estate manager, murders Artis' family and burns her village. Forced into indentured servitude in the colonies, she becomes a Virginia plantation servant. After seven long years, Artis receives her freedom dues - land in Kentucky. Bear MacKee grew up in the Highlands too, but disease claims his parents on his family's voyage to the colonies.

Kelly McGuffin - an innocent victim of violence and neglect - is haunted by shame. At age 18, loneliness and danger compel her to leave her remote cabin in the Virginia mountains to travel west with the Wyllie brothers to Boonesborough, Kentucky. Kelly's feelings for her heroic rescuer, Sheriff William Wyllie, remain confused and obscured beneath her worsening veil of fear. Caught in the untamed world of the frontier - both breathtakingly beautiful and shockingly cruel - Kelly is unable to control her uncertain future.

The Revolutionary War left Captain Sam Wyllie battle-hardened. His courageous but cold heart defies danger - and love. He is determined to make a fresh start in the far west, the new state of Kentucky. Newly widowed, Catherine Adams knows she should return to her wealthy father in Boston but fears he will once again force her to marry for prestige and wealth, not love. Drawn to Sam's keen intelligence, harsh masculinity, and rugged warrior facade, she decides the west holds a chance for real love.

In an unlikely place for new beginnings, a cemetery, Edward and Dora meet for the first time. But in that forlorn place, the beauty of love blossoms. Edward is still struggling with guilt over the death of his family more than a year ago - a guilt so great he's unable to even look at his children's gravestones. As their friendship grows, Dora forces Edward to confront the truth - their deaths were not his fault. And Edward gives Dora, a young Boston widow, a chance to seize love and learn the meaning of passion.

Weaving a tapestry of history, romance, and adventure, this epic novel sweeps us into an awe-inspiring, heart-stopping story of love and survival in an emerging America. It is spring 1797. Dreaming of building a better life, Stephen and Jane Wyllie set out across the American frontier in search of a place to call home in a land of savage beauty. With undaunted courage and boundless daring, Stephen, along with his five brothers, bravely plunges toward a wilderness full of terror.

C. J. Box, #1 New York Times best-selling author of the hugely popular Joe Pickett series, selects the best short mystery and crime fiction of the year in this annual “treat for crime-fiction fans” (Library Journal).

From the award-winning author of Chemistry comes a sharp and poignant short story that follows a young medical student working in clinical research and grappling with the realities of a future in her chosen field.

Luke Ransom and Jug Sartain, trappers for the American Fur Company, made a formidable team when they partnered up in the grueling winter wilderness of Blackfoot Country. No hostile raids by man, no brutal obstacles of nature could stop them from snaring what they came for. The nicest surprise was that Luke came home with a wife—Willow, a lovely young Crow woman.. Now, one year later, in this new trapping season of 1834, it’s Luke, Jug, and Willow who become the hunted.

Jubal Sackett’s urge to explore drove him westward, and when a Natchez priest asks him to undertake a nearly impossible quest, Sackett ventures into the endless grassy plains the Indians call the Far Seeing Lands. He seeks a Natchez exploration party and its leader, Itchakomi. It is she who will rule her people when their aging chief dies, but first she must vanquish her rival, the arrogant warrior Kapata. Sackett’s quest will bring him danger from an implacable enemy...and show him a life - and a woman - worth dying for.

In this suspenseful Southern tale, we are introduced to King, a Southern born and bred hustler who is determined to take the drug empire handed to him by his father into the legitimate world of the music industry. Little does he know that when the streets birth you, trying to leave can be deadly. King's life is looking good when he meets a beautiful, classy queen.

It is the story of 11-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment.

Eat Pray Love meets American Psycho in a seductive and sinister debut literary thriller. Food critic Dorothy Daniels indulges in her homicidal urges by murdering her lovers and devouring their organs in this intense, visceral, and lushly told tale of food, sex, power, and the pursuit of a very particular taste set between New York and Italy. Please Note: A Certain Hunger contains adult language and depictions of violence. Discretion is advised.

Keita Ali has nothing: no bank account, no papers, no legal identity. A runner, he has fled home - a brutal dictatorship that produces the world's fastest marathoners - to live as an illegal refugee in a wealthy Western nation, surviving on winnings from local races. But the government is cracking down on illegal immigrants, so Keita - who will be executed if he is deported to his homeland - goes underground.

Winter Santiaga hit time served. Still stunning, still pretty, still bold, still loves her father more than any man in the world, still got her hustle and high fashion flow. She’s eager to pay back her enemies, rebuild her father’s empire, reset his crown, and ultimately to snatch Midnight back into her life no matter which bitch had him while she was locked up. But Winter is not the only one with revenge on her mind.

In Scarborough, a low-income urban neighborhood, three kids struggle to rise above poverty, abuse, and a system that consistently fails them. The adults in their lives either rise to the occasion or fall by the wayside; together, they make up a troubled yet inspired community that refuses to be undone.

Stories of Your Life and Others presents characters who must confront sudden change-the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens-while striving to maintain some sense of normalcy. In the amazing and much-lauded title story (the basis for the 2016 movie Arrival), a grieving mother copes with divorce and the death of her daughter by drawing on her knowledge of alien languages and non-linear memory recollection.

What if the last man in the world she could be prevailed upon to marry...is her husband? In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet tells the proud Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy that she wouldn't marry him if he were the last man in the world. But what if she never said the words? What if circumstances conspired to make her accept Darcy the first time he proposes?