American Literature Anthology

Alexander Chee, an essayist of “virtuosity and power” (Washington Post), selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.

As a 41-year-old man confronts his own mortality in this collection's title story, he recalls his Spokane Indian father's chilling death from alcoholism and diabetes. Another tale features an eccentric salesman pursuing a married woman from airport to airport. And then there's the film editor who sees nothing wrong with altering footage to fit preconceived views - until he becomes the target of media distortion.

Take a trip into theheart of passion as seductive samba rhythms pulse in the warm evening breezes. Escape and savor these three scintillating stories set against the beautifulbackdrop of Brazil.... Two weeks in Rio - surely that's enough time for marketing VP Sydni Lawson to forge a lucrative merger. But instead of sweet-talking real estate mogul Gabriel St. James, she's being swept away by their sizzling and unexpected attraction.

Tales of the Out & the Gone reflects the astounding evolution of America's most provocative literary anti-hero. The first section of the audiobook, War Stories, offers six stories enmeshed in the vola-tile politics of the 1970s and 1980s. The second section, Tales of the Out & the Gone, reveals Amiri Baraka's increasing literary adventurousness, combining an unpredictable language play with a passion for abstraction and psychological exploration.

Accompanied by interpretations of their significance by noted historian Richard D. Heffner and journalist Alexander Heffner, this book includes important documents such as the complete text of the Declaration of Independence.

Proverbs for the People is an astounding collection of contemporary African-American fiction, featuring stories by such well known authors as Pearl Cleage, Omar Tyree, Margaret Johnson-Hodge, Travis Hunter, Parry "Ebony Satin" Brown, Gwynne Forster, Edward Jackson and Vicki L. Andrews. These widely varied stories resonate with the power and wisdom of the ages, speaking of universal truths that will heal and guide the wayward spirit.

The 10th anniversary edition of The Best American Erotica includes the most esteemed and lascivious writers at work today. Dorothy Allison explores the wonderful, mysterious abilities of the human hand, and Zane's corporate tigress plays mind games that make other office shenanigans look like mere games of Candyland.

“The People Could Fly,” the title story in Virginia Hamilton’s prize-winning American Black folktale collection, is a fantasy tale of the slaves who possessed the ancient magic words that enabled them to literally fly away to freedom. And it is a moving tale of those who did not have the opportunity to “fly” away, who remained slaves with only their imaginations to set them free as they told and retold this tale.

Here are 10 unabridged stories by the greatest American authors. These treasured stories from the most influential authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries were selected for their literary importance as well as their dramatic oral qualities.

Gutta Mamis includes four novellas featuring cold-hearted women who get ahead in America's grimiest underworld: "Twisted Loyalty" by Kai, "Three the Hard Way" by C. J. Hudson, "The Face of Death" by Brandie Davis, and "Chasers" by N'Tyse.

This debut collection is a complicated love letter to Washington, DC, and to those who call it home: a TSA agent who's never flown, a girl braving new worlds to play piano, and a teacher caught up in a mayoral race. These characters navigate life's "training school" - with lessons on gentrification and respectability - and fight to create their own sense of space and self.

In 16 remarkable stories, Chaya Bhuvaneswar spotlights diverse women of color - cunning, bold, and resolute - facing sexual harassment and racial violence, and occasionally inflicting that violence on each other.

This exciting collection presents two previously unpublished stories by SF legend Octavia E. Butler. A Necessary Being precedes the events of Survivor, Butler's third (famously disowned) installment in her Patternist series, and includes characters from it, focusing exclusively on the Kohn, aliens who build their social hierarchies on the blueness of their fur. In Childfinder, a black woman with the gift of identifying children with latent psychic ability refuses to share her skill with an organization of white telepaths.

Ambrose Bierce brings to life the heart rendering stories of divided loyalties, splitting families, states, countries, and individuals. He writes of the glory in beginning and savagery in the doing. Here is a moving anti-war series of stories if ever there was one. A must read by all students of American History and Literature, though perhaps best understood by older adults.

From one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists comes Certain American States, whose insightful and lonely stories beg you to discover the emotional universes hiding at their cores. Catherine Lacey brings her narrative mastery to Certain American States, her first collection of short stories. As with her acclaimed novels, she gives life to a group of subtly complex, instantly memorable characters whose searches for love, struggles with grief, and tentative journeys into the minutiae of the human condition are simultaneously gripping and devastating.

Bigfoot encounters, they say, are transformative. Jump into Tracks and see what you will say about them! Here, you will meet a Sasquatch for every season. You may never get a chance to meet a Bigfoot in person, but don’t miss the chance to meet the Sasquatch in Tracks, a collection of engaging stories based on actual reports of encounters.

Louis L'Amour's world is built on those dramatic moments when men and women cast their fears, doubts, and pasts behind them and plunge into the unknown. Nowhere is that more evident than in this latest collection of stories set on the American frontier. These selections include "The Nester and the Piute"; "Big Man"; "Waltz Him Around Again"; "Shadow"; "Barney Takes a Hand"; "When a Texan Takes Over"; and "No Trouble for the Cactus Kid".

Unlike the other arts, American literature has been a powerful, influential, and leading aspect of American culture. By turns sedate and mercurial and possessing a moral mind set of various social values, the American short story reveals in its pages the psyche of a growing, sprawling nation whose sense of destiny has always been larger than life. Here are seven masterpieces that will make you smile, make you frown, and leave you pondering the mystery that surrounds the soul of a great nation.

No nation has ever achieved the literary diversity of America. From nativist humor to immigrant triumph, Americans have recorded their visions and hopes better than anyone

In ancient mythology, the Titan Prometheus was punished by the gods for bringing man the gift of fire - an event that set humankind on its course of knowledge. As punishment, Prometheus was bound to a rock. But in The Gift of Fire, those chains cease to be, and the great champion of man walks from that immortal prison into present-day South Central Los Angeles. Disheveled and lost, he is thrown in jail, where he meets lifelong criminal Nosome Blane....