American Literature Anthology

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.

The transporting stories in this year’s The Best American Mystery and Suspense are populated by those who exist on the fringe of our society and want more than what life has dealt them: A haunted veteran turned career criminal is on the run. An injured fighter turned bouncer seeks vengeance for his lost love. An assassin on his last job finds himself questioning his life choices and breaks all the rules to understand his final victim.

From a Hong Kong movie idol fleeing a sex scandal to an obedient daughter turned Stanford pretender, from a Chinatown elder summoned to his village to a Korean American pastor with a secret agenda, the characters in the collection illustrate the conflict between self and society, tradition and change. In "What We Have Is What We Need", winner of the Atlantic's Student Writing Contest, a boy from Mexico reunites with his parents in San Francisco. When he suspects his mother has found love elsewhere, he fights to keep his family together.

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.

Urban Books' popular Girls from da Hood series is back, bringing listeners more dramatic tales about the lives of some tough, resourceful women who can hold their own when things get rough on the streets. This time, Redd, Nikki-Michelle, and Erick S. Gray deliver the stories with their trademark flair. Like a hood-rich Bonnie and Clyde, Candy and Raynail have their hands on all of the drugs that run through the veins of Westwood. When Raynail is set up to take the fall for a crime he didn't commit, Candy goes on a mission to take down everyone involved.

Reesa's a savvy financial planner with one goal - to have a baby before 35. But to do that, she's got to do one of two things: dump her current man, Simon, and find another man more suitable to be husband and father, or settle with Simon and work overtime trying to train him for the starring role. At 33, getting rid of Simon to find Mr. Right is a chance Reesa's not willing to take. But when she's had enough of Simon's antics and kicks him to the curb, will her goal change?

"Nine Lives" by Kiki Swinson: Wild-card Aiden. Dead-shot Ava. Killing nine targets in 10 days will be this brother-sister hit team's biggest score yet. But as Ava sets up their final target, she falls hard for him and a chance at a normal life. "The Crushed Ice Clique" by Noire: At first all ghetto princesses Honore and Cucci want is quick cash-flow. But after sexing jewelry distributor Slimy Sam and learning his illegal tricks of the trade, they assemble a crack team of thieves for one dazzling scam.

With the same unforgettable and distinctive prose on display in his other books, Airtight Willie & Me is further evidence that Iceberg Slim was an expert at capturing the language of the streets. Always compelling, sometimes funny, and often bleak, Slim gives us six slices of city life that will leave you thirsting for more.

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.

La inspiración para escribir este libro le llegó a García Márquez con una insólita noticia que tuvo que cubrir como periodista. El 26 de octubre de 1949 el reportero Gabriel García Márquez fue enviado al antiguo convento de Santa Clara, que iba a ser demolido para edificar sobre él un hotel de cinco estrellas, a presenciar el vaciado de las criptas funerarias y a cubrir la noticia. Se exhumaron los restos de un virrey del Perú y su amante secreta, un obispo, varias abadesas, un bachiller de artes y una marquesa.

With My Face to the Enemy is one of the most provocative and wide-ranging anthologies on the Civil War to come along in years. Its illuminating essays examine the war from perspectives that were critical to its outcome - the larger-than-life personalities of its important players and the national strategies and key battle tactics that shaped the four-year-long crisis.

Drawing on both lived experience and cultural memory, Norma Dunning brings together six powerful short stories centered on modern-day Inuk characters in Tainna. Ranging from homeless to extravagantly wealthy, from spiritual to jaded, from young to elderly, and even from alive to deceased, Dunning’s characters are united by shared feelings of alienation, displacement, and loneliness resulting from their experiences in southern Canada. They must rely on their wits, artistic talent, humor, and spirituality­ for survival, and find solace in shining moments of reconnection.

Returning to the city that inspired his first prize-winning book, Lost in the City, Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city's power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens.

The National Book Award finalist for Refund returns with a new collection of stories that boldly examines the changes in American culture over the last two years through the increasing presence of violence, bigotry, sexual harassment, and the emotional costs of living under constant threat. In the title story, the competition between two middle school cellists is affected by a shooting at their school, and it is only years later that they realize how the intrusion of violence affected the course of their lives.

Termed the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the southwestern Indians and the first protest novel of California, Ramona is the story of 3 cultures - Indian, Mexican, and Anglo - locked in combat. The upheaval and injustice are humanized through the romance of a beautiful half-Indian orphan who grow up as the ward of Señora Moreno in privileged surroundings, then falls in love with an Indian and joins him in a life of poverty and tragedy. The Ramona Pageant in Hemet, California, based on this romance, has played each year since 1923, reenacting the transition period between Mexican traditions and the new U.S. and state governments.

By the time of his early death in 1988, Raymond Carver had established himself as one of the great practitioners of the American short story. Where I'm Calling From, his last collection, encompasses classic stories from Cathedral, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and earlier Carver volumes, along with seven new works previously unpublished in book form.

In folktales, the trickster can be the wise one or the fool, the one who fools or the one who is fooled. That is why children of all ages enjoy hearing these tales. The psychology of childhood is pretty much the same everywhere, giving these enjoyable stories universal appeal.

Desire raises the stakes - and the danger. This collection includes Desperate Housewife, Sinful, and L.A. Confidential.

Symone Davenport is a 22-year-old college senior who has set herself up for a very secure future, but all her achievements feel more like a duty than a labor of love. It takes the help of Jaylen Richards, the handsome new choir director, to not only unlock her talent and try to bring her into the spotlight but to unlock her heart. Janice was never very thin. With a gorgeous face, personality, and brains, she isn't lacking friends, but her insecurities about her weight gain get in the way of things reaching the next level with men.

Carl Weber brings the best of urban street lit authors together, all telling their own dramatic tales of life in the streets in known cities across the USA. The second installment continues with Treasure Hernandez telling the tale of the Dirty South.