American Literature Anthology

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

Did Mark mean what Alison Lind hoped? Was her boss declaring his passion for her? Did he really feel the same way she secretly felt for him? Apparently not. Instead of asking her to be his lover, he was asking her to be temporary nanny to his baby niece. Not an ounce of desire in sight. Or was there? Living together, spending time in intimate surroundings, created a sensual tension too powerful to ignore. How long before this strictly business relationship turned into a strictly passionate predicament?

The Conjure Woman is a collection of short stories by noted African American author Charles Waddell Chesnutt. It is considered to be one the seminal collections of African American literature.

Culinary creator, writer and community advocate, Sohla El-Waylly selects the best twenty articles published in 2021 that celebrate the many innovative, comforting, mouthwatering, and culturally rich culinary offerings of our country.

For every moment in your life there is a poem. In Dancing by the Light of the Moon, we have a remarkable collection of over 250 best-loved poems in the English-speaking world. Allow Gyles Brandreth to be your guide to not only the wonders of poetry - and there are many - but also its practical uses in everyday life.

Here are four unforgettable stories by Yann Martel, the New York Times best-selling author of Life of Pi. In the exquisite title novella, a very young man dying of AIDS joins his friend in fashioning a story of the Roccamatio family of Helsinki, set against the yearly march of the 20th century.

En los cuentos que incluye El gaucho insufrible destacan el uso magistral de la ironía y algunas de las claves fundamentales de la obra de Bolaño: la literatura como argumento, las tramas policiacas, el arte como obsesión, la búsqueda de una verdad que solo parece ineludible para aquellos que la persiguen, la desmitificación de la realidad y la muerte.

In this intense and brilliant book, Bowles focuses on Morocco, condensing experience, emotion, and the whole history of a people into a series of short, insightful vignettes. He distills for us the very essence of Moroccan culture. With extraordinary immediacy, he takes the listener on a journey through the Moroccan centuries, pausing at points along the way to create resonant images of the country, it's landscapes, and the beliefs and characteristics of its inhabitants.

Included in this collection: "Rubenesque" by Magenta Michaels; "Brian's Bedroom" by Leigh Rutledge; "Serenade for Female with Fantasies" by Anne Marie Mardith; "Why" by Bob Flanagan; "Milk" by Michael Dorsey; and more.

Said Sayrafiezadeh has been hailed by Philip Gourevitch as “a masterful storyteller working from deep in the American grain”. His new collection of stories are set in a contemporary America full of the kind of emotionally bruised characters familiar to fans of Denis Johnson and George Saunders. These are people contending with internal struggles - a son’s fractured relationship with his father, the death of a mother, the loss of a job, drug addiction - even as they are battered by the larger, often invisible, economic and political forces of American society.

A rural town finds itself under the authoritarian sway of a tree that punishes children. A pair of old friends navigate their fraught history as strange happenings escalate in a Mexican restaurant. A pair of narcissistic friends wreak havoc on an activist community. An aloof young man finds himself living through his lover’s memories. And a day of LARPing takes a cosmic turn.

In New York City, an art student finds an unexpected subject when she moves in with a grandmother from Xi’an, and boundaries are put into question. When a newlywed couple moves to Arizona, adapting to unfamiliar customs keeps their marriage from falling apart. A woman grapples with what it means to care for another, and the limits of that care, when her dying husband returns from Beijing years after abandoning her. And during a rainy summer in Texas, a visitor exposes the unspoken but unburiable history that binds two families together.

Ayesha Shetty lost her brother seven years ago, the same time she lost everything else important to her: her dreams, her fierce independence, and the man she loved. Not wanting to see her mother hurt anymore, she put her wild self away and became the dutiful daughter her mother needed and took on her brother’s role in the family business. Now her best friend’s big, fat Indian wedding is a chance to get away from her endless duties at the restaurant and maybe even have some fun (if she remembers how).

Here is the preface to 12 magnificent stories, originally part of The John Cheever Audio Collection, in which John Cheever celebrates - with unequaled grace and tenderness - the deepest feelings we have.

Spanning several decades, Ghassan Zeineddine’s debut collection examines the diverse range and complexities of the Arab-American community in Dearborn, Michigan. In ten tragicomic stories, Zeineddine explores themes of identity, generational conflicts, war trauma, migration, sexuality, queerness, home and belonging, and more.

This is a selection of works by three famous Irishmen: Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats and Bram Stoker. It includes: the short story by Bram Stoker, "Dracula's Guest"; Oscar Wilde's poem "Humanitad" and three versions of his "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"; and finally, an early collection of poetry called The Rose by W. B. Yeats. There is a general introduction by the writer and actor Tim Dalgleish and other additional material.

Here is the preface to twelve magnificent stories, originally part of The John Cheever Audio Collection, in which John Cheever celebrates - with unequaled grace and tenderness - the deepest feelings we have.

A long-married couple is forced to confront their friend's painful past when a church revival comes to a nearby town ... A woman in an arranged marriage struggles to connect with the son she hid from her husband for years ... A well-meaning sister unwittingly reunites an abuser with his victims. Through an indelible array of lives, Yoon Choi explores where first and second generations either clash or find common ground,

For Unique, life is good until her dope-dealing boyfriend, Took, is arrested and winds up in jail. Now she's broke as a joke, trying to put every petty hustle into play to chase hard times away from the door. With an empty refrigerator, a stack of bills piling up, a tenth-grade education, a big butt and a smile, it doesn't take long for her to learn to pull the wool over the eyes of any fool who's blinded by her good looks.

For those readers of his poetry and inspired by his increasingly vital work as advocate for rational land use and the right-size life, these stories of Wendell Berry's offer entry into the fictional place of value and beauty that is Port William, Kentucky. Berry has said it's taken a lifetime for him to learn to write like an old man, and that's what we have here, stories told with grace and ease and majesty. Wendell Berry is one of our greatest living American authors, writing with the wisdom of maturity and the incandescence that comes of love.