American Short

Before Jack Kerouac expressed the spirit of a generation in his 1957 classic On the Road, he spent years figuring out how he wanted to live and, above all, learning how to write. Atop an Underwood brings together more than sixty previously unpublished works that Kerouac wrote before he was twenty-two, ranging from stories and poems to plays and parts of novels, including an excerpt from his 1943 merchant marine novel, The Sea Is My Brother. These writings reveal what Kerouac was thinking, doing, and dreaming during his formative years and reflect his primary literary influences.

In this eye-opening short story, a tech reporter’s mistake unites two women eight thousand miles apart. One in New Jersey, one in the Philippines. Same name: Sandra Guzman. Same job: content moderators for a mega social media website. What transpires between them is a friendship that changes their perceptions of each other’s privilege and challenges the power of the very industry they work for.

Spanning the early 1900s up to modern times, the connected stories here trace the intersecting lives of travelers, expatriates, and local folks in ways that shock, illuminate, and reveal. From the American photographer who finds her world disturbed by new forms of love and lust, to a charismatic priest confronted by the earthly perks of fame and stardom, the diverse mix of characters are united by the universal search for love and understanding - a challenge on an island simmering with issues of politics, power, and race.

In this first ever short story collection, New York Times bestselling author Francis Ray takes us on five steamy, sexy adventures. From a timid, dowdy duckling who turns into a confident, sexy swan which sends her into the arms of a handsome artist; to a bridesmaid’s explosive encounter with the best man; to an unproven actress who is being wooed to the stage by a handsome Broadway director.

Twenty years ago Martin Limón published his first mystery featuring Sergeant George Sueño, a young Mexican American army detective stationed on the US Eighth Army base in South Korea in the early 1970s, the heart of the Cold War. George and his investigating partner, the rowdy and short-fused Sergeant Ernie Bascom, are assigned cases in which the Eighth Army has come into conflict with local Korean law enforcement - often incidents in which American soldiers, who are not known for being on their best behavior in their Asian host country, have committed a crime.

In Kenya, when a young American man falls in love with the sophisticated daughter of an African chief, their marriage is strong. But tradition will soon put their union to the supreme test. Gripping and soulful, A Woman's Worth is a tale of cultural divisions, emotional wounds, and a love that struggles to transcend them.

Alicia Erian's characters are brave, disarming, affectionate, and deeply flawed. They inhabit the not-so-very-wide space between a good intention and a bad outcome. The Brutal Language of Love challenges traditional notions of right and wrong with what has become Erian's signature—an achingly stylish humor and a deep understanding of the brutal truth about human nature. These surprising, provocative, and deeply resonant stories marked the emergence of a major talent.

Exploring the diverse landscape of American life, the stories in Blues and Trouble: Twelve Stories capture the lives of people caught between circumstance and their own natures or on the run from fate. Tom Piazza’s debut short story collection, originally published in 1996, heralded the arrival of a startlingly original and vital presence in American fiction and letters. Set in Memphis, New Orleans, Florida, Texas, New York City, and elsewhere, the stories echo voices from Ernest Hemingway to Robert Johnson in their sharp eye for detail and their emotional impact.

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.

An ordinary man wakes one morning to discover he’s a famous reggaetón star. An aging abuela slowly morphs into a marionette puppet. A struggling academic discovers the horrifying cost of becoming a Self-Made Man. In There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven, Ruben Reyes Jr. conjures strange dreamlike worlds to explore what we would do if we woke up one morning and our lives were unrecognizable. Boundaries between the past, present, and future are blurred. Menacing technology and unchecked bureaucracy cut through everyday life with uncanny dread.

Over the last generation, historians have broadened our understanding of colonial America by adopting both a trans-Atlantic and a trans-continental perspective, examining the interplay of Europe, Africa, and the Americas through the flow of goods, people, plants, animals, capital, and ideas. In this Very Short Introduction, Alan Taylor presents an engaging overview of the best of this new scholarship.

Framed as a reference work of humorous “entries” that offer trenchant social commentary, Everything Abridged presages a dark vision of the near future but tells jokes in the face of it: An intelligence agency operative uncovers a conspiracy to generate conspiracies and realizes his participation in the scheme. A Caribbean monarch meets four decades of American presidents and adjusts his country’s foreign policy accordingly. Experiment participants are asked to bring back a gun as quickly as possible.

John Ryder is a seasoned Navy SEAL commander haunted by the ghosts of a mission gone wrong. Four and a half years ago, Ryder led his elite team into the treacherous mountains of Afghanistan to capture a notorious warlord, only to walk into a deadly ambush that left him as the sole survivor. Now, as the head security officer and personal bodyguard for industrial tycoon Marcus Dimitriou, Ryder tries to put the past behind him—until a chilling encounter reveals that the mission in Karmana was no accident.

The collection contains 12 provocative tales that explore the emotional and mental terrain of a diverse cast of characters, from the innocent to the insane. In each, Jones displays her unflinching ability to dive into the most treacherous of psyches and circumstances: the title story examines the identity and relationship conundrums of a Black man who can pass for white, earning him the name “White Rat” as an infant; “The Women” follows a girl whose mother brings a line of female lovers to live in their home.

Reconstruction chronicles the way in which Americans—black and white—responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. It addresses the quest of emancipated slaves’ searching for economic autonomy and equal citizenship, and describes the remodeling of Southern society; the evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations; and the emergence of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and one committed, for a time, to the principle of equal rights for all Americans.

Meng Jin’s critically acclaimed debut novel, Little Gods, was praised as “spectacular and emotionally polyphonic (Omar El-Akkad, BookPage), “powerful” (Washington Post), and “meticulously observed, daringly imagined” (Claire Messud). Now Jin turns her considerable talents to short fiction, in ten thematically linked stories.

American Fairy Tales, A Collection of 3 Short Stories, #04 contains three short stories written in 1901 by L. Frank Baum. This audiobook contains 3 of Baum's stories: "The Dummy That Lived", "The King of the Polar Bears", and "The Mandarin and the Butterfly".

American Fairy Tales, A Collection of 3 Short Stories, #02 contains three stories written in 1901 by L. Frank Baum. This audiobook contains three of Baum's stories: "The Girl Who Owned a Bear", "The Enchanted Types", and "The Laughing Hippopotamus".

American Fairy Tales, A Collection of 3 Short Stories, #01 contains three stories written in 1901 by L. Frank Baum. This audiobook contains three of Baum’s stories: "The Box of Robbers", "The Glass Dog", and "The Queen of Quonk".

Established by the leaders of the country's only successful slave revolt in the mid-19th 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.