American Short

New York City is not only The New Yorker magazine's place of origin and its sensibility's lifeblood, it is the heart of American literary culture. Wonderful Town, an anthology of superb short fiction by many of the magazine's most accomplished contributors, celebrates the 75-year marriage between a preeminent publication and its preeminent context with this collection of 44 of its best stories from (so to speak) home.

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, renowned marine biologist and co-founder of the All We Can Save climate initiative, compiles the best science and nature writing of the year.

In the tradition of narrativa de lo inusual (narrative of the unusual), The Only Sound Is the Wind combines the fantastic with the everyday, weaving elements of magical realism and surrealist twists to sharpen our view of human (and animal) connection. In the title story, the arrival of a mail-order clone complicates a burgeoning romance; a lonely librarian longing for her homeland strikes up an unusual relationship in the award-winning “The Moth”; when humans start giving birth to puppies and kittens in “This New Turn,” a realignment of the natural order ensues.

Understanding the origins of civil wars and their trajectories therefore demands some appreciation of the economic, political, social, cultural, and geographic order of societies. If there is one factor that best predicts why a civil war erupts, it is a prior civil war. That is why knowledge of a country's history of political violence, and associated narratives about who is to blame and why, are critical to understanding where a civil war might next occur.

This is the second collection of short stories relating to the fictional sea-sprayed Canadian village of Avonlea. Anne Shirley appears in a few, but most concern other characters from the Anne Shirley series, including Diana Barry and members of the Meredith and Blair families. Published in 1920, these tales of hidden hopes and cherished dreams are sure to enchant fans of Anne of Green Gables.

For over thirty years, The Journey Prize Stories has consistently introduced audiences to the next generation of great Canadian writers. The 33rd edition of Canada's most prestigious annual fiction anthology proudly continues this tradition by celebrating the best emerging Black writers in the country, as selected by a jury comprising internationally acclaimed, award-winning writers David Chariandy, Esi Edugyan, and Canisia Lubrin.

Humorous, poignant, perceptive, and full of grace, Kathleen Collins' stories masterfully blend the quotidian and the profound in a personal, intimate way, exploring deep, far-reaching issues - race, gender, family, and sexuality - that shape the ordinary moments in our lives.

"Her immediate concern was money." So begins the first story in Manuel Muñoz's dazzling new collection. In it, Delfina has moved from Texas to California's Central Valley with her husband and small son, and her isolation and desperation force her to take a risk that ends in profound betrayal.

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.

“Food and travel are natural companions,” writes guest editor Padma Lakshmi. From this pairing comes “the possibility of seeing anew, of examining how we make and assign meaning.” The essays in this year’s Best American Food and Travel Writing circle the world—from Dakar in Senegal, to Michoacán in south-central Mexico, to the Camino de Santiago in Spain—and deepen our understanding of our place in it.

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.

En el prólogo de estos Doce cuentos peregrinos, García Márquez nos regala su explicación de por qué doce, por qué cuentos y por qué peregrinos. En Barcelona, una prostituta que va entrando en la vejez entrena a su perro para llorar ante la tumba que ha escogido para sí misma. En Viena, una mujer se vale de su don de ver el futuro para convertirse en la adivina de una familia rica.

When Alice follows a white rabbit down a hole she discovers the extraordinary world of Wonderland, where a magical adventure begins. It’s not long before Alice finds herself attending a very unconventional tea party and taking part in a peculiar game of croquet, all in the company of such mysterious and unforgettable characters as the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and the Mock Turtle.

Transgressive, foulmouthed, and brutally funny, Brontez Purnell’s 100 Boyfriends is a revelatory spiral into the imperfect lives of queer men desperately fighting the urge to self-sabotage. As they tiptoe through minefields of romantic, substance-fueled misadventure - from dirty warehouses and gentrified bars in Oakland to desolate farm towns in Alabama - Purnell’s characters strive for belonging in a world that dismisses them for being Black, broke, and queer. In spite of it - or perhaps because of it - they shine.

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.

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.

In this anthology, everybody is Black. Filled with epic battles, complicated families, soft kisses, and sharpened blades, Magic in the Melanin is an adult fantasy anthology that showcases Black authors who write magical stories of all kinds.

Art and life. Each the mirror of the other. This then is the classic definition of what ‘Realism’ as a writing form really is. Some might call it a fancy term for the mundane day to day pursuits but in the hands of an author it comes alive. We are drawn into characters and landscapes that we can empathize with, we can, metaphorically speaking, help shoulder their burden, be on the long trail with them whatever the landscapes, the hurdles, incidents and other people may place in their literary way.

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.

This classic collection includes seven life-changing stories with ironic twists of fate, which can inform the young about their choices in life and recall the choices older people have made between success and happiness, duty and pleasure, and much more. Includes a short, final summing-up chapter, envoi.