American Short

"Stay Scheming": Karlie Houston is broke, betrayed - and running from a bounty on her head. Turns out the real owners of the payday loan office she ripped off weren't cool with her idea of employment bennies. "Who Can You Trust?": Struggling bank teller Porsha has no time for Cinderella fantasies. She's working overtime to keep her tragedy-struck family off the streets. But her new boyfriend, Game, is smart, seductive - and sure-thing successful. So why not work his rock-solid plan to steal from her bank?

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.

Gospel comedy queen Pat G'orge-Walker regales listeners with the hilarious antics of Sister Betty and her South Carolina friends, big-hearted Ma Cile and redhaired Sister Connie Fuse. But things don't really start shakin' until on-the-make Deacon Laid Handz, manhungry Sister Carrie Onn, and conniving Reverend Knott Enuff Money get into the act. And yet for all of its rollicking humor, this book is brimming with profound and, at times, pointed truths about church life.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Charles thought he had it all - until a devastating betrayal and the shattering loss of his family drove him to living on the streets. Beatrice is the first person who's truly cared about him in a long time. Little by little, he's finding reasons to care about rebuilding his life. Drawn to Charles and the temptation of a second chance, Beatrice is faced with the hardest of decisions. But his insight, secrets - and the reminder of a profound past encounter - will give her unexpected inspiration, gratitude, and the strength she needs to find her way - perhaps in time for Christmas.

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.

Around the Way Girls 10, like its predecessors, is a fast-paced look at the lives of some street-smart women who think they know it all but are about to get the lessons of their lives.

Urban Books' popular Around the Way Girls series is back, bringing readers more dramatic tales about the lives of some tough, resourceful women who can hold their own when things get rough on the streets. Growing up poor and biracial, Shannon never quite fit in. Not truly accepted by either side of her family, the confused teenager turns to the one thing that loves her back unconditionally - the streets. With a bottle of liquor at her side and a worthless mentality in tow, Shannon allows the local strip club and the pole to become her new family.

Critics have compared her work to that of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, but J. California Cooper has a warm, witty style that’s definitely her own. Each of her short stories is a gem of downhome wisdom, polished with a bit of gossip, some heartbreak, and lots of humor.

Set in Northern New Mexico, an astonishing, beautifully rendered debut about living in a landscape shaped by love, loss, and violence. With intensity, dark humor, and emotional precision, Kirstin Valdez Quade's unforgettable stories plunge us into the fierce, troubled hearts of characters torn between their desires to escape the past and to plumb its depths.

Karlie Houston hasn't seen a raise in forever, but the payday loan office she manages is raking in the cash. So why not get what she's rightfully owed by masterminding a heist? Once her lover Sidney's boys hit all the company's locations at one time, there's a fortune to split. But suddenly bodies start dropping - and Karlie better devise the perfect plan to survive.

Samrat Upadhyay's thrilling new collection brings stories of thieves, lovers, political prisoners, fractured families, and of Nepali-Americans attempting to navigate the strange customs of the United States. It reaffirms Upadhyay's brilliant contributions to the international literature of exile.

Once again on the American side of the Atlantic talent pours forth from the pens of these literary women. Even to choose a mere ten seems to be a choice too difficult to make. Society may hold women back but these writers are equal to the challenge and overcome its boundaries with superbly written stories that are a beacon for all others who follow.

How does a Mexican American, the son of poor immigrants, leave his border home and move to the heart of gringo America? How does he adapt to the worlds of wealth, elite universities, the rush and power of New York City? How does he make peace with a stern, old-fashioned father who has only known hard field labor his whole life? Troncoso tells his luminous stories through the lens of an exile adrift in the 21st century, his characters suffering from the loss of culture and language, the loss of roots and home as they adapt to the glittering promises of new worlds that seem so empty.

To mark its 15th anniversary, and the very last edition of the series, the top-selling erotica anthology achieves a scorching new climax with a special edition showcasing standout stories from the entire series as well as never before published pieces - plus a hot and edgy piece from Susie Bright herself.

A veritable library of listening in this splendid collection of American Short Stories! This boxed set includes all stories from Volumes 1, 2 and 3.