Short Family

"Canadian Family Adventures" follows the tale of 10 Irish siblings who immigrate to Canada in the late 1880s. Their mother, Maggie Collins, wants her children, between the ages of 10 years old and 30 years old, to have a good life, and she arranges for them to sail to Canada. The ten siblings arrive in Canada by ship, and each one settles in a different area of Canada and pursues a different career.

Celebrate Second Christmas, a treasured, lighthearted time of community, with four Amish romances. This collection includes “When Christmas Comes Again” by Beth Wiseman, “Her Christmas Pen Pal” by Ruth Reid, “A Gift for Anne Marie” by Kathleen Fuller, and “The Christmas Aprons” by Tricia Goyer.

Blessed with three wonderful children and a life full of material comforts, Rick and Ellen have always had a happy, if increasingly busy, marriage. But when Rick announces that he's been offered a promotion that will require the family to pick up and move across the country for a fourth time, Ellen is dismayed. What will he do when she tells him that she doesn't want to start all over again?

From her many well-loved novels, Hilma Wolitzer - now 91 years old and at the top of her game - has gained a reputation as one of our best fiction writers. These collected short stories - most of them originally published in magazines including Esquire and the Saturday Evening Post in the 1960s and 1970s, along with a new story that brings her early characters into the present - are evocative of an era that still resonates deeply today.

From some of your favorite best-selling and critically acclaimed authors - including Sandhya Menon, Anna-Marie McLemore, and Rin Chupeco - comes a collection of interconnected short stories that explore the intersection of family, culture, and food in the lives of 13 teens.

Veintitrés relatos de amor y violencia secretamente entrelazados por un fino hilo narrativo y un rico lenguaje que recrea azarosas peripecias en un mundo exuberante y voluptuoso. Una niña solitaria se enamora del amante de su madre y practica misteriosas ceremonias rituales; una mujer permanece medio siglo encerrada en un sótano, víctima de un caudillo celoso; en el fragor de una batalla, un hombre viola a una muchacha y mata a su padre.

Acclaimed for the grace, wit, and magic of her novels, Ramona Ausubel introduces us to a geography both fantastic and familiar in eleven new stories, some of them previously published in The New Yorker and The Paris Review. Elegantly structured, these stories span the globe and beyond, from small-town America and sunny Caribbean islands to the Arctic Ocean and the very gates of Heaven itself. And though some of the stories are steeped in mythology, they remain grounded in universal experiences: loss of identity, leaving home, parenthood, joy, and longing.

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.

After the stunning historical novels The Clearing and The Missing, Tim Gautreaux now ranges freely through contemporary life with 12 new stories and eight from previous collections. Most are set in his beloved Louisiana, many hard by or on the Mississippi River, others in North Carolina, and even in midwinter Minnesota. But generally it's heat, humidity, and bugs that beset his people as they wrestle with affairs of the heart, matters of faith, and the pros and cons of tight-knit communities.

In 1956, Updike published a story, "Snowing in Greenwich Village," about a young couple, Joan and Richard Maple, at the beginning of their marriage. Over the next two decades, he returned to these characters again and again, tracing their years together raising children, finding moments of intermittent happiness, and facing the heartbreak of infidelity and estrangement.

Few winter stories are more affecting than Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl. Written in 1848, and strictly speaking a New Year's Eve story, it showed so clearly then, as it does now, that the Christmas holidays do not represent fireside, food, and presents for all. This story never fails to move, yet it somehow avoids serious sentimentality.

Motherhood isn’t always what’s expected. One woman may delight in navigating the unknowable, while another may look to the past to chart the course ahead. Still another may have the urge to redefine the relationship between mother and child. For each, the journey can be heartwarming and heartbreaking, ever changing and challenging. In these provocative stories, acclaimed authors probe the growing pains that can change the lives of both mother and child in ways they never imagined.

Willa Cather is considered to be one of the best chroniclers of pioneer life in the 20th century. She had a long and distinguished career writing essays, poems, short stories, and novels. This story is a powerful example of a frequent theme: the haunting, sometimes painful, contrast between city and country life.

It wasn't easy for Phillip Lark to single-handedly raise his rambunctious teenage daughter. But the girl had hatched a plot to find her father a wife, and lovely Carrie Weston seemed to fit the bill. Phillip claimed he wasn't interested in remarriage, but would the magic of the holiday season - and Carrie's wonderful charms - help him change his mind?

From the best-selling author of The Gruffalo, Julia Donaldson, comes Princess Mirror-Belle, the exciting adventures of a princess with a difference. Ellen gets a big shock when her double appears out of the bathroom mirror. But Mirror-Belle is a double with a difference! She is a princess and a very mischievous one at that. Join magically mischievous Mirror-Belle as she comes popping out of Ellen's mirror to sweep her into a variety of hilarious escapades.

Over the past decade, Simon Van Booy has been listening to people’s stories. With these personal accounts as a starting point, he has crafted a powerful collection of short fiction that takes listeners into the innermost lives of everyday people. From a family saved from ruin by a mysterious benefactor to a downtrodden boxer who shows unexpected kindness to a mugger, these tales reveal not only the precarious balance maintained between grief and happiness in our lives but also how the echoes of personal tragedy can shape us for the better.

When Ava Barnes’s boyfriend, Justin, proposes after a whirlwind romance, the young couple embarks on a quest that will test their love. For generations, engaged couples in Ava’s family have traveled into the Everglades to retrieve the egg of the magnificent frigate bird in order to bake it into a marriage cake. Those who succeed live happily ever after, while those who fail are destined for heartbreak. With Ava’s beloved grandmother gravely ill, never has the marriage tradition meant so much.

The morning sun painted the sky in hues of orange and gold as Ella rushed through her small kitchen. Her three kids were playing noisily in the living room, and the faint sound of football on TV meant Grandpa Joe had already claimed his spot on the couch. Thanksgiving was supposed to be a time for peace and reflection, but this year felt like anything but. Ella sighed, surveying the half-prepared turkey and the empty pantry shelves. It had been a tough year, with rising bills and her job cut to part-time. She couldn’t afford a big feast, but she was determined to make the best of it.

I knew Jay long before he became my stepfather. We shared a fantasy. Something that now I knew that he and my mother had gone away, I could try. The last thing I expected was for him to come home and catch me.

John Updike's 21st novel, a bildungsroman, follows its hero, Owen Mackenzie, from his birth in the semi-rural Pennsylvania town of Willow to his retirement in the rather geriatric community of Haskells Crossing, Massachusetts. In between these two settlements comes Middle Falls, Connecticut, where Owen, an early computer programmer, founds with a partner, Ed Mervine, the successful firm of E-O Data, which is housed in an old gun factory on the Chunkaunkabaug River.