Short Family

Miriam was raised in a society without children. To offset the devastation of climate change, state-of-the-art birth control has made daycares and playgrounds things of the past. As tempting as the government inducements are to remain child-free, Miriam’s curiosity about the people who “drop out” of society to become parents grows. When she finds a like-minded partner, she must choose between the rewarding comforts she knows and the unknowable mysteries of being a mother.

Here are classic Christmas stories as told by some of Canada's most beloved voices. Gordon Pinsent, Sarah Harmer, George Stroumboulopoulos and Mary Margaret O'Hara bring these holiday favourites to life and the spirit of the season into all of our hearts.

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.

Grab your family, friends, or even your dog and gather around for a fun game of trivia! This book is great for kids and has the ultimate list of fun categories from food all the way to children's movies!

As we age, memories can fade, affecting not only recall but also connections with loved ones. Engaging in brain-stimulating activities like reading can slow cognitive decline, as noted by the American Academy of Neurology. This book offers an enjoyable way to exercise your memory and bring details back into focus. With short stories set in familiar outdoor settings, you’ll be transported into the great outdoors from the first chapter.

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.

We've all heard the adage "finders, keepers." But does that tenet apply when the found object is an abandoned baby on a bus stop bench, and the keepers two affluent gay men who have always wanted a child? Award winning author Lucy Jane Bledsoe expertly blurs the lines between what's right and what's necessary, especially when it comes to two loving parents who want to do the right thing, but are also determined to protect their only child.

A striking new collection of ten short stories and two novellas that explores the idea of property in every meaning of the word, from the acclaimed New York Times best-selling author of the National Book Award finalist So Much for That and the international best seller We Need to Talk About Kevin.

In one of her strongest works of fiction yet, Nicole Krauss plunges fearlessly into the struggle to understand what it is to be a man and what it is to be a woman, and the arising tensions that have existed from the very beginning of time. Set in our contemporary moment, and moving across the globe from Switzerland, Japan, and New York City to Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, and South America, the stories in To Be a Man feature male characters as fathers, lovers, friends, children, seducers, and even a lost husband who may never have been a husband at all.

Have you ever tried to imagine what it was really like for Mary? Do you think she automatically understood all that was happening? Can you use your imagination to fill in parts of her story that the Bible has not recorded? The author has attempted to do just that. Not to be authoritative about what Mary was thinking, but to stimulate your imagination and allow the lives of Mary and Joseph to become more real in your own awareness of what it might have been like for them.

Maggie loves to sing, but her mother keeps telling her to sing more softly.

Nothing ever goes the way it should. Marty is barely a friend any more, and the roommate from hell is doing Naked Guy on my couch again. It's bad enough that it feels like my life is coming apart at the seams. There's one man that has held it together for the past few weeks, but things change. All it takes is a few words and everything shatters.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his acclaimed novel about North Korea, The Orphan Master’s Son, Adam Johnson is one of America’s most provocative and powerful authors. Critics have compared him to Kurt Vonnegut, David Mitchell, and George Saunders, but Johnson’s new book will only further his reputation as one of our most original writers. Subtly surreal, darkly comic, both hilarious and heartbreaking, Fortune Smiles is a major collection of stories that gives voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear, while offering something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world.

In these stories, the mysterious bonds of family are tested, transformed, fractured, and fortified. A recent widower and his adult son ferry to a craggy Scottish island in search of puffins. An actress who plays a children’s game-show villainess ushers in the New Year with her deadbeat half brother. A mother, pining for her children, feasts on loaves of challah to fill the void. A new couple navigates a tightrope walk toward love. And on a trip to a Texas water park with their son, two fathers each confront a personal fear.

Grandma's house was a magical place, and in this vivid memoir, Donald Davis makes it possible for each of us to go back to our own grandma's kitchen, clutter room, living room, and to that immeasurable bed that seemed to swallow us whole. This selection also contains a traditional story Davis learned from his grandmother, one handed down through his family from generations who once lived in Scotland before coming to the Appalachian mountains, about the time that fortune-seeker named Jack made the king mad.

Whether or not you believe in fate, or luck, or love at first sight, every romance has to start somewhere. Meet Cute is an anthology of original short stories featuring tales of "how they first met" from some of today's most popular YA authors.

Ginny O'Toole has spent a lifetime repaying her family's debt, and she's finally at the end of her servitude with one last job. Of course, it couldn't be easy. After stealing the computer files that will free her once and for all, she finds herself on the run from a pissed off vampire who has never fallen for her helpless act. A deadly predator too sexy for his own good. If he doesn't knock it off, he's going to see just how powerful she can really be.

Pen/Hemingway finalist Jamil Jan Kochai ​breathes life into his contemporary Afghan characters, moving between modern-day Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora in America. In these arresting stories verging on both comedy and tragedy, often starring young characters whose bravado is matched by their tenderness, Kochai once again captures “a singular, resonant voice, an American teenager raised by Old World Afghan storytellers.” The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories is a moving exploration of characters grappling with the ghosts of war and displacement.

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.

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.