Short Family

Joy Williams has been celebrated as a master of the short story for four decades, her renown passing from one generation to the next even in the shifting landscape of contemporary writing. And at long last the incredible scope of her singular achievement is put on display: 33 stories drawn from three much-lauded collections and another 13 appearing here for the first time in book form.

When it happens to you, you will be surprised. That thing they say about how you knew all the time, but just weren't facing it? That might be the case, but nevertheless, there you will be. Molly Ringwald mines the complexities of modern relationships in this gripping and nuanced collection of interlinked stories. Writing with a deep compassion for human imperfection, Ringwald follows a Los Angeles family and their friends and neighbors while they negotiate the hazardous terrain of everyday life - revealing the deceptions, heartbreak, and vulnerability familiar to us all.

The stunning novella that concludes John Updike's acclaimed Rabbit series is now available on audio. Set 10 years after Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom's death, Rabbit Remembered returns listeners to the small Pennsylvania town where Harry's widow, Janice, and his son, Nelson, still reside. They are faced with a surprise when Annabelle, Harry's 39-year-old illegitimate daughter, arrives on the scene, bringing with her ghosts from the past.

Ellen's life is turned upside down by the hilarious Mirror-Belle, a spirited princess who claims to be from somewhere mysterious and far away. She appears out of mirrors to tell Ellen magical stories and take her on exciting escapades. From exploring a hospital after Ellen falls off her bike to chasing after Mirror-Belle's magic ball, going to the seaside and joining the unusual pets club, you can always guarantee that wherever Mirror-Belle goes, trouble will follow.

Colm Tóibín's Mothers and Sons is a sensitive and beautifully written meditation on the dramas surrounding this most elemental of relationships. Psychologically intricate and emotionally incisive, each finely wrought story teases out the delicate and difficult strands woven between mothers and sons. This is an acute, masterful and moving collection that confirms Tóibín as a great prose stylist of our time.

Eva Gray has a secret. Eight years ago her sister entered the Brothers of Sin Motorcycle Club and never came back. Seven years ago she vowed revenge, even if she had to change everything about her life to do it - her look, her name, her face. Now she's stalking the Brothers and looking for weakness. She's close to achieving her goal, so close she can taste it. But a prominent federal judge is now in ICU, and Eva's the only one who can prove the club hired the hit.

A man recalls his father's advice on how to save a drowning person, but struggles when the time comes to use it. A wife’s good deed leaves a couple vulnerable at the moment when they’re most in need of security—the birth of their first child. Newly in love, a man preoccupied by accounts of freak accidents is befallen by one himself. In stories about love and fear, idealisms and illusions, failures of muscle and mind and all the ways we try to care for one another, Steven Heighton’s Instructions for the Drowning is an indelible last collection by a writer working at the height of his powers.

Just as Avery thinks she finds balance with her position as a call girl and her relationship with Sean, everything changes. The relationships that she has depended on are suddenly gone. After years of friendship, Avery is forced to face the cold hard truth - there is no place for feelings in this kind of business

We all live like we’re famous now, curating our social media presences, performing our identities, withholding those parts of ourselves we don’t want others to see. In this riveting collection of stories from acclaimed author Jess Walter, a teenage girl tries to live up to the image of her beautiful, missing mother. An elderly couple confronts the fiction writer eavesdropping on their conversation.

In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged for a series of brutal murders. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims’ families, but its impact travels even further: into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into the future, as true crime podcasts and biopics tell the story of the crimes. Highway Thirteen, Fiona McFarlane’s newest collection, takes murder as its starting point, but it unfolds to encompass much more.

When Avery finds out that the cowboy who requested her services for the night is Marty, things take an unexpected turn. If Avery declines her friend, she'll be in trouble with Miss Black, but if she accepts, it could mean a new, normal relationship and saying farewell to Sean forever.

When Liam Brady's family business hires a creative writer for a marketing project, he is not prepared to spend time with a woman who asks people uncomfortable questions. Maddie Parker is barely holding it together. Laid off from her newspaper job, she’s desperate to finance her health insurance. When her friend Nicole lands her a job writing about a group of grouchy engineers, Maddie signs on the dotted line. While Liam shows her the ropes, Maddie pushes all his buttons. Actually, she starts to fantasize about unbuttoning Liam’s top button.

Although best known for creating the spirited Anne Shirley, L. M. Montgomery had a thriving writing career that included several novels and more than 500 poems and stories. This collection brings together rare pieces originally published between 1900 and 1939 that haven’t been in print since their initial periodicals.

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.

Holly, North Carolina - where it’s Christmas year-round and miracles can happen. A good thing for the O’Connor family - four local siblings, four sexy stories, four unique journeys to happily ever after.

Although best known for such long novels as Our Mutual Friend and The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens also wrote many wonderful short stories with both a supernatural and a humorous twist. This is one of his best.

This powerful collection of short stories traces an emotional arc inspired by Madeleine L'Engle's early life and career, from her lonely childhood in New York to her life as a mother in small-town Connecticut. In a selection of 18 stories discovered by one of L'Engle's granddaughters, we see how L'Engle's personal experiences and abiding faith informed the creation of her many cherished works.

When a doddering Harry Platt tumbles from the top of his stairs in a deadly fall, it looks like an unfortunate accident. But solicitor Tony Standish's suspicions are aroused when he meets the beneficiaries and discovers the immense size of the estate. Jack and Sarah investigate and find that nothing is what it seems when it comes to families - not when money and secrets are involved. Cherringham is a serial novel à la Charles Dickens, with a new audio episode released every two weeks.

After her mother’s passing, Aldona finds a tin filled with old letters from a prisoner at Ravensbrück, a women’s concentration camp in northern Germany. Amid the descriptions of daily deprivations and humiliations at the camp, she uncovers the heart-wrenching story of a small circle of women who risked their lives to hide a baby girl from the guards. Aldona is rocked to the core by this record of courage and sisterhood during one of the grimmest chapters of human history.

Growing up homeschooled in Berkeley, California, Beatrice Quinn is a statistical genius who has dreamed her whole life of discovering new mathematical challenges at a school like Oxford University. She always thought the hardest part would be getting in, not convincing her parents to let her go. But while math has always made sense to Beatrice, making friends is a problem she hasn’t been able to solve. The compromise? The Connecticut Shakespearean Summer Academy.