Short Family

These stories attest to the generous compass of Thomas McGuane's fellow feeling, as well as to his unique way with words. In this collection, filled with grace and humor, the ties of family make for uncomfortable binds: A devoted son is horrified to discover his mother's antics before she slipped into dementia, and a father's outdoor skills are no match for a change in the weather. But complications arise equally in the absence of blood, as when lifelong friends on a fishing trip finally confront their deep dislike for each other.

My Peculiar Family is an anthology of Gothic horror and unusual stories like none ever published before! Combining New York Times best-selling authors (Christopher Golden, Tracy Hickman), Amazon best-selling authors (William Meikle, Derrick Belanger, Rob Watts), award-winning authors (James A. Moore, Stacey Longo), and emerging talents, this anthology unites these authors, who have sold millions and million books between them, to come together for a common cause.

Sam Theopolis entered the Woolman household like a clown with treasures up his sleeve. He kept the absent-minded Jessie from permanently checking out of reality, and he brought an inconceivable joy to Jessie's younger daughter and grandson. But just when the current of their lives seemed smooth and untroubled, tragedy struck like a squall. With eccentric characters reminiscent of Anne Tyler, Willard takes the reader on a quirky journey of the heart.

In 1980, young lovers Pea and Nam arrive in Bangkok in search of a life, and a world, beyond Thailand’s rural outskirts. Thirty days, they promise each other. Thirty days for Pea to find work, for him to put aside his violent and unstable past and take root in this strange new land.

In Look For Me and I’ll Be Gone, his sixth collection of stories, John Edgar Wideman imbues with energy and life the concerns that have consistently infused his fiction and nonfiction. How does it feel to grow up in America, a nation that - despite knowing better, despite its own laws, despite experiencing for hundreds of years the deadly perils and heartbreak of racial division - encourages (sometimes unwittingly, but often on purpose) its citizens to see themselves as colored or white, as inferior or superior.

B.J. Harrison reads Louisa May Alcotts famous novella "Behind a Mask", which is widely considered to be Alcotts masterpiece in sensation fiction. A wealthy Victorian-era family recruits Jean Muir as sixteen-year-old Bellas governess. But soon enough, Jean Muir appears to have everyone under her spell, and to have the power to do everything as she pleases. This novella from the late 19th century was initially published under Louisa May Alcotts pseudonym A. M. Barnard...

Listen to a collection of classic stories by the world's most beloved writers. Here are the complete stories, unabridged, for you and your family to enjoy together this Christmas and for many Christmases to come. Family favorites and remembered treasures are in this collection, as well as a few light-hearted surprises.

Über 50 Jahre lang lieben sie sich, teilen ihr Leben. Doch nun ist der Mann schwer krank. Seit Jahren palliativ umsorgt, wird sein Radius immer eingeschränkter, der Besuch weniger, die Abhängigkeit größer. Entlang der Stunden eines Tages erzählt Helga Schubert davon, wie man selbst den Verstand und der andere die Würde behält, wie es ist, mit einem todkranken Menschen durch dessen Zwischenwelten zu wandeln. Und davon, wie Liebe zu Erbarmen wird. Die Erzählungen mäandern in der gemeinsamen und der eigenen Vergangenheit, sind von zartem Humor und frei von Pathos.

C'è chi è pronto a traslocare, chi sceglie a chi somiglierà da grande, chi vorrebbe che il figlio nato troppo presto torni nella pancia, chi dimentica la figlia in macchina e poi si reca al lavoro, chi si dimentica il gas acceso, chi ha un segreto che potrebbe far crollare un’intera casa, chi cerca di non farsi capire dai più piccoli, chi ha perso un figlio. Dieci racconti possibili e, in quanto tali, quasi veri, che parlano di famiglie, di madri e bambini, di coppie, di quotidianità, di cose difficili e dolorose; che parlano a ognuno di noi.

The New York Times lauds Russell Banks as "the most compassionate fiction writer working today," and hails him as a novelist who delivers, "wrenching, panoramic visions of American moral life." Long celebrated for his unflinching, empathetic works that explore the unspoken but hard realities of contemporary culture, Banks now turns his keen intelligence and emotional acuity on perhaps his most complex subject yet: the shape of family in its many forms.

The award-winning stories in Dima Alzayat's collection, Alligator and Other Stories, are luminous and tender, whether dealing with a woman preforming burial rites for her brother in "Ghusl", or the great-aunt struggling to explain cultural identity to her niece in "Once We Were Syrians". Alzayat's stories are rich and relatable, chronicling a sense of displacement through everyday scenarios. There is the intern in pre-#MeToo Hollywood of "Only Those Who Struggle Succeed", or the "dangerous" women of "The Daughters of Manāt" who struggle to assert their independence.

Death. It’s a part of life and something we all must accept. Whether it be our own demise or losing a loved one, the experience of death is both sobering and surreal. My Dad Is Dead is a group of related short stories that explore that dichotomy through the eyes of a kid. In George Verongos’ second book, he turns childhood memories into “fictionally enhanced” tales (he made us say that, he’s trying to make it a thing).

"Non c'è posto al mondo che io ami di più della cucina". Così comincia il romanzo di Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen. Le cucine, nuovissime e luccicanti o vecchie e vissute, riempiono i sogni della protagonista Mikage, rimasta sola al mondo dopo la morte della nonna, e rappresentano il calore di una famiglia sempre desiderata. Ma la famiglia si può non solo scegliere, ma anche inventare. Così il padre del giovane amico Yuichi può diventare o rivelarsi madre e Mikage può eleggerli come propria famiglia, in un crescendo tragicomico di ambiguità.

With this sharp and witty debut collection, author Kate Doyle captures precisely that time of life when so many young women are caught in between, pre-occupied by nostalgia for past relationships—with friends, roommates, siblings—while trying to move forward into an uncertain future.

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.

At first glance, the stories in Sweet and Low seem grounded in the everyday: they paint pictures of idyllic Southern landscapes, characters fulfilling their roles as students, wives, boyfriends. But they are not what they seem. In these stories, Nick White deconstructs the core qualities of Southern fiction, exposing deeply flawed and fascinating characters - promiscuous academics, aging podcasters, woodpecker assassins, and lawnmower enthusiasts, among others - all on wildly compelling quests. White's honest and provocative prose will jolt listeners awake with its urgency.

The truth is, as a character in this provocative new collection puts it, "passionate, beautiful, and hideous, it can make you happy and it can torture you, and it's always liberating." In "After the Season", a man of humble means falls quickly in love with a woman belonging to a much elevated financial status and wrestles with his feelings and his beliefs about the rich. A son takes his distant father to a Bach festival in "Johann Sebastian Bach on Ruegen" only to learn that perhaps he was the one who was never really present in their relationship. And in "The Night in Baden-Baden" a man who's caught in a lie changes his ways.

A wife struggles to make sense of her husband’s sudden disappearance. A mother mourns her teenage son through the music collection he left behind. A woman shepherds her estranged parents through her brother’s wedding and reflects on the year her family collapsed. A young man comes to grips with the joy—and vulnerability—of fatherhood. And, in the masterly opening novella, two teenagers from very different families forge a sustaining friendship, only to discover the disruptive and unsettling power of sex.

The stories in Thomas Pierce’s Hall of Small Mammals take place at the confluence of the commonplace and the cosmic, the intimate and the infinite. A fossil-hunter, a comedian, a hot- air balloon pilot, parents and children, believers and nonbelievers, the people in these stories are struggling to understand the absurdity and the magnitude of what it means to exist in a family, to exist in the world.

The recipient of the Journey Prize and Edna Staebler Award, Heather Birrell made a splash in the literary world with her first collection, I Know You Are But What Am I? In Mad Hope, Birrell employs her keen insight into the human condition to present tales featuring a complex array of characters, including a gay man caring for a friend and a science teacher faced with a shocking request.