Short Fiction Collection

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.

As the smell of pinecones and cinnamon fill the air and the plump turkey roasts in the oven, the final preparations for Christmas day have begun just as they do every year. The tree lights are twinkling and the mince pies are cooked and there is just one final tradition to carry out before the Christmas magic can begin. This year though, something is different and it's time for life-long traditions to change.

This book is a condensed collection of notes, thoughts, and practical advice for fiction writers of all shapes and sizes. Where The 24 Laws of Storytelling is a deep immersion in the art of storytelling, Write Your Novel is a much lighter passage through the halls of fiction writing. It’s a writing craft book that asks for a less weighty investment of time and energy.

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears draws listeners into a world of wholly original, sideways ghost stories that linger in the mouth and mind like rotten, fragrant fruit. Both timeless and urgent, these eleven stories confront misogyny, violence, and the impossible economics of America with van den Berg's trademark spiky humor and surreal eye. Moving from the peculiarities of Florida to liminal spaces of travel in Mexico City, Sicily, and Spain, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears is uncannily attuned to our current moment, and to the thoughts we reveal to no one but ourselves.

After Scarlett Chase is fired from her dream job, she is stuck working temp jobs while she figures out what to do with her life. Her current job of the week might be the most boring of them all, until a flash of lightning during a spring storm plunges the entire office building into darkness.

In a city where glamour meets grit, these ex-military alpha bad boys must protect the lives of the only women who can open up their shielded hearts. This dual-narrated Platinum Security Series Collection includes four full length romantic suspense novels, each featuring an Extended Epilogue written exclusively for this boxed set!

The Ultimate Modern Classics Collection: Volume One is the first instalment in our classics collection focusing on the most important and iconic novels, stories, and poems of the 20th century. Featuring 18 essential modern classics from Orwell, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Woolf, and many more, and read by a cast of incredible narrators including Iwan Rheon, Ben Allen, Karen Cass, Nathan Osgood, amongst others, this is an essential addition to your library.

After a long run as a respected journalist, Edward “Fitz” Fitzhugh is on his way out when he stumbles across the story of a lifetime. The Gravedigger is a serial kidnapper who taunts the police with riddles. The other puzzle is his motive, which Fitz is determined to piece together. When an eyewitness to the latest abduction leads Fitz closer to the facts, he realizes that the last great story of his career is not at all what it appears to be.

Inside this classic kids collection, you’ll find a mixture of some of the most famous folklore and fairy tales ever written. From short stories by Aesop and Hans Christian Andersen to folklore from The Brothers Grimm, these timeless masterpieces have endured centuries to resonate deep in the hearts of adults and children alike.

This extraordinary collection of correspondence by Paul Bowles spans eight decades and provides an evolving portrait of an artist renowned for his privacy. From his earliest extant letter, written at the age of four, to his precocious effusions to Aaron Copeland and to Gertrude Stein; from his meditations on mescaline as relayed to Ned Rorem, to his intensely moving letters to Jane Bowles during her illness, In Touch fills in the lacunae left by previous biographers and offers a rare look at the many aspects of Bowles's brilliant career.

In the wake of Hilary Mantel’s brilliant conclusion to her award-winning Wolf Hall Trilogy, this collection of loosely autobiographical stories locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood. Sharp and funny, these drawn-from-life stories begin in the 1950s in an insular northern village “scoured by bitter winds and rough gossip tongues.” For the child narrator, the only way to survive is to get up, get on, get out.

The Ultimate Ghost Stories Collection is a fully indexed collection of classic ghost stories, read by three Audie-winning narrators. Included here are stories by Henry James, M.R. James, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Edith Wharton and Washington Irving.

Of all the essentials for survival: oxygen, water, sleep, and food, only food is a vast treasure trove of memory and of sensory experience. Food is a portal to culture, to times past, to disgust, to comfort, to love: no matter one's feelings about a particular dish, they are hardly ever neutral.

Wes Reynolds. Basketball player, arrogant, always sleeping through class. And my new tutor. Lincoln Reeves, golf pro and swing coach, might be the one person who can take my game to the next level. If I don’t throw my club at his handsome face first. Secretly hooking up with my brother’s teammate was a bad idea. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat.

FML is becoming Avery's motto. Just when she doesn't think things could get any worse, they do. When her car stalls out at a busy intersection, she gets out to check under the hood, and a guy steals her car. Armed with a dress and a pair of Chucks, Avery runs after the thief. When a hot stranger offers to help, she can't say no. That's how Avery mets Sean Ferro, the totally sexy, totally damaged guy with more secrets than she has time for.

The Threads of Fate features a series of vignettes inspired by the universe of the Blackbirds tabletop role-playing game. In a war-ravaged landscape, these foreboding characters' stories are sure to be a spine-tingling delight to fans of the game and anyone who enjoys a well-told horror story.

In her introduction to this year’s The Best American Essays, guest editor Vivian Gornick states that her selections “contribute materially to the long and honorable history of the personal essay by way of the value they place on lived experience.” Provocative, daring, and honest at a time when many writers are deliberately silencing themselves in the face of authoritarian and populist censorship movements, the twenty-one essays collected here reflect their authors’ unapologetic observations of the world around them.

The complete collection of the Caelen's Wife Series, including A Murmur of Providence, A Whisper of Fate, and A Breath of Promise....

Carol Shields distills all her elegance, wisdom, and humor into short stories that are more like concise novels. Throughout these stories runs Shields' preoccupation with identity - as in the title story, a compacted day in the life of the world, in which a procession of characters try on new selves. Yet these stories and their quiet epiphanies reflect all the contrasts of human existence...from the bittersweet sexuality of "Eros" to the wicked skewering of pompous academic conversation in "The Next Best Kiss".

Horror favorite T.W. Grim invites you to pull up a chair and watch the sun slip past the horizon with this dark and macabre collection of short stories.