American Short Fiction

In Holler, Child’s eleven brilliant stories, LaToya Watkins presses at the bruises of guilt, love, and circumstance. Each story introduces us to a character irrevocably shaped by place and reaching toward something—hope, reconciliation, freedom. In “Cutting Horse,” the appearance of a horse in a man’s suburban backyard places a former horse breeder in trouble with the police. In “Holler, Child,” a mother is forced into an impossible position when her son gets in a kind of trouble she knows too well from the other side.

Symone Davenport is a 22-year-old college senior who has set herself up for a very secure future, but all her achievements feel more like a duty than a labor of love. It takes the help of Jaylen Richards, the handsome new choir director, to not only unlock her talent and try to bring her into the spotlight but to unlock her heart. Janice was never very thin. With a gorgeous face, personality, and brains, she isn't lacking friends, but her insecurities about her weight gain get in the way of things reaching the next level with men.

She needs a partner. He needs an advocate. With her sister happily married and running the restaurant for over three years, Daisy Haven finds herself at a loss. An opportunity arises, sparking a desire in her heart to not only see women’s rights increased in the country, but to have someone to partner with in her new endeavor. When it appears the newest member of town is the one who agrees with her cause, she’s annoyed at having to work so closely with the man who sets her teeth on edge. New to Pinewood, Colorado, Jordan Porter wants nothing more than continue the cause near to his ...

Originally published in 1938, Uncle Tom's Children, a collection of novellas, was the first book from Richard Wright, who would go on to win international renown for his powerful and visceral depiction of the Black experience. Set in the American Deep South, each of the powerful and devastating stories in Uncle Tom's Children concerns an aspect of the lives of Black people in the post-slavery era, exploring their resistance to white racism and oppression. The collection also includes a personal essay by Wright titled "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow."

This is the second collection of short stories relating to the fictional sea-sprayed Canadian village of Avonlea. Anne Shirley appears in a few, but most concern other characters from the Anne Shirley series, including Diana Barry and members of the Meredith and Blair families. Published in 1920, these tales of hidden hopes and cherished dreams are sure to enchant fans of Anne of Green Gables.

"Black Is Blue" by Victor L. Martin delves into the life of a corporate woman who falls in love with a thug and finds out just how easy it is to stray from the straight and narrow.

Eighteen and hungry, Wiz's only addiction to drugs is the money it makes. But Crystal changes all of that and shows him just how powerful a woman can be, in "The P is Free" by LaShonda Sidberry-Teague.

An ordinary man wakes one morning to discover he’s a famous reggaetón star. An aging abuela slowly morphs into a marionette puppet. A struggling academic discovers the horrifying cost of becoming a Self-Made Man. In There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven, Ruben Reyes Jr. conjures strange dreamlike worlds to explore what we would do if we woke up one morning and our lives were unrecognizable. Boundaries between the past, present, and future are blurred. Menacing technology and unchecked bureaucracy cut through everyday life with uncanny dread.

A grieving mother calls out to her faraway son. A student forgoes the lurid appeal of dating apps in exchange for a painter’s love. The anonymous voices of queer native men converge amid violent eroticism. A man just out of prison balances the uneasy weight of family and freedom, while a professor returns home to conduct research only to be haunted by a dark specter. The stories and voices in Billy-Ray Belcourt’s debut story collection are buoyed by philosophical undergirding, poetic demand, and the complex relationship between aesthetics and ethics.

From the National Book Award “5 Under 35” honoree and author of Bestiary comes startling stories that center the bodies, memories, myths, and relationships of Asian American women. In “Auntland,” a steady stream of aunts adjust to American life by sneaking surreptitious kisses from women at temple, buying tubs of vanilla ice cream to prepare for citizenship tests, and hatching plans to name their daughters “Dog.” In “The Chorus of Dead Cousins,” ghost-cousins cross space, seas, and skies to haunt their live-cousin, wife to a storm chaser.

In the title story of Walk Between the Raindrops, a woman sits down next to a man at a bar and claims she has ESP. In “Thirteen Days,” passengers on a cruise line are quarantined, to horrifying and hilarious effect. And “Hyena” begins simply: “That was the day the hyena came for him, and never mind that there were no hyenas in the South of France, and especially not in Pont-Saint-Esprit—it was there and it came for him.”

This Accident of Being Lost is the knife-sharp new collection of stories and songs from award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. These visionary pieces build upon Simpson's powerful use of the fragment as a tool for intervention in her critically acclaimed collection Islands of Decolonial Love. Provocateur and poet, she continually rebirths a decolonized reality, one that circles in and out of time and resists dominant narratives or comfortable categorization.

Andrew Lang (1844-1912) was a poet, novelist, and literary critic. He created the enchanting world of fairyland inhabited by characters like the snow-queen, the mermaid's son, ogres, dwarfs, monsters, magicians, and giants. The Pink Fairy Book contains 41 tales from Africa, Japan, Scandinavia, and Europe. They range from familiar stories like "The Snow-Queen" and "The Fir-Tree" to the obscure tales of the Tanuki. This collection contains stories like "The Cats' Elopement", The "Princess in the Chest", "Snowflake", and more....

This second collecton of great American short stories includes titles by Mark Twain, O. Henry, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

An incident at a TSA security check point sows chaos and rumors, creating a chain of events that impacts twelve young Asian Americans in a crowded and restless airport. As their disrupted journeys crisscross and collide, they encounter fellow travelers—some helpful, some hostile—as they discover the challenges of friendship, the power of courage, the importance of the right word at the right time, and the unexpected significance of a blue Stratocaster electric guitar.

Edited by National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi and featuring some of the most acclaimed best-selling black authors writing for teens today - Black Enough is an essential collection of captivating stories about what it’s like to be young and black in America. A selection of the Schomburg Center's Black Liberation Reading List.

Burri is a fashion designer and icon with a biochemistry background. Her latest pieces are African inspired and crafted to touch the heart. They enable wearers to absorb nanorobotic memories and recount the stories of Black lives and forgiveness. Wenda doesn’t buy it. A protest performance artist, Wenda knows exploitation when she sees it. What she’s going to do with Burri’s breakthrough technology could, in the right hands, change race relations forever.

A northern white couple has relocated to the South to operate a vineyard on a North Carolina plantation. There, they pass their idle hours listening to the stories of one Uncle Julius, who has a deep knowledge of the land. These stories, however, are more than mere entertainments. They all have their time and place, and they offer not only a quiet commentary on the events of the day but also a deeper reckoning with the plantation’s disturbing past.

In his first, glorious collection of stories, Rupert Everett takes us on exhilarating journeys with a cast of extraordinary characters. From Oscar Wilde’s last night in Paris to the ferociously unforgiving world of a Los Angeles talent agency and beyond, these stories are evocative, moving, and tender. Brilliantly witty, elegiac, and drawing from the wealth of film and TV ideas Everett has worked on over the course of his illustrious career, The American No will delight and surprise his many fans.

Being a P.I. with a new fiance and side-kick isn't easy. Greyson and Sarah’s wedding planning comes to a halt when they must find a missing girl. Will Greyson get a chance to start over with Sarah after all they’ve been through? Will their search for the missing girl foil their romance and pending wedding? Sarah Starting Over (Siletz Bay #1) ends with some unanswered questions for a P.I. and a widowed mom. Greyson Starting Over is (Siletz Bay # 2) takes place one year later in the sleepy seaside town of Siletz Bay.

There's a saying in Brooklyn that if you come from my part of town, you're from around the way. Well Lyric, Juicy, and Precious are all from around the way. They all live in Crown Heights, one of the most notorious sections of Brooklyn, but to them it's just a place they call home. Around the Way Girls 2 is a fast-paced look at the life of some street-smart women who think they know it all but are about to get the lessons of their lives.