American Short Fiction

New York City, 1890 Olga Schoon’s father has big plans for her life. Soon, she will be married. In fact, he has found her the perfect match. Olga, however, has no time for love. New York City’s garment factory workers deserve safe and fair working conditions, and as the daughter of one of the city’s most successful factory owners, she is determined to help the cause. Can she navigate her father’s strict expectations while still pursuing her calling? And what happens when her growing feelings for a handsome business associate threaten to destroy everything she’s been striving for? ...

"Nine Lives" by Kiki Swinson: Wild-card Aiden. Dead-shot Ava. Killing nine targets in 10 days will be this brother-sister hit team's biggest score yet. But as Ava sets up their final target, she falls hard for him and a chance at a normal life. "The Crushed Ice Clique" by Noire: At first all ghetto princesses Honore and Cucci want is quick cash-flow. But after sexing jewelry distributor Slimy Sam and learning his illegal tricks of the trade, they assemble a crack team of thieves for one dazzling scam.

With only two hundred dollars, Unique packed her suitcase and headed to New York City for a brand-new start. It's there that Unique meets big-time boxing promoter Kennard, and it is love at first sight.... After nine months of living in the lap of luxury with Kennard, skeletons from Unique's past show up, and it will cost her a cool million dollars to keep not only her relationship but her life.... Unique isn't about to lose it all. With the help of her best friend, she devises a major heist; to pull it off all she has to do is stay alive....

Autumn, a young woman trapped in a world of the unknown, has the bright idea to move to Paris, the City of Love. " ...there I was, sobbing in-between hugs, farewells and well-wishes. It was almost too much all at once…” Autumn lost her dream job after the business cut off many staff members, and she became lost in her mind with no-one but herself; and a piece of paper. Although Losing her job is what drove Autumn to the city of Paris, love is what made her stay. Have you ever seen a man, and instantly your heart raced? Olivier is a handsome Frenchman; tall, toned body, has an ...

A mother and daughter negotiate the Oregon Trail with grisly results; an elementary teacher watches the carnage of the Challenger explosion spill over into her own classroom. A possible prospector traveling west is drawn to an isolated inn where no one walks away hungry; a 1950s housewife shares the gruesome repertoire of behavior expected of a proper lady. Prohibition and women’s suffrage, the Civil War and the Vietnam War, the JFK assassination conspiracy and the Y2K hysteria.

This collection is full of gritty stories of strong, spirited women who deal with everything from homicide and drugs to all sorts of turmoil - all while showing the men of the streets of Brooklyn that they are not afraid of anything. Perhaps the edgiest of all the Girls from da Hood books, this drama-filled installment follows a drug-fueled crime operation, which could put the girls and their extravagant lifestyles in permanent danger. But these girls from da hood are trying to find a way out of their troubles, by any means necessary.

The Conjure Woman is a collection of short stories by noted African American author Charles Waddell Chesnutt. It is considered to be one the seminal collections of African American literature.

Young Alice leads an ordinary sort of life until, one day, she follows a rabbit down a hole and embarks on a series of adventures with some of the most weird and wonderful characters anyone has ever encountered! She soon discovers that nothing is ordinary in Wonderland, least of all the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the Cheshire Cat, the Duchess, and the Mock Turtle.

This cross-genre anthology written by superstar YA authors from across the Latin American diaspora offers bold new thrills for every monster fan. In these fifteen original short stories, bloodthirsty vampires are hunted by a quick-witted slayer; children are taken from their beds by “el Viejo de la Bolsa” while a military dictator steals their parents; and anyone you love might be a monster waiting to strike. The sinister worlds of these narratives are also magical ones, where supernatural beings can be avatars for justice, vengeance, sisterhood, and empowerment.

In her debut collection of short stories, Islands of Decolonial Love, renowned writer and activist Leanne Simpson vividly explores the lives of contemporary Indigenous Peoples and communities, especially those of her own Nishnaabeg nation. Found on reserves, in cities and small towns, in bars and curling rinks, canoes and community centres, doctors offices and pickup trucks, Simpson's characters confront the often heartbreaking challenge of pairing the desire to live loving and observant lives with a constant struggle to simply survive....

New York Times best-selling author Zane presents a tantalizing short story collection, Zane's Sex Chronicles, which is now the basis of the Cinemax series Zane's Sex Chronicles - the first urban erotic series on television. The series calls for a sexual revolution and brings forth our favorite characters - Patience James aka Zane, Maricruz, Lyric, Eboni, and Ana Marie - as a force to be reckoned with as they balance common day-to-day issues, a slew of hot sex, and the fine men in the big city. Learn more about their backgrounds in this special tie-in edition.

This debut collection is a complicated love letter to Washington, DC, and to those who call it home: a TSA agent who's never flown, a girl braving new worlds to play piano, and a teacher caught up in a mayoral race. These characters navigate life's "training school" - with lessons on gentrification and respectability - and fight to create their own sense of space and self.

In ancient mythology, the Titan Prometheus was punished by the gods for bringing man the gift of fire - an event that set humankind on its course of knowledge. As punishment, Prometheus was bound to a rock. But in The Gift of Fire, those chains cease to be, and the great champion of man walks from that immortal prison into present-day South Central Los Angeles. Disheveled and lost, he is thrown in jail, where he meets lifelong criminal Nosome Blane....

Some treasures can't be measured in silver. In 1880s Idaho Territory, Boston-trained assayer Katherine Lobmeyer is determined to prove her worth in her ailing father's Silver City office, even if it means challenging every convention about a woman's proper place. Matthew Sterling, owner of the richest silver mine in the Owyhees, doesn't believe a woman belongs in the scientific world of mineral testing—until Katherine's brilliant mind and fierce dedication force him to question everything he thought he knew about a lady's capabilities. When theft and sabotage threaten the mining community...

In the American Civil War that began in 1861 the War was seemingly fought to end Slavery. A War for Good. The result a win for the good guys but a society that still bears fractures from this seminal period. The stories in this volume show the true scars that are endured as a riven Nations authors try to explain and reconcile.

A wicked, funny, sexy read Hunter Valentine is the best barber in town. He has a sexy secret skill, that along with his wayward friend Lionel is keeping him out of debt. Hunter is single, and focuses on making enough money to get out of this risky business of cutting ladies privates early. As luck would have it, the love of his life, a conservative politician's daughter, is back in town trying to reconcile. Hunter has to navigate between Meghan's advances and his new sexy clientele. He may not get the chance to give up one for the other, as his new service is on the verge of revolutionizing...

Cleis Press's Best Lesbian Erotica and Best Women's Erotica series top bestseller lists, raising and exceeding the standards and expectations of readers of erotic fiction with each new edition. Now the African-American women's erotica market will discover the same level of literate, provocative sex writing in this debut collection of a new series. Best Black Women's Erotica showcases the hottest, most arousing, and most surprising erotic literature by African-American women writers.

Split into five sections - Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling, and Remembering - Changing My Mind finds Zadie Smith casting an acute eye over material both personal and cultural. This engaging collection of essays, some published here for the first time, reveals Smith as a passionate and precise essayist, equally at home in the world of great books and bad movies, family and philosophy, British comedians, and Italian divas. Changing My Mind is journalism at its most expansive, intelligent, and funny - a gift to readers and writers both.

The Last Defender of Camelot is a collection of breathtaking stories that showcase the incredible abilities of several authors. Edited and with an introduction by award-winning author Robert Silverberg, it includes such tales as For a Breath I Tarry, and Halfjack. It also features the Hugo Award-winning 24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai, Permafrost, and Home is the Hangman. From Publishers Weekly Though SF "master of prose technique" and "paragon of the storytelling art" (in the introductory words of Robert Silverberg, himself a certified luminary) Roger Zelazny died in 1995, collections of ...

For successful African American businesswoman Zoe Reynard, finding the pleasure she wants, the way she wants it, is not worth the risk of losing everything she has: marriage to the man she has loved since childhood, a thriving company, three wonderful children. But Zoe feels helpless in the grip of an overpowering addiction—to sex.