Short Family

What happens when everything around you seems perfect - your family, your health, your social status, your overall life - but all of a sudden something threatens to tear it all apart and rob you of what you've always known? This type of thing happens to many people, every day, from all walks of life. Some are able to get over it and go on with their lives. But others are not so fortunate. They find themselves stuck in their own meltdown of loss, hurt, and pain. Such is the situation in Marita L. Kinney's latest novel.

This is the thirteenth novella in the ongoing story of the Andersen family. Livia Andersen was a woman who held her family together with a quiet smile and an iron will. It’s only been months since her death and the children and grandchildren that she leaves behind continue to grapple with the shifting changes in their lives now that she’s gone. Disappointments she kept to herself are slowly coming to light. Now more is revealed and her oldest son wonders just how much his mother knew and how far she was willing to go to keep their family whole. Noah Andersen would like nothing more than...

JINGLE BELL BABIES (Holiday Brides Book 6) A bachelor finds a pair of twins on his doorstep on Christmas morning, then is even more stunned to learn from a pretty social worker that the baby girls, Mary and Bryte, have him listed on county paperwork as their father. A sweet and poignant tale about accepting the gifts of the season. JINGLE BELL BABIES Christmas Day delivers Santa’s sweetest surprise! Emergency room physician Mark Holiday thinks he’s seen just about everything life can deliver. That is, until twin baby girls land on his doorstep on Christmas morning. At a loss to explain ...

The Against All Odds series is a romantic comedy saga with lots of humor and some angst.

A cynical Hollywood moviemaker confronts his dead wife’s lover and abruptly realizes the depth of his own passion. As his parents’ marriage disintegrates, a precocious fifth-grader distracts himself with meditations on baseball, spaghetti, and his place in the universe. And in the title story, an elderly nun enters a college creative writing class and plays havoc with its tidy notions of fact and fiction. The Whore’s Child is further proof that Russo is one of the finest writers we have.

Thakur Vijay Singh Rathod was one of the richest political businessmen in Mumbai. He was revered by his wife, Savitri, who wanted to give him a son, the heir to his inheritance. But fate decreed otherwise. This is a story of Thakur Vijay Singh Rathod, a proud and ruthless man, his wife Savitri - religious and completed devoted to him, his offspring, and his abandoned child.

Shea receives a call that completely upends her existence and forces her to return to Sundown, the town she thought she had left behind. Tensions increase as she deals with her brother Donovan's untimely death, and long-buried family dynamics start to show again. Shea's return brings back memories of a town with a troubled past that is racially divided as she makes new connections with her childhood friend Marcus, the town's new police chief, and her elder brother Jay, who is now mayor. The repercussions of the past challenge the ties between family and friends. Angelo, Andy to his friends,...

Pen/Hemingway finalist Jamil Jan Kochai ​breathes life into his contemporary Afghan characters, moving between modern-day Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora in America. In these arresting stories verging on both comedy and tragedy, often starring young characters whose bravado is matched by their tenderness, Kochai once again captures “a singular, resonant voice, an American teenager raised by Old World Afghan storytellers.” The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories is a moving exploration of characters grappling with the ghosts of war and displacement.

She’s out of second chances. He’s losing hope. Will love lead them home? Emma Smucker thought Paradise Township would be her fresh start. But when her new teaching methods spark suspicion, she risks losing another home—and the children who depend on her. Matthew Blank was once the town’s finest carpenter. Now blind, he struggles to keep his family’s workshop alive. Helping Emma craft learning tools gives him new purpose and draws them closer than either expected. As gossip spreads and fear grows, Emma and Matthew must stand together. Will they find the courage to build a future on...

Wide ranging stories to add wonder and mindfulness to your day...but short stories and poetry? Yes! These are bite-size chunks of fun, weirdness, introspection, and narrative. Sort of like M&Ms, but with more letters. I even have a category of Very Short Stories, for those that want a quick read. The following are extracts from a couple of them—but I have lighter stuff too! The group of newfound friends steadfastly neared the top of the mountain. A shaft of light penetrated the foliage. They felt the yellow warmth on their head and the top of their dry eyes. Looking up, they saw the beam ...

She swore she’d never go back. Now she has, but not to stay. Seven years ago, Rebecca King left her Amish community behind. Now, her father’s stroke forces her return to Lancaster County, but only long enough to help him heal. She doesn’t belong there anymore. Not after choosing the English world over her family. Not after breaking Samuel’s heart. Samuel Lapp never stopped loving her. But Rebecca’s return brings whispers of doubt and painful memories he thought he’d buried. When her modern nursing methods clash with Amish tradition, the community questions her loyalty. Samuel ...

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.

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.

When grandmother Maureen Phelan is surprised in her home by a stranger, she clubs the intruder with a Holy Stone. The consequences of this unplanned murder connect four misfits struggling against their meager circumstances. Ryan is a fifteen-year-old drug dealer desperate not to turn out like his alcoholic father, Tony, whose feud with his next-door neighbor threatens to ruin his family. Georgie is a sex worker who half-heartedly joins a born-again movement to escape her profession and drug habit.

Polly’s fourth-grade daughter has been spending a lot of time with her classmate Sylvie—maybe too much. Sylvie’s clothes are a little…flashy…and her phone (a ten-year-old with a phone!) doesn’t seem to have any parental controls. It seems that Sylvie’s mother, with her vape pens and her too-high heels, may not be making good choices. As Polly tries to exert a positive influence, she discovers just how little anyone can tell about a family from the outside.

Unity, Texas — May 1887. A grieving daughter. A hopeful journey. A love tested by secrets. Can love survive secrets, ambition, and the wild brutality of the frontier? After the sudden death of her father in the spring of 1887, Clary Wilson is left with little more than two battered stagecoaches—and the care of her younger sister. With no prospects back home, she answers a mail-order bride advertisement and heads west to Unity, Texas, hoping for a second chance at life and love. Thomas Forster, the man she’s been corresponding with, is even more handsome and kind than Clary dared ...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his acclaimed novel about North Korea, The Orphan Master’s Son, Adam Johnson is one of America’s most provocative and powerful authors. Critics have compared him to Kurt Vonnegut, David Mitchell, and George Saunders, but Johnson’s new book will only further his reputation as one of our most original writers. Subtly surreal, darkly comic, both hilarious and heartbreaking, Fortune Smiles is a major collection of stories that gives voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear, while offering something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world.

*** Amazon #1 Best Selling Author *** He’s Amish. She’s not. Each is looking for a change. What happens when God brings them together? Elijah Troyer is eighteen years old when he decides to go on a delayed Rumspringa, an Amish tradition when adolescents venture out into the world to decide whether they want to continue their life in the Amish culture or leave for the ways of the world. He has only been in the city for a month when his life suddenly takes a strange twist. Eve Campbell is a young woman in trouble with crime lords, and they will do anything to stop her from talking. ...

Believe is the fourteenth novella in the ongoing story of the Andersen family. Livia Andersen was a woman who held her family together with a quiet smile and an iron will. It’s only been months since her death and the four children she leaves behind continue to grapple with the shifting changes in their lives now that she’s gone especially her youngest daughter, Claire. Claire Andersen Slavik came to her lakeside cabin shortly after her mother’s death. She needed the refuge it offered her at a time when little else did. She’s had several visitors over the last several months ...

From matchmaking carolers to a festive lights competition, four best-selling authors explore the magic of the holidays in these heartwarming small towns.