"In this pair of novellas and two stories, Russo's characters bear little similarity to the blue-collar citizens we're familiar with from most of his novels. In "Horseman," a tenured professor confronts a young plagiarist as well as her own weaknesses as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches--"And after that, who knew?" In "Intervention," a realtor facing an ominous medical prognosis finds himself in his father's shadow while he presses forward, or...

"In stories that evoke the haunting beauty of New England beaches and resonate with a bittersweet loneliness, Romero blurs the lines between life and death, reality and fantasy. A deceased woman counsels her son's fiancée on how to be a good wife to him, with disastrous consequences. A mysterious, commanding cat appears in a young woman's home, as inexplicable as the demise of her years-long relationship with her boyfriend. At turns humorous, sorrowful,...

This collection of stories illuminates moments that shape a life, from a dream or a sexual act to simple twists of fate that turn a person out of his or her accustomed path and into another way of being. Set in the countryside and towns of Lake Huron, (Michigan and Ontarion) these stories about departures and beginnings, accidents, dangers, and homecomings both virtual and real, paint a portrait of how strange, dangerous, and extraordinary life can...

In this book the author's trademark gifts of penetrating characterization, unsparing eye, and rascally intelligence are once again fully on display. Her classic wicked humor in each story, which range from a ghost story to a vampire story to near-memoir to mini-sagas of family and social fracture, brilliantly unsettles the reader in that unmistakably Mantel way. She brutally and acutely writes about gender, marriage, class, family, and sex, cutting...

Alice Munro's central characters range from 14-year-old Lauren in "Trespass," through the young couple in "Runaway," whose helpful older neighbour intervenes to help the wife escape, all the way to a 70-year-old woman meeting a friend of her youth on a Vancouver street and sitting with him to recall their tangled lives fifty years earlier, through a web of cheerful lies. Three of the stories, "Chance," "Soon," and "Silence," are linked, showing us...

Across a range of subjects, themes, tones, and narrative voices, the author's assured prose and expansive imagination introduce readers to people, places, and premises that are hilarious, insightful, provocative, and moving, often at the same time. A boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes, only to discover that claiming the winnings may unravel his family. A woman sets out to seduce motivational speaker Tony Robbins ,turning for help...

These prizewinning stories champion the everyday person who tries to do his or her best in demanding and even demeaning situations. The stories in A Common Person and Other Stories, R. M. Kinder's third short-story collection and the winner of the Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction, expose the disruption in our modern life and the ever-present threat of violence, and, most importantly, they capture the real heroism of everyday people. The characters...

Three-time Hugo Award winner N. K. Jemisin's first collection of short fiction challenges and enchants with breathtaking stories of destruction, rebirth, and redemption. N. K. Jemisin is one of the most powerful and acclaimed speculative fiction authors of our time. In the first collection of her evocative short fiction, Jemisin equally challenges and delights readers with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption. Dragons...

This is a collection of stories that explores the power of love in all its forms, obssessive love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love as it is shaped by passion, betrayal, and the echoes of intimacy.