Fiction: special features

In The Piano Tuner, Peter Meinke writes of the foreignness that awaits us when we go abroad and when we answer our own front door to admit a stranger, that confronts us in unfamiliar cities and villages and in the equally disquieting surroundings of our memories and regrets.

The stories in Drowning Lessons engage water as both a vital and a potentially hazardous presence in our lives.

Set against the stark but seductive landscape of the American Southwest, the stories in All My Relations explore the inner landscape of mind and heart, where charting the simplest course is subject to a complex constellation of relationships.

In Daniel Curley's stories, passionate rage and cool, clear hatred alter the terms of even the most basic human relationships, etching odd patterns on the surface of the natural world-a man applies the methods of Mata-Hari to the task of keeping track of his ex-wife; the victim of a pickpocket plots psychological revenge on the criminal population of a Mexico City bus line; a spurned lover summons all his strength and courage to liberate a roomful of snakes held captive by his rival.

In the limbo bounded by rebellion and resignation, belonging and solitude, Ed Allen's middle Americans seem to be either freely adrift or uncomfortably vested in an exit strategy wholly inadequate for their circumstances.

In this funny, touching collection about music, identity, liars, and love, Geoffrey Becker brings us into the lives of people who have come to a turning point and lets us watch as they take, however clumsily, their next steps.

Mary Hood's fictional world is a world where fear, anger, longing-sometimes worse-lie just below the surface of a pleasant summer afternoon or a Sunday church service.

The lives on view in Nervous Dancer are complex and precarious.

The stories collected in The Consequences of Desire describe a modern urban society in its extraordinary complexity, its often apparent absence of fixed values, and its resistance to easy understanding.

The eleven stories in Wendy Brenner's debut story collection concern people who are alone or feel themselves to be alone: survivors negotiating between logic and faith who look for mysterious messages and connections in everyday life, those sudden transformations and small miracles that occur in mundane, even absurd settings.

The eleven stories in Kellie Wells's debut collection cover a wide range of eccentric characters-from a young girl experiencing her friend's strange demise to a set of opposite-sex conjoined twins.

In her debut collection, Melinda Moustakis brings to life a rough-and-tumble family of Alaskan homesteaders through a series of linked stories.

Ghost Traps is a collection of twelve stories about characters who are on the edge and under duress, individuals backed against a wall as they try to free themselves from their own limitations, habits, and destructive desires.

At the heart of this collection of five short stories and the title novella is the powerful interconnection between parents and children, nostalgia and memory, and the collective emotional intimacies and transactions that configure human behavior.

In Amina Gautier's Brooklyn, some kids make it and some kids don't, but not in simple ways or for stereotypical reasons.

In these twelve intelligent tales, seasoned poet and story writer Gary Fincke reconciles lost hope and quiet despair with small blessings and ultimate redemption.

In Break Any Woman Down, Dana Johnson explores race, identity, and alienation with unflinching honesty and vibrant language.

A shady financier visits his small hometown, a middle-aged divorce emerges from a life of drastic austerity and self-denial, a sick and dying professor discovers the healing touch of a former student.

The tie that binds men and women, that makes men do absurd things that they will very likely be sorry for later, is at the center of this prize-winning collection of stories.

The mechanical men in these stories-Industrial Age holdovers, outsiders wanting for relevance and respect, or overwhelmed people who confuse the certainties of one reality with the doubts of another-are cut off in some way from contemporary culture.

Tony Ardizzone writes of the moments in our lives that shine, that burn in the dim expanse of memory with the intensity and vivid light of the evening news.

Front porches, family cars, playgrounds, swimming pools: from such familiar haunts of childhood, these stories look out on the world through young eyes and hearts.

The bestselling author "offers up lean, deftly composed short-shorts that seem effortless but inflict a surprising amount of mayhem considering their size" (Brian Evenson, O. Henry Award-winning author).

Like a gut punch, like a lightning strike, nearly seventy pieces of flash fiction in this expanded edition--featuring twenty previously uncollected tales, including ten original stories--from Stephen Graham Jones showcase the visceral bite of his prose and scope of his vision. From bungee jumpers to truck drivers, from childhood memories to orgies, these are vignettes of the extraordinary moments that make up ordinary days.

In "Animals I've Known," a golden retriever surrenders to the sensory pleasure of his waterfowl prey. A father ignores years of warning signs leading up to a tragic day at the beach in "Seafood," while a burger joint serves up a heaping portion of nostalgia on a man's lunch hour in "Solemn Burger." A moment of connection opens up a future of terrifyingly endless possibility in "The Sadness of Two People Meeting in a Bar," and in "When I'm Alone I Count Myself," a man has to live by a strict set of rules to keep his fragile world from crumbling around him.

States of Grace is "a lightning-fast read, and yet each piece feels as fleshed-out and dense as a novel, with SGJ often spanning decades and a wide range of emotions in no time flat" (LitReactor).

“Sonora’s story is about not giving up in the face of setbacks. An inspirational tale.” —Booklist

"This one's for the horse girls, the girls who fell in love with Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken and hoped someday they'd be like the fearless, determined, strong Sonora Carver whose love and belief in her horses made her an icon." --Joy Callaway, international bestselling author

Inspired by a true story of one of the first female horse divers, Sonora explores a world of daring feats and extraordinary adventures set in the heyday of the American carnival scene.

Sonora Webster is penniless but plucky, and despite the looming Great Depression, she follows her wanderlust, answering an advert to dive with horses. Little does she know that she is about to be thrust into a world teeming with danger, excitement, and fierce competition.

As Sonora delves into the cutthroat world of show business, complete with trapeze aerial acts and juggling bears, her undeniable talent and unwavering dedication propel her into the limelight, making her a sensation, and after marrying the show runner, her entire life becomes their act and their horses. But she soon learns that a diver--and her horse--are only as good as their last show, a show some are hellbent on shutting down. When a tragic accident changes her life forever, can Sonora muster the courage to climb the forty-five-foot tower and dive again, risking her life to save the show and their horses from falling into the wrong hands?

In Sonora, Jenni L. Walsh vividly captures the spirit of a brave woman who defied societal norms to follow her dreams, diving into the unknown with courage and resilience.

In these stories, Dianne Nelson illuminates that vast territory of pleasure and pain created within modern families.

“Sonora’s story is about not giving up in the face of setbacks. An inspirational tale.” —Booklist

"This one's for the horse girls, the girls who fell in love with Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken and hoped someday they'd be like the fearless, determined, strong Sonora Carver whose love and belief in her horses made her an icon." --Joy Callaway, international bestselling author

Inspired by a true story of one of the first female horse divers, Sonora explores a world of daring feats and extraordinary adventures set in the heyday of the American carnival scene.

Sonora Webster is penniless but plucky, and despite the looming Great Depression, she follows her wanderlust, answering an advert to dive with horses. Little does she know that she is about to be thrust into a world teeming with danger, excitement, and fierce competition.

As Sonora delves into the cutthroat world of show business, complete with trapeze aerial acts and juggling bears, her undeniable talent and unwavering dedication propel her into the limelight, making her a sensation, and after marrying the show runner, her entire life becomes their act and their horses. But she soon learns that a diver--and her horse--are only as good as their last show, a show some are hellbent on shutting down. When a tragic accident changes her life forever, can Sonora muster the courage to climb the forty-five-foot tower and dive again, risking her life to save the show and their horses from falling into the wrong hands?

In Sonora, Jenni L. Walsh vividly captures the spirit of a brave woman who defied societal norms to follow her dreams, diving into the unknown with courage and resilience.

Caught in the muddle of modern life, eyes gazing at the middle distance, the characters in Silent Retreats search, down roads paved by custom and dotted by the absurd, for escape, refuge, or, at least, merciful diversion.

In these stories by Melissa Pritchard, the past brushes up against the present, the voices of both the sane and the obsessed are heard, and the spirits speaking unbidden through the mouths of some spurn others who desire them most.

En Historias, Relatos de Aqui, de Alla y del Mas Alla, Serafin Fernandez Gago nos sumerge en un viaje emotivo a traves del amor, la memoria y la perdida.

Vom Bodensee bis Bottrop: neue Erzahlungen von Peter StammGewohnt nahbar und subtil erzahlt Peter Stamm in seinen neuen Erzahlungen aus dem Leben seiner Figuren.

'Now's the time to curl up with a ghostly tale - and this collection should be your go to!

What if you could turn the pages of your own life, like the pages of your favourite book?

Y si el lugar mas seguro del mundo fuera tambien el mas extrano?

Desde la altura de los cielos, cualquier emocion humana parece insignificante; pero en el plano terrenal, cada experiencia vivida intensamente se convierte en una historia significativa.

Una serie de relatos intensos que exploran la fragilidad emocional, los limites de la cordura, el deseo, la traicion y la busqueda de sentido.

From a rising star of inventive and wildly evocative Russian literature(Publishers Weekly),a collection of short stories that straddles the line between delight and horror.

Sexy small town contemporary romance from USA Today bestselling author A.