Winner of the National Book Award for her short story collection Victory Over Japan, Ellen Gilchrist has entertained audiences with her vivid fictional portraits of strong women, eccentric lives, and the difficulties of love and life. Known both for her short fiction and her novels, Gilchrist has been awarded several honors throughout her career, and her work continues to receive both critical and popular acclaim. This book examines her fiction, book by book, and offers an appreciation of her craft through a careful analysis of the stories themselves, their critical reception, and...

Hundreds of popular historical fiction titles are described and categorized according to their underlying appeal features, and under topics and themes you'll never find in the library catalog--women with true grit, greatest war stories, royalty rules, quick reads, humor, and many others. Use these unconventional, sometimes whimsical, reading lists to identify read-alikes rooted in shared appeal features or in the specific characteristics on which the lists are based. You can also post individual lists on your library Web site, put them in your newsletter, or use them for patron handouts to...

As a short-story writer, Alice Munro has achieved high critical and popular regard in both her native Canada and in the United States. Indeed, Munro has been adopted by the entire English-speaking world as one of its own, and her work has received many awards and honors. In the U.S., she is roundly regarded as one of the best--if not the best--contemporary writers of the short story, and one of the greatest living fiction writers. Here, Brad Hooper takes readers through her fiction, work by work, discussing the themes, forms, techniques, and styles she employs to make her work come alive....