Kategoria BISAC: Fiction >> Short Stories (single author)

Ghost Dancing is a spare, beautifully written novel-in-stories about Jimmy One Rock and his wife, Mary, as they struggle to endure their hard-won lives and the ghosts of Native American tradition that surround them. As each story begins, we find the couple at different stages of their lives, and witness the subtly reflective changes on their Pacific Northwest reservation.

In the title story of this collection, neighborhood boys crouch in a backyard toolshed, and conspire to prove their piano teachers to be witches. In "Cannibal Kings," a disillusioned young man accompanies a troubled boy on a tour of prep schools through the Pacific Northwest, only to realize that he has lost his way in life. And in "Come Live With Me And Be My Love," a middle-aged gentleman looks back at his mannered early life as a Ivy Leaguer, married to a vivacious woman but silently yearning for his best friend -- and the sacrifices that each made to uphold their compromising...

Filled with admiration for his characters and the hope they bring to their day to day dilemmas, Night Swimming has affirmed Pete Fromm's reputation as one of the nation's best writers.

Winner of the Whiting Writers' Award

In a voice somewhere between Cormac McCarthy and Kurt Cobain, John McManus explores young people living in extreme situations. Some are in the Tennessee Smoky Mountains, some in the Pacific Northwest, a few are in the Western deserts of Utah and Nevada, one is in England, and many are scattered throughout the Southern US. All are desperate for something beyond the ordinary lives that are given to them, and every one is absolutely unforgettable.

First published in 1978, this collection of nineteen of Ballard's best short stories is as timely and informed as ever. His tales of the human psyche and its relationship to nature and technology, as viewed through a strong microscope, were eerily prescient and now provide greater perspective on our computer-dominated culture. Ballard's voice and vision have long served as a font of inspiration for today's cyber-punks, the authors and futurist who brought the information age into the mainstream.

How is a woman in her thirties, HIV-positive and fresh out of rehab, supposed to find love and work in contemporary, urban America? Emily Carter's critically acclaimed debut traces Glory's journey from her addictions to heroin and alcohol in New York to her rebirth in Minnesota's recovery community. Glory Goes and Gets Some is a streetwise and sardonic look at sex, HIV, addiction, and recovery.

The Rose Thieves gives us the Vanderwald family: flamboyant, hot-tempered Lila, who feels trapped living in a small New England town; her sentimental, eternally optimistic husband, a failed futures-market investor; and their children. An affectionate daughter steals flowers from gardens all over town for her big sister's sixteenth birthday. A tea party for the local minister is turned upside down by a four-year-old's remark. Sheep wander through the kitchen, an enraged mother swan menaces the sisters as their own mother entertains a possible lover, and, after a near-disaster, Lila...

The stories in John Fulton's striking debut collection are set in cars, laundromats, motels, ranch houses, androadside diners, where his characters struggle with and against the demands of family loyalty, love, loss, andsexual desire. A teenage girl attempts to lose her virginity while her mother dies at home; a middle-aged Casanova passes himself off as Barry Manilow--much to thedistress of his soon-to-be-fourth wife; and two youngboys accompany their increasingly unhinged mother ona journey of self-destruction across the Utah desert.

Two years ago--at twenty-two--John McManus captivated writers and critics with his first story collection and became the youngest recipient of the Whiting Writers Award. Now McManus returns with a collection of stories equally piercing and visionary: stories about the young and old, compromised by circumstance and curiosity, and undergoing startling transformations. In "Eastbound," a car driven by two elderly sisters breaks down on an elevated highway: Beneath them lies the lost country of the South, overrun with concrete and shopping centers but still possessing the spectres and secrets...

In these wonderfully funny and poignant stories, Willett's eccentric, complex characters think and do the unconventional. Soft, euphonic women gradually grow old; weak, unhappy men confront love and their own mortality; and abominable children desperately try to grow up with grace. With a unique voice and dry humor, Willett gives us a new insight into human existence, showing us those specific moments in relationships when life suddenly becomes visible.

Critically acclaimed when it was first published in 1987, Jenny and the Jaws of Life is being brought back due to popular...

Welcome to the short stories of Ron Carlson, where strange beach towels turn up in your suburban living room; where the ordinary son of a family of geniuses spins a rollicking tale of happiness and disappointment; and where a desperate ex-con with a broken heart must hide out in a desert hotel, only to make a startling discovery. Epic in scope and confessional in tone, At the Jim Bridger enfolds the reader in a world of love and mystery, and makes us feel better than just about anything written on the page.

Historically, short stories were a rich source of successful movies and significant films. Classics such as Rear Window, High Noon, Psycho, All About Eve, and Blade Runner began as short stories. Unfortunately, many of the major venues for discovering new talent--The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and Mademoiselle--are gone. Today, short stories are again becoming an important basis for major motion pictures and television, with films such as Brokeback Mountain, Good Will Hunting, and Minority Report.

One reason short...

Shortlisted for the 2009 Commomwealth Writers' Prize

Shroff's vibrant narratives in this concept collection of 14 stories set in contemporary Bombay feature a range of beautifully drawn characters in fascinating situations: from the laundrywallas' water shortage problems, to the doomed love affair of a schizophrenic painter and his Bollywood girlfriend, to the wandering thoughts of a massagewalla at Chowpatty Beach, to the heart-warming relationship of a carriage driver and his beloved horse. Each of these stories is richly crafted and arranged against the grand chaotic backdrop of...

In eight stories, this singular collection of short fiction written over the course of ten years explores the terrain of modern urban life. In reflective, telegraphic prose, Susan Sontag confronts the reader with exposed workings of an impassioned intellect in narratives seamed with many of the themes of her essays--the nature of knowing, our relationship with the past, and the future in an alienated present.

Philosophical inquiry, examinations of language, and involuted domestic disputes are the focus of Lydia Davis's inventive collection of short fiction, Almost No Memory. In each of these stories, Davis reveals an empathic, sometimes shattering understanding of human relationships.

From one of our most imaginative and inventive writers, a crystalline collection of perfectly modulated, sometimes harrowing and often hilarious investigations into the multifaceted ways in which human beings perceive each other and themselves. A couple suspects their friends think them boring; a woman resolves to see herself as nothing but then concludes she's set too high a goal; and a funeral home receives a letter rebuking it for linguistic errors. Lydia Davis once again proves in the words of the Los Angeles Times "one of the quiet giants in the world of American fiction."

The literary event of 2001 is now the paperback event of 2002: The Collected Stories of Richard Yates gathers the late author's powerful and peerless short fiction in one comprehensive volume. Praised by such authors as Michael Chabon, Stewart O'Nan, Robert Stone, and Richard Russo, and universally acclaimed in reviews across the country, The Collected Stories is the crowning jewel in what has been the rediscovery of one of our greatest American writers.

In a nameless Greek village, the lives of its citizens--the priest, the whore, the doctor, the seamstress, the mayor--and even its animals--a centaur, a parrot that recites Homer, a horse called History--are entwined. As their lives intersect, their hidden crimes, their little infamies, are revealed, in a place full of passion, cruelty, and deep reserves of black humor.