American Short

Traplines is extraordinary fiction that presents the menacing underside of family life. In crackling prose, Eden Robinson describes homes ruled by bullies, psychopaths, and delinquents; families whose conflict resolution techniques range from grand theft to homicide; and kids who just can't get a break.

Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy.

The greatest short story writers strive to achieve a single, dramatic effect, a feature which the early masters of this genre perfected. Although the short story came from Europe, it was reborn in America and reached a pinnacle of superb form on these shores by the turn of the 20th century. In so many of our best writers, we hear echoes of a pioneer ethos that sustains the heart of a great literature. Here are 12 of America's best.

No nation has ever achieved the literary diversity of America. From nativist humor to immigrant triumph, Americans have recorded their visions and hopes better than anyone

In this followup to his hugely popular Midnight Storm Moonless Sky: Indigenous Horror Stories, Blackfoot storyteller Alex Soop plunges us again into enthralling tales that mix reality with dark terror. Within its stories, Whisper at Night and They Will Come reveals ancient theories of the paranormal, post apocalyptic scenarios, impossible wells of grief, and monstrous phobias. Soop scares the wits out of listeners, all the while uncovering overlooked social anxieties and racism affecting Indigenous Peoples across North America.

The prestigious annual story anthology includes prize-winning stories by Jamil Jan Kochai, David Ryan, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Lisa Taddeo, Ling Ma, Catherine Lacey, and Cristina Rivera Garza. “[A] standout collection . . . . Dazzling performances from some of today’s most exciting writers...

Unlike the other arts, American literature has been a powerful, influential, and leading aspect of American culture. By turns sedate and mercurial and possessing a moral mind set of various social values, the American short story reveals in its pages the psyche of a growing, sprawling nation whose sense of destiny has always been larger than life. Here are seven masterpieces that will make you smile, make you frown, and leave you pondering the mystery that surrounds the soul of a great nation.

A collection of twenty classic short stories by Isaac Asimov, author of the Foundation series, featuring the definitive and only in-print version of “Nightfall” From one of history’s most influential writers of science fiction comes this collection of twenty short works of fiction...

Multiple award winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman returns to dazzle, captivate, haunt, and entertain with this third collection of short fiction following Smoke and Mirrors and Fragile Things—which includes a never-before published American Gods story, “Black Dog,”...

Selections include "The Robber Bridegroom" by Washington Irving, "The Stolen White Elephant" by Mark Twain, "Chickamauga" by Ambrose Bierce, "The Mission of Jane" by Edith Wharton, and "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe.

A collection of classic American short stories, including 'The Old Man's Bride' by Timothy Shay Arthur (read by Van Johnson), 'The Virginian' by Owen Wister (William Holden), 'The Turn of the Screw' by Henry James (Ronald Colman and Edna Best) and 'The Man That Corrupted Handleyburg' by Mark Twain (Frank Lovejoy).

Five great American short story writers, dating from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, are represented here. Different in atmosphere and writing style, they nevertheless caught the mood and concerns of the day in a way that was distinctly American.

Here are eight stories from master American writers of the 19th century. They vary from sinister tales by Ambrose Bierce - why is that window boarded up? - and a reflective moment in the life of a woman without children, but forced to look after children, to classic short stories by O. Henry and Stephen Crane. There is even an elegiac description of an eclipse by James Fenimore Cooper, author of The Last of the Mohicans.

In the deft hands of Neil Gaiman, magic is no mere illusion... and anything is possible. In this, Gaiman's first book of short stories, his imagination and supreme artistry transform a mundane world into a place of terrible wonders -- a place where an old woman can purchase the Holy Grail at a...

In her debut collection of short stories, Islands of Decolonial Love, renowned writer and activist Leanne Simpson vividly explores the lives of contemporary Indigenous Peoples and communities, especially those of her own Nishnaabeg nation. Found on reserves, in cities and small towns, in bars and curling rinks, canoes and community centres, doctors offices and pickup trucks, Simpson's characters confront the often heartbreaking challenge of pairing the desire to live loving and observant lives with a constant struggle to simply survive....

All the delightful and bizarre inhabitants of Wonderland are here: the White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat, the hooka-smoking Caterpillar and the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Ugly Duchess... and, of course, Alice herself - growing alternately taller and smaller, attending demented tea parties and eccentric croquet games, and observing everything with clarity and rational amazement.

The classic collection of five deeply resonant and disturbing interconnected stories from #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King. Innocence, experience, truth, deceit, loss, and recovery are at the core of these five interconnected, sequential tales—each deeply rooted in the 1960s...

A piercingly raw debut story collection from a young writer with an explosive voice; a treacherously surreal and, at times, heartbreakingly satirical look at what it's like to be young and black in America.

Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, and an intriguing interpretation of British history - these are just some of the themes embraced by the anonymous authors of the eleven tales that make up the Welsh medieval masterpiece known as The Mabinogion. They tell of Gwydion the shape-shifter, who can create a woman out of flowers; of Math the magician whose feet must lie in the lap of a virgin; of hanging a pregnant mouse and hunting a magical boar.

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years A modern masterpiece about love and kinship, about living in an America birthed from slavery. Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison gives life to characters who struggle with what society tells them to be, and the love they...