American Short

In Screen Tests, an astoundingly original and stylish collection, Zambreno has once again created new categories of writing, of vivid and surprising language and thought. In the first half, the narrator regales us with incisive and witty swatches from a life lived inside a brilliant mind...

Danzy Senna's You Are Free is now available for the first time in audio! Each of these eight remarkable stories by Danzy Senna tightrope-walks tantalizingly, sometimes frighteningly, between defined states: life with and without mates and children, the familiar if constraining reference points...

From Johannes Lichtman comes a wisely comic debut novel about a teacher whose efforts to stay sober land him in Sweden, but the refugee crisis forces a very different kind of reckoning. You don’t have to be perfect to do good... Jonas Anderson wants a fresh start. He’s made plenty of bad...

Set in France and America, News of Our Loved Ones is a haunting and intimate examination of love and loss, beauty and the cost of survival, witnessed through two generations of one French family, whose lives are all touched by the tragic events surrounding the D-Day bombings in Normandy. What if...

For fans of George Saunders and Karen Russell, an "amazing, wildly inventive" collection of stories that straddles the line between the real and the fantastical (Kevin Wilson). In The Wrong Heaven, anything is possible: bodies can transform, inanimate objects come to life, angels appear and...

“A near-miraculous, brilliant debut.”—George Saunders, Man Booker Prize–winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo “In one exquisitely crafted story after the next, Will Mackin maps the surreal psychological terrain of soldiers in a perpetual war.”—Phil Klay, National Book...

LONGLISTED for the 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION An urgent, essential collection of stories about immigration, broken dreams, Los Angeles gang members, Latin American families, and other tales of high stakes journeys, from the award-winning author of War by Candlelight and At Night We...

Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal column has been must reading for thoughtful liberals and conservatives alike. Now she issues an urgent, heartfelt call for all Americans to support the next President. Because it is not the threats and challenges we face, but how we face them that defines us as...

With his harrowing debut, Luke Mogelson provides an unsentimental, unflinching glimpse into the lives of those forever changed by war. Subtle links between these ten powerful stories magnify the consequences of combat for both soldiers and civilians, as the violence experienced abroad echoes...

Nickolas Butler's debut novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, became an international bestseller and won numerous accolades, including France's Prix PAGE/America. Now, in Beneath the Bonfire, he demonstrates his talent for portraying "a place and its people with such love that you'll find yourself falling...

Winesburg, Ohio, a collection of stories set in a fictitious town in the 1890s, has long been considered Sherwood Anderson's masterpiece. Haunting and powerful, it draws readers into the streets and houses of Winesburg - and into the darkly complex lives of each of Anderson's unforgettable "grotesques."

“Whenever I think about Michelle Obama, I think, ‘When I grow up, I want to be just like her. I want to be that intelligent, confident, and comfortable in my own skin’.” ―Roxane Gay “Even after eight years of watching them daily in the press, the fact that the most powerful man in...

This hard-hitting, beautiful short story collection from one of America's preeminent literary voices “reflect[s] both sides of his Mexican-American heritage while stretching the reader's understanding of human boundaries” (Kirkus). Examining the borders between one nation and another...

“Ann Beattie at her most magnificent…Her first new collection in ten years...These tales explore the range of emotional states the author is famous for: longing, disaffection, ambivalence, love, regret. It’s nice to hear her voice again” (People). “A peerless, contemplative...

Before writing his memoir of madness, Darkness Visible, William Styron was best known for his ambitious works of fiction–including The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie’s Choice. Styron also created personal but no less powerful tales based on his real-life experiences as a U.S. Marine...

Termed the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the southwestern Indians and the first protest novel of California, Ramona is the story of 3 cultures - Indian, Mexican, and Anglo - locked in combat. The upheaval and injustice are humanized through the romance of a beautiful half-Indian orphan who grow up as the ward of Señora Moreno in privileged surroundings, then falls in love with an Indian and joins him in a life of poverty and tragedy. The Ramona Pageant in Hemet, California, based on this romance, has played each year since 1923, reenacting the transition period between Mexican traditions and the new U.S. and state governments.

One of Barack Obama’s “Favorite Books of the Year” "Phenomenal" --Justin Torres, author of We the Animals "Brilliant" --Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun “A profound exploration of the true meaning of borders.” —The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE 10 BEST...

A northern white couple has relocated to the South to operate a vineyard on a North Carolina plantation. There, they pass their idle hours listening to the stories of one Uncle Julius, who has a deep knowledge of the land. These stories, however, are more than mere entertainments. They all have their time and place, and they offer not only a quiet commentary on the events of the day but also a deeper reckoning with the plantation’s disturbing past.

The 1925 New York edition of Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time trails readers through the years before, during, and after World War I. The collection’s first two stories, “Indian Camp” and “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,” introduce Hemingway’s semiautobiographical character Nick Adams as a child. In total, seven stories portray the young man’s coming of age. All fourteen, including interspersed vignettes, embody the themes that Hemingway would return to throughout his career: alienation, grief, loss, and separation, as well as the regenerative powers of nature.

A debut collection of moving and darkly witty stories from an "admirably fearless" (New York Times Book Review) writer whom critics have compared to Michael Chabon, E.L. Doctorow, and Dennis Lehane A Massachusetts Book Award "Must Read" Selection When marriages, friendships, and families come...