American Short

“This timely novel takes on friendship, desire, fear, and vulnerability in one incisive, witty, and powerful package.” —People “Astonishes with the force of its unexpected beauty.” —The New York Times Book Review The author of the “graceful and compassionate” (People) New York...

The National Book Award finalist for Refund returns with a new collection of stories that boldly examines the changes in American culture over the last two years through the increasing presence of violence, bigotry, sexual harassment, and the emotional costs of living under constant threat. In the title story, the competition between two middle school cellists is affected by a shooting at their school, and it is only years later that they realize how the intrusion of violence affected the course of their lives.

“With dark humor and sharp dialogue, Homes plumbs the depths of everyday American anxieties.” —Time A razor-sharp story collection from the "furiously good" A.M. Homes, author of the forthcoming novel The Unfolding (Zadie Smith, bestselling author of Swing Time). With her signature humor...

From National Book Award finalist and the New York Timesbestselling author of The Year We Left Home comes a “powerful, beautifully crafted” (People) family saga about three generations of women who struggle to find freedom and happiness in their small Midwestern college town. A Cloud in the...

While T.C. Boyle is known as one of our greatest American novelists, he is also an acknowledged master of the short story and is perhaps at his funniest, his most moving, and his most surprising in the short form. In The Relive Box, Boyle's sharp wit and rich imagination combine with a...

Big Cats opens with "Charlotte," in which a young girl with a broken pelvis spies on her voluptuous neighbor during a long, hot summer night, setting the tone of irrepressible curiosity and yearning that is evident throughout the collection. In "Get Away from Me, David," a bank manager tries to...

Blistering and deeply personal, I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son records Russell's quest to understand, through his journalistic subjects, his own appetites and urges, his persistent alienation, and, above all, his knotty, volatile, vital relationship with his father.

Loose Woman Seductive, earthy, and at times confessional, Sandra Cisneros's vibrant collection of poetry celebrates the females aspects of love--from the reflective to the overtly erotic--in a voice recognizable from her powerful works of fiction. These poems offer narratives as formally elegant...

In The Italian Quartet, Sara Marcello, a writer with roots in Italy, is invited to the island villa of Ugo and Olivia Bellini, two wealthy and worldly antiquarians. In this place of myth, belonging as much to Homer and Prospero as to the present, Sara discovers that she is at the center of...

A wild, inventive ride of a short story collection from a distinctive new American storyteller. The stories in Thomas Pierce’s Hall of Small Mammals take place at the confluence of the commonplace and the cosmic, the intimate and the infinite. A fossil-hunter, a comedian, a hot- air balloon...

A literary jigsaw puzzle of a debut novel set in Colombia during the peak of its decades-long conflict, and in New York City While her parents are away, a teenager finds herself home alone, with the household staff mysteriously gone, no phone connection, and news of an insurgency on the...

It's 1942. With the Nazi party at the height of its power, the occupying army empties Poland's towns and cities of their Jewish populations. As neighbor turns on neighbor and survival often demands unthinkable choices, Poland becomes a moral quagmire - a place of shifting truths and blinding ambiguities.

Following the best-selling Everybody's Fool, a new collection of short fiction that demonstrates that Richard Russo--winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls--is also a master of this genre. Russo's characters in these four expansive stories bear little similarity to the blue-collar...

Held captive by her employers -- and by her own demons -- on a mysterious farm, a widow struggles to reunite with her young son in this uniquely American story of freedom, perseverance, and survival. Darlene, once an exemplary wife and a loving mother to her young son, Eddie, finds herself...

From Ragtime and Billy Bathgate to World’s Fair, The March, and Homer & Langley, the fiction of E. L. Doctorow comprises a towering achievement in modern American letters. Now Doctorow returns with an enthralling collection of brilliant, startling short fiction about people who, as the author...

*A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Best Book of the Year* From John Edgar Wideman, a modern “master of language” (The New York Times Book Review), comes a stunning story collection that spans a range of topics from Michael Jordan to Emmett Till, from childhood memories to the final day in a...

Desire raises the stakes - and the danger. This collection includes Desperate Housewife, Sinful, and L.A. Confidential.

Raising the literary bar to a new level, Jerome Charyn re-creates the voice of Theodore Roosevelt, the New York City police commissioner, Rough Rider, and soon-to-be 26th president through his derring-do adventures, effortlessly combining superhero dialogue with haunting pathos. Beginning with his sickly childhood and concluding with McKinley's assassination, the novel positions Roosevelt as a "perfect bull in a china shop," a fearless crime fighter and pioneering environmentalist who would grow up to be our greatest peacetime president.

“Dazzling.” —The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice “Richly satisfying.” —The Wall Street Journal “These are stories you want to live in…a collection perfectly suited for our moment.” —Booklist (starred review) A collection of stories “so beautifully crafted they...

From the author of the “enthralling” (New York Times Book Review) and “beautiful” (Washington Post) debut novel The Vexations comes an exciting new story collection that is “perfect for fans of George Saunders and Karen Russell” (Booklist), moving boldly between the real and the...