Short Family

Colum McCann's Everything in This Country Must, a writer of fierce originality and haunting lyricism, turns to the troubles in Northern Ireland and reveals the reverberations of political tragedy in the most intimate lives of men and women, parents and children. In the title story, a teenage...

Sneaking into the majestic house on Park Row last night and unlocking the door for the well-dressed stranger had been exciting. Still, Roger knows that what he did for Circus was wrong, especially when he learns from the newspaper that one of the inhabitants was killed. But the fifty dollars he earned is a fortune! His mother never seems to have any change left over for dinner after she buys her daily supply of liquor. And his father is in the hospital, recovering from a gunshot wound. Now Circus is asking him to pull another job.

Some things come easy in life, but this is the hardest situation I could have imagined. The man I love, the broken billionaire Sean Ferro, has finally dropped his guard and opened his heart. He's let me in. He's shared his life and his love. Then the unimaginable happens. One event cascades into another until I'm standing at the shore with blood on my hands, betraying the man I swore to love forever.

Two friends embark on a car ride that puts them on the road to reconnection and holiday cheer. The only reason Topaz is flying back into her hometown for the second time in a decade is because her job is forcing her to use the rest of her PTO time before the year is over. And how convenient is it she's landing back during the week of the town's 75th anniversary of the Sunflower Falls Holiday Festival.

Their parents had to leave for a business trip, leaving them with their uncle to take care of them. Jasmin, Annalove, and Lilyrain find themselves caught up in an atypical adventure.

A young novelist trapped in a bad relationship takes the first step toward true pleasure and tenderness…but does she have the courage to be swept off her feet? It doesn’t matter how many people read and like her new book, there’s only one man’s opinion that matters to Clara…or at least that’s what she thinks. But when a chance encounter at a film premiere introduces her to someone new - someone who understands her in a way the first man can’t - Clara finally discovers the validation she really wants and needs.

Here is one of London's famous stories of the Klondike, where men had to battle the elements, and often each other, to survive.

A man's encounter with his mother's first love redefines his past and changes the course of his future. This story is an excerpt from the full collection, While I'm Still Myself, available everywhere books are sold.

After the violent, shadowy events surrounding his father's disappearance and his siblings' disbandment, Martín flees Mexico City with his wife, newborn son, and dog. Isolated and homesick in Madrid, Martín awakes one sticky, hot morning, quietly overwhelmed by the circumstances - his growing aversion to his son, the dog's sudden illness, and the vague unresolved danger from his abandoned homeland.

This feel-good story will restore your faith in "Happily Ever After". If you believe that love really can conquer all - even real life - then Love in a Garden: What Happens After Happily Ever After is for you! This is a quick story you can listen to at lunchtime.

This story made the editor cry every time he read it. Most stories about Alzheimer's and dementia end with a depressing note, a bleak hope, a grasping at humanity as everything, eventually, fades. This story features a grown man whose dreams of tomorrow and his liturgy of life root him in the very reality of his existence, giving hope for all families who have ever had to deal with this disease.

When did “parenting” become a verb? Why is it so hard to parent, and so rife with the possibility of failure? Sitcom families of the past—the Cleavers, the Bradys, the Conners—didn’t seem to lose any sleep about their parenting methods. Today, parents are likely to be up late, doomscrolling on parenting websites. In Long Days, Short Years, Andrew Bomback—physician, writer, and father of three young children—looks at why it can be so much fun to be a parent but, at the same time, so frustrating and difficult to parent.

Fungi and human families are the threads that tie the fabric of all these tales together. In The Freaky Fungal Family Tree, there are few things that are as they appear to be. You’ve been duly warned. Now, from this point on - listen at your own risk!

Five short stories set in Texas, and featuring characters from all my current fiction work, are included in the first collection. Two are set in Galveston, and three in Austin. Four of the stories also serve as prequels to my first novel, The Children, presenting the full extended family, including all six cousins, the grandparents and parents, in action with each other and the world around them.

Wenn die drei Thalbach-Frauen mit verteilten Rollen E.T.A. Hoffmanns "Nussknacker und Mausekönig" sprechen, Enkelin Nellie die Weihnachtsgeschichte berlinert und (Groß-)Mutter Katharina und Tochter Anna Thalbach ihre liebsten Weihnachtsgedichte und -märchen vorlesen, dann fangen Augen an zu leuchten, dann wird selbst dem größten Weihnachtshasser warm ums Herz.

Polly’s fourth-grade daughter has been spending a lot of time with her classmate Sylvie—maybe too much. Sylvie’s clothes are a little…flashy…and her phone (a ten-year-old with a phone!) doesn’t seem to have any parental controls. It seems that Sylvie’s mother, with her vape pens and her too-high heels, may not be making good choices. As Polly tries to exert a positive influence, she discovers just how little anyone can tell about a family from the outside.

Full of humor and pathos, as Southern stories ought to be, the 15 short shorts in this debut collection will haunt you. From simple family dysfunction to tragic twists of fate, the characters in Surviving Nashville suffer their losses with surprising grace. Stacy Barton is a storyteller with an ear for dialect, an eye for detail, and a heart for her characters - even the mean ones.

'Tis Herself: Short Story Collection, Volume One focuses on the small and the not so small events in the lives of ordinary people. These stories move us to laugh and cry as we encounter the twists and turns of dealing with everyday life.

Come along on a journey with characters Tiffany and Beth as they learn to love and to appreciate themselves for who they are as strong, wise, beautiful, and fully melanated individuals, through trials they face against others in the real world.

Peggy Square blankets are a New Zealand institution. Knitted in individual squares, the whole is greater than the parts.These stories by Josie Laird are individual and charming, thought-provoking, and gruesome. As a collection, they seek to warm and entertain you, and maybe have you in stitches!