Short Family

In 16 remarkable stories, the award-winning author of Elizabeth's Field and other books captures the flavor of Maryland's Eastern Shore. While her characters are tied to the reality of the moment, their stories are about the secret life of the heart's yearning.

NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF SUMMER 2018 BY O Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, New York Post, The Millions, Southern Living, POPSUGAR, The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Review of Books Praised by the Washington Post as "Tennessee Williams . . . transposed to the twenty-first-century...

“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...

For readers of Miranda July, Rebecca Lee, and Mary Gaitskill, a debut short-story collection that is a mesmerizing blend of wit, transgression, and heart. A passive-aggressive couple in the midst of a divorce compete over whose new fling is more exotic. A Russian migrant in Tokyo agonizes over...

“Playful and poetic . . . A foxy, original writer. Memory fuses with wonder, and wonder with worship." —The Wall Street Journal “Marvelously vivid, perfectly tuned. . . Tolstaya is well known in Russia as a brilliant and caustic political critic, but her memories of her Soviet childhood...

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...

From Ann Packer, author of the New York Times best-selling novels The Dive from Clausen’s Pier and Songs Without Words, a collection of burnished, emotionally searing stories, framed by two unforgettable linked narratives that express the transformation of a single family over the course of a...

Monica Ali's stunning second book is a collection of stories, set in the Alentejo province of Portugal, linked by characters and by a vivid sense of place and time. Teresa, a beautiful young girl from the village, is supposed to marry a suitable man from the same community, but she wants to see the world. Vasco is a café owner who is losing business to the new Internet café down the road.

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...

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...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his acclaimed novel about North Korea, The Orphan Master’s Son, Adam Johnson is one of America’s most provocative and powerful authors. Critics have compared him to Kurt Vonnegut, David Mitchell, and George Saunders, but Johnson’s new book will only further...

Heralding the arrival of a stunning new voice in American fiction, Robin Black’s If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This takes readers into the minds and hearts of people navigating the unsettling transitions that life presents to us all. Written with maturity and insight, and in beautiful...

From a Hong Kong movie idol fleeing a sex scandal to an obedient daughter turned Stanford pretender, from a Chinatown elder summoned to his village to a Korean American pastor with a secret agenda, the characters in the collection illustrate the conflict between self and society, tradition and change. In "What We Have Is What We Need", winner of the Atlantic's Student Writing Contest, a boy from Mexico reunites with his parents in San Francisco. When he suspects his mother has found love elsewhere, he fights to keep his family together.

From the creator of the wildly popular blog Mommy Shorts comes Ilana Wiles' first humor book on remarkably average parenting. If you want solid advice about raising kids, this book is not for you. If you want to wallow in your own misery about how having kids is AWFUL, this book is not for you. This book pays homage to the every-parent and suggests that they are the people having the best child-rearing experience of all. This book is an honest guide that celebrates the fun of being a mom.

No parent is ever ready for a terminal diagnosis of their child. No mother should see the day where turning off your son's ventilator is the only option to end his pain. And, no grandfather should see the day when your grandchild is scheduled to die in his mother's arms. But, on September 10, 2005, this was the harsh reality facing our family, and this was the day we’d never forget. I am no pastor nor a preacher. I am no miracle worker nor a missionary.

Myron Nolan has done the unimaginable — he has killed a man. As he tries to survive the homicide investigation and battle the searing flames of guilt that threaten to engulf him, his relationship with his wife takes a toll. Can he escape the consequences of his actions?

Through a series of recollections and bittersweet memories, Audrey Jordan recalls vivid details of her son’s life — fragments of his war experience from old letters, his childhood, his dream of sailing down the Mexican coast, and more — while sitting through his funeral service with family.

The award-winning stories in Dima Alzayat's collection, Alligator and Other Stories, are luminous and tender, whether dealing with a woman preforming burial rites for her brother in "Ghusl", or the great-aunt struggling to explain cultural identity to her niece in "Once We Were Syrians". Alzayat's stories are rich and relatable, chronicling a sense of displacement through everyday scenarios. There is the intern in pre-#MeToo Hollywood of "Only Those Who Struggle Succeed", or the "dangerous" women of "The Daughters of Manāt" who struggle to assert their independence.

Death. It’s a part of life and something we all must accept. Whether it be our own demise or losing a loved one, the experience of death is both sobering and surreal. My Dad Is Dead is a group of related short stories that explore that dichotomy through the eyes of a kid. In George Verongos’ second book, he turns childhood memories into “fictionally enhanced” tales (he made us say that, he’s trying to make it a thing).