Short Stories

Gavin is about to find out that Harper really does exist-and she's going to knock his socks off! Find out for yourself in Bayside Romance! Harper's life is too unsettled for a relationship, but Gavin is determined to help her find her way, especially if it leads straight to his heart. Moonlight conversations lead to steamy kisses, and as romance blooms, it stirs a love too real to deny. But when Gavin's past collides with the life they're building, it has the power to ruin everything.

Elisabeth Nash has spent years dreaming of returning to the small town of Trusty, Colorado, where she spent summers with her favorite aunt. When she inherits her aunt's farmette, she closes her Los Angeles pet bakery and pampering business, sure that life in Trusty will be as peaceful and as welcoming as she remembers. But being an outsider in the close-knit town proves to be very different from the happy summers she remembers from her childhood - and falling for Trusty's hot, wealthy, and sinfully irresistible veterinarian, Ross Braden, sends the rumor mill into a frenzy.

This is Raymond Carver's third collection of stories, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, including the canonical titular story about blindness and learning to enter the very different world of another. The 12 stories in Cathedral mark a turning point in Carver's work.

Two estranged sisters, Lillian and Adelia, struggle to come to terms after the mother they've believed to be dead for the past 15 years actually passes away. Confused and in shock, they travel together to the isolated village of their childhood to claim the farm that was passed on to them. There’s comfort in returning to this place of their birth, where a simpler, rustic life feels possible - but the sisters quickly realize that something is very wrong with the village and that their mother was hiding more than they could have ever imagined.

On her 12th birthday, Sierva Maria - the only child of a decaying noble family in an 18th-century South American seaport - is bitten by a rabid dog. Believed to be possessed, she is brought to a convent for observation. And into her cell stumbles Father Cayetano Delaura, who has already dreamed about a girl with hair trailing after her like a bridal train. As he tends to her with holy water and sacramental oils, Delaura feels something shocking begin to occur.

After a string of bad dates and no prospects, Sophia Othonos has finally hit the jackpot: an actual nice guy. When he suggests a romantic getaway, she’s sure they’re about to take the next step toward their future. A rustic cruise to the Galápagos Islands isn’t exactly her idea of a vacation, but Sophia is ready for anything…until her boyfriend has to cancel. Now she’s all alone on a trip that was meant for two. Sophia finds herself at a crossroads about who she is, what she wants, and whether her relationship is really everything she thought.

In April 2020, the world faced imminent lock-down, so a group of filmmakers started a virtual support group. Once a week, these diverse voices would assemble to do what they do best: tell each other stories. Campfire horror tales, emotional cosmic mysteries, and anything else that either made them take their minds off what was happening to the world, or help them understand it. HAUNTED REELS is the best of those stories.

Tony Black is the hottest surfer on the planet. He travels the world throughout the year and spends his summers on Cape Cod with his friends, at the Seaside cottages in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. He's got his choice of women, but Amy Maples is the one he wants. Fourteen years ago she was his for an entire summer, until a devastating accident changed everything, and what they had seemed like it had never existed - at least for her.

A collection of classic works by Edgar Allan Poe, American author, poet, editor, and literary critic. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

A collection of 98 enthralling and pulse-quickening stories, spanning five decades, venerates the remarkable imagination of J. G. Ballard. With a body of work unparalleled in twentieth-century literature, J. G. Ballard is recognized as one of the greatest and most prophetic writers in the world. With the much-hailed release of The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard, readers now have a means to celebrate the unmatched range and mesmerizing cadences of a literary genius.

Anna Hibiscus lives in Africa. Amazing Africa. She lives with her whole family in a wonderful house. There is always somebody to laugh or play with. She loves to splash in the sea with her cousins and have parties with her aunties. But more than anything else in the world, Anna Hibiscus would love to see snow.

In late summer of 1994, Jack Noble, a former All-American quarterback, is in the middle of the toughest event he's ever taken part in. Marine Corps Recruit Training. After eight weeks he's managed to make enemies of every drill instructor and every recruit in his platoon. Then on one particularly humid South Carolina day, an odd sequence of events changes everything.

The Montgomerys are heading north to Boulder, Colorado. These Montgomerys hold their secrets close and their family closer…at least that’s what they’ve told themselves over the years. When their world shifts on its axis, however, each sibling will have to fight for a way to find their equilibrium, as well as who they thought they were before everything changed. Breaking down their own barriers won’t be easy, but they’re Montgomerys and never back down from a challenge—even when the challenges happen to be the ones they never saw coming.

Mrs Zant has recently lost her beloved husband, and while walking in the Kensington Gardens, the spot where she and her deceased husband declared their love for each other, she feels his presence trying to warn her of some coming danger. Mr Rayburn witnesses it all, and he'll have to fight his own incredulity regarding the supernatural and his gut feeling that the disturbed young woman is telling the truth.

Jane Austen wrote Love and Friendship (originally spelled Love and Freindship [ sic]) when she was just 14 years old. The three notebooks that contain her early works, including this story, are currently on display at the Bodleian Library and the British Museum. Taking the form as letters written by the heroine to the daughter of her friend, this story resembles a fairy tale that lampoons the conventions of romantic stories at the time.

Before he was the feared black ops government assassin Orphan X, operating in the shadows and spoken about in whispers, Evan Smoak was a teenager, undergoing the most rigorous of training. At 17, Evan is sent off by his handler, ex-CIA station agent Jack Johns, to take the most intense U.S. military training course. But that is only part of the challenge before him—Evan has to get there and back, safely and quietly, maintaining operational security.

Published in chronological order, with extensive story and bibliographic notes, this series not only provides access to stories that have been out of print for years, but gives them a historical and social context. Series editors Scott Conners and Ronald S. Hilger excavated the still-existing manuscripts, letters and various published versions of the stories, creating a definitive "preferred text" for Smith's entire body of work.

Drawn together for the first time, this is a collection of Lily’s short stories about the much-loved men from her Mixed Messages and Finding Home series. Follow them through awkward marriage proposals, birthdays, a fraught babysitting job, and a very drunken Eurovision Song Contest party.

Being the wife of a cop isn't all it's cracked up to be. Especially when dead bodies keep ruining your romantic dinner plans. But fashion designer turned amateur sleuth Maddie Springer is determined that her husband's latest case, dubbed the "Sex Shop Murder", will not keep him from celebrating their first anniversary together, which just happens to fall on the most romantic of all holidays, Valentine's Day. She's ready to do whatever it takes to make this night special and distraction-free.

In this riveting tale of looming apocalypse, Pup is living off the grid for the summer with her parents on an island off the coast of Maine, when all three of them face the hardest decisions of their lives. Across the water one night they can see homes burning and hear gunfire. Pup and her parents, with their goat and chickens and garden and their dog, Opey, have no contact with the mainland, except for boat runs into town.