"Featuring guest-editor contributions by the Edgar Alan Poe Award-winning author of the Joe Pickett series, a latest annual anthology features top-selected short mystery and crime fiction stories from the past year."-- Provided by publisher

"This dazzling collection of short stories by award-winning author James R. Benn shows a crime fiction legend at the height of his career. In his first ever published anthology, James R. Benn, author of the ever-so-popular Billy Boyle World War II Mysteries, presents an eclectic mix of new and previously published mystery stories. In this collection, betrayal, murder, revenge, greed, and the powers of and connection to spirituality are explored. In...

"From the highly acclaimed author of Daughters of the Revolution and The Bostons (winner of the PEN/Bingham Award for fiction) comes a lyrical, visceral collection of short stories about sex and scars, waste and promise, with an eclectic cast of characters spanning generations and cultures. In "Francis Bacon," an aspiring writer crafts sexual fantasies for an Upper East Side mogul. In "The Snake," a restless psychologist sheds one existence after...

"The author of the sensational national best seller For the Relief of Unbearable Urges returns with a commanding new collection of short stories: What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank establishes Nathan Englander beyond all doubt as the heir to Roth, Malamud, and Babel. A tour de force. The title story, inspired by Carver's masterpiece, is a comic classic, a provocative portrait of two marriages in which the holocaust is played out as a...

"A debut story collection offering a kaleidoscopic portrait of life for contemporary Chinese people, set between China and the United States"-- Provided by publisher.

This much-anticipated second collection of stories is signature Ted Chiang, full of revelatory ideas and deeply sympathetic characters. In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and the temptation of second chances. In the epistolary "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications not just for his own people, but for all of...

Roads of Destiny (1909) is a collection of short stories by American writer O. Henry. Inspired by his experiences as a fugitive and in prison, these stories address themes of crime, poverty, and fate. "A Retrieved Reformation," perhaps the most notable of the collection's twenty-two stories, is semi-autobiographical in that it explores the life of a criminal and fugitive who maintains a moral identity while struggling to adjust to life outside of...

The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett, is an 1896 novella and early example of the regionalism genre with its sketches of the fictional fishing village of Dunnet Landing in Maine. The narrator is a woman from Boston who returns to the small coastal town after a brief earlier visit, in order to finish writing her book. She rents an empty schoolhouse with a panoramic view of Dunnet Landing, which serves as a focus of narrative consciousness....

Updike's first collection of new short fiction since the year 2000, "My Father's Tears" finds the author in a valedictory mood as he mingles narratives of his native Pennsylvania with stories of New England suburbia and of foreign travel.

A stunning collection of short stories selected by the author herself from over three decades of work. A veritable masterclass in the art of short fiction, The Red Convertible features 31 previously published stories and 5 never-before-published pieces. Presented in one collection for the first time, the stories of The Red Convertible cement Louise Erdich’s position in the pantheon of consummate, innovative writers of the American short story alongside...