H. G. Wells

Alvin Langdon Coburn

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New Hampshire

And Other Stories

The title story tells of a promising public figure used up by his job and obsessed by a vision of an enchanted garden he had known as a child. It is a tale all of us know, the attempt to recover a period when our lives were simpler and complications lay far in the future. Other titles are: "The Star," "A Dream of Armageddon," "The Cone," "A Moonlight Fable," "The Diamond Maker," "The Lord of the Dynamos," and Wells' durably celebrated story of true freedom and the human spirit, "The Country of the Blind."

The Door in the Wall

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#fiction #hardcover #botm #bookofthemonth #shortstories #lgbtq #lgbt #fionaandjane #friendship

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Washington

fiona and jane

Jesse Eisenberg

New Jersey

Known for his iconic film roles but also for his regular pieces in the New Yorker and his critically acclaimed plays, Eisenberg is an emerging literary voice.

Taking its title from a group of stories that begin the book, Bream Gives Me Hiccups moves from contemporary L.A. to the dorm rooms of an American college to ancient Pompeii, throwing the reader into a universe of social misfits, reimagines scenes from history, and ridiculous overreactions. In one piece, a tense email exchange between a young man and his girlfriend is taken over by his sister, who is obsessed with the Bosnian genocide (This situation reminds be of a little historical blip called the Karadordevo agreement); in another, a college freshman forced to live with a roommate is stunned when one of her ramen packets goes missing (She didn't have "one" of my ramens. She had a chicken ramen); in another piece, Alexander Graham Bell has teething problems with his invention (I've been calling Mabel all day, she doesn't pick up! Yes, of course I dialed the right number--2!).

In these forty-four stories, Eisenberg combines personal elements with highly imaginative settings, combining tenderness with a tragedy that lurks behind the jokey humor. The pieces, wryly amusing as single stories,become as a whole a touching exploration of the psychology of their protagonists.

United by Eisenberg's gift for character, and grouped into chapters that open with illustrations by award-winning cartoonist Jean Jullien, the witty and moving pieces collected in Bream Gives Me Hiccups explore the various insanities of the modern world, and mark the arrival of a talented, self-ironic, and original writer.

Bream Gives Me Hiccups

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Pennsylvania

One of the Best Books of the Year: NPR, USA Today National Bestseller A small-town newspaper columnist with old-fashioned views of the modern world. A World War II veteran grappling with his emotional and physical scars. A second-rate actor plunged into sudden stardom and a whirlwind press junket. Four friends traveling to the moon in a rocketship built in the backyard. These are just some of the stories that Tom Hanks captures in his first work of fiction: a collection of shorts that explore--with great affection, humor, and insight--the human condition in all its foibles. The stories are linked by one thing: in each of them, a typewriter plays a part, sometimes minor, sometimes central. To many, typewriters represent a level of craftsmanship, beauty, and individuality that is harder and harder to find in the modern world. In these stories, Hanks gracefully reaches that typewriter-worthy level. By turns whimsical, witty, and moving, Uncommon Type establishes him as a welcome and wonderful new voice in contemporary fiction.

Uncommon Type

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Veronica Roth

North Dakota

Stories from the Future

Bestselling Divergent and Carve the Mark author Veronica Roth delivers a stunning collection of novella-length stories set in the future, illustrated with startling black-and-white artwork. No world is like the other. Within this masterful collection, each setting is more strange and wonderful than the last, brimming with new technologies and beings. And yet, for all the advances in these futuristic lands, the people still must confront deeply human problems. In these six stories, Veronica Roth reaches into the unknown and draws forth something startlingly familiar and profoundly beautiful. With tales of friendship and revenge, plus two new stories from the Carve the Mark universe, this collection has something for new and old fans alike. Each story begins with a hope for a better end, but always end with a better understanding of the beginning. With beautifully intricate black-and-white interior illustrations and a uniquely designed package, this is the perfect gift for book lovers.

The End and Other Beginnings

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Ellen Oh

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

New York

From basketball dreams and family fiascos to first crushes and new neighborhoods, this anthology, written by award-winning children's authors, celebrates the uniqueness and universality in all of us.

Flying Lessons and Other Stories

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Jojo Moyes

South Carolina

From provincial Sophie being swept off of her feet in the glamour of belle epoque Paris to Beth's unexpected confrontation with an old lover in a marquee in Britain, this first collection of short stories from internationally bestselling author Jojo Moyes contains ten tales of love, loss, liberation and laughter

Paris for One and Other Stories

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Justin C. Key

West Virginia

Stories

Black Mirror meets Get Out in this gripping story collection reminiscent of the work of Octavia E. Butler, which deftly blends science fiction, horror, and fantasy to examine issues of race, class, and prejudice--an electrifying, oftentimes heartbreaking debut from an extraordinary new voice. Justin C. Key has long been obsessed with monsters. Reading R. L. Stine's Goosebumps as a kid, he imagined himself battling monsters and mayhem to a triumphant end. But when watching Scream 2, in which the movie's only Black couple is promptly killed off, he realized that the Black and Brown characters in his favorite genre were almost always the victim or villain--if they were portrayed at all. In The World Wasn't Ready for You, Key expands and subverts the horror genre to expertly explore issues of race, class, prejudice, love, exclusion, loneliness, and what it means to be a person in the world, while revealing the horrifying nature inherent in all of us. In the opening story, "The Perfection of Theresa Watkins," a sci-fi love story turned nightmare, a husband uses new technology to download the consciousness of his recently deceased Black wife into the body of a white woman. In "Spider King," an inmate agrees to participate in an experimental medical study offered to Black prisoners in exchange for early release, only to find his body reacting with disturbing symptoms. And in the title story, a father tries to protect his son, teaching him how to navigate a prejudiced world that does not understand him and sees him as a threat. The World Wasn't Ready for You is a gripping, provocative, and distinctly original collection that demonstrates Key's remarkable literary gifts--a skill at crafting science fiction stories equaled by an ability to sculpt characters and narrative--as well as his utterly fresh take on how genre can be used to delight, awe, frighten, and ultimately challenge our perceptions. Wildly imaginative and powerfully resonant, it introduces an unforgettable new voice in fiction.

The World Wasn't Ready for You

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Yan Ge

California

From multi-award-winning author Yan Ge, a shimmering, genre-bending English-language debut that announces the next phase in a major literary career. “A bewitching collection of stories that will leave you awestruck, shaken, and wanting to reach for it again and again.” —Paul Yoon, author of Run Me to Earth In twenty years, Yan Ge has authored thirteen books written in Chinese, working across an impressive range of genres and subjects. Now, Yan Ge transposes her dynamic storytelling onto another linguistic landscape. The result is a collection humming with her trademark wit and style—and with the electricity of a seasoned artist flexing her virtuosity with a new medium. A young woman bonds with an encampment of poets after a devastating earthquake. Against her better judgment, a college student begins to fall for an acquaintance who might be dead. And a Confucian disciple returns to the Master bearing a jar full of grisly remains. Weaving between reality and dreamy surreality, these nine stories wend toward elsewhere, a comforting, frustrating, just-out-of-reach place familiar to anyone who has ever experienced longing. Through it all Yan Ge’s protagonists peer thoughtfully at their own feelings of displacement—physical or emotional, the result of travel, emigration, or exile. Brilliant and irresistibly readable, Elsewhere explores the utility (or not) of art in the face of lonesomeness, quotidian, and spectacular. This highly anticipated collection is further proof that Yan Ge is a generational literary talent, to be watched closely for decades to come.

Elsewhere

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Kim Edwards

Michigan

The first story collection from the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Memory Keeper's Daughter

With The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Kim Edwards touched hearts across the nation. In this, her first collection of stories-now with three new stories added-she explores the lives of those who exist on the fringes of society: a fire-eater, an American and his Korean war bride, Madame Curie's maid, and others. Though their tales vary dramatically, each comes up against the barriers of place and circumstance in the most universal of experiences: the quest to discover and understand the elusive mysteries of love. Transporting readers to exotic locations, this beautiful collection reinforces Edwards's presence as an extraordinarily gifted writer.

The Secrets of a Fire King

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Rebecca Miller

Kentucky

Rebecca Miller returns to short fiction for the first time since her collection of stories, Personal Velocity, with the arresting, darkly prescient Total.

From Dublin to Martha's Vineyard, from the anxious comforts of motherhood to a technologically infected near future that mirrors today with dark prescience, each of the seven stories in Total is a world of its own, painted with vivid strokes, whose people and questions stay with the reader long after the story has ended. Joad, one of the first characters we meet, finds onionskin pages crammed in a locked desk drawer while refurbishing a Hudson Valley farmhouse; the terrifying words on the fragile paper haunt Joad and her husband, the woman who wrote them looming over the couple like a malevolent spirit. Her words embody the power of the act of creation and the insidious, untamable force of language once it has left one's pen.

Rebecca Miller, the author of The Private Lives of Pippa Lee and Jacob's Folly, returns to short fiction for the first time since her prodigious collection Personal Velocity. The author and award-winning filmmaker has "the soaring eye of the epicist and the sly instinct of the satirist" (The New Yorker), and her talents are on full display in Total. Each voice and life captured in these haunting stories is unforgettable.

Total

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Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Georgia

Steven Erikson has carved a name for himself among the pantheon of great fantasy writers. But his masterful storytelling and prose style go beyond the awe-inspiring Malazan world. InThe Devil Delivered and Other Tales, Erikson tells three different, but captivating stories:

"The Devil Delivered" tells a story set within the near future, where the land owned by the great Lakota Nation blisters beneath an ozone hole the size of the Great Plains. As the natural world falls victim to its wrath, and scientists scramble to understand it, a lone anthropologist wanders the deadlands, recording observations that threaten to bring the entire world to its knees.

"Revolvo" takes place in an alternate Earth where evolution took an interesting turn and the arts scene is ruled by technocrats who thrive in a secret, nepotistic society of granting agencies, bursaries, and peer-review boards, all designed to permit self-proclaimed artists to survive without an audience.

"Fishin' with Grandma Matchie" is told in the voice a nine-year-old boy, writing the story of his summer vacation. What starts as a typical recount of a trip to see Grandma quickly becomes a stunning fantastical journey into imagination and perception in the wild world that Grandma Matchie inhabits.

The Devil Delivered and Other Tales

197aedd4-ee2c-4f4c-ad2e-5439be7f706e-1

Virginia

30 Erotic Tales Written Just for Him

Helene Tursten

Marlaine Delargy

Don't let her age fool you. Maud may be nearly ninety, but if you cross her, this elderly lady is more sinister than sweet. 

Just when things have finally cooled down for 88-year-old Maud after the disturbing discovery of a dead body in her apartment in Gothenburg, a couple of detectives return to her doorstep. Though Maud dodges their questions with the skill of an Olympic gymnast a fifth of her age, she wonders if suspicion has fallen on her, little old lady that she is. The truth is, ever since Maud was a girl, death has seemed to follow her.

In these six interlocking stories, memories of unfortunate incidents from Maud's past keep bubbling to the surface. Meanwhile, certain Problems in the present require immediate attention. Luckily, Maud is no stranger to taking matters into her own hands . . . even if it means she has to get a little blood on them in the process.

*Includes cookie recipes*

An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed

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David Sedaris

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

42adfc2c-f1d9-469e-b29c-a0747cd9e3d9-1

Jessica Spotswood

Florida

From an impressive sisterhood of YA writers comes an edge-of-your-seat anthology of historical fiction and fantasy featuring a diverse array of daring heroines. Crisscross America — on dogsleds and ships, stagecoaches and trains — from pirate ships off the coast of the Carolinas to the peace, love, and protests of 1960s Chicago. Join fifteen of today’s most talented writers of young adult literature on a thrill ride through history with American girls charting their own course. They are monsters and mediums, bodyguards and barkeeps, screenwriters and schoolteachers, heiresses and hobos. They're making their own way in often-hostile lands, using every weapon in their arsenals, facing down murderers and marriage proposals. And they all have a story to tell. With stories by: J. Anderson Coats Andrea Cremer Y. S. Lee Katherine Longshore Marie Lu Kekla Magoon Marissa Meyer Saundra Mitchell Beth Revis Caroline Richmond Lindsay Smith Jessica Spotswood Robin Talley Leslye Walton Elizabeth Wein

A Tyranny of Petticoats

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#shortstories #guggenheim #thomaswilliams #hardcover 

The Collected Stories of Thomas Williams

A posthumous collection of short fiction from an award-winning author explores life in the fictional New Hampshire town of Leah

Leah, New Hampshire

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Tom Hanks

Hilary Mantel

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Maryland

The New York Times bestselling collection, from the Man Booker prize-winner for Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, that has been called "scintillating" (New York Times Books Review), "breathtaking" (NPR), "exquisite" (The Chicago Tribune) and "otherworldly" (Washington Post). "A new Hilary Mantel book is an Event with a 'capital 'E.'"-NPR "A book of her short stories is like a little sweet treat."-USA Today (4 stars) "[Mantel is at] the top of her game."-Salon "Genius."-The Seattle Times One of the most accomplished, acclaimed, and garlanded writers, Hilary Mantel delivers a brilliant collection of contemporary stories In The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Mantel's trademark gifts of penetrating characterization, unsparing eye, and rascally intelligence are once again fully on display. Stories of dislocation and family fracture, of whimsical infidelities and sudden deaths with sinister causes, brilliantly unsettle the reader in that unmistakably Mantel way. Cutting to the core of human experience, Mantel brutally and acutely writes about marriage, class, family, and sex. Unpredictable, diverse, and sometimes shocking, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher displays a magnificent writer at the peak of her powers.

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

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Aaliyah Bilal

A groundbreaking debut collection portraying the lived experiences of Black Muslims grappling with faith, family, and freedom in America. In Temple Folk, Black Muslims contemplate the convictions of their race, religion, economics, politics, and sexuality in America. The ten stories in this collection contribute to the bounty of diverse narratives about Black life by intimately portraying the experiences of a community that resists the mainstream culture to which they are expected to accept and aspire to while functioning within the country in which they are born. In “Due North,” an obedient daughter struggles to understand why she’s haunted by the spirit of her recently deceased father. In “Who’s Down?” a father, after a brief affair with vegetarianism, conspires with his daughter to order him a double cheeseburger. In “Candy for Hanif” a mother’s routine trip to the store for her disabled son takes an unlikely turn when she reflects on a near-death experience. In “Woman in Niqab,” a daughter’s suspicion of her father’s infidelity prompts her to wear her hair in public. In “New Mexico,” a federal agent tasked with spying on a high-ranking member of the Nation of Islam grapples with his responsibilities closer to home. With an unflinching eye for the contradictions between what these characters profess to believe and what they do, Temple Folk accomplishes the rare feat of presenting moral failures with compassion, nuance and humor to remind us that while perfection is what many of us strive for, it’s the errors that make us human.

Temple Folk

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Alejandro Varela

"A searing collection about gentrification, racism, and sexuality. [...] Varela provides invaluable insight on the ways stress impacts the characters' lives, and how they persevere. Readers will be floored."--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"Alejandro Varela is one of my favorite short story writers . . . An iconoclast of tenderness, a compass in the storm this life always is." --Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

"The People Who Report More Stress dissects the minutiae of relationships to self, city, space, and sensibility so we don't numbly succumb to the 'structured order of things.'"--Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, author of The Freezer Door

The People Who Report More Stress is a collection of interconnected stories brimming with the anxieties of people who retreat into themselves while living in the margins, acutely aware of the stresses that modern life takes upon the body and the body politic.

In "Midtown-West Side Story," Álvaro, a restaurant worker struggling to support his family, begins selling high-end designer clothes to his co-workers, friends, neighbors, and the restaurant's regulars in preparation for a move to the suburbs.

"The Man in 512" tracks Manny, the childcare worker for a Swedish family, as he observes the comings and goings of an affluent co-op building, all the while teaching the children Spanish through Selena's music catalog.

"Comrades" follows a queer man with radical politics who just ended a long-term relationship and is now on the hunt for a life partner. With little tolerance for political moderates, his series of speed dates devolve into awkward confrontations that leave him wondering if his approach is the correct one.

A collection of humorous, sexy, and highly neurotic tales about parenting, long-term relationships, systemic and interpersonal racism, and class conflict from the author of The Town of Babylon, The People Who Report More Stress deftly and poignantly expresses the frustration of knowing the problems and solutions to our society's inequities but being unable to do anything about them.

The People Who Report More Stress

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From a smoke-free, pet-free home #paperback #nonfiction #shortstories 

Inspirational Short Stories and Encouragement on Life, Love, Friendship and Tough Issues

The Richardella-dulcisica, better known as the taste berry, is a unique fruit. When eaten, it causes the taste buds to experience all food eaten afterwards-even distasteful food-as sweet and delicious. Likewise, there are people who, through their love and compassion, make the lives of others better. Like the taste berry, these people can turn sour days into delightful, even joyful, ones. With all the confusion, turmoil and heartache that teens experience, they need "taste berries" more than any other group. The authors - a mother/daughter team sensitive to the special needs of teens- have collected a wide array of inspirational material, which they interweave with teens' comments and critiques. The book is divided into units on self-worth, self-respect and self-esteem; friendship; love and meaningful relationships; finding meaning, purpose and direction in life; giving, sharing and making a difference; encouragement and success; and coping with pressure, stress and tough issues. Real teens reviewed this book and the authors completed it with the collaborative feedback of those teens. This innovative approach enables Taste Berries for Teens to show teens - by means of the responses and reactions of their peers, rather than the rhetoric of adults - what it means to be a "taste berry" and to appreciate the "taste berries" in their lives. In addition, the authors offer their own suggestions and counsel to provide structure for the teen responses. Taste Berries for Teens--a unique combination of timeless and heartwarming narratives, teen responses and reactions, and the authors' own loving and wise commentary and advice--is sure to become every teen reader's constant guide and trusted companion.

Taste Berries for Teens

61771f29-f901-49b5-96d6-8895db790379-1

#novella #nonfiction #botm ##shortstories #prison #shortstories #hardcover 

Minnesota

A Novella and Stories

The award-winning author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self brings her signature voice and insight to the subjects of race, grief, apology, and American history. Danielle Evans is widely acclaimed for her blisteringly smart voice and x-ray insights into complex human relationships. With The Office of Historical Corrections, Evans zooms in on particular moments and relationships in her characters' lives in a way that allows them to speak to larger issues of race, culture, and history. She introduces us to Black and multiracial characters who are experiencing the universal confusions of lust and love, and getting walloped by grief--all while exploring how history haunts us, personally and collectively. Ultimately, she provokes us to think about the truths of American history--about who gets to tell them, and the cost of setting the record straight. In "Boys Go to Jupiter," a white college student tries to reinvent herself after a photo of her in a Confederate-flag bikini goes viral. In "Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain," a photojournalist is forced to confront her own losses while attending an old friend's unexpectedly dramatic wedding. And in the eye-opening title novella, a black scholar from Washington, DC, is drawn into a complex historical mystery that spans generations and puts her job, her love life, and her oldest friendship at risk.

The Office of Historical Corrections

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Anthony Veasna So

Indiana

"A debut story collection about Cambodian-American life-immersive and comic, yet unsparing-that marks the arrival of an indisputable new talent in American fiction"--

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H. G. Wells; Alvin Langdon Coburn

The Door in the Wall

jean chen ho

fiona and jane

Jesse Eisenberg

Bream Gives Me Hiccups

Tom Hanks

Uncommon Type

Veronica Roth

The End and Other Beginnings

Ellen Oh

Flying Lessons and Other Stories

Jojo Moyes

Paris for One and Other Stories

Justin C. Key

The World Wasn't Ready for You

Yan Ge

Elsewhere

Kim Edwards

The Secrets of a Fire King

Rebecca Miller

Total

Steven Erikson

The Devil Delivered and Other Tales

Thomas Roche, Alison Tyler

His

Helene Tursten; Marlaine Delargy

An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed

David Sedaris

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Jessica Spotswood

A Tyranny of Petticoats

Thomas Williams

Leah, New Hampshire

Tom Hanks

Uncommon Type

Hilary Mantel

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

Aaliyah Bilal

Temple Folk

Alejandro Varela

The People Who Report More Stress

Bettie B. Youngs; Jennifer Leigh Youngs

Taste Berries for Teens

Danielle Evans

The Office of Historical Corrections

Anthony Veasna So

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