In this representative volume, "The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories" the reader will find twenty-four of Mark Twain's best shorter works. Classic and unforgettable tales that span the author's career are included, such as "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", which is Twain's most famous short story and was his first great success as an author. It is the unforgettable tale of Jim Smiley, the gambler who will bet on anything including...

"In her second story collection, Sittenfeld shows why she's as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned. In "The Patron Saints of Middle Age," a woman visits two friends she hasn't seen since her divorce. In "A for Alone," a married middle-aged artist embarks on a creative...

John Grisham returns to Ford County, Mississippi, the setting of his immensely popular first novel, "A Time to Kill," with this wholly surprising collection of stories.

"King collects ten of her finest short stories-half published in leading literary magazines and half brand new-opening fresh realms of discovery for fans and new readers alike. Told in the intimate voices of uniquely endearing characters of all ages, these tales explore desire and heartache, loss and discovery, moments of jolting violence and the inexorable tug toward love at all costs. A bookseller's unspoken love for his employee rises to the surface,a...

Presents a compilation of some of the author's previously published short works, in a volume that includes an original short tale and the story, "Until Gwen."

"Stories from a lost American classic "in the same arena as Alice Munro" (Lydia Davis) "In the field of short fiction, Lucia Berlin is one of America's best kept secrets. That's it. Flat out. No mitigating conditions." --Paul Metcalf A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With her trademark blend of humor and melancholy, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday--uncovering moments of grace...

TThe fable-like stories in A Sense of the Whole—reminiscent of the best of Kawabata, Hrabal, Lispector, and Kafka—feature characters who refuse to believe that we are unconnected, refuse to not aspire to the notion of the human family. These characters are girls and boys, men and women, Iranians and Americans, all seeking a home for the body and the soul.

"From bourgeois facial-hair trends to parental sleep deprivation, Joseph O?Neill closely observes the mores of his characters, whose vacillations and second thoughts expose the mysterious pettiness, underlying violence, and, sometimes, surprising beauty of ordi?nary life in the early twenty-first century. A lonely wedding guest talks to a goose; two poets struggle over whether to participate in a “pardon Edward Snowden” verse petition; a cowardly...