A collection of nine stories about love and life featuring best friends, princes, trolls, imaginary boys, and Simon Snow.

"A new collection of stories by one of America's most beloved and admired short-story writers, her first in fifteen years, since Birds of America ("Fluid, cracked, mordant, colloquial. Will stand by itself as one of our funniest, most telling anatomies of human love and vulnerability." --The New York Times Book Review, cover). These eight masterly stories reveal Lorrie Moore at her most mature and in a perfect configuration of craft, mind, and bewitched...

"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...

"Sharp and funny, these drawn-from-life stories beginin the 1950s in an insular northern village "scoured by bitter winds and rough gossip tongues." For the child narrator, the only way to survive is to get up, get on, get out. In "King Billy Is a Gentleman," the child must come to terms with the loss of a father and the puzzle of a fading Irish heritage. "Curved Is the Line of Beauty" is a story of friendship, faith, and a near-disaster in a scrap-yard....

Margaret Atwood has established herself as a beloved cultural icon and one of the most visionary and canonical authors of her generation. In this collection comprised of fifteen extraordinary stories-some of which have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine-Atwood speaks to our times with her characteristic wit and intellect. Of special significance are the seven works revolving around the long-term married couple Tig and Nell....

A fiercely vivid collection of stories about troubled California adolescents and misfits.

"The 'best short story writer in English' (Time) is back with a masterful collection that explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice, and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. With his trademark prose— wickedly funny, unsentimental, and perfectly tuned— Saunders continues to challenge and surprise: here is a collection of prismatic, deeply resonant stories that encompass joy and despair, oppression...

A collection of fifteen stories, eleven of which have never been previously published, from the early career of bestselling American master Elmore Leonard. Over his long and illustrious career, Elmore Leonard was recognized as one of the greatest crime writers of all time, the author of dozens of bestselling books--many adapted for the big screen--as well as a master of short fiction. A superb stylist whose crisp, tight prose crackled with trademark...

A series of short stories discloses the strangeness, the beauty and the horror that man finds in himself and in the world around him.