Fragile Things ($0.99), by Neil Gaiman. Also at the B&N store.Book Description
A mysterious circus terrifies an audience for one extraordinary performance before disappearing into the night, taking one of the spectators along with it . . . In a novella set two years after the events of American Gods, Shadow pays a visit to an ancient Scottish mansion, and finds himself trapped in a game of murder and monsters . . . In a Hugo Award-winning short story set in a strangely altered Victorian England, the great detective Sherlock Holmes must solve a most unsettling royal murder . . . Two teenage boys crash a party and meet the girls of their dreams, and nightmares . . . In a Locus Award-winning tale, the members of an excusive epicurean club lament that they've eaten everything that can be eaten, with the exception of a legendary, rare, and exceedingly dangerous Egyptian bird . . . Such marvelous creations and more, including a short story set in the world of The Matrix, and others set in the worlds of gothic fiction and children's fiction, can be found in this extraordinary collection, which showcases Gaiman's storytelling brilliance, as well as his terrifyingly entertaining, dark, sense of humor. By turns, delightful, disturbing, and diverting, Fragile Things is a gift of literary enchantment, from one of the most unique writers of our time.
Ugly Man ($1.99), by Dennis CooperBook Description
... an uncommon book of death and comedy.
Internationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he's always explored honestly, but does so now-in stories-with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world. As it has done for decades, Cooper's taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.
Hardly Knew Her ($0.99), by Laura Lippman. Also at the B&N store.Book Description
New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman has been hailed as one of the best crime fiction writers in America today, winning virtually every major award in the genre. The author of the enormously popular series featuring Baltimore P.I. Tess Monaghan as well as three critically lauded stand-alone novels, Lippman now turns her attention to short stories -- and reveals another level of mastery.
Lippman sets many of the stories in this sterling anthology, Hardly Knew Her, in familiar territory: her beloved Baltimore, from downtown to its affluent suburbs, where successful businessmen go to shocking lengths to protect what they have or ruthlessly expand their holdings, while dissatisfied wives find murderous ways to escape their lives. But Lippman is also unafraid to travel -- to New Orleans, to an unnamed southwestern city, and even to Dublin, the backdrop for the lethal clash of two not-so-innocents abroad. Tess Monaghan is here, in two stories and a profile, aligning herself with various underdogs. And in her extraordinary, never-before-published novella, Scratch a Woman, Lippman takes us deep into the private world of a high-priced call girl/madam and devoted soccer mom, exploring the mystery of what may, in fact, be written in the blood.
Each of these ingenious tales is a gem -- sometimes poignant, sometimes humorous, always filled with delightfully unanticipated twists and reversals. For people who have yet to read Lippman, get ready to experience the spellbinding power of "one of today's most pleasing storytellers, hailed for her keen psychological insights and her compelling characterizations," (San Diego Union-Tribune), who has "invigorated the crime fiction arena with smart, innovative, and exciting work" (George Pelecanos). As for longtime devotees of her multiple award-winning novels, you'll discover that you hardly know her.
My Goat Ate Its Own Legs ($1.99), by Alex Burrett. Also at the B&N store.Book Description
My Goat Ate Its Own Legs: Tales for Adults by Alex Burrett is a debut collection of tales that explores the weird what-ifs of evolution, devotion, and universal disaster."Burrett's imagination is as fertile as that of Jorge Luis Borges's, and he's more readable, and funnier." -The Independent on Sunday (London)In a voice so unfailingly chipper it's suspicious, Alex Burrett poses in fiction some disturbing yet certainly possible futures for the human race (and other ambitious, earthbound mammals). Always ready with an impeccable phrase or a sly wink, he shares tales of the most darkly ironic sort, including a field report from a human abattoir, a chronicle of dating Death, and, of course, the tale of the goat that ate its own legs. The thirty-one bizarre, insightful, and morbidly hilarious tales in My Goat Ate Its Own Legs: Tales for Adults will delight anyone who doesn't take life (or death) too seriously.
Girl Trouble ($1.99), by Holly Goddard Jones. Also at the B&N store.Book Description
Girl Trouble, a Harper Perennial paperback original, is Rona Jaffe Award winner Holly Goddard Jones's debut short story collection, set around small-town Southerners caught in moral and sometimes mortal quandaries. Written with extraordinary empathy and maturity, and with the breadth and complexity of a novel, these eight beautifully written, achingly poignant, and occasionally heartbreaking stories explore the fine line between right and wrong, good and bad, love and violence. A high school basketball coach learns that his star player is pregnant with his child. The nightmare of a college student's rape and murder is relived by both her mother and her killer, whose contradictory accounts call to question the very nature of victimhood. In these eight stories, the fine line between right and wrong, good and bad, love and violence is walked over and over again.
Love Begins in Winter ($1.99), by Simon Van Booy. Also at the B&N store.Book Description
On the verge of giving up—anchored to dreams that never came true and to people who have long since disappeared from their lives—Van Booy's characters walk the streets of these stark and beautiful stories until chance meetings with strangers force them to face responsibility for lives they thought had continued on without them.
The Secret Lives of People in Love ($1.99), by Simon Van Booy. Also at the B&N store.Book Description
The Secret Lives of People in Love is the first short story collection by award-winning writer Simon Van Booy. These stories, set in Kentucky, New York, Paris, Rome, and Greece, are a perfect synthesis of intensity and atmosphere. Love, loss, human contact, and isolation are Van Booy's themes. In radiant prose he writes about the difficult choices we make in order to retain our humanity and about the redemptive power of love in a violent world. Included in this updated P.S. edition is the new story "The Mute Ventriloquist."
Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing ($1.99), by Lydia Peelle. Also at the B&N store.Book Description
With this first book of fiction, a gifted young writer brings together eight superbly crafted stories that peer deeply into the human heart, exploring lives derailed by the loss of a vital connection to the land and to the natural world of which they are a part.
"Mule Killers" evokes the end of an era and of a grandfather's dreams when he decides to replace animal power on his farm with tractors. Two restless young girls in "Sweethearts of the Rodeo" live out their last summer of innocence, riding ponies recklessly and spying on their boss and the wealthy women who visit him. In "Phantom Pain," the Tennessee woods are a sliver of what they once were, men now hunt with GPS and cell phones, and the rumor of a dangerous panther on the loose stirs up a small town.
An unexpected vision of the beauty and mystery of life redeems the darkest moments in this stellar debut collection, a book that readers will want to read and reread.
The Price of Love and Other Stories ($1.99), by Peter Robinson. Also at the B&N store.Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author comes a riveting collection of short fiction, marked by the piercing psychological insight and brilliant characterization that are hallmarks of his acclaimed novels Ever since the publication of his first mystery featuring Detective Inspector Alan Banks, Peter Robinson has been steadily building a reputation for compulsively readable and perceptive novels that probe the dark side of human nature. Plumbing the territory that he has so successfully staked, The Price of Love and Other Stories includes two novellas and several stories featuring the Yorkshire policeman at his finest. In the novella "Going Back," never before published in the United States, Banks returns home for a family reunion, only to find it taking a decidedly sinister turn. In "Like a Virgin," written especially for this volume, Banks revisits the period in his life and the terrible crime that led him to leave London for Eastvale. And in between, the disparate motives that move us to harm one another, from love and jealousy to greed and despair, are all explored with fascinating depth. Edgy and smart, thrilling and suspenseful, this remarkable collection is a must-have for Robinson fans-and any fan of compelling crime fiction.
Legend of a Suicide ($1.99), by David Vann. Also at the B&N store.Book Description
The reportorial relentlessness of [David] Vann-s imagination often makes his fiction seem less written than chiseled. A small, lovely book has been written out of his large and evident pain.--New York Times Book Review In Legend of a Suicide, his heartbreaking semi-autobiographical debut story-collection, David Vann relates the story of a young man trying to come to terms with the guilt and pain of his father-s suicide. The wild outback of the author-s native Alaska acts as the ideal backdrop for this collage of six stories-a novella and five shorts-and mirrors the author-s own psychological wilderness. From -an important new voice in American literature- (Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain) comes an unforgettable exploration of the tragic gaps between one boy and his father.
More of This World or Maybe Another ($1.99), by Barb Johnson. Also at the B&N store.Book Description
The lives of four unlikely friends intersect on the backstreets of New Orleans. Living amid poverty and violence, these fragile heroes of the American underclass redefine our notions of family, redemption, and love.
