Nobody loves books more than us. We’re a team of readers with broad interests and strong feelings about the books on our shelves. The Odditoriumby Melissa Pritchard In each of these eight genre-bending tales, Melissa Pritchard overturns the conventions of mysteries, westerns, gothic horror, and historical fiction to capture surprising and often shocking aspects of[…]
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READ AN EXCERPT Excerpt from “Our Song” by Ander Monson Copyright © 2020 by Ander Monson Forthcoming in The Gnome Stories, Graywolf Press, February 2020 I no longer believe in memory and don’t believe in fire. I hold my hand to the simulated flame and anticipate the pain. Even though it’s digital it still hurts.[…]
READ AN EXCERPT Alone in his shop, Lena on the phone, fifty miles away in her own lonely shop, she told him they thought it was breast cancer. The silence after was a roar in his head. Cancer in those days meant dead. 1961. “Are they sure?” “How the hell can I get breast cancer?”[…]
READ AN EXCERPT She bends forward, pushing back a cumbersome, invasive purse (which frequently distresses her by banging into people in crowds, ruining her otherwise perfect unobtrusiveness, but which she nonetheless carries because it is a gift, and expensive, and holds an entire magazine without the need to fold it) and sees in the tank[…]
READ AN EXCERPT Excerpt from “We Are Meant for Greater Things” From Earthly Delights and Other Apocalypses by Jen Julian Winner of the 2018 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction This girl, she’s one of those people you hear about nowadays, living her life for the second time around. She’s a slack-faced, dream-eyed sister, born—twice[…]
READ AN EXCERPT Clinton came from good quarreling stock. William and Macie Slade’s bickering, arguments, and barbed debates were the stuff of local legend. After one infamous fight in which his mother had thrown a whole roasted chicken at his father’s head, Clinton had asked his father why he didn’t just leave and marry someone[…]
READ AN EXCERPT Excerpt from “Longest Night of the Year” Sex. That’s all Cameron had really wanted. Uncommitted, internet-facilitated sex and maybe a little conversation. But the woman he brought home—his online date, his supposed match—hasn’t emerged from his guest room since she went into it three nights ago, locking the door behind her. She[…]
Recommended Reading: The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories.
By shelfmedia staff picks Jan 29, 2020
READ AN EXCERPT Excerpt from “Ten Penny”From The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. FoxWinner of the 2014 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction M. used to come to me late at night, when he was stinking from the bar, all the alcohol and cigarettes and the heavy smell of desperation[…]
READ AN EXCERPT Damian and Amelia had four meetings with production companies who wanted to option the book. The first three studios all pitched different versions of the same story—his story: an intrepid activist/scientist discovers a cave full of the fossilized remains of an ancient society of large intelligent weasels. The cave is in danger[…]
READ AN EXCERPT In the back of the house there is a corner room that does not open onto the lush and well-tended garden. Its shutters are indolent eyelids opening and closing with the wind. Light comes in small beams from the courtyard where pots are being washed. A woman is sweeping dirty water away[…]
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