The stories in this remarkable collection--including "An Anxious Man," winner of the National Short Story Prize (UK)--are vibrant and gripping. James Lasdun's great gift is his unfailing psychological instinct for the vertiginous moments when the essence of a life discloses itself. With forensic skill he exposes his characters' hidden desires and fears, drawing back the folds of their familiar self-delusions, their images of themselves, their habits and routines, to reveal their interior lives with brilliant clarity.

It is the story of Jozsef Sondor, a tough, irreverently witty Jewish boy growing up in World War II Hungary. Jozsef carries the reader into the whirl of everyday life in war-torn Budapest, from the eve of the Holocaust in Hungary to the Russian liberation in 1945. Through his eyes, we witness history, or, as he sees it, the adult world gone mad. What is this "Jewish problem", he asks. And what can God be thinking of? Jozsef soon finds that his questions have no simple answers, but they do lead him on a journey to understanding the war, politics, religion, and, in the end, the complexity of human nature.

From the Publisher: New Directions has long published poet William Carlos Williams' entire body of short fiction as The Farmers' Daughters (1961). This new edition of The Collected Stories of William Carlos Williams contains all fifty-two stories combining the early collections The Knife of the Times (1932), Life Along the Possaic (1938) with the later collection Make Light of It (1950) and the great long story, "The Farmers' Daughters" (1956). When these stories first appeared, their vitality and immediacy shocked many readers, as did the blunt, idiosyncratic speech of Williams' immigrant and working-class characters. But the passage of time has silenced the detractors, and what shines in the best of these stories is the unflinching honesty and deep humanity of Williams' portraits, burnished by the seeming artlessness which only the greatest masters command.

Featuring an international constellation of notable authors, this anthology explores and celebrates childhood with tales touching on abuse and rejection, loneliness and love, the joys of friendship and discovery, and the first confused inklings of adolescent love. Participants in the project include acclaimed and award-winning authors such as David Almond, Margaret Atwood, Andre Brink, Melvin Burgess, Junot Diaz, Nadine Gordimer, Eva Hoffman, Alberto Manguel, Meg Rosoff, Nicholas Shakespeare, Ali Smith and Richard Zimler. Some of the 26 stories are new, while others are difficult to find in print-yet each offers a moving, disturbing, surprising, or mysterious glimpse into the fragile and precious lives of children around the world.

Eight short stories, each featuring a child hero, present the dilemma of anti-Semitism through the ages. Each tale confronts Jewish identity in a different historical period. Each chapter is followed by modern commentary from Albert Vorspan.

'Stories of Happy People' is a collection of ten short fictions that maps the range of contentment, from inner joy to the edges of despair

A collection of stories finds its main characters in unlikely places and situations, from an affluent Jewish American who returns to Germany to a homosexual restauranteur who gets the chance to cook another meal for his first lover

"With Death and So Forth, esteemed writer and editor Gordon Lish returns with a new book of scintillating short fiction. With his trademark precision, wit, and wiliness, Lish writes outside the margins and around the edges of the death, loss, and the fractiousness and fragmentation of language"--Provided by publisher.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice All the characters in Evgenia Citkowitz's first collection of short fiction are connected by the quest for identity—some are poised at crossroads, while others teeter on the edge of a moral precipice. In "Leavers' Events," a teenage girl awaits exam results and has a sexual encounter with a teacher that she hopes will define her. In "Sunday's Child," a middle-aged actress evicts a homeless woman from her garden, precipitating a crisis of conscience. And in the title novella, "Ether," a blocked writer plagiarizes his own life with devastating consequences. Unexpected and startlingly original, Citkowitz depicts her characters with a mordant humor and tenderness that never diminishes their complexity.

A collection of Algren’s lost and unfinished writings, including his last novel and several stories considered to be among his masterpieces, with a new introduction by Algren's biographer Colin Asher. "You should not read [Algren] if you can’t take a punch. Mr. Algren can hit with both hands and move around and he will kill you if you are not awfully careful." —Ernest Hemingway Nelson Algren sought humanity in the urban wilderness of postwar America, where his powerful voice rose from behind the billboards and down tin-can alleys, from among the marginalized and ignored, the outcasts and scapegoats, the punks and junkies, the sex workers and down-on-their luck gamblers, the punch-drunk boxers and skid-row drunkies and kids who knew they'd never reach the age of twenty-one. Algren admired them all for their vitality and no-bullshit forthrightness, their insistence on living, their self-awareness, and their ability to find a laugh and a dream in the unlikeliest places. Entrapment and Other Writings contains his unfinished last novel, previously unpublished or uncollected stories and poems, and reportage. Algren speaks to our time as few of his American contemporaries of the 1940s and ’50s do, in part because he was always the outsider.

A collection of amusing Yiddish stories on such topics as marriage, matchmaking, doctors, rabbis and authority. They were written early this century.

From across the far reaches of the internet, the community at Fark.com presents . . . Raiders of the Lost Plot: The 2024 Fark Fiction Anthology! Our editors have worked feverishly to bring you the best short fiction of 2024 from the minds and imaginations at Fark, the online community where snark is king and wit reigns supreme. Gods and devils, angels and piglets, mysteries and the mysterious. Space smugglers and fantastic beasts, murders, mayhem, and one very, very important dog all come together with much, much more. And even better, for the ninth year in a row, all proceeds from the sale of this anthology will benefit an excellent children's charity chosen by the posters at Fark.com. So strap in, put a fedora on your squirrel, and get ready, because adventures await and there's all sorts of plots to find! Table of Contents: SOTA by Jason Allard Boring Alice by Mark Suszko Starthief Night by Ann Hosler Transcripture by Anthony Fabbri The Friendly Night Skies by Mark Zec Sunshine Superplant by Charles Montgomery Forbidden Isle by Gevera Bert Piedmont Sen of the Forest by Jaque Davison The Seeker by Dan McKay Strays by Stephen D. Ball The Celestial Bureaucracy by Vincent Spiezio Arzool the Destroyer and the Piglet of Doom by Brian Bander Psycho by Fred Blonder Catastrophe by Maddi Davidson Toking the Eleventh Dimension by Margret A. Treiber Employee 103 by Sim Tree Saffron by R. A. Willis Whom the Gods Would Destroy by D. Paul Angel Empty Country by Otto Marxhausen The Party of the Second Part by Eolas Pellor Accounts of a Haunting by Simina Lungu It Came from the Swamp by Lisa Lahey The Welcoming Flames by Christopher Pate Bell, Book, and Candle by James Defton Welcome to My World by Willin D. Fenster Who Murdered Colonel Sherrington-Smyth? by Joseph Benedetto The Beach House by Ed Ahern Mail Order Bride by Margaret Karmazin False Flag by Philip Ekstrom The House in North Woods by Tennessee Kaplan Against Flesh and Blood by Clayton Emery

Shortlisted for the prestigious Sapir Prize, winner of UNSECO's international competition for Short Stories from the Mediterranean, Amstel is a haunting collection of stories about family, love and longing. These captivating tales take conventional life and tilt it sideways, delivering a memorable blend of the real and the surreal: A mother invites her reluctant son for cocktails and Amstel beer, then drunkenly reveals a part of her life that would have better remained hidden; a lonely man invites a battered young mother and her son into his empty home and a new hope is born in him; a pregnant woman in Jerusalem and her Palestinian cleaning lady draw closer until the Intifada tests their comradeship; a crazy Moroccan girl who habitually bites the back of her hand until it bleeds, believes she's found love; a woman exits her house momentarily into the night chill, the entrance door slams behind her and she has nowhere to go except to the small campfire Palestinian workers from The West Bank have kindled nearby - these are some of the diverse characters populating the intriguing stories in Amstel.Praise for Amstel:"I discovered a lush, rare literary language in the story 'Amstel.' I read it and was dumbfounded that writers still exist who are capable of creating a sentence worthy of Thomas Mann, filled with detail and sparks and shards of images all flowing together to create a portrait from within and simultaneously observed from a distance...It is a truly classic tale, with no jarring notes...demanding a period of reflection before reading anything."Benny Ziffer, Haaretz Daily

This collection of erotic short stories examines human desire and explores the boundaries between reality and fantasy. The stories explore Freudian obsessions, the innocence of youth, frustration and man's addiction to success. The author has also written The Woman of Rome.

The Beatrix Gates is a colorful mix of science fiction, magic realism, memoir, and myth exploring themes of spirituality and transformation. Courage and cowardice contend in a literary odyssey unlike any other. Written especially for this volume, "Trans Central Station" is Pollacks personal and political take on the transgender experience then and now, and tomorrow? "Burning Beard" is a fiercely revisionist Bible tale of plague and prophecy told through a postmodern prose of many colors. "The Woman Who Didnt Come Back" is about just what it says. And there is of course PM Press usual and unusual Outspoken Interview. --Publisher

An Alphabet of Embers is an anthology of unclassifiables – lyrical, surreal, magical, experimental pieces that straddle the border between poetry and prose. It lives in a place between darkness and sound, between roads and breaths, its pages taut with starlight; between its covers, words talk to each other, and have an occasional cup of tea.

An anthology of Australian Speculative Fiction. BAGGAGE presents some of the finest new work by Aussie writers, including Jack Dann, Monica Carroll, K. J. Bishop, Kaaron Warren, Yaritji Green, Janeen Webb, Lucy Sussex, Jennifer Fallon, Maxine McArthur, Tessa Kum, Laura E. Goodin, Deborah Biancotti, and Simon Brown.

Quality Control essay by Stanley Schmidt Savage Planet novelette by Barry B. Longyear How to Get Along With an Extraterrestrial or Your Neighbor essay by G. Harry Stine One-Wing (Part 2 of 2) serial by George R. R. Martin and Lisa Tuttle Tetherball shortstory by Thomas A. Easton A First Glimpse novelette by Raymond Z. Gallun "Your Privacy is My Business" shortstory by Joe Patrouch Biocybernetics Revisited [The Alternate View] essay by G. Harry Stine