A present contains a monstrous secret. An uninvited guest haunts a Christmas party. A shadow slips across the floor by firelight. A festive entertainment ends in darkness and screams. Who knows what haunts the night at the dark point of the year? This collection of seasonal chillers looks beneath Christmas cheer to a world of ghosts and horrors, mixing terrifying modern fiction with classic stories by masters of the macabre. From Neil Gaiman and M. R. James to Muriel Spark and E. Nesbit, there are stories here to make the hardiest soul quail - so find a comfy chair, lock the door, ignore the cold breath on your neck and get ready to welcome in the real spirits of Christmas.

"Dreams play a powerful role in Indigenous culture, serving as warning, insight, guidance, solace, or hope. Bawaajigan - an Anishinaabemowin word for dream or vision - is a collection of powerful literary short fiction by Indigenous writers from across Turtle Island. Stories about the connection between the spirit world and everyday life and the rest of the cosmos; urban-fantasy and high-fantasy worlds; alternative histories, and alternative realities; brushes with the supernatural, the prophetic, the hallucinatory, and the surreal. Among these themes we find stories ranging from the gritty, the gothic, the comedic, and the heart-wrenchingly tragic: a tale about the state of sleep-deprivation that conjures an uncertainty as to where dream ends and reality begins; the ominous tension of television static that conjures a certainty of something terrible about to happen; encounters with spirit guides, and spirit enemies; confrontations with ghosts haunting residential school hallways, and ghosts looking on from the afterlife; and with concepts based on Ouija boards, bead-dreamers, Haudenosaunee wizards, talking eagles, giant snakes, sacred white buffalo calves, spider's silk, a burnt and blood-stained diary, longings for what could-have-been, worm holes fallen through reality, poppy-induced deliriums, imaginary friends, and knowledge revealed. Unifying everything: these are stories about the strength and power of dreams."--

A collection of short stories chronicling the plight of aging millennials as they enter their middle ages.

"Despite his ability to control the ambient digital cloud, a foster teen falls for a clever con man. Luring bullies to a quarry, a boy takes revenge through unnatural powers of suggestion. After an alien invasion, a survivor fears that he brought something infectious back from the Arctic. A rebellious group of queer artists create a new identity that transcends even the anonymity of death. In Shirley Jackson and Nebula Award-winning author Sam J. Miller's devastating debut short fiction collection, queer infatuation, inevitable heartbreak, and brutal revenge seemlessly intertwine. Miller shows his savage wit, unrelenting candor, and lush imagery in this essential career retrospective, taking his place alongside luminaries of the short fiction form such as Carmen Maria Machado, Carson McCullers, and Jeff VanderMeer."

"This capstone novel in Library of America's Bernard Malamud edition brings together his three final novels: The Tenants, about the growing tension between two male writers--one Jewish, the other Black--who are the only inhabitants of a crumbling Manhattan tenement house; Dubin's Lives, a revealing study in the perils and promise of love in middle age thought to be Malamud's most autobiographical work; and God's Grace, a postapocalyptic tale of upended evolution in which redemption depends on the lone human survivor's ability to find common ground with a talking chimp. Edited by Malamud's definitive biographer, the volume is rounded out with thirteen masterful short stories and the memoir 'Long Work, Short Life' as well as a fascinating autobiographic sketch, 'A Lost Bar-Mitzvah,' published here for the first time."--Dust jacket.

"Things That Cause Inappropriate Happiness is Danila Botha's third collection of short fiction. In these thirteen brilliant stories, she observes with her signature vulnerability and humour what it's like not to fit in. From a photographer teaching English in the Middle East ("Sometimes I Like to Shoot Kids") to a chalk eating South African immigrant teen, who struggles to fit in ("Nothing My Parents Taught me Turned Out to be True") to a neurodiverse travel agent who is tired of pretending to be like everyone else ("Congratulations on Everything") to a woman who fakes a pregnancy ("All Good Things Take Time") and an artist with a desperate need to communicate during the pandemic ("There's Something I've Been Meaning To Say To You"), these stories pulse with the empathy and originality Botha has become known for. As in her previous collection, the Trillium and Vine nominated For All the Men (and Some of the Women) I've Known, Things That Cause Inappropriate Happiness will make you laugh, and cry but above all, it will make you feel less alone"--

Collects twelve humorous stories featuring the teeny weenies.

"First published in 1972, Columbus and the Fat Lady introduced readers to Governor General's Literary Award-winning author Matt Cohen's skewed and hilarious worldview. By turns funny, surreal, wistful, savagely satirical, and brilliantly inventive, the stories in this collection intrigue and surprise the reader with their unexpected language and plots. He conjures up images that are both absurd and perceptive. From Sir Galahad as a schoolteacher to Christopher Columbus as a carnival attraction, these stories feature the improbable with strength and virtuosity. This collection is a foray into the jungles of life on this planet and the tangled but fascinating interiors of the human head."--

"In this new English translation, Nomburg's stories explore modern Jewish life in the growing cosmopolitan city of Warsaw: young intellectuals in pursuit of truth and beauty; working class fathers tempted by schemes for easy money; and teenagers caught between desire and tradition. By turns comic, satiric, and earnest, Nomberg's stories take the pulse of Warsaw's Jewish socity at the dawn of the 20th century." (page [4] of cover)

In the era of compulsive touch-ups and digital poses, perhaps it is time to re-read our body in order to rescue it. The thirty chapters of Sensitive Anatomy form a celebration of the body in its entirety. This is a poetic, political and erotic journey across the very matter that makes us. It is a book that reveals how we see ourselves and how we are made to see. It stands against the culture of Photoshop, against oppressive images, against edits and erasures. In this way, Neuman continues to extend the limits of short-form prose with irony and aplomb. Body as style, style as body.

"An all-access ticket to the celebrated and wholly original mind of Mark Leyner, "one of the smartest and funniest humans since Aristophanes" (Jay McInerney). Praised as "chaotic and vibrant" (Charles Yu), "visionary" (Sam Lipsyte), and "supremely original" (John Cusack), the work of Mark Leyner has inspired a generation of contemporary novelists and has long deserved its place of recognition among the literary superstars of the seismic postmodernism-influenced movement of the early 21st century. A Shimmering, Serrated Monster!: The Mark Leyner Reader samples the staggering highlights from Leyner's extraordinary career in all of its bizarre and infatuating glory, with excerpts spanning from his groundbreaking early novels My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (1990) and Et Tu, Babe (1992) to his modern masterpieces The Sugar-Frosted Nutsack (2012) and The Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit (2021). Appreciations from modern masters introduce each novel and the book includes original pieces in Leyner's irrepressible voice, including a timeline ("The Story So Far") and a new Afterword ("The Highlighted Passages"). This comprehensive volume is the perfect entry point for readers attracted to mind-expanding prose, and a bouquet of delights for those who have loved any of his past works"--

A collection that includes both early and later stories follows an unforgettable cast of characters that are captured in all of their forceful presence and singularity, their foolishness and wisdom, and their venality and nobility.