Sourland

Author	Robert Stone
ISBN	0618386254

In Fun with Problems, Robert Stone demonstrates once again that he is “one of our greatest living writers” (Los Angeles Times). The stories in this new collection share the signature blend of longing, violence, and black humor with which Stone illuminates the dark corners of the human soul....

Author

Rainer Maria Rilke

Between the New Poems of 1907 and 1908 and his death in 1926, Rainer Maria Rilke published only two major volumes of poetry--the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, both in 1923. But during this period he was writing verse continually, often prolifically--in letters, in guest books, in presentation...

Author	T. Coraghessan Boyle
ISBN	0670021423

A superb new collection from "a writer who can take you anywhere" ("The New York Times")
In the title story of this rich new collection, T.C. Boyle has created so vivid and original a retelling of the story of Victor, the feral boy who was captured running naked through the forests of Napoleonic France,...

Author	David Rabe
ISBN	1439163332

A most curious and interesting tale in that it centers on the most granular details of moments that American soldiers experienced in the Vietnam War. Raw and crude at times, but I bet this is as close as a reader will get to a accurate depiction of how it felt to be a soldier in a conflict with so many more questions...

Author	David Means
ISBN	0865479127

The Spot is an old blacksmith shed in which three men tweeze apart the intricacies of a botched bank robbery.

The Spot is a park on the Hudson River, where two lovers sense their affair is about to come to an end.

The Spot is at the bottom of Niagara Falls, where the body of a young girl floats...

Author	Edith Wharton
ISBN	1593080905

One of Edith Wharton’s few works of fiction that takes place outside of an urban, upper-class setting, Ethan Frome draws upon the bleak, barren landscape of rural New England. A poor farmer, Ethan finds himself stuck in a miserable marriage to Zeenie, a sickly, tyrannical woman, until he falls in...

Author	Charles Baxter
ISBN	0307379213

Ever since the publication of The Harmony of the World in 1984, Charles Baxter has slowly gained a reputation as one of America’s finest short-story writers. Each subsequent collection—Through the Safety Net, A Relative Stranger, and Believers—was further confirmation of his mastery: his...

Author

Conchie Fernandez

Kyle Reed stands on the verge of his lifelong dream of artistic immortality when a call from his estranged older brother Stuart puts a halt to everything in his carefully constructed life. Kyle faces the impossible decision to go back "home" and attempt to undo the many painful choices he made that severed...

Author	Adam Ross
ISBN	0307270718

After his widely celebrated debut, Mr. Peanut, Adam Ross now presents a darkly compelling collection of stories about brothers, loners, lovers, and lives full of good intentions, misunderstandings, and obscured motives.

A hotshot lawyer, burdened by years of guilt and resentment, comes...

Author	Lynne Tillman
ISBN	1935869000

The stories in Some Day This Will Be Funny marry memory to moment in a union of narrative form as immaculate and imperfect as the characters damned to act them out on page. Lynne Tillman, author of American Genius, presides over the ceremony; Clarence Thomas, Marvin Gaye, and Madame Realism mingle at...

Author	Eudora Welty
ISBN	0679600027

Eudora Welty's subjects are the people who live in southern towns like Jackson, Mississippi, which has been her home for all of her long life. 'I've stayed in one place, ' she says, and 'it's become the source of the information that stirs my imagination'. Her distinctive voice and wry observations are...

Author

Frances Clarke

The Glassblowers Daughter
By Frances Clarke
276 Pages
5 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
I'm going to begin my review by quoting a fellow reviewer of this book. "Raven" conveys what I feel, with such eloquence, it bears repeating. 
"This book reads like a single sentence, in that it...

Author	Petru Popescu
ISBN	1416532633

A hauntingly beautiful novel, bringing to life one of history’s most mysterious characters, Mary of Nazareth, as a beautiful, complicated, utterly believable girl in love.

• In a bestselling tradition: Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent, Francois Mauriac’s...

Author	Dietrich Bonhoeffer
ISBN	0687010985

A brilliant theologian hanged by the Nazis in 1945 for taking part in a plot to kill Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived out his Christian commitment to the very end of his life. This collection of correspondence between Bonhoeffer and von Wedemeyer--long anticipated but never before published--offers...

Author	Knut Hamsun
ISBN	1931243190

Published in Norway in 1912, The Last Joy (Den Siste Glaede) appears at an important transition point in Hamsun’s career, as he moved any from his intense observations of individual characters to focus on a broader canvas of small town and farm life social units of the Norwegian culture. If Hunger...

Author	Lucy Grealy
ISBN	1582341532

From the author of the unforgettable Autobiography of A Face comes a collection of wonderfully unexpected essays on life, love, sex, God and politics.

Whether she is contemplating promiscuity or The New Testament, lamenting about what she should have said to Oprah, or learning to tango,...

Author	Tim Willocks
ISBN	0380723573

On the day Dr. Ray Klein wins his parole, the disciplinary perfection of Green River Penitentiary in Texas is torn apart by riot - more a tribal war - of unimaginable ferocity. As the inmates take over, the River sucks all inside further toward the abyss. Klein must choose. He must either claim his freedom...

Author	Rosamond Smith
ISBN	1504045130

Demure Lily Merrick is a dutiful housewife and mother who teaches pottery classes in upstate New York. Then, out of the blue, her estranged sister, Sharon, shows up after fifteen years, seeking refuge from her life as a Las Vegas stripper. At first Lily is overwhelmed and overjoyed. Her daughter and...

Author	Peter Carey
ISBN	0679743324

As If

Many of the reviews of this fantastic collection of short stories mention the following comment by Peter Carey:

"The trouble with academics is that they try too hard to understand these stories ....

"They should relax. The stories are only about what they seem to be about....

Author	Bradford Morrow
ISBN	1605982652

Bradford Morrow’s stories have garnered him awards such as the O. Henry and Pushcart Prizes and have given him a devoted following. Now gathered here for the first time is a collection of his finest, gothic tales.


A young man whose childhood hobby of collecting sea shells and birds’...

Author

Laura Furman

The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2011 contains twenty unforgettable stories selected from hundreds of literary magazines. The winning tales take place in such far-flung locales as Madagascar, Nantucket, a Midwestern meth lab, Antarctica, and a post-apocalyptic England, and feature a fascinating...

Author	Edgar Allan Poe
ISBN	1557133298

Years ago - 8, to be precise - I took a field trip with my honors American Literature class to a house Edgar Allan Poe lived in in Philadelphia. After the guided tour finished, we were led to the inevitable gift shop. There were copies of Poe's famous works everywhere, from the Rue Morgue to the Red death....

Author	Sigrid Nunez
ISBN	1594487669

From the critically acclaimed author of "The Last of Her Kind", a breakout novel that imagines the aftermath of pandemic flu, as seen through the eyes of a thirteen-year-old boy uncertain of his destiny.

His family's sole survivor after a flu pandemic has killed large numbers of people worldwide,...

Author	Richard Foreman
ISBN	1481120727

"Warsaw is a work of power. It has the authentic feeling that pulses from an important book. The meticulous research and psychological insights light up one of the most ghastly episodes in the history of man's inhumanity to man."
Patrick Bishop, author of Fighter Boys and A Good War.

The...

Author	James Carlos Blake
ISBN	0425154122

THE PISTOLEER is a fantastic work of historical fiction. James Carlos Blake does a superb job of chronicling the life of John Wesley Hardin. Part outlaw and part folk hero, "Wes" Hardin was a legendary figure in the history of Texas and the Old West. Much of Blake's book corroborates with the known facts...