Berlin invites her reader into a rich, itinerant life: one of beauty, pain, laughter, drink and surprising moments of grace. In Mexico, Chile and the American southwest, in laundromats, hospitals, motels and bars, she crafts miracles from the everyday with a voice that is irresistible.

In these nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories, Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity's oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine. In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In "Anxiety...

"A gentle Eastern European immigrant arrives in New York City after his family and his life have been torn apart by his country's civil war. A man who loves to bowl rolls a perfect game--and then another and then another and then many more in a row until he winds up ESPN's newest celebrity, and he must decide if the combination of perfection and celebrity has ruined the thing he loves. An eccentric billionaire and his faithful executive assistant...

Eight short stories with subjects ranging from a dejected teenager who discovers that the universe is communicating with him through talismanic objects left behind in a seagull's nest to two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove who try helplessly to slake their thirst for blood.

In this book the author's trademark gifts of penetrating characterization, unsparing eye, and rascally intelligence are once again fully on display. Her classic wicked humor in each story, which range from a ghost story to a vampire story to near-memoir to mini-sagas of family and social fracture, brilliantly unsettles the reader in that unmistakably Mantel way. She brutally and acutely writes about gender, marriage, class, family, and sex, cutting...

Across a range of subjects, themes, tones, and narrative voices, the author's assured prose and expansive imagination introduce readers to people, places, and premises that are hilarious, insightful, provocative, and moving, often at the same time. A boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes, only to discover that claiming the winnings may unravel his family. A woman sets out to seduce motivational speaker Tony Robbins ,turning for help...

A fifth collection by the author of the National Book Award finalist, Varieties of Disturbance, includes pithy one-liners, exploratory observations and letters of complaint, including "A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates," in which a professor is stymied by her choices.

This is a collection of stories that explores the power of love in all its forms, obssessive love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love as it is shaped by passion, betrayal, and the echoes of intimacy.

"Since her acclaimed novel A Carnivore's Inquiry, Sabina Murray has been celebrated for her mastery of the gothic. Now in Muckross Abbey and Other Stories, she returns to the genre, bringing readers to haunted sites from a West Australian convent school to the moors of England to the shores of Cape Cod in ten strange tales that are layered, meta, and unforgettable. From a twisted recasting of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, an actor who dies for his...

"Collection of short stories by Eudora Welty, published in 1949. The stories had all been published previously... Symbolism from Greek mythology unifies the stories, all of which are set in the Mississippi Delta town of Morgana over a 40-year period. The hero of "Moon Lake" and the guitarist in "Music from Spain" are Perseus figures. King MacLain, the protagonist of "Shower of Gold," is a sexually adventurous Zeus figure." -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia...