Written in epistolary form and drawn from actual events, Brown’s The Power of Sympathy (1789) and Foster’s The Coquette (1797) were two of the earliest novels published in the United States. Both novels reflect the eighteenth-century preoccupation with the role of women as safekeepers of the young country’s morality.

“disruption[noun] - Disturbance or problems which interrupt an event, activity, or process.”

The title and topic chosen for our seventh collection of stories from around Africa, decided before the world as we knew it changed, turned out to be eerily prescient. Drawn from the four corners of the continent, from Libya and Sierra Leone to Kenya and Botswana, these twenty-one stories serve up an imaginative feast, many unfolding the consequences of the environmental degradation of the planet.

But the contributors have not parroted the doom and gloom often found in dystopian or apocalyptic fiction. Instead, they have opted for wildly original narratives featuring sea monsters, zombies, time and space travel, cyborgs, immortals, gods and goddesses both benevolent and terrifying, and even a one-eyed octopus. This riot of colour and creativity offers fierce and rich allegories of colonial conquest and late capitalism, and probes patriarchal family and social structures with deft fingers.

The reader will find comedy, the absurd, and the surreal in these pages, as well as lovingly drawn and often valedictory accounts of the natural world and its denizens. Above all, these stories tell of human connection in the face of impossibly difficult circumstances, providing much-needed comfort and inspiration.

Prepare to be disturbed, moved, and entertained. This is the disruption you’re really looking for.

Brilliant and original, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers introduces a remarkable new writer whose breathtaking stories are set in China and among Chinese Americans in the United States. In this rich, astonishing collection, Yiyun Li illuminates how mythology, politics, history, and culture intersect with personality to create fate. From the bustling heart of Beijing, to a fast-food restaurant in Chicago, to the barren expanse of Inner Mongolia, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers reveals worlds both foreign and familiar, with heartbreaking honesty and in beautiful prose.

“Immortality,” winner of The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for new writers, tells the story of a young man who bears a striking resemblance to a dictator and so finds a calling to immortality. In “The Princess of Nebraska,” a man and a woman who were both in love with a young actor in China meet again in America and try to reconcile the lost love with their new lives.

“After a Life” illuminates the vagaries of marriage, parenthood, and gender, unfolding the story of a couple who keep a daughter hidden from the world. And in “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” in which a man visits America for the first time to see his recently divorced daughter, only to discover that all is not as it seems, Li boldly explores the effects of communism on language, faith, and an entire people, underlining transformation in its many meanings and incarnations.

These and other daring stories form a mesmerizing tapestry of revelatory fiction by an unforgettable writer.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
A WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD "RAVE" BOOK OF THE YEAR

Including work by:
Amiri Baraka, Derrick Bell, Octavia E. Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Jewelle Gomez, Walter Mosley, Ishmael Reed, and many more...

An important new anthology, the first of its kind, DARK MATTER explores a century of fantastic fiction by preeminent and emerging luminaries of the African diaspora. A richly vibrant collection of stories and essays, it displays the brilliance of writers ranging from early pioneers such as W. E. B. Du Bois, to famed sf authors including Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler, to such luminaries of the literary tradition as playwright-critic Amiri Baraka and satirist Ishmael Reed, as well as a spectrum of acclaimed new writers.

Astonishing, compelling, erotic, and profound stories of worlds within and beyond abound in DARK MATTER. From the bittersweet legacies of Africa to utterly phantasmagoric future civilizations, here is a compilation of stories that transmute our human experience.

A Featured Alternate of Science Fiction Book Club®, of Black Expressions®, and of Quality Paperback Book Club®

Richard Bausch is a master of the intimate moment, of the ways we seek to make lasting connections to one another and to the world. Gew writers evoke the complexities of love as subtly, and few capture the poignancy of the sudden insight or the rhythms of ordinary conversation with such delicacy and humor. To read these twelve stories--of love and loss, of families and strangers, of small moments and enormous epiphanies--is to be reminded again of the power of short fiction to thrill and move us, to make us laugh, or cry. In these profound glimpses into the private fears, joys, and sorrows of people we know, we find revealed a whole range of human experience, told with extraordinary force, clarity, and compassion.

As much as this compendium of short stories is fantasia, the title came from a hallucinogenic experience where the author swam in a drinking well with hundreds of Salamanders, and the strange events that followed. The book is enriched with fifty tales from the in between, which range from stories of the Great War to Tiger hunting in India; from adventures in the Kalahari with The San to the Anglo Zulu War. They all have a strange hook in the swell of Roald Dahl.

It’s rare to find a compendium of short stories these days that captivate the mind with intrigue, as you go back for more and more. The stories leading up to the epitaph hook are truly creative and within the pages are clues to life and secrets revealed, the ultimate book to be beside your bed, as a story a night will hook like ‘Scheherazade and 1001 nights’

'Perfectly crafted, intricate and haunting stories' from the bestselling author of THE READER. A mesmeric collection of stories about love. In his characteristically unsentimental, elegant and spare prose, Schlink unveils characters and relationships haunted by betrayal and guilt, in situations where self-examination is inescapable. FLIGHTS OF LOVE consists of seven stories, all of them weaving around the idea of love - why people are drawn to it and why some run away. Schlink shows us in turn love as desire, love as confusion, love as a quick affair, love as a drastic life-changing rebellion, love as a force of habit, love as self-betrayal. The cumulative effect is a book which uses effortlessly beguiling language to examine the universal human desire to find a lasting loving relationship, however thwarted that desire ultimately is.

The stories, blogs and poetry in this anthology explores the stark divides that exist in our communities and our country, South Africa.

Written by a range of writers – from published authors to talented school students – these powerful narratives give voice to those who are poor and discriminated against, and are threaded through with hope and resistance.

In David Sedaris's world, no one is safe and no cow is sacred. A manic cross between Mark Leyner, Fran Lebowitz, and the National Enquirer, Sedaris's collection of essays is a rollicking tour through the national Zeitgeist: a do-it-yourself suburban dad saves money by performing home surgery; a man who is loved too much flees the heavyweight champion of the world; a teenage suicide tries to incite a lynch mob at her funeral; a bitter Santa abuses the elves.

David Sedaris made his debut on NPR's Morning Edition with "SantaLand Diaries," recounting his strange-but-true experiences as an elf at Macy's, and soon became one of the show's most popular commentators. With a perfect eye and a voice infused with as much empathy as wit, Sedaris writes stories and essays that target the soulful ridiculousness of our behavior. Barrel Fever is like a blind date with modern life, and anything can happen.

Selected as one of the Village Voice Literary Supplement's Favorite Books of the Year.

In hierdie debuutbundel word die eenheid wat deur die onderlinge verband tussen die afsonderlike verhale geskep word, as versterkende tegniek ingespan.

Dit vorm nie net tematies ’n eenheid nie maar vertoon ’n terugkerende ooreenkoms van situasie en karakters, byvoorbeeld twee susters waarvan een mooier en inkenniger is, ’n familie se sieklik geykte uitdrukkings en maniërismes, ’n problematiese verhouding met die ma, geskeide en hertroude ouers, die ma se verknogtheid aan haar honde, lesbiese verbintenisse, mislukte of betekenislose verhoudings, siellose seksuele ervarings, onmag om deel van die konvensionele gesins- en familieopset te word.

Een keurder beskryf die verhale as stilisties en tegnies knap, met “sterk en sprankelende dialoog en beeldryke milieuskildering”.

A gripping collection of novellas, told from the perspectives of three different characters, these superb adventures are essential Skyward reading!

Sunreach
After a planet-destroying Delver suddenly appears in the sky of Detritus and vanishes just as suddenly, FM knows that the last free human society got lucky. Her Skyward Flight companion Spensa figured out how to draw this Delver away, but it won't be so easy next time. Humanity has to be prepared . . .

ReDawn
Alanik has recovered from the shock of answering a distress call and finding a planet of humans making a stand against the Superiority, only to be dismayed to discover they're considering a peace overture from their enemy. Worse, when she returns to her home planet of ReDawn, she find her own people falling into exactly the same trap. With her mentor captured, she turns to her new friends to help: can Alanik, FM, Jorgen and Rig coax an ancient technology into life in time to save both their planets from disaster?

Evershore
The government of Detritus is still in disarray following Superiority treachery, and no word has come from Spensa, on her mission deep in the Nowhere, leaving Alanik, Jorgen, FM and Rig to pick up the pieces. So when the Kitsen send word from the planet Evershore, saying they have some humans and wish to return them, they have to decie if the strange message can be trusted . . .

Indulge in a chilling feast--a gastronomic journey into the darkest corners of the mind.

With a masterful blend of psychological depth and sensory detail, N Gray presents a menu of four tantalizing tales that will leave you both unsettled and satisfied. Each story is a unique dish crafted to challenge perceptions and immerse the reader in obsession, discovery and death, proving that the truth can be far more disturbing than the unknown.

An irresistible invitation to the darker aspects of the human experience, one bite at a time. Just remember, every course comes at a price.

Credited with inventing the modern horror tradition, H. P. Lovecraft remade the genre in the early twentieth century, discarding ghosts and witches and instead envisaging mankind at the mercy of a chaotic and malevolent universe.

This selection of stories ranges from early tales of nightmares and insanity such as ‘The Outsider’ and ‘Rats in the Walls’, through the grotesquely comic ‘Herbert West – Reanimator’ and ‘The Hound’, to the extra-terrestrial terror of ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, which fuses traditional supernaturalism with science fiction. Including the definitive corrected texts, this collection reveals the development of Lovecraft’s mesmerizing narrative style and establishes him as a hugely influential – and visionary – American writer.

Edited with an Introduction by S. T. Joshi.

This anthology includes the work of numerous authors such as Marge Piercy, Harlan Ellison, S. J. Rozan, Nancy Richler, Moe Prager (Reed Farrel Coleman), Wendy Hornsby, Charles Ardai, and Kenneth Wishnia. The stories explore such issues as the Holocaust and its long-term effects on subsequent generations, anti-Semitism in the mid- and late-20th-century United States, and the dark side of the Diaspora (e.g., the decline of revolutionary fervor, the passing of generations, the Golden Ghetto, etc.).

The stories in this collection include “Trajectories,” Marge Piercy’s story of the divergent paths taken by two young men from the slums of Cleveland and Detroit in a rapidly changing post–WW II society; “Some You Lose,” Nancy Richler’s empathetic exploration of the emotional and psychological challenges of trying to sum up a man’s life in a eulogy; and “Yahrzeit Candle,” Stephen Jay Schwartz’s take on the subtle horrors of the inevitable passing of time.

These works include many “teachable moments” about the history of prejudice, the contradictions of ethnic identity, and assimilation into American society and culture.

‘n Versameling kortverhale deur die bekende skrywer J.M Gilfillan. Die hooftema is verhoudings en die wyse waarop mense reageer op die vreugde en verdriet wat deel is van hierdie lewe.

Meestal gaan dit nie oor groot en aardskuddende gebeurtenisse nie, maar die klein dinge van elke dag. Die broosheid van verhoudings.

Die bundel het ook ’n ligter kant. So is daar byvoorbeeld ’n spookstorie, daar is ’n bietjie erotiek, en heelwat oor die krag van woorde.

'n Leeftyd Se Bekruip is ’n bundel verhale vol humor en avontuur. Dit gaan oor die te-voet-jag van kleinwild tot grootwild en strek oor verskillende lande en kontinente heen.

Dit gebeur nie aldag dat ‘n boer ‘n boek publiseer nie. Maar Dawie Strauss is nie ‘n gewone boer nie. Hy is ‘n boer én ‘n skrywer, ‘n jagter én ’n bewaarder.

‘n Boek wat op jou bedkassie of leunstoel, op jou see-handdoek of tydens jou vliegtuigrit op jou sal wag en sal sorg vir ‘n lekkerlees-avontuur. Sterre en kampvuur. Vriendskap en heimwee. Die bos róép…

A collection of poems written in honour of William Shakespeare, dressed up as a slight play with snippets of humour.

All in all... it's a slightly crooked affair

Demons, witches, extra-sensory perception, possessed animals, and an ever-loving God. There is much that exists, or is claimed to exist, in the world today, that we are yet to understand. A perfect introduction into the inner workings of the weird mind of Graham Downs, this collection of flash fiction paranormal stories contains: The Thing in the Window, An Automatic Decision, Telepathic Link, The Witch of Wellington, and The Christmas Bird.

All have been newly edited and polished since publication on his website in 2014, and some with new endings. It also contains the never-before published story, Under the Sheets, about an old woman who believes she is being haunted by a strange ghost, living under her bed, and this special edition paperback includes the hit short story, Billy's Zombie!

Journalist, ecologist, conservationist, and bestselling novelist FRANK HERBERT captured the imagination of entire generations. Novels like The Dosadi Experiment and The White Plague explored science's effect on society. The Green Brain and The Dragon in the Sea introduced Herbert's main theme: how societies and individuals respond to changing or threatening environments. In Dune, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, Herbert expanded this theme to create a series that has fascinated more readers than any other contemporary work of the imagination. Among Herbert's other works were The Eyes of Heisenberg; Santaroga Barrier; Whipping Star; Project 40; Threshold; five additional novels in the Dune series, and two anthologies of short fiction.

Eye features the startlingly original collaboration "The Road to Dune," a walking tour of Arakeen narrated by Frank Herbert and illustrated by acclaimed British artist Jim Burns. Also included is an introduction by Herbert describing his personal feelings about the filming of David Lynch's movie version of Dune; Herbert's own favorite short story, "Seed Stock"; and tales from throughout his career, some never before collected.