For readers of Melissa Bank or Jhumpa Lahiri: witty, seductive stories of expatriate women, their loves and losses. "Interesting women - are we ever going to be free of them? I meet them everywhere these days, now that there is no longer such a thing as an interesting man..." So drawls the narrator of one of Andrea Lee's jewel-like stories, herself, undeniably, an Interesting Woman. These gleaming, sensual stories bend a wit worthy of Colette's on a demimonde of expatriates, teenage 'pocket divas', girlfriends, wives, mistresses and daughters. Each focuses on a moment of seduction, of self-discovery, where the mocking detachment of the outsider is briefly pulled aside. An American, chained by her Italian husband's belief in her conventional wholesomeness, surprises him with two costly call girls for his birthday; but her pleasure in her own daring remains wistfully private. A New England beauty has a brief love affair, alternately lyrical and perverse, with a European prince more than twice her age. A woman, having earlier left her husband 'in a moment of epic distraction', has his new ex to stay, changing forever their understanding of the man they both married. 'Interesting Women' teases the reader with ironic glimpses of the charged games of sexual power between men and women, and women with each other. It is that delicious rarity: a summer read of sophisticated intelligence, whose gorgeous images will linger long.

A funny, sad, off-kilter collection of stories from a rising American star of satire. 'People like to call them ashes but it feels more like a couple of rocks, especially if you hold the whole thing in your hands, or swing it, as I do, on occasion, bolo-style from the sack cord. I'm still not sure why I do this, but it feels good, standing there in the dining room, windmilling my mother around.' From the peep palaces of Times Square to the cubicles of corporate America, 'Venus Drive' takes us away from the toothpaste-white gleam of American life, and leads us down an altogether darker, comic road on the seedy side of town. Pot-dazed revolutionaries, summer-camp sadists, and babysitters with an eye for erotic humiliation all make themselves known in this crafty, streetwise new collection from the acclaimed author of 'The Subject Steve'. At once shocking, inventive and funny, these stories confirm Sam Lipsyte's place amongst the very brightest - and darkest - talents of American fiction.

“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.

In "We'll Always Have Paris"--a new collection of stories gathered together for the first time--the inimitable Ray Bradbury once again delights us with prose that soars and sings. He imagines great things and poignantly observes human foibles and frailties. He enchants us with the magic he mastered decades ago and still performs flawlessly. Whether he's exploring the myriad ways to be reborn, or the circumstances that can make any man a killer, or returning us to Mars, Bradbury opens the world to us and beckons us in. His tales will live forever--we will always have Bradbury.

The beloved author of Early Morning Riser brings us eleven glittering stories of love - friendships formed at the airport bar, ex-husbands with benefits, mothers of suspiciously sweet teenagers, ill-advised trysts - in all its forms, both ridiculous and sublime. The games and rituals performed by Katherine Heiny's characters range from mischievous to tender. In 'Bridesmaid, Revisited,' Marilee, suffering from a laundry and life crisis, wears a massive bridesmaid's dress to work. In 'Twist and Shout,' Ericka's elderly father mistakes his four-thousand-dollar hearing aid for a cashew and eats it. In 'Turn Back, Turn Back,' a bedtime story coupled with a receipt for a Starbucks babyccino reveal a struggling actor's deception. And in '561,' Charlene pays the true price of infidelity and is forced to help her husband's ex-wife move out of the family home. From one of our most celebrated writers, our bard of waking up in the wrong bed, wearing the wrong shoes, late for the wrong job, but loved by the right people, Katherine Heiny has delivered a work of glorious humour and immense kindness.

In Wicked Women, a 1997 New York Times Notable Book of Year and her most celebrated collection of stories ever, critically acclaimed Fay Weldon brings her bracing wit to bear on men, love, therapy, marriage, parenting, and the myriad self-deceptions and half-truths that oil the wheels of "civilized behavior".

In these twenty madcap tales we enter Fay Weldon's world, peopled with therapists who blithely destroy marriages and Family ties, husbands and lovers whose greatest cruelty is their indifference, and clever women navigating the perils and pitfalls of domesticity. In lucid and finely honed prose, Fay Weldon serves up our greatest denials and most imprudent compromises. Her wicked humor and seasoned wisdom are as evident here as always -- and tempered by great compassion for the foibles of the human heart.

Iceland is a country where stories are as important as history. When Vikings settled the island, they brought their tales with them. Every rock, hot spring and waterfall seems to have its own story. Cruel man-eating trolls rub shoulders with beautiful elves, whose homes are hidden from mortal view. Vengeful ghosts envy the living, seeking to drag lost loves into their graves - or they may simply demand a pinch of your snuff. Some of the stories in this collection are classic Icelandic tales, while others are completely new to English translation. Hjoerleifur has always been deeply interested in the rich lore of his island. His grandparents provided a second home in his upbringing and taught him much about the past through their own way of life. Hjoerleifur is dedicated to breathing fresh life into the stories he loves.

DISCOVER THE SHORT STORY COLLECTION THAT GAVE THE WORLD DRIVE MY CAR, THE BAFTA AND OSCAR WINNING FILM A dazzling Sunday Times bestselling collection of short stories from the beloved internationally acclaimed Haruki Murakami. Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are vanishing cats and smoky bars, lonely hearts and mysterious women, baseball and the Beatles, woven together to tell stories that speak to us all. Marked by the same wry humour that has defined his entire body of work, in this collection Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic. 'Supremely enjoyable, philosophical and pitch-perfect new collection of short stories...Murakami has a marvelous understanding of youth and age' Observer 'Murakami at his whimsical, romantic best' Financial Times

'Kaleidoscopic, urgent, hilarious, revelatory' Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings 'Sumptuous and astute ... An absolute delight to read' Diana Evans, author of Ordinary People 'A compelling hurricane of a book' Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION A major debut, blazing with style and heart, that follows a Jamaican family in Miami navigating recession, racism and Hurricane Andrew. You want a home. You want to win back your girlfriend's admiration. You want to prove that your father bet on the wrong son. 1979. Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But they soon learn that the welcome in America will be far from warm. Trelawny, their youngest son, comes of age in a society which regards him with suspicion and confusion, greeting him with the puzzled question 'What are you?' Their eldest son Delano's longing for a better future for his own children is equalled only by his recklessness in trying to secure it. As both brothers navigate the obstacles littered in their path - an unreliable father, racism, a financial crisis and Hurricane Andrew - they find themselves pitted against one another. Will their rivalry be the thing that finally tears their family apart? The thrilling linked stories in Jonathan Escoffery's If I Survive You pulse with inimitable style, heart and barbed humour while unravelling what it means to carve out an existence between cultures, homes and pay checks. They announce Escoffery as a once in a generation talent and chronicler of life at its most gruesome and hopeful. 'Escoffery's is a strong, much needed new voice in our literature' Percival Everett, Booker shortlisted author of The Trees 'A welcome reminder of what fiction can do' Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind 'Brilliant wit, real heart and electric humour' Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Friday Black

Tales from writers with Latinx, Caribbean, Asian, African, Arabic, North American, East European origins, and more, challenge the reader with stories that spill out into space, parallel realms or just hidden in plain sight. The stories explore the world from the perspective of the incoming, whether necessitated through war or oppression, financial or familial need, or with hope for a better future, examining visions of displacement and relocation in future and speculative settings. New stories selected from open submissions are set alongside classic sci-fi by the likes of Otto (Eando) Binder and Zenna Henderson, modern stories by such authors as Celu Amberstone and Ken Liu, and older, realist immigrant narratives by Abraham Cahan, Sui Sin Far, Lee Yan Phou, Constantine Panunzio and more. Complemented by a foreword by author E.C. Osondu and an insightful introduction by Betsy Huang, Ph.D., this is an intriguing view of the conflict and anxiety between the settled and the unsettled. The Flame Tree Gothic Fantasy, Classic Stories and Epic Tales collections bring together the entire range of myth, folklore and modern short fiction. Highlighting the roots of suspense, supernatural, science fiction and mystery stories, the books in Flame Tree Collections series are beautifully presented, perfect as a gift and offer a lifetime of reading pleasure.

Talented sportsmen inexplicably go absent without leave, crafty gamblers conspire in the hope of making a killing, and personal rivalries and jealousies come to a head on fields of play... The links between sport and fictional crime were celebrated in Ellery Queen's anthology Sporting Blood (1942), although that book also included such activities as poker, chess, and the collecting of coins and butterflies. This collection is the first major attempt in the UK to gather together short mysteries with a sporting theme. Each story features a different sport and each is written by a different author. The sports covered include golf, cricket, soccer, rugby, running, swimming, boxing, archery, rowing, tennis and squash. The classic stories in this new British Library anthology show that crime is a game for all seasons.

'Elisa said Yes and I said Yes. We said Yes in all the European languages. Yes. We said yes we said yes, yes to vague but powerful things, we said yes to hope which has to be vague, we said yes to love which is always blind, we smiled and said yes without blinking.' ('A Better Way to Live') ----------- How does love change us? And how do we change ourselves for love - or for lack of it? Ten stories by acclaimed author Deborah Levy explore these delicate, impossible questions. In Vienna, an icy woman seduces a broken man; in London, a bird mimics an old-fashioned telephone; in adland, a sleek copywriter becomes a kind of shaman. These are twenty-first century lives dissected with razor-sharp humour and curiosity, stories about what it means to live and love, together and alone.

Returning to the territory of "Brokeback Mountain" (in her first volume of Wyoming Stories) and Bad Dirt (her second), National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx delivers a stunning and visceral new collection. In "Fine Just the Way It Is," she has expanded the limits of the form. Her stories about multiple generations of Americans struggling through life in the West are a ferocious, dazzling panorama of American folly and fate.

"Every ranch...had lost a boy," thinks Dakotah Hicks as she drives through "the hammered red landscape" of Wyoming, "boys smiling, sure in their risks, healthy, tipped out of the current of life by liquor and acceleration, rodeo smashups, bad horses, deep irrigation ditches, high trestles, tractor rollovers and 'unloaded' guns. Her boy, too...The trip along this road was a roll call of grief."

Proulx's characters try to climb out of poverty and desperation but get cut down as if the land itself wanted their blood. Deeply sympathetic to the men and women fighting to survive in this harsh place, Proulx turns their lives into fiction with the power of myth -- and leaves the reader in awe. The winner of two O. Henry Prizes, Annie Proulx has been anthologized in nearly every major collection of great American stories. Her bold, inimitable language, her exhilarating eye for detail and her dark sense of humor make this a profoundly compelling collection.

The countryside – what is it for? A paradise on earth where you can relax and get creative? Or an outdoor wool factory where every other house is an Airbnb and there are fewer trees than Camden. In his new collection of short stories David Gaffney explores the theme of town versus country through a number of different lenses, including his own experience of being brought up in west Cumbria then moving to Manchester. A creative residency on the coast of Scotland becomes weirder and weirder in “The Retreat”; ‘I’ve always had the feeling that the countryside has something against me and that one day it will take its revenge.’ In “The Table”, a recluse in Penrith uses mid-century furniture to lure city dwellers into a world of ‘depressed farmers with shotguns and bottomless pits of slurry that will swallow you so hard you'll never be seen again. And in “The Garages” the pressure of city living forces a man to become oddly obsessed with empty spaces. Often funny, often haunting, often profound, Gaffney uses dark humour and surreal characters to demonstrate a deep understanding of how places, urban or rural, can shape, influence and sometimes distort our lives. ‘People who like the countryside tend to believe in things that aren’t really there,’ says a character in “The Country Pub”. These are indeed stories about things that aren’t really there, and this is why they resonate with you long after you have stopped reading.

          Enter into the worlds of fifteen young women who, despite their vastly different circumstances, seem to negotiate an eerily similar and unavoidably dangerous emotional terrain. With a visceral bite or a surreal edge, each electrically charged story in Circling the Drain presents women trying to understand the nature of loss--of leaving or being left--and discovering that in the throes of feverish conflict, things are rarely what they seem. By turns dark and lyrical, ferocious and playful, these stories are precise, startling, and undeniably original. Reading them is a cathartic, mesmerizing literary experience.

'Although he writes about queer lives and loves in Nigeria, Arinze Ifeakandu's voice is sensually alert to the human and universal in every situation. These quietly transgressive stories are the work of a brilliant new talent' DAMON GALGUT, Booker Prize-winning author of The Promise 'Contemporary love stories with moments of real surprise and revelation' BRANDON TAYLOR, author of Real Life 'Gorgeous... A hugely impressive collection, full of subtlety, wisdom and heart' SARAH WATERS, author of Fingersmith 'Captures the tenderness and tumult of queer love, familial love, self-love, and the many ways love elates and eludes us.... Masterful. What a glorious collection!' DEESHA PHILYAW, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies 'Magic in motion... A staggering, heartshattering show' ELOGHOSA OSUNDE, author of Vagabonds! 'Raw tender grace... A serious literary talent has emerged' COLM TOIBIN, author of The Magician 'Quite simply a tour de force' SARAH HALL, author of Burntcoat In this stunning debut from one of Nigeria's most promising young writers, the stakes of love meet a society in flux A man revisits the university campus where he lost his first love, aware now of what he couldn't understand then. A daughter returns home to Lagos after the death of her father, where she must face her past - and future -relationship with his longtime partner. A young musician rises to fame at the risk of losing himself and the man who loves him. Generations collide, families break and are remade, languages and cultures intertwine, and lovers find their ways to futures; from childhood through adulthood; on university campuses, city centres, and neighbourhoods where church bells mingle with the morning call to prayer. These nine stories of queer male intimacy brim with simmering secrecy, ecstasy, loneliness and love in their depictions of what it means to be gay in contemporary Nigeria.

Something is happening. Wars, both national and internal, are being waged in jungles, across borders, in the streets of Lima, in the intimacy of New York apartments. War by Candlelight is an exquisite collection of stories that carry the reader from Third World urban centers to the fault lines that divide nations and people -- a devastating portrait of a world in flux -- and Daniel Alarcon is an extraordinary new voice in literary fiction, one you will not soon forget.

The music of the Smiths and their iconic frontman Morrissey is beautiful, witty, melancholic--music that makes outsiders feel as though they are part of something. Now an eclectic collection of acclaimed, up-and-coming writers lets their love of the band, its words and music, manifest itself in literary form with smart, emotion-filled, Smiths-inspired short fiction.

In "Please," edited by Peter Wild, love blooms by the cemetery gates and the death of a Miami disco dancer inspires a new TV show. Shoplifters of the world unite to tug a reluctant aardvark from a hole, while a naked birthday rendition of "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" is beamed across the globe. Here is fiction that melds the worlds of music and literature while celebrating the unique artistic contributions of one of the most beloved bands of the past two and a half decades.

In nine luminous stories of love and loss, loneliness and hope, Judith Hermann's stunning debut collection paints a vivid and poignant picture of a generation ready and anxious to turn their back on the past, to risk uncertainty in search of a fresh, if fragile, equilibrium. An international bestseller and translated into twelve languages, Summerhouse, Later heralds the arrival of one of Germanys most arresting new literary talents.

A restless man hopes to find permanence in the purchase of a summerhouse outside Berlin. A young girl, trapped in a paralyzing web of family stories and secrets, finally manages to break free. A granddaughter struggles to lay her grandmother's ghosts to rest. A successful and simplistic artist becomes inexplicably obsessed with an elusive and strangely sinister young girl.

Against the backdrop of contemporary Berlin, possibly Europe's most vibrant and exhilarating city, Hermann's characters are as kaleidoscopic and extraordinary as their metropolis, united mostly in a furious and dogged pursuit of the elusive specter of "living in the moment." They're people who, in one way or another, constantly challenge the madness of the modern world and whose dreams of transcending the ordinary for that "narrow strip of sky over the rooftops" are deeply felt and perfectly rendered.

Gorgeous Collector's Edition. The Myths of Ancient Egypt are tied intimately to the presence and natural rhythms of the Nile. With their animalistic mythology, the Egyptians explained the effects of famine, harvest, floods and death by creating a pantheon of gods that still holds our fascination today. This new book of classic tales brings the stories of the ancients to life, from the birth of creation by Ra, the sun god, to the murder of Osiris, and the revenge of Horus. We gain glimpses of the underworld and the afterlife, as the rulers of Egypt claimed lineage from the Gods both worshipped and fashioned by the people of Egypt, at a time when humankind had begun to shape the world around it, Flame Tree Collector's Editions present the foundations of speculative fiction, authors, myths and tales without which the imaginative literature of the twentieth century would not exist, bringing the best, most influential and most fascinating works into a striking and collectable library. Each book features a new introduction and a Glossary of Terms.

An Oprah's Book Club selection: this "electrifying" book (Washington Post) pays tribute to the wisdom and resilience of children even in the face of the most agonizing circumstances. Uwem Akpan's stunning stories humanize the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few readers will feel they've ever encountered Africa so immediately. The eight-year-old narrator of "An Ex-Mas Feast" needs only enough money to buy books and pay fees in order to attend school. Even when his twelve-year-old sister takes to the streets to raise these meager funds, his dream can't be granted. Food comes first. His family lives in a street shanty in Nairobi, Kenya, but their way of both loving and taking advantage of each other strikes a universal chord. In the second of his stories published in a New Yorker special fiction issue, Akpan takes us far beyond what we thought we knew about the tribal conflict in Rwanda. The story is told by a young girl, who, with her little brother, witnesses the worst possible scenario between parents. They are asked to do the previously unimaginable in order to protect their children. This singular collection will also take the reader inside Nigeria, Benin, and Ethiopia, revealing in beautiful prose the harsh consequences for children of life in Africa. Akpan's voice is a literary miracle, rendering lives of almost unimaginable deprivation and terror into stories that are nothing short of transcendent. One of the best books of the year: Wall Street Journal, People, Bloomberg News, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post Book World, and Entertainment Weekly