Set in modern Shanghai, a debut by a Chinese-American writer about a prodigal son whose unexpected return forces his newly wealthy family to confront painful secrets and unfulfilled promises.After years of chasing the American dream, the Zhen family has moved back to China. Settling into a luxurious serviced apartment in Shanghai, Wei, Lina, and their daughter, Karen, join an elite community of Chinese-born, Western-educated professionals who have returned to a rad...

“A stunning story of friendship and family, love and belonging . . . I absolutely adored it.”—Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author of All the Colors of the DarkWhen two young men meet during a tech internship, it sparks an intense friendship—and even more intense competition—in this sweeping novel of privilege, identity, and ambition from the acclaimed author of What We Were Promised.Jack Chen, the ol...

The Winter 2015-16 issue of Ploughshares. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Two out of each year's three issues are guest-edited by prominent writers who explore different personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles, with the Winter issue staff-edited.The stories, poems, and essays that comprise this staff-edited issue of Ploughshares are diverse and timely. Visit a South African laundromat in Laurie Baker’s short story, Here I Am, Laughing with Boers;...

“A stunning story of friendship and family, love and belonging . . . I absolutely adored it.”—Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author of All the Colors of the DarkWhen two young men meet during a tech internship, it sparks an intense friendship—and even more intense competition—in this sweeping novel of privilege, identity, and ambition from the acclaimed author of What We Were Promised.Jack Chen, the ol...

Set in modern Shanghai, a debut by a Chinese-American writer about a prodigal son whose unexpected return forces his newly wealthy family to confront painful secrets and unfulfilled promises.After years of chasing the American dream, the Zhen family has moved back to China. Settling into a luxurious serviced apartment in Shanghai, Wei, Lina, and their daughter, Karen, join an elite community of Chinese-born, Western-educated professionals who have returned to a rad...

From personal loss to phantom diseases, The Empathy Exams is a bold and brilliant collection, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction PrizeA Publishers Weekly Top Ten Essay Collection of Spring 2014Beginning with her experience as a medical actor who was paid to act out symptoms for medical students to diagnose, Leslie Jamison's visceral and revealing essays ask essential questions about our basic understanding of others: How shou...

Twenty of the best American short stories of 2011, chosen by the New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Chord.The twenty tightly crafted stories collected here by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Geraldine Brooks are full of deftly drawn characters, universal truths, and often surprising humor. Richard Powers's "To the Measures Fall" is a comic meditation on the uses of literature in the course of a life. In the satirical "The Sleep," Caitlin...

Andrea Gibson's dynamic and energetic first book Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns challenges us to not only read but to react. Hauntingly vivid the poems march through a soldier's lingering psychological wounds tackle the curious questions of school children on the meaning of "hate" and tangle with a lover's witty and vibrant description of longing. Gibson's poems deconstruct the current political climate through stunning imagery and careful crafting. With the same velocity the poign...

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013 gathers twenty of the best short stories of the year, selected from thousands published in literary magazines. The winning stories take place in such far-flung locales as a gorgeous sailboat in Hong Kong, a Cuban sugar plantation, the Kenai River in Alaska, a mansion in New Delhi, a ship torpedoed by a German U-boat, and the ghost-haunted rubble of a Turkish girls’ school. Also included are the editor’s introduction, essays from the jurors (Lauren G...

A "category-defying [and] engaging" collection of short fiction and nonfiction by Phil Klay, George Saunders, Jess Walter, Nora Krug, and more ( Kirkus Reviews).Chosen by Dave Eggers and a freewheeling discussion group of passionate student readers, this edition of the annual anthology includes selections ranging from novelist Mona Simpson's eulogy for her brother Steve Jobs to a piece by prize-winning historian Adam Hochschild first published in the Oc...

The political humorist shares his transformation from dirty hippie to conservative middle-aged grouch: "An incorrigible comic gift" ( The New York Times Book Review).The #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Give War a Chance was at one time a raving pinko, with scars on his formerly bleeding heart to prove it. In Age and Guile: Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut, P. J. O'Rourke chronicles the remarkable trajectory that t...

A hilarious collection from McSweeney's that "achieves the sensation of being hit by a hip, humorous train.... Breaks mold after mold in hilarious fashion" (The New York Times).Now more than ever, Americans are troubled by questions. As sweaty modernity thrusts itself upon us, the veil of ignorance that cloaked our nation hangs in tatters, tattered tatters. Our "funny bones" are neither fun nor bony. Glum is the new giddy, and the old giddy wasn't too gidd...