These stories are enveloped by change and the changes that shift the trajectories of our lives: change that shatters us, change that opens the world, and change from which we can never come back. These fourteen stories tell us about extensive and inevitable changes and how we realign ourselves and our lives, if we can.

Death, that ending of all endings, is the shared concern of these stories, which have been chosen from among the hundreds that have appeared in the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction series.More than seventy volumes, which include approximately eight hundred stories, have won the Flannery O’Connor Award. This stunning trove of always engaging, often groundbreaking short fiction is the common source for this anthology on death–and for planned anthologies on such t...

This collection bristles and hums with the rugged resilience one encounters in southern and Appalachian fiction where ghosts of loved ones and livestock alike haunt an underworld of lonely trails. Set in West Virginia, the stories take up residence with rural characters who defend their mailboxes against teenagers, bathe and feed their bedridden elders, and circle the inflated orbs of love and desire in high school gymnasiums. Whole lifetimes flare in an instant as characters scramble to s...

Life is Not Always a Butcher's Game. Sometimes the Prizes Are Real. Sometimes They're Precious. All-time best-selling author STEPHEN KING returns with a novel of carny life—and death... College student Devin Jones took the summer job at Joyland hoping to forget the girl who broke his heart. But he wound up facing something far more terrible: the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and dark truths about life—and what comes after—that would change his world forever. A rive...

In this Christmas romance novella, a struggling veterinarian isn’t about to let a wealthy man steal her home . . . but he might steal her heart.Some people think owning buckets of money gives them the right of way. Well, if cosmetic king Peter King thinks he’s going to buy struggling veterinarian Andi Evans’s family property out from under her, he's got another thing coming. This Christmas, Andi is not in a giving mood . . . but is she ready to receive something he...

In David Sedaris's world, no one is safe, and no cow is sacred. With the legendary essayist’s signature biting wit, this collection skewers family dysfunction, awkward childhood memories, and the absurdities of modern life.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.W...

Myron Vale sees ghosts. One hundred billion of them, to be precise.In a world where everybody dies but nobody leaves, Myron Vale is the rare individual who completely straddles both sides of the great divide. In fact, he may just be the only one. His strange ability the result of a gunshot to the head while serving as a Portland police officer, a few years later he recovers to forge a new life as private investigator catering to both the living and the dead.His biggest prob...

People love their pets--cats more so than any other (or so the cats would like to think). And if there is anything cat-lovers enjoy almost as much as stroking their beloved feline friends, it's reading about cats. In the tradition and style of her previous smash hits, Callie Smith Grant brings readers a brand-new collection of uplifting stories about the amazing creatures that warm our hearts--and our laps! With stories from Melody Carlson, Jill Eileen Smith, Robert Benson, Kathi ...

Murder is only a whisker away...Koko and Yum Yum must come to Qwill's rescue in Lilian Jackson Braun's captivating mystery The Cat Who Went Underground. Perfect for crime fans and cat lovers.'Most detectives do their legwork on two legs. A few, however, do it on four...' - Associated PressJim Qwilleran packs up his old kit bag and his two Siamese cats, Koko and Yum Yum, for a sun-and-fun summer at his log cabin in ...

Women and their horses—a symbiotic relationship based on trust, camaraderie, friendship, and love. In Why We Ride, Verna Dreisbach collects the stories of women who ride, sharing their personal emotions and accounts of the most important animals in their lives.This collection of stories includes the heartfelt thoughts of a range of women—those who rode as children, those who spent their girlhood years dreaming of owning a pony, and those who have made a lifelong hobby or c...

Shortly before he died, America's laureate of the dispossessed made his own selection from his short stories, revised the texts and published them in this authorative edition.The stories in Where I'm Calling From are selected from the full range of the author's work including Furious Seasons, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, What We Talk about When We Talk about Love, and Cathedral and include all seven stories from his last c...

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