"As this fresh anthology proves, there's a mix of writers and sensibilities that inhabit the literary Midwest as to make the term unpredictable." —Stuart Dybek, MacArthur Fellow and author of The Coast of ChicagoNew Stories from the Midwest presents a collection of stories that celebrate an American region too often ignored in discussions about distinctive regional literature. The editors solicited nominations from more than three hundred magazines...

Humour and high adventure combine in the biggest action debut in years – even if its characters are very small.Infinity Drake (Finn) is with his scientist uncle when they are summoned to a crisis meeting. A power-mad villain has released a lethal bio-weapon – mutant wasps with a deadly sting.Millions of lives are in danger, but Uncle Al has a crazy plan that just might work… Soon he’s shrinking a crack military team to take down the wasps. But a double agent throws the miss...

Life is hard for a literary wunderkind after a decade of writer’s block in this “ribald deconstruction . . . of an industry in love with its own absurdities” (Kirkus Reviews).You graduate from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop with a short story published in The New Yorker and subsequently Best American Short Stories. You stay in town and work on your novel. And work on your novel. Until, finally, twelve years have passed . . . and you are working as a m...

Taking off from The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide, John McNally’srelentlessly blunt, bracingly cheerful, and immensely helpful map to being a writer, Vivid and Continuousis an equally blunt, cheerful, and helpful map to learning to be a writer. While acknowledging that many fine books cover such essentials of fiction writing as point of view, characterization, and setting, McNally sets out in this new book—intended as a supplement to beginning fiction...

Sam Heggarty returns home to hunt for the gunmen who robbed and executed his father. As he makes his way back, he witnesses another murder and stumbles across a clue to the people responsible for his father's death. Sam becomes caught up in the chase to track down an escaped prisoner as he partners up with ageing lawman, County Sheriff Lewis Leeming. He discovers that the one person who may hold the key to the identity of his father's murderers is someone that everyone else is intent on ki...

Sailors Diggings an isolated mining settlement is left reeling when outlaws slaughter seventeen of the stunned population and clean out the assay office stealing $75,000 worth of freshly mined gold. A group of vigilantes led by Don Plunkett give chase determined to dispense some Old West justice. Eddie Carter is mistaken for a gang member and to escape a lynching he must go on the run handcuffed to outlaw leader Dave Mooney, the man responsible for the death of his partner. In the confront...

The Promise of Failure is part memoir of the writing life, part advice book, and part craft book; sometimes funny, sometimes wrenching, but always honest. McNally uses his own life as a blueprint for the writer’s daily struggles as well as the existential ones, tackling subjects such as when to quit and when to keep going, how to deal with depression, what risking something of yourself means, and ways to reenergize your writing through reinvention.What McNally illuminates ...

Get shrunk! Humour and high-stakes combine in the action-packed Infinity Drake series. A BIG adventure with a tiny hero!Infinity Drake – Finn for short – is STILL only 9mm tall. But before his crazy scientist uncle can figure out a way to return him to his normal size, a new threat emerges on the other side of the world.Supreme villain, Kaparis, plans to release an army of self-replicating nano-bots – a hardware virus that will give him total control of global communication...

Get shrunk! Humour and high-stakes combine in the conclusion to the action-packed Infinity Drake series. A BIG adventure with a tiny hero!And you thought 9mm was small?Infinity Drake takes it to a whole 'nother level…After months of captivity Finn and Carla reach their final destination; evil mastermind Kaparis's secret lair in the Carpathian mountains.Once there Finn learns the villain's true purpose – to conquer his paralysis and rise again. To do so Kapar...

Get shrunk! Humour and high-stakes combine in the action-packed Infinity Drake series. A BIG adventure with a tiny hero…Infinity Drake and his scientist uncle are summoned to a crisis meeting. A power-mad villain has released a doomsday bio-weapon – the mutant Scarlatti wasp.Millions of lives are in danger, but Uncle Al has a crazy plan that just might work… Soon he’s shrinking a crack military team to take down the wasps. But a double agent throws the mission and now Finn ...

Get shrunk! Humour and high-stakes combine in the action-packed Infinity Drake series. A BIG adventure with a tiny hero!Infinity Drake – Finn for short – is STILL only 9mm tall. But before his crazy scientist uncle can figure out a way to return him to his normal size, a new threat emerges on the other side of the world.Supreme villain, Kaparis, plans to release an army of self-replicating nano-bots – a hardware virus that will give him total control of global communication...

Get shrunk! Humour and high-stakes combine in the conclusion to the action-packed Infinity Drake series. A BIG adventure with a tiny hero!And you thought 9mm was small?Infinity Drake takes it to a whole 'nother level…After months of captivity Finn and Carla reach their final destination; evil mastermind Kaparis's secret lair in the Carpathian mountains.Once there Finn learns the villain's true purpose – to conquer his paralysis and rise again. To do so Kapar...