“How tragic that this book--set in a Queens, New York, beach town that in real life was devastated by Sandy--has a new relevance. Sarah is a California painter who’s come east for a retreat she hopes will revive her artistic passion. It’s a sheer joy to stay in the company of Ison’s voice. There’s an unlikely relationship at the center, the kind of encounter that could happen only in the summertime suspension of ‘ordinary’ life.” --Karen Russell, O Magazine

Ball is the thrilling and emotionally provocative debut collection of short fiction by the acclaimed author of the novels Rockaway and A Child Out of Alcatraz and the essay collection Reeling through Life.Ball explores the darker edges of love and sex and death, how they are intimately and often violently connected, with bright, vivid stories set mostly in contemporary Los Angeles. In Cactus,” a young girl comes to fear the outside worl...

Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies looks at how film shapes identity. Through ten cleverly constructed essays, Ison explores how a lifetime of movie-watching has, for better or worse, taught her how to navigate the world and how to grapple with issues of career, family, faith, illness, sex, and love.Cinema is a universal cultural experience, one that floods our senses with images and sounds, a powerful force that influences our perspec...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • A simple hospital visit becomes a portal to the tender relationship between mother and daughter in this “spectacular” (The Washington Post) novel by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys.“An aching, illuminating look at mother-daughter devotion.”—PeopleA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, T...

Racing Hummingbirds examines critiques and at times delights in one woman's navigation through the many worlds of manic depression and her struggle to maintain humanity in the process. Jeanann Verlee's award-winning debut collection is a series of narratives prayers and conjurings which address gender sex race poverty heartbreak and survival with such stark intimacy you will find yourself living inside. These poems cannot possibly be about you yet they are. They cross boundaries and reclai...

Runner-up in the Prose Fiction category at the 2016 Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada!In his debut story collection, Kevin A. Couture creates a world where the veneer of humanness stretches thin and often cracks as a menagerie of burdened characters reveal their beast-like traits. In his desperate survival plan, a pre-teen “rescues” dogs in order to sell them back to their well-off owners; a marathon pacesetter reflects on the pace she sets both on and o...

Acclaimed poet and author Stan Rogal’s newest collection of short  stories will drag you into a mesmeric, macabre world of fragile  characters dealing with crippling obsession. Befriend a pitiful  prostitute; watch a man’s curiosity choke out his life; and be part of a  visceral act of voyeurism as you witness passion at its cruelest and  darkest forms in the lives of the breaking and the broken.

Shortlisted for the 2010 Danuta Gleed Award for Short Fiction!Crisp confronts the unspeakable parts of memory, meditating on characters caught in isolation and struggling to make sense of grief, disappointment, and the occasional dinner party gone wrong. Along the way, these characters don’t always make sound decisions: a grieving widow pursues a priest, an unhappy wife whittles her husband to bits, and a melancholic man has a one-night stand with a whale ...

A daughter's narrative about life with and without her father, whose death plunges her into deep grief but gradually becomes her most compelling reason to hope.Like so many Christian women, Rebecca, her mother, and her two sisters love a man who does not walk beside them in faith. As his cancer returns after a year of remission, they face his last days. As the women in his life struggle to savor their final times together and let go, he finally reaches out to God, ...

Housewife assassin Donna Stone’s green thumb–and for that matter, her trigger finger–is put to the test when it’s discovered that genetically enhanced corn containing a deadly brain-eating virus has been released into America’s food chain.

“Told with such humour and suspense that it’s hard to put down . . . A rare achievement, an unstintingly honest, hilarious, and dreadful delight.” — Globe and MailGreer Pentland is having a challenging year. Her teenaged son, Sam, is on trial for the murder of two senior citizens, a crime allegedly committed while he was sleepwalking. Greer is also battling breast cancer, a disease that has left her with a litany of physical side effects and deep anger tow...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An essential volume for generations of writers young and old. The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this modern classic will continue to spark creative minds for years to come. Anne Lamott is "a warm, generous, and hilarious guide through the writer’s world and its treacherous swamps" (Los Angeles Times).**“Superb writing advice…. Hilarious, helpful, and provocative.” —**The New York Times Book Review