Distributed by University Press of Florida on behalf of Panhandler Books, an imprint of the Department of English and World Languages at the University of West FloridaIn Proper Imposters, four contemporary authors explore the vices and virtues of deception and how it manifests in ways personal, psychological, propulsive, and profound. An accountant at a pencil manufacturing company investigates a series of ominous events behind the facade of the mysterious...

Neighbors of Nothing examines characters who find themselves searching for new identities in worlds they no longer recognize. In "Piebald," parents assume the identity of their dead son; in "Everyday Murders," the sole survivor of a violent crime attempts to confront an online entrepreneur who sells football-style serial killer jerseys. Through odd, compelling, and sometimes futile gestures, these characters struggle against guilt and grief and the seemingly endless stretch of day...

Speculative and darkly surreal, the stories in Shadowselves examine characters who have stepped dangerously close to an edge they cannot see. A snow plow driver stranded on the roadside during a blizzard finds himself trapped in a riddled memory. A middle-aged man wakes up one morning to find he’s gained four hundred pounds overnight, along with the unbearable regrets of countless strangers. A lonely child sets off to prove the existence of a mythic bird, but uncovers an ugly secr...

“Wasp Box is a thrilling debut that will no doubt soon garner lots of positive attention from readers and critics alike. It is that rare novel that manages to be profound while also being profoundly entertaining.” – Wraparound South“What develops in Wasp Box is horrific, beautiful, bizarre, poignant and mesmerizing. The sensory and visceral detail will cause readers to claw at their legs and necks, jam fingers into their ears, or hop on one foot to shake from the head what ...

Riotously funny, beautifully written, and charged with emotional intelligence, this well-crafted debut investigates the world from the fringe through characters who stray so far from convention they seem to inhabit another universe.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The beloved author of The Women presents a modern-day fairy tale—the story of a woman who gets a miraculous chance at happiness.Joy Candellaro once loved Christmas more than any other time of the year. Now, as the holiday approaches, she is at a crossroads in her life; recently divorced and alone, she can’t summon the old enthusiasm for celebrating. So without telling anyone, she buys a ticket and boards a plane bound f...

The acclaimed author reflects on romance and disillusionment in childhood, young adulthood, and her marriage through a series of autobiographical essays."Smart, funny, and moving. . . . A gifted and gutsy writer. . . . This is what a first collection of stories should be." — The Boston GlobeCousins, mothers, sisters, dolls, dogs, best friends: these are the fixed points in Jo Ann Beard's universe, the constants that...

The novel that inspired the TV series Moonlight puts a twist on the classic Dracula vampire tale and blends it with Chandler hardboiled P.I. detective fiction.LA-based P.I. and vampire Mick Angel has been hired by a beautiful red-headed burlesque dancer to find her missing sister. But the apparently simple case of a teenage runaway is soon complicated by drug dealers, persistent cops, murder, and Mick’s own past. Mick must learn the hard way what every vampire should know ...

In TOO LATE, 15-year-old Greg is in a teen sex offenders’ facility because of an assault on his stepsister. He hates the professionals who try to help him and can’t wait to go home. When he enters a room for a meeting, his mother is there crying. Her partner, whom Greg calls Step Dude, sits at her side. They have come to tell Greg they don’t want him back. It’s too late to be good, they say. Greg comes to the crippling realization of what he has become: the father he has both hated and fea...

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...

The lease is meaningless: a square paced first by seismic workers, and then your father, and then by every other man you know. Distilled from his time in the Saskatchewan and Albertan oilfields, Mathew Henderson’s The Lease plumbs the prairie depths to find human technology and physical labour realigning our landscape. With acute discipline, Henderson illuminates the stubborn and often unflattering realities of industrial culture and its cast of hard-living men.

• Bertin's working in the mode of younger contemporary American authors in the States, like Justin Taylor, Adam Wilson, and Sarah Hall, who write about the gritty lives of Millenials. The occasional brutality of his characters, always offset by the complexity of their emotions and desires, is reminiscent those in Wells Tower's collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned.• Bertin has performed in front of many audiences. He’s a good reader with a commanding presence.