Contributing authors: Don Ball, Jon Chaus, Sharri Cohen, T.L. Eastwood, Carol Elek, Lisa Griffiths, Sue Maywood, Tamara Miller, Holly Scott, and Scott Skipper offer some autobiographical memories, a little historical fiction, several good creepy tales, some heartwarming stories, a couple of talking animal escapades, action and adventure, and even a children's book about baby hummingbirds. No matter what you're hankering to read, you'll find it here.

**#1 New York Times bestseller!In this unforgettable collection of essays, acclaimed humorist David Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface.**Sedaris plays in the snow with his sisters. He goes on vacation with his family. He gets a job selling drinks. He attends his brother's wedding. He mops his sister's floor. He gives directions to a lost traveler. He eats a hamburger. He has his blood sugar tested. It all so...

Dark, Scary, Thrilling, Strange, Creepy, Mysterious—a mega-box set from a master of the fiction of nightmares. 3 acclaimed collections in one—plus bonus content! From New York Times bestselling author Douglas Clegg comes a mega-collection of his classic dark fiction of suspense, horror and nightmare logic, including the previously-uncollected novelette, Funerary Rites, as well as the critically-praised novelettes, White Chapel and I Am Infini...

National Humor Month won't be the same with this huge, classic collection of side-splitting, groan-worthy, family-friendly jokes, puns, and riddles. Guaranteed LOLs at a time we can all use a laugh.Between these covers are a staggering 3650 entries - at a joke a day that's 10 full years of comedy! With chapters on everything from Modern Romance, the Working World and Aging to Pop Culture, Money, and much more, 3650 Jokes, Puns and Riddles contains the most...

"A terrific writer. Definitely one to keep an eye on."—Dennis LehaneIn Wild Thyme, Pennsylvania, summer has brought Officer Henry Farrell nothing but trouble. Heroin has arrived with a surge in crime. When local carpenter Kevin O'Keeffe admits that he shot a man and that his girlfriend, Penny, is missing, the search leads the small-town cop to an industrial vice district across state lines that has already ensnared more than one of his neighbors. With the patience ...

The perfect book for new fans and decade-long supporters alike, Ann Beattie: The New Yorker provides readers with a lifetime**’s** worth of short stories from one of the most original and celebrated voices of her generation.When Ann Beattie began publishing short stories in The New Yorker in the mid-seventies, she emerged with a voice so original, and so uncannily precise and prescient in its assessment of her characters’ drift an...

Fifty remarkable short stories from a range of contemporary fiction authors including Junot Diaz, Amy Tan, Jamaica Kincaid, Jhumpa Lahiri, and more, selected from a survey of more than five hundred English professors, short story writers, and novelists.Contributors include Russell Banks, Donald Barthelme, Rick Bass, Richard Bausch, Charles Baxter, Amy Bloom, T.C. Boyle, Kevin Brockmeier, Robert Olen Butler, Sandra Cisneros, Peter Ho Davies, Janet Desaulniers, Junot...

A witty, wild anthology "filled with excellently plotted stories" of cooking, cleaning, and crime by some household names in mystery fiction ( South Florida Sun Sentinel).Join Nevada Barr, Barbara Collins, Carole Nelson Douglas, Eileen Dreyer, Vicki Hendricks, Suzann Ledbetter, Elisabeth Massie, Christine Matthews, Denise Mina, Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky, Nancy Pickard, S.J. Rozan, and Julie Smith on a riotous ride through the dark but often hilarious cor...

This fiendish anthology, complied by the horror genre's most acclaimed editor, drags you into the twisted minds of modern literary masters at their fiendish best. Visionary storytellers fill this collection of tales lyrical and strange, monstrous and exhilarating, horrific and transformative.*A sweetly vengeful voice on the radio calls a young soldier out to join a phantom patrol.*A hotel maid who threw her newborn child from a fourth-story window lingers in an interminable...

When Jill McCorkle feels a short story coming on, she goes right ahead and "wastes" wonderful ideas instead of hoarding them for a novel. The result is another extraordinary collection of stories and characters. In "It's a Funeral! RSVP," the storyteller is a woman who takes up self-styled "careers" that suit her circumstances. Now she's stumbled onto one that's so successful that she just can't quit. It's planning funerals, what she calls Going Out Parties, in which the clients are the so...

As a middle child raised middle class and stuck out in the middle of Louisiana, hilarious writer and actress Sarah Thyre often found her in–between existence far less than desirable. Even from a young age, Sarah found ways of shirking her own hated identity — whether by stealing someone else's or lying about her own. She changed her name, claimed to be a great outdoorsman, and solicited donations for her favorite charity — which turned out to be, in fact, her. In addition, Sarah lived thro...

Pre-teens will enjoy the spooky twists on situations recognizable from their own lives. Here you will jockey with a ghost at a sleepover, battle otherworldly monsters in a crosswalk at school, and risk your fate on a fiendish roller coaster. Plus meet a shadow with an unusual ambition, pursue an eerie solution for impossible homework, and face the creature that won't let go of your loose tooth. Seven additional stories lurk, each equally hair-raising. Vlad Pale's Crick Crack, 13 Ghoulish T...