Roseville to Kansas City, Jamaica Plains to Lubbock, the characters in Runaway find new lives. These exciting stories find transformation via spirit, heart, loss, hope and emptiness. Luanne Smith, Michael Gills, and Lee Zacharias have crafted a collection that is at once devastating and utterly magical. This is a collection to be read and re-read, shared in writing workshops and savored.—Karen Salyer McElmurray, Wanting RadianceWhat follows in this anthology is a collection...

Taboos and Transgressions: Stories of Wrongdoings, is a short story anthology, edited by Luanne Smith, Kerri Beth Neville, and Devi Laskar is an anthology focused on breaking the rules featuring stories by Pam Houston, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Joyce Carol Oates, and Kim Addonizio alongside emerging writers. The anthology offers a scope of voices, styles, stories, and wrongdoings. From infidelity to family prejudices, from breaking the law to broken promises, from losing everything to finding em...

For this anthology, Muddy Backroads: Stories from off the beaten path, the editors asked for stories that moved away from the norms of daily life to explore the side roads that take us away from the known. What do your characters do when they step away from what’s seen as normal or usual? What happens when they find themselves in unexpected situations or locations? What if nothing about their lives is what most consider typical? When a character takes a “muddy backroad,” he, they or she mo...

Motown, the crossover label made rhythm and blues the soul of American popular culture. Join us in honoring the artists connected to Hitsville, USA, and 30 years’ worth of “The Sound of Young America.” We asked contributors to show us their knowledge of Motown, its history and its place amongst R&B, soul, and Hip-Hop. We invited them to pay homage to the greats: Martha and the Vandellas, The Temptations, The Four Tops, The Supremes, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Jackson ...

Stories that move away from the norms of daily life to explore the side roads that take us away from the known. Where will those backroads and back alleys take us?

Taboos and Transgressions: Stories of Wrongdoings, is an anthology that includes fiction and nonfiction. It was edited by Luanne Smith, Kerry Neville, and Devi S. Laskar, and focuses on breaking the rules with stories by Pam Houston, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Joyce Carol Oates, and Kim Addonizio alongside exceptional work by both noted and emerging writers. The anthology offers a scope of voices, styles, stories, and wrongdoings. From infidelity to family prejudices, from breaking the law to bro...

"Have you ever wanted to run away from it all to some dusty little town, change your name to Wanda and wait tables while your life changes chapters? Have you ever felt the need to leave the wife behind, hop a train or hitch a ride and seek out the California sun? Have you ever come home to her clothes gone, her keys, her cat and nothing left there but a hint of her perfume? We've all had those times where we've dreamed it, planned it, lived it. This collection of short stories addresses ev...

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...

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...

All American Horror of the 21st Century is a compilation of the best short horror fiction published by magazines, anthologies, and websites between 2000 and 2010. These stories deal with “uniquely American” themes and subjects, and are written in an equally unique “American style.” Contributors include National Book Award-nominee Dan Chaon, rising horror star Jeff Jacobson, World-Fantasy award winner Andy Duncan, New York Times-bestselling authors Tom Monteleone, David Morrell, F. Paul Wil...

A small-town Bill Clinton look-alike agonizes over whether to accept a tempting offer from the CIA; an obese young woman finds love in a prairie cafe; a lonely child encounters a supernatural being; a teenage girl struggles with a sexual predator as she hitchhikes on the autobahn; a newly divorced man tries to return his adopted children; two brothers and a sister take their father's ashes back to the North, trying to make it over the ice road before break-up. These are just a few of the s...

A spectacular new anthology of the best short-short fiction from across the United States.It has been more than thirty years since the term "flash fiction" was first coined, perfectly describing the power in the brevity of these stories, each under 1,000 words. Since then, the form has taken hold in the American imagination. For this latest installment in the popular Flash Fiction series, James Thomas, Sherrie Flick, and John Dufresne have searched far and wide for...