In these wondrously strange and revealing stories, Tom Kealey chronicles the struggles and triumphs of the young and marginalized as they discover many ways of growing up.Their names are Merrill, Omar, Shelby, Laika, Winston, and Toomey, but most people don’t see them. They are boxers in training and the children of fishermen. They are altar boys in a poverty-stricken parish. They are assistant groundskeepers and assistant camel-keepers. They travel with the circus, care for disabl...

Growing up can mean growing pains and the joys of new independence. With maturity comes the shift from infinitepossibilities to imminent realities. These thirteen stories describe the slow and subtle experience of growing up, allowing us to reflect upon the forces that pushed us toward adulthood and away from the familiar ground of youth that must be left behind if we are to learn how to soar on our own.

These stories are enveloped by change and the changes that shift the trajectories of our lives: change that shatters us, change that opens the world, and change from which we can never come back. These fourteen stories tell us about extensive and inevitable changes and how we realign ourselves and our lives, if we can.

Travel, and the exhilarating experiences it offers us, is the shared concern of these stories, which have been chosen from among the hundreds that have appeared in the prestigious Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction series.More than seventy volumes, which include approximately eight hundred stories, have won the Flannery O'Connor Award. This stunning trove of always engaging, often groundbreaking short fiction is the common source for this anthology on childhood—and for plann...

Front porches, family cars, playgrounds, swimming pools: from such familiar haunts of childhood, these stories look out on the world through young eyes and hearts. Wise beyond their years—or soon to be—Ruthie, Omar, J.J., and the other kids in these stories veer in and out of touching distance to hard lessons about trust, love, and mortality. However engaged or aloof, grownups are always nearby. Far-from-perfect emissaries to the realm of adulthood, they pose questions for children even as...

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 gracefully disconcerting collection of stories by the winner of the 2005 Narrative Prize. Wavering between fidelity and freedom, the women in this sparkling debut deal with emotional damage and unhealed heartbreak by plunging into unusual, often bizarre, relationships. Praise for 'Famous Fathers and Other Stories': “Pia Zs stories will break your heart in the best way imaginable. I actually gasped aloud several times while reading this astonishing collection — its that brave, that funny,...

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...

A new edition of the Arthur Ellis Award winning crime novelArthur Beauchamp, the scholarly, self-doubting legend of the B.C. criminal bar, is enjoying his retirement on B.C.’s Garibaldi Island when he is dragged back to court to defend an old client. Nick “The Owl” Faloon, one of the world’s top jewel thieves, has been accused of raping and murdering a psychologist. Beauchamp has scarcely registered how unlikely it is that the rascally Faloon could commit a savage ...

“It is the voice of the characters, the kindness of strangers, and the ingenuity and determination of our protagonist against terrible forces that make this story sing.” — San Francisco Chronicle on Tucker’s debut, The Clay GirlFrom the author of the Indie Next List pick The Clay Girl comes a deeply moving novel about the resilience of a remarkable young woman unraveling the mystery of a missing friend while struggling to grow pas...

Wild Hundreds is a long love song to Chicago. The book celebrates the people, culture, and places often left out of the civic discourse and the travel guides. Wild Hundreds is a book that displays the beauty of black survival and mourns the tragedy of black death.

*Why did the chicken cross the road?Knock, knock. Who's there?What do you get when you...?*As kids guess the answers, they're sure to get the giggles! With this book, little ones will look forward to sharing the jokes with parents, teachers, and siblings--and even coming up with some variations of their own! In addition to hundreds of rib-tickling jokes, readers will love:Head-scratching brain teasersFunny knock-knock jokesHysterica...