Lists and Suggestions

The games and rituals performed by Katherine Heiny's characters range from mischievous and edgy to tenderly touching. In "Damascus," a mother fears her teenage son is making the same youthful mistakes she did, only to realize that he is wiser than she had understood. In "Twist and Shout," Ericka's elderly father mistakes his four-thousand-dollar hearing aid for a cashew. In "Turn Back, Turn Back," a bedtime story coupled with a receipt for a Starbucks babyccino reveal a struggling actor's deception. And in "561," Charlene pays the true price of infidelity when she is forced to help her husband's ex-wife move out of the family home. ("It's like you're North Korea and South Korea... But would North Korea help South Korea move?") From one of today's most accomplished bard's of modern life--of waking up in the wrong bed, wearing the wrong shoes, being late for the wrong job, but being loved by the right people--a fresh and satisfying work of glorious humour and immense kindness.

The "best short story writer in English" (Time) is back with a masterful collection that explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice, and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. With his trademark prose--wickedly funny, unsentimental, and perfectly tuned--Saunders continues to challenge and surprise: here is a collection of prismatic, deeply resonant stories that encompass joy and despair, oppression and revolution, bizarre fantasy and brutal reality. 'Love Letter' is a tender missive from grandfather to grandson, in the midst of a dystopian political situation in the not-too-distant future, that reminds us of our obligations to our ideals, ourselves, and each other. 'Ghoul' is set in a Hell-themed section of an underground amusement park in Colorado, and follows the exploits of a lonely, morally complex character named Brian, who comes to question everything he takes for granted about his 'reality.' In 'Mother's Day,' two women who loved the same man come to an existential reckoning in the middle of a hailstorm. And in 'Elliott Spencer,' our eighty-nine-year-old protagonist finds himself brainwashed--his memory 'scraped'--a victim of a scheme in which poor, vulnerable people are reprogrammed and deployed as political protesters. Together, these nine subversive, profound, and essential stories coalesce into a case for viewing the world with the same generosity and clear-eyed attention as Saunders does, even in the most absurd of circumstances.

From Oklahoma to California, the many heroes in this collection are bound by a common desire for connection and safety--inside a nation in which they have always lived but do not entirely belong. A member of the Osage tribe, author Chelsea T. Hicks' stories are compelled by an overlooked diaspora happening inside the borders of the United States itself: that of young Native people.

In her first short story collection, Zadie Smith combines her power of observation and her inimitable voice to mine the fraught and complex experience of life in the modern world. Interleaving eleven completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from The New Yorker and elsewhere, Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction. Moving exhilaratingly across genres and perspectives, from the historic to the vividly current to the slyly dystopian, Grand Union is a sharply alert and prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us. Nothing is off limits, and everything feels fresh and relevant. Perfectly paced and utterly original, Grand Union highlights the wonders Zadie Smith can do.

Beloved writer Samantha Irby's much-anticipated, sidesplitting fourth book following her 2020 breakout, Wow, No Thank You. The success of Irby's career has taken her to new heights. She fields calls with job offers from Hollywood and walks the red carpet with the iconic ladies of Sex and the City. Finally, she has made it. But, behind all that new-found glam, Irby is just trying to keep her life together as she always had. Her teeth are poisoning her from inside her mouth, and her diarrhea is back. She gets turned away from a restaurant for wearing ugly clothes, she goes to therapy and tries out Lexapro, gets healed with Reiki, explores the power of crystals, and becomes addicted to QVC. Making light of herself as she takes us on an outrageously funny tour of all the details that make up a true portrait of her life, Irby is once again the relatable, uproarious tonic we all need.

Set in a Native community in Maine, this riveting debut collection reveals what it means to be Penobscot in the Twenty-First Century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy. In twelve striking, luminescent stories, Morgan Talty--with searing humor, abiding compassion, and deep insight--breathes life into tales of family and a community as they struggle with a painful past and an uncertain future. A boy unearths a jar that holds an old curse, which sets into motion his family's unraveling; a man, while trying to swindle some pot from a dealer, discovers a friend passed out in the woods, his hair frozen into the snow; a grandmother suffering from Alzheimer's projects the past onto her grandson; and two friends, inspired by Antiques Roadshow, attempt to rob the tribal museum for valuable root clubs. A collection that examines the consequences and merits of inheritance, Night of the Living Rez is an unforgettable portrayal of an Indigenous community and marks the arrival of a standout talent in contemporary fiction.

Ling Ma brings us eight wildly different tales of people making their way through the madness and reality of our collective delusions: love and loneliness, connection and possession, friendship, motherhood, the idea of home. A woman lives in a house with all her ex-boyfriends. A toxic friendship grows up around a drug that makes you invisible. An ancient ritual might heal you of anything―if you bury yourself alive.

In a series of essays that span her childhood to present, Nora McInerny introduces us to her mind and her world while inviting us to more closely observe our own. This collection is a response to a society that tells us to live, laugh, and love. It reminds us that we don't have to be oppressively optimistic or obsessed with self-improvement.

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet-from the QWERTY keyboard and Staphylococcus aureus to the Taco Bell breakfast menu-on a five-star scale. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection that includes both beloved essays and all-new pieces exclusive to the book.

A rakish fairy meets the real Juliet behind Shakespeare's famous tragedy. A jewelry artist travels to the past to meet a successful silver-smith. The addled crew of a ship at sea discovers a mysterious merman. More than one ignored princess finds her match in the most unlikely men. From ecstasy to tragedy, with love blossoming shyly, love at first sight, and even love borne of practical necessity--beloved fantasist Jane Yolen's newest collection celebrates romance in all its glory.

With delicate wit, a breakneck pace, and a featherweight boxing style of nimble, merciless prose, this collection is about the places and personhoods we inhabit, including the places and people we probably shouldn't be. Each story touches on an undeniable past and a possible future: a glimpse of who we are and what we might become. A rogue assistant orchestrates a spectacular art world con in northern India. A custodian-turned-thief absconds to Antarctica while awaiting her trial. A family's underwater vacation is subverted by a murderous school of fish. In a series of 20 short fictions, Stories No One Hopes Are About Them takes the reader to the ends of the earth, from the ocean floor to the mountains of Himachal Pradesh, from an 18th-century German "house of the dead" to death row at Sing Sing to a party at the local zoo. We're guided by cocktail servers, serial killers, and theme park princesses. Many of these characters--like us--should probably be elsewhere. At once playfully dark and slyly hopeful, Stories No One Hopes Are About Them explores convergences of power, privilege, and place.

The beloved bestselling author of Here for It presents a collection of heartening, thoughtful, and laugh-out-loud funny essays about the lifelong search for community and returning home. After going viral "reading" the chaotic political news, having one-too-many awkward social encounters, and coming to terms with his intersecting identities, R. Eric Thomas is ready to live his best life. Or, if not, at least his best-ish life. Now, in this collection of insightful and hilarious essays, Eric finds himself doing things completely out of character, starting with moving back to his perpetually misunderstood hometown of Baltimore. They say you can't go home again, but what if you and home have changed beyond recognition? From attending his twenty-year high school reunion and discovering another person's face on his name badge, to splattering an urgent care room with blood à la The Shining, to being terrorized by a plague of gay frogs who've overtaken his backyard, Eric provides the nitty, and sometimes gritty, details of wrestling with your past life while in the middle of a new one. With wit, heart, and hope for the future, Congratulations, The Best Is Over! is the not-so-gentle reminder we all need that even when life doesn't go according to plan, we can still find our way back home.

In nine lively essays, critc Aisha Harris invites us into the wonderful, maddening process of making sense of the pop culture we consume. Harris has made a name for herself as someone you can turn to for a razor-sharp take on whatever show or movie everyone is talking about. Now, she turns her talents inward, mining the benchmarks of her nineties childhood and beyond to analyze the tropes that are shaping all of us, and our ability to shape them right back. In the opening essay, an interaction with Chance the Rapper prompts an investigation into the origin myth of her name. Elsewhere, Aisha traces the evolution of the "Black Friend" trope from its Twainian origins through to the heyday of the Spice Girls, teen comedies like Clueless, and sitcoms of the New Girl variety. And she examines the overlap of taste and identity in this era, rejecting the patriarchal ethos that you are what you like. Whatever the subject, sitting down with her book feels like hanging out with your smart, hilarious, pop culture-obsessed friend--and it's a delight.

Elin Hilderbrand offers nine delectable stories—prequels, sequels, and "missing chapters" from her cherished books—some of which have never been published, until now. With a foreword by Hilderbrand about the writer’s reluctance to leave treasured characters behind and a prefatory, "behind-the-scenes" note included with each story, this book answers the prayers of both new and seasoned readers everywhere who, like the Kirkus reviewer, “would rather be living in an Elin Hilderbrand novel.

Justin C. Key has long been obsessed with monsters. Reading R.L. Stine's Goosebumps as a kid, he imagined himself battling monsters and mayhem to a triumphant end. But when watching Scream 2, in which the movie's only Black couple is promptly killed off, he realized that the Black and Brown characters in his favorite genre were almost always the victim or villain--if they were portrayed at all. In The World Wasn't Ready for You, Key expands and subverts the horror genre to expertly explore issues of race, class, prejudice, love, exclusion, loneliness, and what it means to be a person in the world, while revealing the horrifying nature inherent in all of us. In the opening story, "The Perfection of Theresa Watkins," a sci-fi love story turned nightmare, a husband uses new technology to download the consciousness of his recently deceased Black wife into the body of a white woman. In "Spider King," an inmate agrees to participate in an experimental medical study offered to Black prisoners in exchange for early release, only to find his body reacting with disturbing symptoms. And in the title story, a father tries to protect his son, teaching him how to navigate a prejudiced world that does not understand him and sees him as a threat. The World Wasn't Ready for You is a gripping, provocative, and distinctly original collection that demonstrates Key's remarkable literary gifts--a skill at crafting science fiction stories equaled by an ability to sculpt characters and narrative--as well as his utterly fresh take on how genre can be used to delight, awe, frighten, and ultimately challenge our perceptions. Wildly imaginative and powerfully resonant, it introduces an unforgettable new voice in fiction.

Welcome to the Coral Lounge, a room in Helen Ellis's New York City apartment painted such an exuberant shade of Sherman Williams that a peeping Tom once left a sticky note with the doorman asking for the color. It is in the Coral Lounge that the magic of Helen's marriage unfolds: Shindigs where strangers swap clothing in the powder room, a party game called "What's in the box?" makes its uproarious debut, the Puzzle Posse pounces on a 500-piece jigsaw of a beheaded priest. Then, when the pandemic shuts down the city, the Coral Lounge becomes a place of refuge, where Helen and her husband eat take-out while sitting on the floor like toddlers, dragging French fries through a ketchup swamp, where they sing to the two enormous cats who chew on Helen's hair while she sleeps, and where they while away the hours with Mexican Viagra and the ensuing neck injury. In these surprising, romantic, sexy, and hilariously frank essays, Ellis paints a portrait of true romance for our times.

Alexander Chee, an essayist of “virtuosity and power” (Washington Post), selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year. This compilation of powerful and well-crafted essays will make readers cry, think, then return later for more because like a good meal, these take some time to fully digest.

In a collection of luminous stories populated by deeply moving and multifaceted characters, the black girls and women who sit in traditional church pews discover their own unique ways to worship. Though each of these nine stories carries a strong female voice, or voices, from a different region, life experience, and time, the church and its profound influence on black communities is a complex character in itself.

Maggie Shipstead dives into eclectic and vivid settings, from an Olympic village to a deathbed in Paris to a Pacific atoll, and illuminating a cast of indelible characters, She traverses ordinary and unusual realities with cunning, compassion, and wit. In "Acknowledgments," a male novelist reminisces bitterly on the woman who inspired his first novel, attempting to make peace with his humiliations before the book goes to print. In "The Cowboy Tango," spanning decades in the open country of Montana, a triangle of love and self-preservation plays out among an aging rancher called the Otter, his nephew, and a young woman named Sammy who works the horses.

In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others--along with original, previously unreleased essays--Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ourselves, and in doing so proves himself a bellwether for our times.

In Serious Face, Mooallem brings to life the desperate hopes and urgent fears of the people he meets, telling their stories with empathy, humor, insight, and kindness. These elegant, moving essays form an idiosyncratic tapestry of human experience: our audacity and fallibility, our bumbling and goodwill. In moments of calamity and within the extreme absurdity of everyday life, can we learn to love the people we really are, behind the serious faces we show the world? Beneath the self-assured and serious faces we wear, every human life is full of longing, guesswork, and confusion--a scramble to do the best we can and make everything up as we go along. Mooallem chronicles the beauty of our blundering and the inescapability of our imperfections. He investigates the collapse of a multimillion-dollar bird-breeding scam run by an aging farmer known as the Pigeon King, intimately narrates a harrowing escape from California's deadliest wildfire, visits an eccentric Frenchman building a town at what he claims is the center of the world, shadows a man through his first day of freedom after twenty-one years in prison, and more--all with a deep conviction that it's our vulnerability, not our victories, that connect us.

A woman steals a baby from a shelter in an attempt to salvage her own lost motherhood. A phone-sex operator sees divine opportunity when a lavender-eyed cowboy walks into her life. A mother and a son selling dream catchers along a highway that leads to a toxic beach manifest two young documentary filmmakers into their realm. And two teenage girls play a dangerous online game with destiny. United by the stark and sprawling landscapes of California's Central Valley, Chelsea Bieker brims over with each character's attempt to salvage - or sabotage - grace where they can find it.

Glory Edim launches her Well-Read Black Girl Library with this vital anthology celebrating stories from such luminaries as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. This beautifully curated collection centers around the voices of young Black characters as they contend with innocence, belonging, love, and self-discovery. From the timeless lessons in Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" ("this is how you smile to someone you like completely") to those in Dana Johnson's "Melvin in the Sixth Grade" ("this is how kids start fights"), these short stories illuminate the power and the precariousness of Black girlhood. Highlighting both iconic and lesser-known authors-Edwidge Danticat, Amina Gautier, Dorothy West, Paule Marshall, Shay Youngblood, and more-this is an indispensable compendium that will instill readers with "the nerve to walk [their] own way" (Zora Neale Hurston).

In the vein of You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) and Black Nerd Problems, this witty, incisive essay collection from New York Times critic at large Maya Phillips explores race, religion, sexuality, and more through the lens of her favorite pop culture fandoms. From the moment Phillips saw the opening scroll of Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, her childhood changed forever. Her formative years were spent loving not just the Star Wars saga, but superhero cartoons, anime, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, Tolkien, and Doctor Who--to name just a few. As a critic, Phillips has written extensively on theater, poetry, and the latest blockbusters--with her love of some of the most popular and nerdy fandoms informing her career. Now, she analyzes the mark these beloved intellectual properties leave on young and adult minds, and what they teach us about race, gender expression, religion, and more--especially as fandom becomes more and more mainstream. Spanning from the 90s through to today, Nerd is a collection of cultural criticism essays through the lens of fandom for everyone from the casual Marvel movie watcher to the hardcore Star Wars expanded universe connoisseur. It's for anyone who's ever wondered where they fit into the narrative or if they can be seen as a hero--even of their own story.

Eight interconnected stories follow the tenants in the Banneker Homes, a low-income high rise in Harlem where gentrification weighs on everyone's mind, as they weave in and out of each other's lives, endeavoring to escape from their pasts and forge new paths forward. Fofana delivers the hardy, profane, violent, and passionate narration in Black English Vernacular, and finds the humanity in all his characters as they struggle to get by. These engrossing and gritty stories of tenuous living in a gentrifying America enchant.

From living literary legend Ana Castillo's groundbreaking collection explores the secrets that are kept within households, the behaviors borne of patriarchal privilege, and the women they impact the most Throughout these stories, Mexico is the source of both mystery and clarity, whether through characters’ histories as immigrants or children of immigrants, or because, as happens frequently, the characters in these tales must travel there, like Dorothy to Oz, to unlock knowledge which often has the potential to alter their lives.Castillo’s truth-seeking characters leave an impression.

From literary icon Margaret Atwood comes a brilliant collection of nonfiction--funny, erudite, intimate, impassioned, and always startlingly prescient--which grapples with such wide-ranging topics as: Why do people everywhere, in all cultures, tell stories? How do we get rid of the immense amount of plastic that's littering our seas and lands? How much of yourself can you give away without evaporating? Is science fiction now writing us? So what if beauty is only skin deep? What do zombies have to do with authoritarianism? Is it true? And is it fair? In over fifty pieces, taken from lectures, autobiographical essays, book reviews, cultural criticism, obituaries, and new introductions to her own body of work as well as that of other writers, we watch Atwood aim her prodigious intellect and impish humor at the world, and report back to us on what she finds.

Pop culture is the Pandora's Box of our lives. Racism, wealth, poverty, beauty, inclusion, exclusion, and hope -- all of these intractable and unavoidable features course through the media we consume. Examining pop culture's impact on her life, Nichole Perkins takes readers on a rollicking trip through the last twenty years of music, media, and the internet from the perspective of one southern Black woman. She explores her experience with mental illness and how the TV series Frasier served as a crutch, how her role as mistress led her to certain internet message boards that prepared her for current day social media, and what it means to figure out desire and sexuality and Prince in a world where marriage is the only acceptable goal for women. Combining her sharp wit, stellar pop culture sensibility, and trademark spirited storytelling, Nichole boldly tackles the damage done to women, especially Black women, by society's failure to confront the myths and misogyny at its heart, and her efforts to stop the various cycles that limit confidence within herself. By using her own life and loves as a unique vantage point, Nichole humorously and powerfully illuminates how to take the best pop culture has to offer and discard the harmful bits, offering a mirror into our own lives.