"A gentle Eastern European immigrant arrives in New York City after his family and his life have been torn apart by his country's civil war. A man who loves to bowl rolls a perfect game--and then another and then another and then many more in a row until he winds up ESPN's newest celebrity, and he must decide if the combination of perfection and celebrity has ruined the thing he loves. An eccentric billionaire and his faithful executive assistant...

"Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his acclaimed and bestselling novel The Orphan Master's Son, Adam Johnson is one of America's most provocative and powerful authors. In Fortune Smiles--his first book since Orphan Master--he continues to give voice to characters rarely heard from, while offering something we all seek from fiction: a new way of looking at our world. In six masterly stories, Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters,...

"A man recalls his father's advice on how to save a drowning person, but struggles to come to terms with its application. Locked down with his new partner and her aging cat, a recovering alcoholic must continue learning how to balance control and vulnerability. When his husband dies, a son's request of his conservative father teaches both men to see one another, and their relationship, anew. In stories about love and fear, Romantic idealism and practical...

"Calling to mind the best works of Paul Beatty and Junot Diaz, this collection of moving, timely, and darkly funny stories examines the concept of black identity in this so-called post-racial era. A stunning new talent in literary fiction, Nafissa Thompson-Spires grapples with black identity and the contemporary middle class in these compelling, boundary-pushing vignettes. Each captivating story plunges headfirst into the lives of new, utterly original...

In a recent interview, when asked how he saw the role of the writer, Saunders said "To me, the writer's main job is to make the story unscroll in such a way that the reader is snared -- she's right there, seeing things happen and caring about them. And if you dedicate yourself to this job, the meanings more or less take care of themselves." In Tenth of December, the reader is always right there, and the meanings are beautiful and profound and abundant....

"From David Levithan's story about a non-binary kid collecting pieces of other people's collections to Jenny Torres Sanchez's tale of a girl gathering types of fire while trying not to get burned to G. Neri's piece about 1970s skaters seeking opportunities to go vertical -- anything can be collected and in the hands of these award-winning and best-selling authors, any collection can tell a story. Nine of the best YA novelists working today have written...

"Equal parts fantastical -- a pair of talking dolls help twins escape a stifling home, a heart boils on the stove as part of an elaborate cure for melancholy -- and true to life -- a mother and daughter try to heal their rift when the daughter falls unexpectedly pregnant, a woman reexamines her father's legacy after his death -- the stories in this collection are hopeful and heartbreaking, full of danger and full of joy. Chung is a master at capturing...

"In this incredible follow-up to the New York Times and USA TODAY bestseller FaceOff, twenty-two of the world's most popular thriller writers come together for an unforgettable anthology. MatchUp takes the never-before-seen bestseller pairings of FaceOff and adds a delicious new twist: gender. Eleven of the world's best female thriller writers from Diana Gabaldon to Charlene Harris are paired with eleven of the world's best male thriller writers,...

Set primarily in Pakistan, these award-winning stories follow people living on the brink of abandonment - in their personal relationships and their place in the world.

This much-anticipated second collection of stories is signature Ted Chiang, full of revelatory ideas and deeply sympathetic characters. In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and the temptation of second chances. In the epistolary "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications not just for his own people, but for all of...