Reader's Shelf

From Library Journal

A Little Bit of Everything:  Short Story Debuts

Young Skins: Stories By Barrett, Colin 2015-03 - Grove Press, Black Cat 9780802123329 Check Our Catalog Awards: Guardian First Book Award (2014) Winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award Winner of the Guardian First Book Award Winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature A stunning introduction to a singular new voice in contemporary fiction. Enter the small, rural town of Glanbeigh, a place whose fate took a downturn with the Celtic Tiger, a desolate spot where buffoonery and tension simmer and erupt, …More

The Wonder Garden By Acampora, Lauren 2015-05 - Grove Press 9780802123558 Check Our Catalog "John likes to arrive first. He enjoys standing quietly with a house before his clients arrive, and today, although he feels pinned beneath an invisible weight, he resolves to savor this solitary moment. It's one of those overhauled ranches so common to Old Cranbury these days, swollen and dressed to resemble a colonial. White, of course, with ornamental shutters and latches pretending to hold …More

Hall of Small Mammals: Stories By Pierce, Thomas 2015-01 - Riverhead Books 9781594632525 Check Our Catalog A wild, inventive ride of a short story collection from a distinctive new American storyteller. The stories in Thomas Pierce's "Hall of Small Mammals" take place at the confluence of the commonplace and the cosmic, the intimate and the infinite. A fossil-hunter, a comedian, a hot- air balloon pilot, parents and children, believers and nonbelievers, the people in these stories are struggling to …More

Single, Carefree, Mellow: Stories By Heiny, Katherine 2015-02 - Knopf Publishing Group 9780385353632 Check Our Catalog "Katherine Heiny's work does something magical: elevates the mundane so that it has the stakes of a mystery novel, gives women's interior lives the gravity they so richly deserve -- and makes you laugh along the way." --Lena Dunham "Single, Carefree, Mellow "is that rare and wonderful thing: a debut that is superbly accomplished, endlessly entertaining, and laugh-out-loud funny. Maya …More

Night at the Fiestas: Stories By Quade, Kirstin Valdez 2015-03 - W. W. Norton & Company 9780393242980 Check Our Catalog With intensity and emotional precision, Kirstin Valdez Quade's unforgettable stories plunge us into the fierce, troubled hearts of characters defined by the desire to escape the past or else to plumb its depths. The deadbeat father of a pregnant teenager tries to transform his life by playing the role of Jesus in a bloody penitential Passion. A young man discovers that his estranged father and …More

Redeployment By Klay, Phil 2015-02 - Penguin Books 9780143126829 Check Our Catalog Phil Klay's" Redeployment "takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned. Interwoven with themes of brutality and faith, guilt and fear, helplessness and survival, the characters in these stories struggle to make meaning out of chaos. …More