National Network for Equitable Library Service

A great classic of Japanese literature and the masterpiece of novelist Ihara Saikaku—now in a completely new and revised edition with an introduction by noted scholar David J. Gundry. The culmination of Saikaku's perceptive genius, the 20 short stories within This Scheming World recount raucous events and incidents on New Year's Eve as everyone tries to settle their debts for the year, as is the New Year's custom.

"Larry Brown wrote the way the best singers sing: with honesty, grit, and the kind of raw emotion that stabs you right in the heart. He was a singular American treasure." -Tim McGraw. A career-spanning collection, Tiny Love brings together for the first time the stories of Larry Brown's previous collections along with those never before gathered. The self-taught Brown has long had a cult following, and this collection comes with an intimate and heartfelt appreciation by novelist Jonathan Miles.

Short stories from a New York Times–bestselling author, in settings ranging from Edwardian garden parties to 1970s Manhattan. While bringing to life stories of the past filled with privilege and glamour, these tales also explore their characters’ less than savory ambitions and desires. In the title story, an older man eulogizes his young friend—a muse to the artists he gathered around himself—only to reveal that despite the young man’s burgeoning reputation as a poet, he could only inspire genius, but not produce it.

Rudyard Kipling, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1907, has long been considered an important and vibrant, even controversial, storyteller and poet.

In paperback for the first time, the much-beloved satirical novel The New York Times praised as "both a treatise and a romp." Baby Ralph has ways to pass the time in his crib—but they don't include staring at a mobile. Aided by his mother, he reads voraciously: "All of Swift, all of Sterne, Invisible Man, Baldwin, Joyce, Balzac, Auden, Roethke," along with a generous helping of philosophy, semiotics, and trashy thrillers. He's also fond of writing poems and stories (in crayon). But Ralph has limits.

From the pre-eminent author of Felicia's Journey and Death in Summer, the first major collection of stories since the highly acclaimed After Rain. With understatement and startling precision William Trevor writes about longing and sadness, the loving and the lonely, those who barely have control over their lives and those who have something to hide. Whether writing of the dying of a day, a love or a way of life, Trevor tells a story of such distilled beauty and intelligence that humanity illuminates even its darkest corners.

This collection of short stories of the Mississippi Delta by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author is “a work of art” (The New York Times Book Review). Here in Morgana, Mississippi, the young dream of other places; the old can tell you every name on every stone in the cemetery on the town’s edge; and cuckolded husbands and love-starved piano teachers share the same paths. It’s also where one neighbor has disappeared on the horizon, slipping away into local legend.

Enter a world of magic and myth, where foxes fall in love and robots build their own dragons. In The Fox’s Tower and Other Tales, New York Times bestselling author Yoon Ha Lee crafts together short and moving stories of love, adventure, magic, and nature. With poetic language and intricate world building, readers will be whisked away to a different adventure with every new story. Full of fascinating creatures and LGBT+ romances, this flash fiction collection combines the classic with the contemporary in Yoon’s captivating style.

If you know London primarily through novels like White Fang, these stories will provide a new perspective. Full of intriguing characters and snippets of pidgin, they also highlight London's concern with social issues.

Something Special was previously unpublished except in a 1950s anthology and in Japan, and rediscovered after her death. It is the only short story that Iris Murdoch ever wrote for publication. Set in Dublin, against the vividly recognisable backdrop of the writer's native city in the late fifties, Something Special is the story of Yvonne, an ordinary, bold young Irish woman who believes there's more to life than marriage to Sam, the respectable young man who's courting her.