National Network for Equitable Library Service

Twelve stories that provide startling glimpses of contemporary life in Bombay, and elsewhere. A wealthy business woman compelled by the desire to hurt her best friend; an old woman in a Tokyo apartment seeking the touch of a baby's hand; a woman reflecting on violence as a riot rages outside her home. Tales about friendship and repulsion, family ties and freedom; violence, public and private; ambition and uncertainty, alienation and acceptance, growing up and growing old.

I have written Life Stories virtually in the space of one breath -- these stories have been imagined in such concentration, that I had to free myself from them. They came so naturally, that I am very happy to have returned to the short-story format. It seems to me that in these eight stories each individual and different life is so strikingly intense that it was not possible to place all into one novel … Also in terms of style, I searched and found a different approach to each of the stories. I wanted to express myself more clearly and more simply.

From celebrated Toronto poet, Domenico Capilongo, comes a collection of powerful and humorous stories inspired by love: the love of family and tradition, the passion shared between two people when love is found, and the impact felt when it is misunderstood and lost. These stories travel the globe from Toronto to Vancouver, WWII Sicily, Rome, Japan, Thailand, and even the gardens of Paris. Capilongo succeeds in capturing the beat of relationships in their many stages of complicated development.

The game of life. Stories about competition in sports and games and activities. The Greek conception of the agon, competitive tests of skill and endurance and fortitude – and experiencing what an old TV show once called the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. There is more, however, than the pleasure of a score and the pain of a loss. More than the outcome of the competition is what the competition reveals about character. And, though all playing involves fun and skill and struggle, there is the game that leads to the short-term outcome and there is the game that is without end.

Len Gasparini is a master of the dark, hard-edged, densely layered story. In his latest story collection, The Snows of Yesteryear, he charts the climate of the human heart with compassion, humor, nostalgia, and irony. His characters are shaped as much by fate as by the hungry ghosts of their own pasts. A desperate publisher dreams up a clever hoax to save his weekly newspaper from going under. Life and art are crucially juxtaposed when a painter sees his ideal model in a young black stripper.

The resistance of the human spirit in face of time, disloyalty, and oblivion is the theme of Marina Sonkina’s new collection of short stories. Her seemingly naïve and helpless protagonists inhabit disparate social stations, geographical locales and cultures; all are persons displaced in their own lives. But in their struggles for survival, they discover the redeeming and dangerous power of unconditional love – the only weapon available to them. Strange and incomprehensible to everyone, love makes its sudden appearance to an eight-year-old hunchbacked boy in the title story of Lucia’s Eyes.

With their staccato rhythm and attention to detail these stories recall emotions, memories, atmosphere, and even physical sensations with a powerful freshness. Gasparini's ability to render passion and humanity ensure a truly memorable and compelling collection.

The two short stories in this collection are steeped in the revelries and tragedies of nostalgia. A woman living in war-torn Prague contemplates revenge against her oppressors but instead chooses to "sleep with the enemy." The stories in this work are set against a glimmering and dangerous Prague-populated by characters who are equally mysterious and beautiful.

This offbeat story collection effortlessly captures dark underworlds and the eccentric characters that inhabit them. In one story, a jealous tattoo artist revenges himself on the woman he loves. In another, one horrifying realization after another comes to light during a harmless childhood game. Told with a Hitchcock-like flair for psychological detail, these disturbing stories reverberate with gruesome plot twists and remarkable turns of fate.

A classic short fiction writer, Wade Bell lets his characters do the talking for him, electing to stay in the background. His style is simple but he's not afraid to pry open the heart of a character and expose it for all the world to see. Bell's latest collection features a young wife who deliberately sets up her husband to kill or be killed; a struggling artist who is picked up by a mysterious six-foot woman at a bar; a girlfriend called Jupiter Moon; and a drill instructor who gets his kicks ordering a seven-year-old to march.