National Network for Equitable Library Service

Terence Young's second collection of short stories, The End of the Ice Age, brings together thirteen tales of hardscrabble characters in their lonely orbits. Young's writing is unadorned and precise, yet witty and unsentimental, and of striking psychological precision. These are stories of unfulfilled expectations, of infidelities'of the body and the mind and conscience and the small though ultimately meaningful victories that allow us to withstand.

The eleven remarkable stories in Kevin Hardcastle's debut Debris introduce an authentic new voice. Written in a lean and muscular style and brimming with both violence and compassion, these stories unflinchingly explore the lives of those MMA fighters, the institutionalized, small-town criminals who exist on the fringes of society, unveiling the blood and guts and beauty of life in our flyover regions.

In the stories of Confidence, there are ecstasy-taking PhD students, financial traders desperate for husbands, owners of failing sex stores, violent and unremovable tenants, aggressive raccoons, seedy massage parlors, experimental filmmakers who record every second of their day, and wives who blog insults directed at their husbands. There are cheating husbands. There are private clubs, crowded restaurants, psychiatric wards. There is one magic cinema and everyone has a secret of some kind.

In this sparkling collection of stories drawn from the surreal edge of life, playful irony vies with more poignant evocations of solitude, mortality, and the dawn of sexual awareness - all bodied forth in a language that is precise, elegant, and immediate.

What are boys and men thinking? That's what the wry, observant, heartbroken and hilarious girls and women in these stories want to know. What are they thinking when they warn women against adventure, gulp ale in moonlit truck wrecks, steal their fingers down their nurses' thighs, tell their little girls fairy tales? What are insane boys the most exquisite, and where have the musical geniuses flown without our love? What is Jerome Hepditch doing in a loincloth, and how will his wives acquire escape vehicles?

At Dream Inc., a lifestyle-magazine publisher, people are struggling to do more than their jobs. They struggle to fall in love. They struggle to stay that way. They struggle to be good parents, and to be good children. They struggle to have friends, to eat lunch, to be happy, and to answer the phone. And all that struggle can be pretty interesting especially when it happens on company time. In The Big Dream, acclaimed short story writer Rebecca Rosenblum documents a new generation discovering itself in the workplace, and gives us an In Our Time for the present age.

Now in its 47th year, 'Best Canadian Stories' has long championed the short story form and highlighted the work of many of the writers, throughout their respective careers, who have gone on to shape the Canadian literary canon.

In a linked collection that presents the secret small tragedies of an Anglican congregation struggling to survive, All Saints delves into the life of Simon, the Reverend, and the lives of his parishioners: Miss Alice Vipond, a refined and elderly schoolteacher, incarcerated for a horrendous crime; a woman driven to extreme anxiety by an affair she cannot end; a receptionist, and her act of improbable generosity; a writer making peace with her divorce.

These fourteen stories by acclaimed poet Patricia Young explore the small victories and lurching disappointments, losses and betrayals of the everyday with a language and style that is tautly poetic and beautifully unsentimental. A woman who cannot leave her house loses almost everything, her only companion a garrulous radio talk show host; a house fire sets in motion the end of a marriage as a couple re-examine the meaning of truth and commitment; a teenage girl cannot extract herself from a doomed relationship with a heroin addict.

"Weeds" by Stephen King: When a meteorite lands on his property, Jordy Verrill envisions an easy payday. Unfortunately for Jordy, this is no ordinary rock-and the uncompromising force inside has found its first target. "The Price You Pay" by Kelley Armstrong: Never pay more than you owe. Sounds like easy advice to follow. But for Kara and her childhood friend Ingrid, some debts can never be repaid . . . especially those tendered in blood. "Magic Eyes" by Bill Pronzini: Edward James Tolliver has found a weary sort of asylum among the insane.