National Network for Equitable Library Service

'This novel is a jewel ... one of those books that enters the soul, which it is impossible not to be conquered by. It is a masterpiece like few others' —Huffington Post. Miguel and Alicia fall quietly in love as teenagers, walking back from school together. When Lucas—enigmatic, charismatic—arrives, everything changes, and Miguel is certain he has lost Alicia. Yet, against the odds, she marries him. Now, eleven years later, their marriage has begun to fray, and Alicia sets out to see Lucas again.

If one theme unifies the 11 tales collected here, it is that of longing. Written after her return from Kenya and during the dark days of the Nazi occupation, they derive their themes and locales from Isak Dinesen's childhood in Denmark. Isak Dinesen was the pen-name of Karen Blixen, who was born in Rungsted, Denmark in 1885. After studying art at Copenhagen, Paris, and Rome, she married her cousin, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, in 1914. Together they went to Kenya to manage a coffee plantation.

Twenty-five stories, twenty-five paintings, five years to write, ten years to paint. This is an extraordinary collaboration between artist and artist: the Booker Prize-winning writer Ben Okri and the painter Rosemary Clunie. Together they have created a world, and peopled it with dreams. Twenty-five fairy tales for adults, these narratives are a response to our times, informed by our world but not limited by it, imaginative, enchanting, haunting – both prescient and prophetic.

A fresh and fearless collection of short fiction, poetry, and graphic fiction for today's middle-grade readers. In this timely, thought-provoking, funny, and heartbreaking collection, ten acclaimed BIPOC authors from across Canada explore the theme and concept of home. From awkward family dinners to life on the rez to moving to a new town, each of these stories provides a unique perspective on the theme of belonging through characters tasked with navigating and finding their place in this world.

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.