NCW Libraries

How are our lives shaped by the difficult choices of our parents and even grandparents? How will our own choices direct the future for our children? Following generations of one family across nearly a century, each of Andrea Lewis's intertwined, engaging short stories evokes an intense sense of place and time, from New Orleans in 1895 to Grand Isle, Louisiana, during the hurricane of 1901 and on to London during the Olympic Games of 1948. The people...

"Principal Anne DeWitt knew her past could catch up with her, but she didn't expect it would make her late for school. Killing a man does take time though; so does disposing the body...if you do it right. After three relatively quiet years at Travis High School, it seems Anne is in danger of being exposed--even the baseball coach knows more about her former life than she ever imagined. Now, she must find out who else holds her secrets and who wants...

Tobias Wolff's first two books, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs and Back in the World, proved how the short story can "provoke our amazed appreciation" (New York Times Book Review). In the years since, he's written a third collection, The Night in Question, as well as several other astounding works. Now he returns with fresh revelations—about biding one's time, experiencing first love, or burying one's mother—that come

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Renee Simms's debut short story collection is a revealing look at how geography, memory, ancestry, and desire influence our personal relationships. In many of her stories, Simms exposes her own interest in issues concerning time and space. For example, in "Rebel Airplanes," an L.A. engineer works by day on city sewers and by night on R-C planes that she yearns to launch into the cosmos. The character-driven stories in Meet Behind Mars offer beautiful...

Beth Piatote's luminous debut collection opens with a feast, grounding its stories in the landscapes and lifeworlds of the Native Northwest, exploring the inventive and unforgettable pattern of Native American life in the contemporary world. Told with humor, subtlety, and spareness, the mixed-genre works of Beth Piatote's first collection draw on Indigenous aesthetics and forms to offer a powerful,sustaining vision of Native life. A woman teaches...

The bestselling, award-winning author’s “fiercely freewheeling collection of stories and poems about the tragicomedies of ordinary lives” (O, The Oprah Magazine).
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, War Dances blends short stories, poems, call-and-response, and more into something that only Sherman Alexie could have written. Ordinary men stand at the threshold of profound change, from...

"Told in the intimate voices of complex, endearing characters, Five Tuesdays in Winter intriguingly subverts expectations as it explores desire, loss, jolting violence, and the inexorable tug toward love at all costs."--Dust jacket flap. "With Writers & Lovers and Euphoria, Lily King's books catapulted onto bestseller and best-of-the-year lists across the country, further cementing her reputation as one of the most "brilliant" (NYTBR), "wildly talented"...

Discover the true meaning of fear with these classic horror stories. The Essential Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft collects one of the author's most popular novellas, "At the Mountain of Madness," and six of his most famous short stories, including "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Shadow Out of Time," "The Dunwich Horror," "The Colour of Space," "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," and "The Whisperer in the Darkness." These hair-raising tales have inspired generations...