It's the summer of 1993. After the death of their parents at the hands of a drunk driver, city-dwelling teenage brothers Christopher and James Janes are sent to live with their widowed grandfather in the remote Ozarks of Missouri. There, the brothers must learn to cope with the drastic turn their lives have taken and the unfamiliarity of their surroundings, as well as their grief. By some stroke of fate, there is one other person their age in the area: a girl named Kylie.

Eight years after a virus has left half of the population of the world mentally unstable, a man named Ethan Chase enters into a program to become a "Sitter", or caretaker, to two "Unstables". One of which, is a girl, a "Mirror", who believes that she leaves for Paris every Sunday and returns on Tuesday and often mimics and repeats the actions of those around her. The other, a highly functioning "Amnesiac" named Noah who is at one moment lucid and the next completely incoherent.

The Short(Cuts) is a collection of seven unique and individual stories that range across all different genres. Sometimes humorous and other times sad, the collection represents some of the smaller works that Matthew Fish has written in the past 18 years. They range in length from 1,000-word shorts to 30,000-word pieces that have been dated to show a progress and change in both narrative style and tone.

A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible. In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth - from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds - collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground. The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot.

There's a reason We Are Legion was named Audible's Best Science Fiction Book of 2016: Its irresistibly irreverent wit! Bob Johansson has just sold his software company for a small fortune and is looking forward to a life of leisure. The first item on his to-do list: Spending his newfound windfall. On an urge to splurge, he signs up to have his head cryogenically preserved in case of death. Then he gets himself killed crossing the street. Waking up 117 years later, Bob discovers his mind has been uploaded into a sentient space probe with the ability to replicate itself.

A teenage mage of humble birth and slightly above-average skill, Zorian is attending his third year of education at Cyoria's magical academy. A driven and quiet young man, he is consumed by a desire to ensure his own future and free himself of the influence of his family, resenting the Kazinskis for favoring his brothers over him. Consequently, Zorian has no time for pointless distractions, much less other people's problems.

Ren Sawyer and Lizzy Harper live completely different lives. He's a rock star with a secret he can no longer live with. She's a regular person whose husband stood her up for a long-planned anniversary trip. On a flight across the Atlantic headed for Italy, a drunken pity party and untimely turbulence literally drop Lizzy into Ren's lap. It is the last thing she can imagine ever happening to someone like her. But despite their surface differences, they discover an undeniable pull between them. A pull that leads them both to remember who they had once been before letting themselves be changed.

Life was barely manageable after my mom was murdered three years ago. I wasn’t sure what my purpose was anymore. But then on my 21st birthday, I drank a little too much and fell from the roof of my nine-story apartment building. I died. Then...I un-died. Enter Hayden, my really bossy (and hot) guardian angel whose duty is to train me to be the next “Soldier of Light.” I’m pretty sure I’m the wrong person for this job, despite what Hayden thinks. Guess I’m stuck saving the dead.

An angry rebel, John dropped out of school and enlisted in the Army, not knowing what else to do with his life - until he meets Savannah, the girl of his dreams. Their mutual attraction quickly grows into the kind of love that leaves Savannah waiting for John to finish his tour of duty, and John wanting to settle down with the woman who has captured his heart. But 9/11 changes everything. John feels it is his duty to re-enlist.

Eury comes to the Bronx as a girl haunted. Haunted by losing everything in Hurricane Maria - and by an evil spirit, Ato. She fully expects the tragedy that befell her and her family in Puerto Rico to catch up with her in New York. Yet, for a time, she can almost set this fear aside, because there's this boy.... Pheus is a golden-voiced, bachata-singing charmer, ready to spend the summer on the beach with his friends, serenading his on-again, off-again flame. That changes when he meets Eury. But some dangers are too powerful for even the strongest love.

Jay Reguero plans to spend the last semester of his senior year playing video games before heading to the University of Michigan in the fall. But when he discovers that his Filipino cousin Jun was murdered as part of President Duterte's war on drugs, and no one in the family wants to talk about what happened, Jay travels to the Philippines to find out the real story. Hoping to uncover more about Jun and the events that led to his death, Jay is forced to reckon with the many sides of his cousin before he can face the whole horrible truth - and the part he played in it.

Two years and 6,000 miles away from the explosion that took his leg, Josh Carpenter struggles to reclaim his former life as a college student. Mary Fischer, a civilian for the first time in years, strikes out on her own to create a new, independent life away from the army and her controlling mother. The last time Josh saw Mary, his National Guard unit was leaving Kuwait, headed north to the war. The last time Mary saw Josh, she watched as his unconscious body was rolled onto a plane bound for a hospital in Germany.

Idyllic Avril Island, owned by the Bennett family, is where their hundred-year-old cottage sat nestled in acres of forest. Forty-year-old June Bennett believed that the island had been sold after the summer of her father's disappearance when she was only 12 years old. It's months after the shocking death of her older sister, May, in a fatal car accident that June finds out that the cottage was never sold. Avril Island is still owned by the Bennett family, and now it's hers. Still reeling from the grief of losing her sister, June travels back to Avril Island in search of answers.

Eighteen-year-old Amelia Griffin is obsessed with the famous Orman Chronicles, written by the young and reclusive prodigy N. E. Endsley. They're the books that brought her and her best friend Jenna together after Amelia's father left and her family imploded. So when Amelia and Jenna get the opportunity to attend a book festival with Endsley in attendance, Amelia is ecstatic. It's the perfect way to start off their last summer before college. In a heartbeat, everything goes horribly wrong.

Millicent Watts-Cohen is on a mission. When she promised her elderly best friend that she’d reunite her with the woman she fell in love with nearly eighty years ago, she never imagined that would mean traveling from D.C. to Key West with three tablespoons of Mrs. Nash’s remains in her backpack. But Millie’s determined to give her friend a symbolic happily-ever-after, before it’s (really) too late—and hopefully reassure herself of love’s lasting power in the process.

Marine biologist Ben Ransome understands the sea, especially the tiny, beautiful sea slugs he has studied and admired for most of his life. What Ben doesn't understand are people, and now, one of the most important people in his life - his 16-year-old daughter, Caddie - is coming to live with him for the summer. But the sweet, happy child he remembers has been replaced by a wounded, angry stranger who resents everything about her father. Caddie is determined to act out in every way, leaving Ben feeling more alone than ever.

Los Angeles, California: Clem Jasper is a trust fund kid with a world famous rock musician for a father. When he dies suddenly (playing ping pong) she discovers he's left her a strange legacy: a series of letters that take her on a mysterious road trip around California. Ignoring her aunt's suggestion that she pitch the trip as a reality show, she embarks on her own to discover just what it was that her father meant her to find. What secret could be so powerful that he had to die before telling her?

Twenty-one years after they were driven apart by circumstances beyond their control, two former lovers have a chance encounter on a Manhattan street. What follows is a tense, suspenseful exploration of the many facets of enduring love. Told from alternating points of view through time, If I Forget You tells the story of Henry Gold, a poet whose rise from poverty embodies the American dream, and Margot Fuller, the daughter of a prominent, wealthy family, and their unlikely, star-crossed love affair.

When she arrived in New York on her eighteenth birthday carrying nothing but $600 cash and a stolen camera, Alice Lee was looking for a fresh start. Now, just one month later, she is the city’s latest Jane Doe. She may be dead but that doesn’t mean her story is over. Meanwhile, Ruby Jones is also trying to reinvent herself. After travelling halfway around the world, she’s lonelier than ever in the Big Apple. Until she stumbles upon a woman’s body by the Hudson River, and suddenly finds herself unbreakably tied to the unknown dead woman.

In I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying, Bassey Ikpi explores her life - as a Nigerian-American immigrant, a black woman, a slam poet, a mother, a daughter, an artist - through the lens of her mental health and diagnosis of bipolar II and anxiety. Her remarkable memoir in essays implodes our preconceptions of the mind and normalcy as Bassey bares her own truths and lies for us all to behold with radical honesty and brutal intimacy.

Kahlen is a Siren, bound to serve the Ocean by luring humans to watery graves with her voice, which is deadly to any human who hears it. Akinli is human - a kind, handsome boy who's everything Kahlen ever dreamed of. Falling in love puts them both in danger...but Kahlen can't bear to stay away. Will she risk everything to follow her heart?

In her best-selling memoir North of Normal, Cea wrote with grace about her unconventional childhood - her early years living in a tipi in Alberta with her pot-smoking, free-loving counterculture family. But her struggles do not end when she leaves her family at the age of 13 to become a model. Honest and daring, Nearly Normal reveals the many ways that Cea's unconventional childhood continues to reverberate through the years.

The Kaufmans have always considered themselves a normal, happy family. Curtis is a physics teacher at a local high school. His wife, Kathleen, restores furniture for upscale boutiques. Daniel is away at college on a prestigious music scholarship, and 12-year-old Olivia is a happy-go-lucky kid whose biggest concern is passing her next math test. And then comes the middle-of-the-night phone call that changes everything.

For years Maggie Sheets has been an invisible hand in the glittering homes of wealthy New York City clients, scrubbing, dusting, mopping, and doing all she can to keep her head above water as a single mother. Everything changes when a former employer dies, leaving Maggie a staggering inheritance - a house in Sag Harbor. The catch? It comes with an inhabitant: the deceased's 82-year old mother, Edith.

In a city filled with prestige and American dreams also lies political fallacy and corruption. Corruption she will soon find herself indulging in. Emma would do anything to save herself from the downfall; go to any length, sacrifice her soul if needed. What she doesn’t realize is that someone else is more desperate to save their own life, and that the worst is yet to come.

When Beatrice Trixie Jordan replies to a personal ad, she meets Jacob Grace, a charming, effervescent 30-something free-spirit writer passionately seeking life. He possesses his own turns of phrase and ways of thinking and feeling that dissonantly harmonize with Trixie's off-center vision. As they rollercoaster through the joys and furies of their wrenching romance, they try to come to terms with the hurt brought about by both of their distant fathers who, in different ways, forsook them.

Dr. Olivia Simon is on duty in the emergency room of North Carolina's Outer Banks Hospital when a gunshot victim is brought in. Midway through the desperate effort to save the young woman's life, Olivia realizes who she is - Annie O'Neill, the woman Olivia's husband, Paul, is in love with.

Finley and Betty's close friendship survived Fin's ninth-grade move from their coastal Maine town to Manhattan. Calls, letters, and summer visits continued to bind them together, and in the fall of their senior year, they both applied to NYU, planning to reunite for good as roommates. Then Betty disappears.

When a car accident leaves photographer Burke Crenshaw in need of temporary full-time care, he finds himself back in the one place no forty-year-old chooses to be--his childhood bedroom. There, in the Vermont home where he grew up, Burke begins the long process of recuperation, and watches as his widowed father finds happiness in a new relationship that's a constant reminder of everything Burke wants and lacks. Exploring local history, Burke discovers an intriguing series of letters from a Civil War soldier to his fianc.

Amy Curry thinks her life sucks. Her mom decides to move from California to Connecticut to start anew - just in time for Amy's senior year. Her dad recently died in a car accident. So Amy embarks on a road trip to escape from it all, driving cross-country from the home she's always known toward her new life. Joining Amy on the road trip is Roger, the son of Amy's mother's old friend.