An unnamed narrator abandons his unfinished thesis and returns to northern Alberta in search of what eludes him: the shape of the novel he yearns to write, an autobiography of his rural hometown, the answers to existential questions about family, love, and happiness.

When Mackenzie wakes up with a severed crow's head in her hands, she panics. Only moments earlier she had been fending off masses of birds in a snow-covered forest. In bed, when she blinks, the head disappears. Night after night, Mackenzie’s dreams return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina’s untimely death: a weekend at the family’s lakefront campsite, long obscured by a fog of guilt.

Alma Katsu calls My Heart Is a Chainsaw “a homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre.” On the surface is a story of murder in small-town America. But beneath is its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, and a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life.

Even four years after the sudden death of his wife, best selling novelist Mike Noonan can't stop grieving, nor can he return to his writing. He moves into his isolated house by the lake, which becomes the site of ghostly visitations, ever-escalating nightmares, and the sudden recovery of his writing ability. What are the forces that have been unleashed here - and what do they want of Mike Noonan?

All the stories in this collection from Stephen King are related to the Vietnam War. King fans will recognize echoes of The Dark Tower series in the collection's first story, "Low Men in Yellow Coats." As the characters develop over the next four stories, King's version of the Vietnam War becomes one of his most frightening tales ever.

In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly 100, dies herself, leading to a farewell doubleheader in a single weekend. Among the guests is Big Angel's half-brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life. Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle.

A single visit to a West Virginia prison can't resolve the tragic pasts of convicted child-killer Will Hatfield and his former sweetheart Karin. While she struggles with haunting regrets, Will vows to wait for her, no matter how long it takes.

Ambrose Young was beautiful. He was tall and muscular, with hair that touched his shoulders and eyes that burned right through you. The kind of beautiful that graced the covers of romance novels, and Fern Taylor would know. She'd been reading them since she was 13. But maybe because he was so beautiful he was never someone Fern thought she could have...until he wasn't beautiful anymore.

Two-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist Bernice L. McFadden has also been twice honored by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. One of Library Journal's 25 Key Indie Fiction Titles, this heartbreaking tale follows two damaged but hopeful souls as they struggle to find love despite the ravages of their pasts.

Tall, slender Violet Mathers is growing up in the Great Depression, which could just as well define her state of mind. Abandoned by her mother as a child, mistreated by her father, and teased by her schoolmates ("Hey, Olive Oyl, where's Popeye?"), the lonely girl finds solace in artistic pursuits. Only when she's hired by the town's sole feminist to work the night shift in the local thread factory does Violet come into her name, and bloom.

Kachemak Winkel never intended to come back to his hometown of Caboose, Alaska, where his family died in a plane crash 20 years earlier. When he finally musters the courage to return and face his painful memories, he's surprised to find a mysterious young woman living in his abandoned house.

Malcolm Little's parents have always told him that he can achieve anything, but from what he can tell, that's nothing but a pack of lies - after all, his father's been murdered, his mother's been taken away, and his dreams of becoming a lawyer have gotten him laughed out of school. There's no point in trying, he figures, and lured by the nightlife of Boston and New York, he escapes into a world of fancy suits, jazz, girls, and reefer.

Edited by National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi and featuring some of the most acclaimed best-selling black authors writing for teens today - Black Enough is an essential collection of captivating stories about what it’s like to be young and black in America. A selection of the Schomburg Center's Black Liberation Reading List.

Closeted teenager Jeremy is sent to live with wealthy relatives after his mother enters rehab. Struggling to fit into the posh world of Ballena Beach, Jeremy joins the high school swim team, dates a popular girl, and begins to think he may have landed in paradise - until his great aunt Katharine starts to dictate his every move…and a late-night phone call insinuates that his father’s accidental death was not so accidental after all. As Jeremy grows accustomed to the veneer of a fabulous life, so grows his need for answers - as well as the danger of immeasurable harm.

India Redding is juggling a web design career, a long-distance romance, and an exasperating promise she made to her late father: keep an eye on her vivacious mother, Eldora. A former Las Vegas showgirl, the flamboyant sixtysomething bombshell never lacks for curveballs. Her latest idea is that she and India hightail it out of Colorado Springs and hit the road for Sin City in her turquoise ’57 Thunderbird. Eldora can revisit the neon strips of her youth, and together they can track down India’s twin sister, Gypsy, a haunted vagabond artist prone to disappearing.

In a little dive in a small Israeli city, Dov Greenstein, a comedian a bit past his prime, is doing a night of stand-up. In the audience is a district court justice, Avishai Lazar, whom Dov knew as a boy, along with a few others who remember Dov as the awkward, scrawny kid who walked on his hands to confound the neighborhood bullies. Gradually, teetering between hilarity and hysteria, Dov's patter becomes a kind of memoir, taking us back into the terrors of his childhood.

Kachemak Winkel never intended to come back to his hometown of Caboose, Alaska, where his family died in a plane crash 20 years earlier. When he finally musters the courage to return and face his painful memories, he's surprised to find a mysterious young woman living in his abandoned house.

Malcolm Little's parents have always told him that he can achieve anything, but from what he can tell, that's nothing but a pack of lies - after all, his father's been murdered, his mother's been taken away, and his dreams of becoming a lawyer have gotten him laughed out of school. There's no point in trying, he figures, and lured by the nightlife of Boston and New York, he escapes into a world of fancy suits, jazz, girls, and reefer.

Diane McKinney-Whetstone, the award-winning and best-selling author of Tumbling, presents Trading Dreams at Midnight - - an Essence Book Club Recommended Read. Back in 1984, 15-year-old Neena's mother left and never came back. And now Neena is following in her footsteps.

From New York Times best-selling author Eric Jerome Dickey comes this sexy novel brimming with the steamy voices of three desperately intertwined lovers. Dickey centers the story on an L.A.-based writer who is obsessed with gorgeous, nubile Nicole - the very same woman who left him at the altar just three years before. Nicole is torn between her ongoing love for him and her passion for the beautiful Ayanna.

No one knows where the Tufa came from or how they ended up in the mountains of east Tennessee. When the first Europeans came to the Smoky Mountains, the Tufa were already there. Dark-haired and enigmatic, they live quietly in the hills and valleys of Cloud County, their origins lost to history. But there are clues in their music, hidden in the songs they have passed down for generations.

In Kenya, when a young American man falls in love with the sophisticated daughter of an African chief, their marriage is strong. But tradition will soon put their union to the supreme test. Gripping and soulful, A Woman's Worth is a tale of cultural divisions, emotional wounds, and a love that struggles to transcend them.

Ray Bradbury - peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America's most beloved authors - is a literary giant whose remarkable career spanned seven decades. Now 26 of today's most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.

Between Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket rests Bayberry Island, home to a bronze mermaid statue that promises to grant true love to anyone who asks with an open heart. For years Rowan Flynn distanced herself from Bayberry Island and its infamous mermaid legend. But after her investor fiancé lost what was left of her family’s fortune, Rowan reluctantly agreed to run the Safe Haven Bed-and-Breakfast, determined never again to fall for the ridiculous fantasy of the mermaid matchmaker.

Max doesn't remember his mother, who was murdered by burglars before they emigrated from Beirut to New Jersey. He lives with his father, Rasheed, who is enamored of his concept of American culture - baseball and barbeques - and tries to shed his Lebanese heritage completely.

Christophe has been in the New World only a year when his native guides abandon him to flee their Iroquois pursuers. A Huron warrior and elder named Bird soon takes him prisoner, along with a young Iroquois girl, Snow Falls, whose family he has just killed, and holds them captive in his massive village. Champlain's Iron People have only recently begun trading with the Huron, who mistrust them as well as this Crow who has now trespassed onto their land; and her people, of course, have become the Huron's greatest enemy.

Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.

Kate Corbin had a handsome boyfriend and a budding career as a reporter at a popular Chicago newspaper. But after the death of the woman who raised her, she fell into a rut and never got out. Now she's stuck writing fluff pieces about lipstick and wine and feeling trapped in a relationship that's going nowhere. Kate's boss gives her an intriguing assignment: spend a week interviewing R. J. Lawson, a modern-day Howard Hughes who recently reemerged as the owner of a well-respected Napa winery.

Kentucky was only ever going to be a summer job. Come fall, Blue Riley would be back in North Carolina, in college. But one job led to another, one town led to another, and one woman led to another. Now, after twenty years Blue faces the hardest question of all - is it time to go home?

The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.