From a National Book Award finalist, Witness is an elegant, insistent narrative of actions taken and not taken. What does it mean to take action? To bear witness? What does it cost? In these ten stories, each set in the changing landscapes of contemporary New York City, a range of characters--from children to grandmothers to ghosts--live through the responsibility of perceiving and the moral challenge of speaking up or taking action. Though they strive to connect, to remember, to stand up for, and to really see each other, they often fall short, and the structures they build around these ambitions and failures shape not only their own futures but the legacies and prospects of their families and their city. In its portraits of families and friendships lost and found, the paradox of intimacy, the long shadow of grief, the meaning of home, Witness enacts its own testimony. Here is a world where fortunes can be made and stolen in just a few generations, where strangers might sometimes show kindness while those we trust--doctors, employers, siblings--too often turn away, where joy comes in snatches: flowers on a windowsill, dancing in the street, glimpsing your purpose, change on the horizon. With prose as upendingly beautiful as it is artfully, seamlessly crafted, Jamel Brinkley offers nothing less than the full scope of life and death and change in the great, unending drama of the city.

For the first time in English, all the fiction by the writer who has been called “the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century” collected in a single volume“An event, and cause for celebration.”—The New York TimesA Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with flaps and deckle-edged paperFor some fifty years, in intriguing and ingenious fictions that reimagined the very form of the short story—from his 1935 debut with A Universal History of Iniquity through his immensely influential collections Ficciones and The Aleph, the enigmatic prose poems of The Maker, up to his final work in the 1980s, Shakespeare’s Memory—Jorge Luis Borges returned again and again to his celebrated themes: dreams, duels, labyrinths, mirrors, infinite libraries, the manipulations of chance, gauchos, knife fighters, tigers, and the elusive nature of identity itself. Playfully experimenting with ostensibly subliterary genres, he took the detective story and turned it into metaphysics; he took fantasy writing and made it, with its questioning and reinventing of everyday reality, central to the craft of fiction; he took the literary essay and put it to use reviewing wholly imaginary books.Bringing together for the first time in English all of Borges’s magical stories, and all of them newly rendered into English in brilliant translations by Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions is the perfect one-volume compendium for all who have long loved Borges, and a superb introduction to the master’s work for all who have yet to discover this singular genius.For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

'Saunders is an astoundingly tuned voice - graceful, dark, authentic and funny - telling just the kind of stories we need to get us through these times' Thomas Pynchon\nIn PASTORALIA elements of contemporary life are twisted, merged and amplified into a slightly skewed version of modern America. A couple live and work in a caveman theme-park, where speaking is an instantly punishable offence. A born loser attends a self-help seminar where he is encouraged to rid himself of all the people who are 'crapping in your oatmeal'. And a male exotic dancer and his family are terrorised by their decomposing aunt who visits them with a solemn message from beyond the grave. With an uncanny combination of deadpan naturalism and uproarious humour, George Saunders creates a world that is both indelibly original and yet hauntingly familiar ...

A collection of seventeen wonderful short stories showing that two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor.A gentle Eastern European immigrant arrives in New York City after his family and his life have been torn apart by his country's civil war. A man who loves to bowl rolls a perfect game - and then another and then another and then many more in a row until he winds up ESPN's newest celebrity, and he must decide if the combination of perfection and celebrity has ruined the thing he loves. An eccentric billionaire and his faithful executive assistant venture into America looking for acquisitions and discover a down and out motel, romance and a bit of real life. These are just some of the tales Tom Hanks tells in this first collection of his short stories. They are surprising, intelligent, heart-warming, and, for the millions and millions of Tom Hanks fans, an absolute must-have.

A debut story collection about Cambodian-American life - immersive, comic and unsparing - by an indisputable talent. A Roxane Gay's Audacious Book Club pick.

Named a ‘Most Anticipated Book of 2021’ by Lit Hub and The Millions\\n'Sestanovich’s elegant prose takes seriously the quiet unrest that can ravage a life' - Raven Leilani, author of Luster\n‘Astonishing – one of the best story collections I’ve read in a long time’ Brandon Taylor, Booker-shortlisted author of Real Life\\nA college freshman, flying home, strikes up an odd, ephemeral friendship with the couple next to her on the airplane. A long-lost stepbrother’s visit to New York prompts a reckoning with a family’s old taboos. An office worker, exhausted by the ambitions of the men around her, emerges into the gridlocked city one afternoon to make a decision. A wife, looking at her husband's passwords neatly posted on the wall, realizes there are no secrets left in their marriage.\\nIn these eleven short stories, thrilling desire and melancholic yearning animate women’s lives – from the brink of adulthood, to the labyrinthine path between twenty and thirty, to middle age, when certain possibilities quietly elapse. With powerful observation and mordant humour, Clare Sestanovich opens up a fictional world where intimate and uncomfortable truths lie hidden in plain sight.\\nObjects of Desire is a book pulsing with subtle drama, rich with unforgettable scenes and alive with moments of recognition, each more startling than the last – a spellbinding, brilliant debut.

The first collection of stories from the author of REAL LIFE, shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize and winner of the Foyles Fiction Book Of The Year\nIn the series of linked stories at the heart of Filthy Animals, a young man tentatively engages with the world again. Recently discharged from hospital, Lionel meets two dance students at a party. Charles and Sophie’s relationship is difficult to read but Lionel is drawn to them both. As he navigates their sexually fraught encounters he is forced to weigh his vulnerabilities against his loneliness – and to consider his return to life.\nElsewhere, a little girl runs wild to the consternation of her childminder; unspoken frictions among a group of teenagers come to a vicious head on a winter night; and a woman dreads a first date only to find that something has cracked open.\nWhat connects these stories is the tension between the surface of things and the intensity of our inner worlds. With exquisite empathy, Brandon Taylor shows that though violence hovers at the edge of many encounters, so too does tenderness and love.\nAdvance praise for Filthy Animals:\\n'In these stories Brandon Taylor shows himself to be a formidable anatomist of the charged moment. The violence is unexpected, the sex complicated, the psychology acute. What I love most of all is the way he can capture the enormous distance between people standing a hair's breadth apart.' --Chris Power, author of A Lonely Man\n'A dazzling showcase for Brandon Taylor's formidable talents – his fierce intellect, his emotional and linguistic precision, his dry and unflinching humor. He is a writer of rare daring, his fiction a series of revelations.' --Katie Kitamura, author of A Separation\\n'A writer who meets life with a rare combination of will, wonderment, temperament, and vitality.' --Yiyun Li, author of Must I Go\\n'Superb work by a writer of extraordinary psychological insight.' --Joseph O'Neill, author of Netherland

By turns dark and hilarious, at times solemn and mysterious, Your Duck is My Duck cements Deborah Eisenberg’s reputation as one of America’s greatest living writers of fiction.\\n“Hugely intelligent, funny, subtle, beautifully written, these stories reach beyond New York into the world."―Tessa Hadley\\n“If our culture can produce a writer this wonderful, there must be something beautiful about us yet.”―George Saunders\\n“[A] scintillating showcase.”-Anthony Cummins, The Observer\\n“Shudderingly intimate and mordantly funny.”―The New York Times\\nNow in B-format Paperback\nEach of the six stories that make up this new collection―Eisenberg’s first for twelve years―has the heft and complexity of a novel. With her own inexorable logic and uncanny ability to conjure up the strange states of mind and emotion that constitute our daily consciousness, Eisenberg pulls us as if by gossamer threads through the lives of her characters. In her world, the forces of money, sex and power cannot be escaped, and the force of history, whether confronted or denied, cannot be evaded. No one writes better about time, tragedy and grief, and the indifferent but beautiful universe around us.\\n"Ducks are having a literary moment."―The Times' Books Bulletin\\n“Comic, elegant and pitch perfect.”―Vanity Fair

"I love being in love. I'm so in love, I'm so in love. Sometimes I don't even know what I'm in love with. I'm in love with the love drug. You walk into a supermarket or a restaurant, your girlfriend goes in first and you're looking at her ass. And you say to yourself, 'Isn't that the most beautiful ass? That's mine. It's beautiful.' Like it's going to save you. An ass isn't going to save you. What's it going to do? Hide you from the police? Call up your boss when you don't feel well?"Like a performance artist in print, Matthew Klam stands up here and delivers hilarious, shocking, high-energy riffs on the theme of modern love and all its complexities. One by one, these stories amuse, enlighten, and entertain. As a group, they mark the full emergence of one of America's foremost young literary talents.In the immediately engrossing title story, Samuel Beardson falls in love with a young woman across a crowded room who, upon closer inspection, turns out to be a bird-boned, longhaired, slim fellow named John Drake. In a single moment, "Sam the Cat" enters a sexual twilight zone, and a young man's cocksure, womanizing lifestyle unravels: "There I am, horned out and at the same time queasy with the weirdness of it." In "The Royal Palms," Klam's overworked, newly monied hero walks out of a Caribbean resort casino with a pile of cash stuffed into his T-shirt. Beside him stands his wife, Diane, furious at herself for the cellulite that's recently appeared on her thighs. Their marriage is at a sexual standstill. Then the sound of an old jeep spooks them, and the next moment they are running for their lives.Having fallen in love with his girlfriend Phylida's beautiful behind, the narrator of "Issues I Dealt With in Therapy" has flown to a Nantucket-like island with her for a wedding. He's been asked to toast the groom, once a well-intentioned civil rights lawyer who's grown into a sweating "Gore-guy," a self-absorbed power pol, a hot, young, curry-barfing bulimic on his way to the White House. Phylida, meanwhile, is a sleepless, hypochondriacal medical resident. Among this cast of frank and foolish characters, we're left to wonder if we have any control over whom we love.Matthew Klam is an O. Henry Award winner, a regular contributor to The New Yorker, and his generation's most on-key singer of the boy-girl blues. The stories in Sam the Cat crackle with humor, intelligence, and style and add up to an outrageous, entirely original, and unforgettable debut."I loved Sam the Cat. What a great collection. The stories are brilliantly constructed. They make me laugh. Très slanky." --Alice Elliott Dark

WINNER OF THE 2021 JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY O MAGAZINE, THE NEW YORKER, THE WASHINGTON POST, REAL SIMPLE, THE GUARDIAN, AND MORE  FINALIST FOR: THE STORY PRIZE, THE L.A. TIMES BOOK PRIZE, THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE, THE CHAUTAUQUA PRIZE "Sublime short stories of race, grief, and belonging . . . an extraordinary new collection . . ." --The New Yorker   "Evans's new stories present rich plots reflecting on race relations, grief, and love . . ." --The New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice "Danielle Evans demonstrates, once again, that she is the finest short story writer working today." --Roxane Gay, The New York Times-bestselling author of Difficult Women and Bad Feminist The award-winning author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self brings her signature voice and insight to the subjects of race, grief, apology, and American history. Danielle Evans is widely acclaimed for her blisteringly smart voice and X-ray insights into complex human relationships. With The Office of Historical Corrections, Evans zooms in on particular moments and relationships in her characters' lives in a way that allows them to speak to larger issues of race, culture, and history. She introduces us to Black and multiracial characters who are experiencing the universal confusions of lust and love, and getting walloped by grief--all while exploring how history haunts us, personally and collectively. Ultimately, she provokes us to think about the truths of American history--about who gets to tell them, and the cost of setting the record straight. In "Boys Go to Jupiter," a white college student tries to reinvent herself after a photo of her in a Confederate-flag bikini goes viral. In "Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain," a photojournalist is forced to confront her own losses while attending an old friend's unexpectedly dramatic wedding. And in the eye-opening title novella, a black scholar from Washington, DC, is drawn into a complex historical mystery that spans generations and puts her job, her love life, and her oldest friendship at risk.

O, The Oprah Magazine's 20 Best Titles of the Year Time Magazine's 100 Books to Read in 2020  Financial Times' Best Books of 2020 Esquire's Best Books of 2020 New York Times Editors' Choice Lit Hub's Best Books of 2020 Bustle's Best Short Story Collections of 2020 Electric Literature's Favorite Short Story Collections of 2020 Library Journal's Best Short Stories of 2020 "Superb. . . . Krauss's depictions of the nuances of sex and love, intimacy and dependence, call to mind the work of Natalia Ginzburg in their psychological profundity, their intellectual rigor. . . . Krauss's stories capture characters at moments in their lives when they're hungry for experience and open to possibilities, and that openness extends to the stories themselves: narratives too urgent and alive for neat plotlines, simplistic resolutions or easy answers."  --Molly Antopol, New York Times Book Review  "From a contemporary master, an astounding collection of ten globetrotting stories, each one a powerful dissection of the thorny connections between men and women. . . . Each story is masterfully crafted and deeply contemplative, barreling toward a shimmering, inevitable conclusion, proving once again that Krauss is one of our most formidable talents in fiction." --Esquire In one of her strongest works of fiction yet, Nicole Krauss plunges fearlessly into the struggle to understand what it is to be a man and what it is to be a woman, and the arising tensions that have existed from the very beginning of time. Set in our contemporary moment, and moving across the globe from Switzerland, Japan, and New York City to Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, and South America, the stories in To Be a Man feature male characters as fathers, lovers, friends, children, seducers, and even a lost husband who may never have been a husband at all.  The way these stories mirror one other and resonate is beautiful, with a balance so finely tuned that the book almost feels like a novel. Echoes ring through stages of life: aging parents and new-born babies; young women's coming of age and the newfound, somewhat bewildering sexual power that accompanies it; generational gaps and unexpected deliveries of strange new leases on life; mystery and wonder at a life lived or a future waiting to unfold. To Be a Man illuminates with a fierce, unwavering light the forces driving human existence: sex, power, violence, passion, self-discovery, growing older. Profound, poignant, and brilliant, Krauss's stories are at once startling and deeply moving, but always revealing of all-too-human weakness and strength. 

In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella "Especially Heinous," Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we na�vely assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelg�ngers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.

The first ever collection of stories from the bestselling and beloved author of Swing Time and White Teeth'Zadie Smith is the best writer of our generation' Gary Shteyngart'Her dialogue is pitch-perfect, her comic timing masterful... [And] she also delivers a sophisticated commentary on race, gender, class, celebrity and power' Telegraph on Swing Time'Smith is virtuosic, as ever, on family and friendship, and her ability to write about large-scale social injustice without losing her neutral novelist's gaze is breathtaking' Times Literary Supplement on Swing Time In the summer of 1959, an Antiguan immigrant in north west London lives the last day of his life, unknowingly caught in someone else's story of hate and division, resistance and revolt.A mother looks back on her early forays into matters of the human heart - and other parts of the human body - considering the ways in which desire is always an act of negotiation, destruction, and self-invention.A disgraced cop stands amid the broken shards of his life, unable to move forward into a future that holds no place for him.Moral panic spreads like contagion through the upper echelons of New York City - and the cancelled people look disconcertingly like the rest of us.A teenage scion of the technocratic elite chases spectres through a premium virtual reality, trailed by a little girl with a runny nose and no surviving family.We all take a much-needed break from this mess, on a package holiday where the pool's electric blue is ceaselessly replenished, while political and environmental collapse happen far away, to someone else.Interleaving ten completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from the New Yorker and elsewhere, Zadie Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction. Moving exhilaratingly across genres and perspectives, from the historic to the vividly current to the slyly dystopian, Grand Union is a sharply alert and prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us.

Winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award Spanning five decades of writing, The Love Object features stories from many of Edna O'Brien's collections; stories that have bewitched generation after generation. Here you will find tales of families, feuds, enchantment, disenchantment and the manifold bonds of love. There are stories about the tension between country and city life, the instinct towards escape and nostalgia for home; and always in shimmering prose.

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