"The two-time Oscar winner presents a first collection of short fiction that includes the stories of a bowling champion who fears his celebrity has ruined his love of the game and an eccentric billionaire and faithful assistant who, while searching for acquisitions, discover romance and real life in a down-and-out motel."--

Robert Coover has been playing by his own rules for more than half a century, earning the 1987 Rea Award for the Short Story as "a writer who has managed, willfully and even perversely, to remain his own man while offering his generous vision and versions of America." Coover finds inspiration in everything from painting, cinema, theater, and dance to slapstick, magic acts, puzzles, and riddles. His 1969 story, "The Babysitter," has alone inspired...

A collection of thirty stories set in Appalachia illuminates the tensions between the traditional and the modern, the old and new South, tenderness and violence, and man and nature.

“Every bit as smart, sensitive, funny, and genuine as her phenomenally popular novels,”* a dazzling collection from the New York Times bestselling author of Prep, American Wife, and Eligible
“I really loved all the characters in this book. They’re so complex and interesting, and in every story, you’ll find them going through these pivotal moments in their lives.”—Reese...

Collects a series of humorous short stories that explore the things kids think about, from what trees talk about to lies their mother tells them.

While T.C. Boyle is known as one of our greatest American novelists, he is also an acknowledged master of the short story and is perhaps at his funniest, his most moving, and his most surprising in the short form. In The Relive Box, Boyle's sharp wit and rich imagination combine with a penetrating social consciousness to produce raucous, poignant, and expansive short stories defined by an inimitable voice.From the collection's title story, featuring...

A collection of stories tell of two sisters: one trades self-respect for a wealthy husband while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to accept her mother's happiness in a foreign country; and the adult Lucy Barton returns to visit her siblings...

A sharp, funny, delightfully unhinged collection of stories set in the dark world of domesticity, American Housewife features murderous ladies who lunch, celebrity treasure hunters, and the best bra fitter south of the Mason Dixon line.
Meet the women of American Housewife: they wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it's cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. They pump the salad spinner like it's a CPR dummy. And...

"A posthumous and definitive collection of new and selected stories by "virtuoso of the short story" (Esquire) and National Book Award finalist Thom Jones. This scorching collection from award-winning author Thom Jones features his best new short fiction alongside a selection of outstanding stories from three previous books. Jones's stories are full of high-octane, prose-drunk entertainment. His characters are grifters and drifters, rogues and ne'er-do-wells,...