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L. A. Child and Other Stories

Author : Penny Jackson

Publisher : Untreed Reads

Page : 76 pages

File Size : 23,26 MB

Release : 2013-12-11

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1611876478

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Book Description

In this collection of award-winning short stories, men, women and teenagers from London to Boston to Hiroshima to India grapple with the unpredictability of their lives. A teenager receives a gun from his best friend when he finds out his girlfriend has been unfaithful. A teacher in Hiroshima finds herself acting in a live sex show. A young man fakes an act of heroism at the George Washington Bridge so he can be famous. A hostess in a Wonderland-themed amusement park loses her identity to become the “perfect” Alice. And, in the Pushcart Prize-awarded title story, a group of disenfranchised young adults try to make sense of the artificial world that is Los Angeles.



Orange World and Other Stories

Author : Karen Russell

Publisher : Vintage

Page : 289 pages

File Size : 28,86 MB

Release : 2019-05-14

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 0525656146

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Book Description

From the Pulitzer Finalist and universally beloved author of the New York Times best sellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove, a stunning new collection of short fiction that showcases Karen Russell’s extraordinary, irresistible gifts of language and imagination. Karen Russell’s comedic genius and mesmerizing talent for creating outlandish predicaments that uncannily mirror our inner in lives is on full display in these eight exuberant, arrestingly vivid, unforgettable stories. In“Bog Girl”, a revelatory story about first love, a young man falls in love with a two thousand year old girl that he’s extracted from a mass of peat in a Northern European bog. In “The Prospectors,” two opportunistic young women fleeing the depression strike out for new territory, and find themselves fighting for their lives. In the brilliant, hilarious title story, a new mother desperate to ensure her infant’s safety strikes a diabolical deal, agreeing to breastfeed the devil in exchange for his protection. The landscape in which these stories unfold is a feral, slippery, purgatorial space, bracketed by the void—yet within it Russell captures the exquisite beauty and tenderness of ordinary life. Orange World is a miracle of storytelling from a true modern master.



Apocalypse Child

Author : Flor Edwards

Publisher : Turner Publishing Company

Page : 220 pages

File Size : 35,51 MB

Release : 2018-03-13

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 1683367707

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Book Description

For the first thirteen years of her life, Flor Edwards grew up in the Children of God. The group's nomadic existence was based on the belief that, as God's chosen people, they would be saved in the impending apocalypse that would envelop the rest of the world in 1993. Flor would be thirteen years old. The group's charismatic leader, Father David, kept the family on the move, from Los Angeles to Bangkok to Chicago, where they would eventually disband, leaving Flor to make sense of the foreign world of mainstream society around her. Apocalypse Child is a cathartic journey through Flor's memories of growing up within a group with unconventional views on education, religion, and sex. Whimsically referring to herself as a real life Kimmy Schmidt, Edwards's clear-eyed memoir is a story of survival in a childhood lived on the fringes.



Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories

Author : Lorraine López

Publisher :

Page : 268 pages

File Size : 16,13 MB

Release : 2002

Category : Fiction

ISBN :

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Book Description

Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories, is a stunning debut collection of short stories that explore identity issues in the Latino community. The cast of characters in her stories include a young boy-impelled by his guilt over failing to prevent his parents' divorce-who seeks to save an abandoned baby, an elderly man attempting to invoke his dead wife by regularly donning her clothing and make-up, a former National Guardsman whose failed attempts to connect with his family do not prevent him from trying, and a young woman determined to give birth to her murdered lover's child. In the title story, an aging Avon representative, who is often mistaken for a transvestite, has become so estranged from the Spanish language she spoke as a child that she no longer remembers that she spoke it or what happened in her childhood. Many of the characters in these stories must negotiate differences in race, culture, language, class, and gender in attempts to discover who they are and where they are going. Lopez's vivid characters struggle both to find a place of belonging and companions who can accept them, as well as self-forgiveness for the compromises they made in living necessarily bifurcated lives as they attempt to breech the gap between cultures.



Flying Lessons & Other Stories

Author : Ellen Oh

Publisher : Yearling

Page : 242 pages

File Size : 40,8 MB

Release : 2018-08-14

Category : Juvenile Fiction

ISBN : 110193462X

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Book Description

Whether it is basketball dreams, family fiascos, first crushes, or new neighborhoods, this bold short story collection—written by some of the best children’s authors including Kwame Alexander, Meg Medina, Jacqueline Woodson, and many more and published in partnership with We Need Diverse Books—celebrates the uniqueness and universality in all of us. "Will resonate with any kid who's ever felt different—which is to say, every kid." —Time Great stories take flight in this adventurous middle-grade anthology crafted by ten of the most recognizable and diverse authors writing today. Newbery Medalist Kwame Alexander delivers a story in-verse about a boy who just might have magical powers; National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson spins a tale of friendship against all odds; and Meg Medina uses wet paint to color in one girl’s world with a short story that inspired her Newbery award-winner Merci Suárez Changes Gear. Plus, seven more bold voices that bring this collection to new heights with tales that challenge, inspire, and celebrate the unique talents within us all. AUTHORS INCLUDE: Kwame Alexander, Kelly J. Baptist, Soman Chainani, Matt de la Peña, Tim Federle, Grace Lin, Meg Medina, Walter Dean Myers, Tim Tingle, Jacqueline Woodson “There’s plenty of magic in this collection to go around.” —Booklist, Starred “A natural for middle school classrooms and libraries.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred “Inclusive, authentic, and eminently readable.” —School Library Journal, Starred “Thought provoking and wide-ranging . . . should not be missed.”—Publishers Weekly, Starred “Read more books by these authors.” —The Bulletin, Starred



Motherhood

Author : Sheila Heti

Publisher : Henry Holt and Company

Page : 305 pages

File Size : 10,7 MB

Release : 2018-05-01

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1627790780

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Book Description

From the author of How Should a Person Be? (“one of the most talked-about books of the year”—Time Magazine) and the New York Times Bestseller Women in Clothes comes a daring novel about whether to have children. In Motherhood, Sheila Heti asks what is gained and what is lost when a woman becomes a mother, treating the most consequential decision of early adulthood with the candor, originality, and humor that have won Heti international acclaim and made How Should A Person Be? required reading for a generation. In her late thirties, when her friends are asking when they will become mothers, the narrator of Heti’s intimate and urgent novel considers whether she will do so at all. In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forbearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice. After seeking guidance from philosophy, her body, mysticism, and chance, she discovers her answer much closer to home. Motherhood is a courageous, keenly felt, and starkly original novel that will surely spark lively conversations about womanhood, parenthood, and about how—and for whom—to live.



Parable of the Sower

Author : Octavia E. Butler

Publisher : Grand Central Publishing

Page : 350 pages

File Size : 37,67 MB

Release : 2023-03-28

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1538765497

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Book Description

This acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from an award-winning author "pairs well with 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale" and includes a foreword by N. K. Jemisin (John Green, New York Times). When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions. Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith . . . and a startling vision of human destiny.



Wild Child

Author : T.C. Boyle

Publisher : Penguin

Page : 284 pages

File Size : 39,39 MB

Release : 2010-01-21

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1101189908

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Book Description

Fourteen “exhilarating” (The Boston Globe) stories that explore “the delicate balance between nature and civilization” (San Francisco Chronicle), from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tortilla Curtain “[A] rollicking collection of . . . good, old-fashioned, funny-suspenseful-head shaking stories.”—The New York Times (Best Books of the Year) There may be no one better than T.C. Boyle at engaging, shocking, and ultimately gratifying readers while at the same time testing his characters' emotional and physical endurance. From “Wild Child,” a retelling of the story of Victor, the feral boy who was captured running naked through the forests of Napoleonic France, to “La Conchita,” the tale of a catastrophic mudslide that allows a cynic to reclaim his own humanity, these tales are by turns magical and moving, showcasing the mischievous humor and socially conscious sensibility that have made Boyle one of the foremost masters of the short story.



Little Nation and Other Stories 

Author : Alejandro Morales

Publisher : Arte Público Press

Page : 210 pages

File Size : 14,37 MB

Release : 2014-09-30

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1611928710

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Book Description

“I’m sick of you punks,” Micaela said. “And I’m warning you now. I’m going to get you for that murder!” In the title story, the Latino community in East L.A. suffers horrible gang-related violence, and the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl is the last straw for Micaela Clemencia, a local teacher. With the help of other women in the neighborhood, Micaela keeps her promise to punish the murderer. And much to the dismay of the police and other city officials, the women take control of the barrio, their “little nation.” While some characters face a violent world driven by greed, others long for a sense of belonging or a place to call their own. In “Mama Concha,” a grandmother shares her ancient wisdom with her grandson, teaching him to appreciate the land and the fruits and vegetables she grows. In “The Gardens of Versailles,” a home with beautiful gardens is a local favorite, until it stands in the way of “progress” that will benefit the entire community. And in “Prickles,” an artist who is a grotesque oddity because of the thorny tumors that sprout all over his body develops a special, unusual relationship with the Virgin of Guadalupe. Alejandro Morales returns to his native Southern California community of Montebello in four of these five stories that examine identity and injustice. Originally written in Spanish, this compelling collection contains Adam Spires’ English translation of these thought-provoking stories, in which Morales explores the Chicano community’s marginalization and search for a space to call its own.