Short Story Index


Book Description




The Cucumber King of Kėdainiai


Book Description

Fiction. Characters in Wendell Mayo's collection, THE CUCUMBER KING OF KEDAINIAI, are one of a kind. A Lithuanian mafia boss strives to achieve world domination with black market cucumbers. A starving Russian artist discovers he can profit by selling paint-by-numbers portraits of former General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. Two spiders re-enact the Cold War years in the bathtub of an abandoned Soviet sanatorium. A woman is interrogated by former-KGB police about the whereabouts of an American she's never met. A man trades a bag of cold fried pike for clues about his Lithuanian ancestors. The concluding narrative, "The Universal Store," assembles all in a kind of marketplace of the heart, where the new realities of an Eastern Europe adapting to change since the fall of the Berlin Wall emerge. These stories by turn are not only dark, comical, surreal but feel terribly true."







The Cucumber Princess


Book Description

A tiny girl, hatched from an egg found in a cucumber field, demands to rule in the stead of the king, thus beginning a contest of wills and strength.




Cucumber Quest: The Flower Kingdom


Book Description

Continuing their journey to collect the signatures of each princess in the seven kingdoms of Dreamside, Cucumber and Almond's entourage travel to the Flower Kingdom. When they arrive, they discover that the royal family was wiped out centuries ago. So who was signing the swords of the heroes before Cucumber?




The Cucumber King


Book Description

Twelve-year-old Wolfi Hogelmann and his family lead an uneventful life until the autocratic Cucumber King suddenly appears from the depths of their cellar and throws himself on the mercy of the Hogelmann household.




Making Love While Levitating Three Feet in the Air: and Other Stories


Book Description

Making Love While Levitating Three Feet in the Air: And Other Stories’s 13 short stories are linked thematically by the recurring idea of flight, in its various definitions and senses. The characters are sometimes in flight from their situations, sometimes from other people, sometimes from themselves. Stories range from contemporary to historical, from realistic to magical realist. The known and the unknown often blur as the characters struggle to understand the unseen forces that move them. Ultimately, the crises that all the characters encounter are psychological or spiritual in some way, however each may define that; as the title of the collection suggests, the characters find themselves levitating somewhere between their deepest desires and an exquisite and terrifying nothingness. No one in these stories “wins” in the traditional sense; there are no tidy answers. But the stories are subtly life affirming in how each character deals with the difficulties of life. Each learns something about himself or herself, however fleeting that knowledge may be, however small a step forward it inspires. Life isn’t static, and neither are these people.




Moon-Face, and Other Stories


Book Description

Moon-Face, and Other Stories by Jack London is a captivating collection of short stories. With a unique blend of adventure, romance, and science fiction, this collection is filled with unexpected twists and turns that keep readers on the edge of their seat. A must-read for London fans, Moon-Face is an unforgettable journey.