Helen Plum Library

"B.J. Novak's One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories is an endlessly entertaining, surprisingly sensitive, and startlingly original debut that signals the arrival of a brilliant new voice in American fiction. A boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes--only to discover how claiming the winnings might unravel his family. A woman sets out to seduce motivational speaker Tony Robbins--turning for help to the famed motivator himself. A new...

"From an award-winning debut writer, a beautiful and unapologetic collection of stories about women's unexpressed desires and needs, and the unexpected ways they resurface "Deceptively quiet but packs a powerful punch. The best collection I've read in years, from a phenomenal new talent."--Celeste Ng "Thank God, a collection of stories about women who don't hate themselves, don't hate other women, don't hate their bodies, don't hate their husbands,...

"A master storyteller at his best--the O. Henry Prize winner Stephen King delivers a generous collection of stories, several of them brand-new, featuring revelatory autobiographical comments on when, why, and how he came to write (or rewrite) each story. Since his first collection, Nightshift, published thirty-five years ago, Stephen King has dazzled readers with his genius as a writer of short fiction. In this new collection he assembles, for the...

Clever and haunting by turns, Ayiti explores the Haitian diaspora experience. A married couple seeking boat passage to America prepares to leave their homeland. A mother takes a foreign soldier into her home as a boarder, and into her bed. And a woman conceives a daughter on the bank of a river while fleeing a horrific massacre, a daughter who later moves to America for a new life but is perpetually haunted by the mysterious scent of blood. Wise,...

Classic tales of changing lives and loves from one of Russia's greatest playwrights, a master of the modern short story. Morality, philosophy, and science merge in "The Duel," the classic tale of transformation in which educated Russian aristocrat Ivan Andreitch Laevsky falls in love with the married Nadya Fyodorovna and runs off to the Black Sea with her. As their passion wanes, Nadya turns to other men for comfort, while Ivan indulges in heavy...

"A New Yorker, trying not to be jaded, accompanies a cash-strapped pot grower to a "Clothing Optional Resort" in California. A nerdy high schooler has her first sexual experience at geology camp. A young woman fundraises for a social-media savvy cancer patient whose circle of supporters grows increasingly obsessive. A college student, the night of her father's funeral, watches an old video of her Bat Mitzvah, hypnotized by the image of the girl she...

Because of his frank and honest portrayal of human sexuality in the controversial works for which he is best known, e.g. "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and "Women in Love", D. H. Lawrence was not widely respected in his day. In fact at the time of his death, he was considered little more than a pornographer. However E. M. Forester challenged this portrayal calling Lawrence "The greatest imaginative novelist of our generation", and with his extended reflection...

In this representative volume, "The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories" the reader will find twenty-four of Mark Twain's best shorter works. Classic and unforgettable tales that span the author's career are included, such as "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", which is Twain's most famous short story and was his first great success as an author. It is the unforgettable tale of Jim Smiley, the gambler who will bet on anything including...

"An observant, strange, and startlingly funny collection of short stories"-- Provided by publisher

First published in 1925, "In Our Time" is a collection of short stories and vignettes by Ernest Hemingway written at the beginning of his literary career. Hemingway began working on some of the stories and pieces of prose that would make up the collection in 1923 and continued working on and refining his stories for the next two years. Many of the stories center around Hemingway's well-known and semi-autobiographical character, Nick Adams. Several...