The Short Story America Anthologies, Volume I through 7, features selected great short stories by today’s top short-story writers. Every story is captivating, entertaining and thought-provoking, staying with the reader long after the experience of reading it. The stories in this book touch the themes of the human condition as fully and eclectically as any collection of stories ever has. Short Story America has brought the reader, author and short story together with this treasure trove of contemporary tales that is sure to be a classic collection.

TOC: Vol 1 Vol2 Vol 3 Vol 4 Vol 5 Vol 6 Vol 7

When a third Mafia boss in a third major city is murdered by an unknown entity, FBI organized-crime agents Jack Hanratty and Neville Parker are assigned to lead the national investigation of what the media dubs ‘Ḁe Godfather Assassinations.’ As the cabal continues to eliminate the leadership of the powerful Maἀa, La Cosa Nostra’s ruling ‘Commission’ responds by importing Fingo, the legendary Sicilian mercenary, to track down the killers. When Fingo kidnaps Agent Hanratty’s pregnant wife, Jack faces an impossible ransom request: to save Rachel’s life, Jack and Neville must deliver the Godfather Assassins to Fingo rather than arrest the vigilantes. Jack and Neville race against time and two formidable enemies toward an epic showdown between justice and injustice, colored by the gray area that complicates human decisions.

You come home from a day of no surprises, thinking you’ll just relax with a hot drink and something amusing to read. But then you pick up a short story from T.D. Johnston instead and, almost immediately, you’re knocked off balance. It’s just an insistent little nudge at first, but the nudges get more and more insistent, along with the knot forming in your stomach. You never see the end that’s coming because it sneaks in around a corner where you never thought to look. T.D. Johnston isn’t just a master of suspense. He’s a master of surprise.

This collection by T.D. Johnston settles the reader in a comfortable easy chair and then proceeds to prick him with electrifying barbs, pelt him with bizarre happenings, or turn time and place upside down. The table of contents include The Errand, Friday Afternoon, Gratuity, The Closing, A Game of Chess, Sixth Period, The Guest, The First Key, Carpool, The Interruption of Thomas Darrow, A Morning Along the Way, and Marco Polo.

"This remarkable collection cements T.D. Johnston’s status as one of America’s best short-story writers.”

– Martin McCaw, two-time winner of the Global Short Story Prize

In this superb debut collection of short stories, Mathieu Cailler weaves tales which bring to life the deeply-human experience with loss and its range of outcomes. From loneliness to recovered relationships, from despair to redemption, from heartbreak to humor, these fifteen stories illuminate the sadness, bewilderment, conflict and ultimate hope which can come from each human being's inevitable encounters with loss. Author Laurie Alberts writes: "LOSS ANGELES doesn't focus on the bright lights of Tinseltown, but rather on the quiet day-to-day pain of marginalized people paralyzed by loss, poor choices, obsessions, and love. These subtle, beautifully wrought, and richly realized stories showcase Cailler as an intrepid fiction writer who is always compassionate to his characters and their moral quandaries."

In this third novel in the classic saga which includes THE HEADMASTER'S PAPERS and THE HEADMASTER'S WIFE, Richard Hawley brilliantly weaves the diary writings of headmaster John Greeve's cancer-stricken wife and estranged grown son into a tale which, when combined with the letters of John Greeve, paints a haunting picture of the spiraling sadness which comes from the dread of impending loss, the distant wanderings of grown children, and the tragedy of unexpressed love punctuated by death. GREEVES PASSING completes a poignant trilogy told entirely through the written expression of unfortunate events, unfulfilled dreams and the untold secrets of a well-educated American family. As John Irving writes, "Richard Hawley has the poise and vision to create an entire world."

THE OTHER WORLD, by Richard Hawley (author of the 1983 classic award-winning novel, THE HEADMASTER'S PAPERS, among many books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and essays). THE OTHER WORLD is a collection which also works brilliantly as a novel, and is as good a work of literary fiction as you will find today. These brilliant and poignant tales are told by the main character, Jonathan Force, beginning with the story "Born Into Christmas," and ranging chronologically from Jonathan's birth to childhood, adolescence, his middle and high school years, and finally on the verge of going to college, revealing along the way a boy who is caught in the conflict, as so many are, between the yearning for a world which he feels born to explore and the world which others expect him to dutifully inhabit. Blake Bailey, author of CHEEVER: A LIFE, writes: "Richard Hawley explores, with eloquence and sensitivity, the secret lives of children and the unexpected moments that linger in memory and give shape to our souls. A stunning collection." Ann Hood, author of THE OBITUARY WRITER, calls THE OTHER WORLD "both a tender and harsh coming-of-age story." As John Irving writes of the author, "Richard Hawley has the poise and vision to create an entire world."

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Tony Jarvis may have been the most distinctive private school headmaster of the past half century, if not in the history of American schooling. He was for thirty years headmaster of Boston’s Roxbury Latin School, the oldest school in continuous operation in the United States, founded in 1645 by the Puritan divine John Eliot, Apostle to the Indians. Roxbury Latin School today is a school of 300 boys in grades seven through twelve, and it is annually ranked among the best, and sometimes the best, scholastically performing school in the United States. But its scholastic performance, though impressive, is probably the least interesting thing about the school, which states its mission to be a place “where e very boy is known and loved.”

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