Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Anthologies

Bill Buford spends a wild night in the park; Jonathan Safran Foer envisions it as a tiny, transplanted piece of a mythical Sixth Borough; and Marie Winn answers definitively Holden Caulfield's question of where the ducks go when the park's ponds freeze over. There are bird sightings and fish sightings; Jackie Kennedy and James Brown sightings; and pieces by Colson Whitehead, Paul Auster, and Francine Prose. This vibrant collection presents Central Park in all its many-faceted glory, a 51-block swath of special magic.

Bill Buford spends a wild night in the park; Jonathan Safran Foer envisions it as a tiny, transplanted piece of a mythical Sixth Borough; and Marie Winn answers definitively Holden Caulfield's question of where the ducks go when the park's ponds freeze over. There are bird sightings and fish sightings; Jackie Kennedy and James Brown sightings; and pieces by Colson Whitehead, Paul Auster, and Francine Prose. This vibrant collection presents Central Park in all its many-faceted glory, a 51-block swath of special magic.

Heed the Slammers Battle Cry! A warrior's truth: "In the long run, everybody's dead. So screw the long run!" Patriotic hoo-ha may be well and good for recruitment parades, but David Drake's battle-hardened mercenaries know it takes tanks, guns, and grit to win when the real fighting flares. Yet peace brings its own problems to old soldiers - for killing potential enemies in battle is self-limiting, but once the killing starts in peacetime, there may be no end to the madness.

Known for best-selling military science fiction, David Drake now takes aim at the listener's funnybone. Meet goblin paratroopers, politically correct space cops, and more, and laugh all the way to the gallows.

Michael Chabon once said, "I scan the tables of contents of magazines, looking for Antonya Nelson's name, hoping that she has decided to bless us again." And now she has blessed us again, with a bounty of the stories for which she is so beloved. Her stories are clear-eyed, hard-edged, beautifully formed. In the title story, "Funny Once", a couple held together by bad behavior fall into a lie with their more responsible friends.

Here are weird stories set in the present, along with alternative histories filled with gritty realism and exacting detail as well as an assortment of horrors and monsters. Most of all, here are the tough heroes who throughout time master their own fears and face the very real terrors that haunt existence. Sometimes these heroes win a partial victory. Sometimes it’s enough to go down fighting.

A dragon's tears; Gilgamesh returned; lovers in space; gin, beer, blood; passion and heartbreak; wild legends, gritty truths - and one truly plucky realtor - you'll find all this and more in Eastlick and Other Stories. Shannon Page's kaleidoscopic collection of marvelous tales meanders from post-apocalyptic Cyprus, medieval Venice, and the Age of Legends, to the far reaches of outer space - and inner space too.

Living under the shadow of two gifted parents, Astrid Nordling feels trapped everywhere but at the piano, finding solace in Schubert and Debussy. Her piano teacher is convinced that she is a prodigy; her mother is not so sure. Set in 1960s Chicago, this excerpt from Lisa Heiserman Perkins' upcoming novel shows that there can be such a thing as too much talent in a single family. As Astrid competes with her dramatic, high-strung mother for the spotlight, their tug-of-war threatens to pull the family apart.

A journalist is haunted by the ghost of a story - and a woman - she can't leave behind. A story so powerful that it haunts the dreams and waking hours of all that have lived through it. A genocide in which the West failed to save the innocent. This is the story of aftermath - of how the dead we fail, haunt us - and how we must return, to lay their ghosts and set ourselves free.

This collection of five stories and four essays showcases the work of Mike Heppner, the writer whom Entertainment Weekly calls, "A fearsome cultural critic disguised in a novelist's clothing," and whose funny and biting fiction has been praised in Esquire, The Washington Post, and The Millions. Most of these pieces have not been published before. Featured performers include: A deluded Lothario, a man obsessed with corn, Charlie Watts, the dude from Def Leppard, and a sweet old lady who meets her untimely end at a Boston Market.

The Wall is a new, brief collection of stories by Becker that have either never been translated into English or been published here in audiobook form before. The title story, "The Wall," recounts two boys’ risky adventure when they scale the wall of a transit camp to visit the ghetto their families have recently vacated. In "The Most Popular Family Story," a favorite anecdote recounted year after year at the gatherings of an extended Jewish family subtly marks the absences left by the Holocaust.

Master short story writer Ellen Gilchrist, winner of the National Book Award, returns with her first story collection in over eight years. In Acts of God, she has crafted 10 different scenarios in which people dealing with forces beyond their control somehow manage to survive, persevere, and triumph, even if it is only a triumph of the will. For Marie James, a teenager from Fayetteville, Arkansas, the future changes when she joins a group of friends in their effort to find survivors among the debris left when a tornado destroys a neighboring town.

A gritty, uncompromising new story from Welsh crime writer Roger Granelli. Elkins arrived in Cardiff in 1946, a refugee from the Holocaust. Now an old man, he's weighed down with a survivor's guilt, haunted by his memories. Kev and Dean are football hooligans, drunk on cheap lager and easy violence. The season is nearly over, and they need a way to fund their summer. A chance encounter causes these three lives to come crashing together one fateful night.

As the Second World War rages in Europe, two undergraduates in Tennessee work a summer job for a celebrated poetry professor, W. T. Harlan, as he supervises the clearing of a ravine to make a garden. At their side is a German POW, watched by military guard, who has been sent to help them with their task. One of the boys, Benjamin Mason, is from a wealthy family and aspires to be a poet; the other, Steven Darby yearns simply to escape his corner of America and explore the world. As they work, they will get to know the German soldier next to them and the brilliant, unhappy W. T. Harlan.

Stephanie Vaughn is a writer’s writer, one whose debut collection of stories, Sweet Talk, was published more than two decades ago to critical acclaim. Fans have come to these stories over the years through word of mouth, posting glowing reviews to their Goodreads pages and on their blogs - unanimously agreeing that this collection is a modern classic that deserves to be in print. Crafted in graceful, honest prose, Vaughn’s stories go straight to the heart of how people live, grow and survive.

Matt Dojny's "You Are the Stepson" is one story told three different ways. Dojny uses "variations on a theme, like movements in a symphony, or parallel universes, existing side by side but never intersecting," writes Halimah Marcus, co-editor of Electric Literature, in her introduction this issue. "The opening to 'You Are the Stepson' tips the [listener] off to the elements that will appear in all three tales contained herein: a cancer-ridden stepfather and his stepson, a bicycle and a gun, and the desperate need for an apology, 'due to the situation with the ant.'”

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Cunningham’s critically-acclaimed short story "Mister Brother" first appeared in Duke University's DoubleTake magazine and was included in the 1999 O. Henry Prize Stories. “Mister Brother” investigates the relationship between two brothers, a relationship that sustains the fairly universal complication of sibling rivalry. This particular rivalry, however, turns out to bear lifelong consequences neither of the boys could possibly have foreseen.

Let it…OH GOD! Add some spice to the season with our Hot Holiday Reads series. With contributions by your favorite Fuse Literary authors and more, you’re bound to (if that’s what you’re into) enjoy this blend of sexy contemporary and fantasy stories about knocking stockings.

"Break all rules, including these." So advises one of the stories in this audiobook collection. These stories jump - conscientiously - from a homage to Alexandre Dumas to an action-packed adventure set in the near future. There’s also an epic fantasy or space opera - take your pick - told in aphorisms, a contemplation on death, and a tale of what happens when walls begin to divide a place.

High in Oregon’s Cascades, a mysterious stranger named Tygre Tygre walks into the off-the-grid settlement known as Cascadiopolis and claims asylum. He is a man with no past and seemingly otherworldly abilities. Will he be the Cascadians’ salvation?