Showing results by narrator "Katharine Chin" in All Categories

Commander Lisa Chao works in the US Navy's Strategic Planning Center in Pearl Harbor. When tensions rise with China over Taiwan, she has to unravel exactly what's happening in the Pacific and why. What she uncovers leads America to war—but not with China. Bullets and bombs are no match for an extraterrestrial warship that can fly between stars, but perhaps the answer to the coming war lies not in the present but in the past. Could Sun Tzu's The Art of War provide humanity with a fighting chance against a technologically superior alien enemy?

When Neil Armstrong first set foot in the lunar dust, the Earth held its breath. That one small step forever changed our view of what was possible, sparking a dramatic expansion of humankind's cosmic awareness. When we gain a new perspective, a transformation begins, profoundly altering the understanding of the world our human experience had previously granted us.

In her introduction to this year’s The Best American Essays, guest editor Vivian Gornick states that her selections “contribute materially to the long and honorable history of the personal essay by way of the value they place on lived experience.” Provocative, daring, and honest at a time when many writers are deliberately silencing themselves in the face of authoritarian and populist censorship movements, the twenty-one essays collected here reflect their authors’ unapologetic observations of the world around them.

Eleven-year-old Avery Lee loves living in Hickory Valley, Maryland. She loves her neighborhood, school, and the end-of-summer fair she always goes to with her two best friends. But she's tired of feeling squished by her six siblings! They're noisy and chaotic and the younger kids love her a little too much. All Avery wants is her own room—her own space to be alone and make art. So she's furious when Theo, her grumpy older brother, gets his own room instead, and her wild baby brother, Max, moves into the room she already shares with her clinging sister Pearl!

“Short stories have to accomplish a nearly impossible magic trick: to introduce a world often much stranger than our own and make you care about it in a matter of pages,” writes R. F. Kuang in her introduction. “The most important part of this magic trick is just a willingness to get weird.” The stories in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023 are brimming with bizarre and otherworldly premises.

Pearl Li is ready to spend the summer before seventh grade hanging out with her two best friends, crocheting the cutest amigurumi dolls, and visiting her favorite tea shop, Boba Time. Its quirky owner, Auntie Cha, is the only adult Pearl can confide in about her art—if only her tech-obsessed family would understand her love of crafts! After Pearl learns of Boba Time’s financial troubles, she decides to sell her amigurumi to raise money for the shop.

A boy who hates bugs starts to see them everywhere. A basketball player’s skin starts to almost drip off his hands—but no one else can see it. Three friends find a hole in the ground that just gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger... And each story is introduced by Stine himself, providing a personal touch sure to delight fans. Laced with Stine’s signature humor and a hefty dose of nightmarish fun, Stinetinglers is perfect for fans of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Stine’s own Goosebumps books.

Annalie and Margaret are sisters who agree on only one thing: that they have nothing in common. Annalie is 17: sweet, content and looking forward to a summer of flirting with the most popular boy in school. Margaret is 19: ambitious, a warrior for social justice and desperate to forget her ex-boyfriend in New York City. When their family is the victim of a racial attack, Annalie tries to pretend it never happened—but Margaret wants to fight back. Suddenly their relationship—and all the ones around them—are hanging by a thread.

“What's most compelling about a scientific story is the way it challenges us to think about the concepts we take for granted,” writes guest editor Carl Zimmer in his introduction. The essays in this year’s Best American Science and Nature Writing probe at the ordinary and urge us to think more deeply about our place in the world around us.

Seventeen years after rebels stormed the streets, factions divide Kisia. Only the firm hand of the god-emperor holds the empire together. But when an unexpected betrayal destroys a tense alliance with neighboring Chiltae, all that has been won comes crashing down. In Kisia, Princess Miko Ts'ai is a prisoner in her own castle. She dreams of claiming her empire. In Chiltae, assassin Cassandra Marius is plagued by the voices of the dead. Desperate, she accepts a contract that promises to reward her with a cure if she helps an empire fall.

Sixteen-year-old Lynda Fan has the skills and the drive to get into the Rhode Island School of Design—but not the money. Her parents are too busy paying off her stepsister’s violin lessons to help Lynda get into art school. So when her rich and arrogant classmate, Angela Wu, offers to hire Lynda as a character designer for an otome game—a love story-based video game—she jumps at the opportunity. Lynda isn’t exactly a romantic, but in pursuit of her dreams, she discovers things she never knew about herself while also finding love with every heart she draws.

From R.L. Stine, the master of horror for young listeners, comes ten brand new stories that are sure to have you keeping the light on at bedtime tonight. A boy thinks that a dream factory will help him make his slumber more fun...but what's the line between dream and nightmare? Two kids find an abandoned shack on the side of the road and are determined to make it their new treehouse... but is it as abandoned as it seems? A boy wants to impress a birthday party with this amateur magician skills...but how far will he go to wow the crowd?

Young rice farmer Yin Wei was forced to become concubine to Prince Guan Terren - a monstrous wielder of poetry magic, and heir to the Azalea throne - to save her family from the famine blighting the land of Tensha. Now confined to the imperial court, Terren's cruelty is not the only danger Wei faces. He and his honourable older brother are locked in a deadly succession war, while Terren's thirty concubines are fighting a war of their own, for the position of future empress.

Evie Mei Huang has literally been to hell and back alongside her friend Kevin. And while the trip to Dìyù, the Chinese underworld, was a grueling journey filled with endless horrors, nothing compares to the fact that she was unable to bring her mother back. She now has the great responsibility to assume the role her mother once held: head of the Weavers Guild. Spinning people’s fates sure seemed easier said than done, and now Evie finds herself buried in Guild duties while trying to maintain a strained relationship with her best friend.

Tony has a love of old comics… but when he goes poking around where he doesn’t belong, will he find himself discontinued? Kylie is thrilled to have a summer job at the local pet store… but will the store’s more gruesome creatures rub off on her? Teddy knows his new substitute teacher has a monstrous secret… but will telling the truth mean risking Mr. Howell’s wrath?

Ruby Chen has always played the part of the dutiful eldest daughter: excelling in school; excelling in piano lessons; excelling at keeping her younger sister, Tina, focused on extracurriculars meant to impress college admissions officers. But when a ghost from the spirit world attacks Ruby in the middle of Vancouver’s Chinatown neighborhood, her life is plunged into a darkness that no amount of duty can free her from. Overnight, Ruby’s sister seems to change.

Now entering its second century, the prestigious annual story anthology has a new title, a new look, and a new guest editor. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has brought her own refreshing perspective to the prize, selecting stories by an engaging mix of celebrated names and young emerging voices. The winning stories are accompanied by an introduction by Adichie, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines that publish short fiction.

The most influential book of Taiwan’s #MeToo movement—a heartbreaking account of sexual violence and a remarkable reinvention of the trauma plot, turning the traditional Lolita narrative upside down as it explores women’s vulnerability, victimization, and the lengths they will go to survive.

“Without stories, we cannot live well,” shares guest editor Min Jin Lee, describing how storytelling affects and nurtures readers. The Best American Short Stories 2023 features twenty pieces of short fiction that reflect a world full of fractured relationships, but also wondrous hope. A lifelong friendship may become a casualty of the Russia-Ukraine war. Rejected by his lover, a man seeks to reconcile with his family. Twitter users miraculously muster enough empathy to help a lost cat find a forever home.

In The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories, you can dine at a restaurant at the end of the universe, cultivate to immortality in the high mountains, watch roses perform Shakespeare, or arrive at the island of the gods on the backs of giant fish to ensure that the world can bloom. Written, edited, and translated by a female and nonbinary team, these stories have never before been published in English and represent both the richly complicated past and the vivid future of Chinese science fiction and fantasy.