Short Stories: 2023

"A fresh, crackling, interlinked collection of short fiction, set among the denizens of Nigeria's Port Harcourt and inspired by a playlist of beloved pop songs. A Broken People's Playlist is the soundtrack of life, comprised of twelve music-inspired tales about love, the human condition, micro-moments, and the search for meaning and sometimes, redemption. It is also Chimeka Garricks's love letter to his native city, Port Harcourt, the setting of most...

"Richly drawn stories about the lives of ordinary families in contemporary Botswana as they navigate love, relationships, tradition, caretaking and grieving in a rapidly changing world. A young widow who for a nearly a year wears mourning clothes in part as a warning to those who believe the old superstitions about bad luck following--even though she's unsure what the traditions mean or whether she is ready to meet the world without their protection....

""Even in death, who has ownership over Black women's bodies?" Questions like this lurk between the lines of this stunning collection of stories that engage with African women's histories, both personal and generational. Their history is not just one thing: there is heartbreak and pain, and joy, and flying and magic, so much magic. An avenging spirit takes on the patriarchy from beyond the grave. An immigrant woman undergoes a naturalization ceremony...

Two Colombian expats meet as strangers on the rainy streets of New York City, both burdened with traumatic pasts. In Cuba, a woman discovers her deceased brother's bones have been stolen, and the love of her life returns from Ecuador for a one-night visit. A cash-strapped couple hustles in Miami, to life-altering ends.

"Izumi Suzuki had ideas about doing things differently, ideas that paid little attention to the laws of physics, or the laws of the land. In this new collection, her skewed imagination distorts and enhances some of the classic concepts of science fiction and fantasy"--

"In the title story, set five minutes in the future where you not only have a credit score but also a dating score, a woman who's been banished from all dating apps attends a weekly help group with others who have been "banned for life," and finds herself falling in love. In "Backwards," a twist on Benjamin Button, a woman reconnects with her estranged father as he de-ages ten years each day they spend together. In "Welcome to Oxhead," all the parents...

"Populated with lovers who leave and return, with ghosts of the Holocaust and messages from the dead, Courtney Sender's debut collection speaks in a singular new voice about the longings and loneliness of contemporary love. The world of these fourteen interlocking stories is fiercely real but suffused with magic and myth, dark wit, and distinct humor. Here, ancient loss works its way deep into the psyche of modern characters, stirring their unrelenting...

"A vast caravan of RVs roam the United States. A girl grows a unicorn horn, complicating her small-town friendships and big city ambitions. A young lady on a spaceship bonds with her AI warden while trying to avoid an arranged marriage. In Allegra Hyde's universe nothing is as it seems, yet the challenges her characters face mirror those of our modern age. Spanning the length of our very solar system, the fifteen stories in this collection explore...

"The Mexican board game of Loter�ia is a game of chance--similar to bingo. However, in Loter�ia instead of matching up numbers on a game board, players match up images. There are 54 cards in the Loter�ia game, and for this short story collection you will find one unique story per card based on a Latin American myth, folklore, superstition, or belief--with a slant towards the paranormal and horrific. In this deck of cards you will find murderers,...

"Since her acclaimed novel A Carnivore's Inquiry, Sabina Murray has been celebrated for her mastery of the gothic. Now in Muckross Abbey and Other Stories, she returns to the genre, bringing readers to haunted sites from a West Australian convent school to the moors of England to the shores of Cape Cod in ten strange tales that are layered, meta, and unforgettable. From a twisted recasting of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, an actor who dies for his...