Best Paris Stories

Anthology of the winners of the Paris Short Story Contest

by Marie Houzelle

For some, Paris is home, for others, merely a dream. By turns humorous, bittersweet, historical or surreal, each of these carefully selected stories invites us to explore a different facet of Paris. BEST PARIS STORIES brings together the winning short stories of the 2011 Paris Short Story Contest with works by Jeannine Alter, Bob Levy, Lisa Burkitt, Nafkote Tamirat, Marie Houzelle, Jo Nguyen, Julia Mary Lichtblau, Mary Byrne, Marie Houzelle, Jane M. Handel, and Jim Archibald. "Exciting new voices from the winners of the 2011 Paris Short Story Contest" - Paris Writers News

Seashells, Gator Bones, and the Church of Everlasting Liability

Stories from a Small Florida Town in the 1930s

by Susan Adger (author)

In the 1930s, the fictional town of Toad Springs, Florida, is filled with the adventures and daily whatnots of worthy, down-to-earth folk such as Flavey Stroudamore, owner of a three-legged gator named Precious who also just happens to have a birthmark of Jesus on his side. Joining Flavey are Buck Blander, pastor of the Church of Everlasting Liability, who honed his preaching skills in prison but doesn't tell his parishioners, and Sweetie Mooney, whose attempt to run a beauty shop in her aunt's home fails after tragedies with head lice and henna hair dye. This lively, heartwarming collection of tales from the Sunshine State will inspire you to smile!

Bonds of Love and Blood

by Marylee Macdonald

Whether far from home or longing to escape, the people in these stories find themselves displaced from their normal routines. They misread the signals and wind up stranded on lonely beaches or seizing the moment before happiness flits away. "MacDonald applies insight, power, and delicacy to create characters between whom the psychic space virtually sizzles." —FOREWORD REVIEWS "engrossing"—MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW "With elegant prose enlivened by shards of mean humor, MacDonald captures how hard it is to love and/or trust abroad or at home."—KIRKUS REVIEWS "Author Marylee MacDonald has done an absolutely masterful job of presenting her readers with short stories so beautifully written that the characters will stay in your mind long after the story, and indeed the book, is done."—READERS’ FAVORITE "In her collection of twelve brilliantly-written short stories, MacDonald explores the pain and beauty of human relationships. MacDonald’s writing is raw and visceral, creating a strong emotional connection between her characters and the reader."—US REVIEW OF BOOKS "Bonds of Love and Blood is brilliantly written and nothing less than emotive."—HOLLYWOOD BOOK REVIEWS "Poignant, honest,and compelling... Highly recommended."—PACIFIC BOOK REVIEW "MacDonald dares to question which is the greater, more unsettling risk: the alluring intimacy of foreign terrains, or the intimate dangers of domesticity?" —Tara Ison, author of Reeling Through Life and Child out of Alcatraz "Her characters remind us of our universal and contradictory longing for solitude and for connection. Savor this book. Enjoy being in the hands of a generous and visionary writer." —Eileen Favorite, author of The Heroines "These elegantly crafted stories brim with emotional wisdom and eloquence. Bearing you around the world, they will imprint themselves, deeply, indelibly, upon your heart." —Melissa Pritchard, author of Palmerino

Worst Seller

by Bighead Horse

“Your biggest problem,” shouts a sadistic instructor at a confused group of writers, “is that you’re too mass-market!” The first story in Bighead Horse’s How to Write a Worstseller tells of an unusual workshop whose participants learn how to curb their sales appeal. This book generates from this story and fictionalises a writing contest with prize of 30 million RMB. The stories touch upon a rich range of topics and display a diverse spectrum of styles, while the author is concealed in the elaborated stories and hidden behind the different writer identities. This collection of stories demonstrates the author's command of writing novels in different styles and themes.

Dreamscape

Real Dreams Really Make a Difference

by Martha Cinader

From ancient history to near-modern times, this collection of short stories and poetry is about fascinating people in history who followed their dreams and changed the world. The repertoire was developed in performance in clubs, schools, libraries, jazz festivals and at the International Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Included are stories about Nicola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Josephine Baker, Queen Boedicea, Sacajawea and more. Described as "a hip beatnick Sesame Street for grownups," the stories are engaging for middle schoolers and up, and would appeal to teachers and librarians for their educational and entertainment value. The collection would also lend itself to adaptation for an educational animated TV series. Martha would like to see the life of this repertoire of biographical stories be extended to other mediums through licensing and permissions opportunities. For a more detailed description please see the Supporting Information PDF.

Detholiad O Storþiau'r Tir

by D.J. Williams

Tales from the Irish Club

A Collection of Short Stories

by Lestor Goran (author)

Tales from the Irish Club contains 11 wry accounts of an enclave of Irish Americans in Pittsburgh during and after World War II. In this first collection of short stories by Lester Goran are the often comic, sometimes tragic tales of Jack Lanahan, the transcendental artist who carves nothing but wooden roosters; Long Conall O’Brien, haunted by the ghosts of prostitutes he has known world-wide; Mrs. Pauline Conlon, famous as the woman who outlives three husbands—until she meets Sailor Kiernan; and the night an image of the Madonna appears on the wall of Local No. 9 of the Ancient Order of Hibernians.Ranging from the grimly realistic to the fantastic, Goran’s stories examine lives so unheralded that only the Irish Club, Forbes Field—where the Pirates break their hearts, and St. Agnes Church—where they attend school and prepare for eternity—know their joys and sorrows.“Tales from the Irish Club presents a group of stories so well imagined that one can hardly tell them apart from life…They are meant to overheard, not heard, as if the reader were a child at a wedding eavesdropping on someone’s loquacious, slightly drunken aunt…I abandoned the Hibernian world of Lester Goran’s Pittsburgh with a sense of loss. Closing his book felt like driving away from my own boyhood city after a large Thanksgiving dinner, with improbable stories still echoing in my head. Tales from the Irish Club is a memorable work.”—New York Times Book Review

She Loved Me Once and other Stories

New and Selected Poems

by Lestor Goran (author)

Lester Goran's first book of short stories, Tales from the Irish Club, was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as a “Notable Book of the Year 1996.” This second collection also centers around a group of men and women in an Irish-American enclave in Pittsburgh, primarily during the years surrounding World War II, but extending at times into the eighties.With evocative settings and narratives ranging from the supernatural to the humorous, from bawdy hilarity to richly detailed realism, Goran creates once more his world of poignant and magical times and places within the mundane affairs of ordinary men and women. With his mastery of language and images he shows again what Paul West has termed “the lunatic sadness of things.”As the Pittsburgh Post—Gazette noted in its review of Tales from the Irish Club, “His many characters come alive with an immediacy and clarity that makes their stories seem like today's gossip.” She Loved Me Once and Other Stories is a worthy successor to that book.

Outlaws of the Purple Cow

And Other Stories

by Lestor Goran (author)

In this, his third collection of stories, Lester Goran moves us again through the times and places indelibly stamped with his wit and insight about people and events lost to history. Outlaws of the Purple Cow centers around the domains of Irish-American men and women in Pittsburgh. Goran creates once more his world of poignant and magical times and places within the mundane affairs of ordinary men and women. Goran’s evocative settings and narratives range form the supernatural to the humorous, from bawdy to richly detailed realism.Goran, with his mastery of language and images, chronicles in stories the unheralded laughters and sorrows of Americans seldom noted in fiction.Goran creates once more his world of poignant and magical times and places within the mundane affairs of ordinary men and women. Goran’s evocative settings and narratives range from the supernatural to the humorous, from bawdy to richly detailed realism: the bewildering ceremony enacted on a suburban lawn on Good Friday; an inventory of the loves of a lifetime compiled on scraps of paper and matchbook covers; the young man home on leave from the army who encounters a woman whose entire life is reflected in the wires holding together her threadbare Christmas tree; and the young man on the first day of his first job who delivers roses to a house where the homeowner had died since ordering the flowers. Goran, with his mastery of language and images, chronicles in stories the unheralded laughter’s and sorrows of Americans seldom noted in fiction.

Sherlock Holmes and the Chinese Junk Affair

And Other Stories

by Val. Andrews

Three short stories each involving Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson and each taxing their powers of observation and detection to the absolute maximum.

The Disappearing Prince

And Other Stories

by Edmund. Hastie

Readers will be interested to know that this collection of short pastiches featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson has been written by a fourteen-year-old schoolboy, Edmund Hastie. In H.R.F. Keating's introduction to this unusual book he says, '... a triumph ... Sherlock Holmes is present in all his characteristic arrogance and all his inevitability of success'. Edmund Hastie has been writing since the age of seven and was inspired to create this work when he discovered Doyle's great detective on the shelves of his public library. In Sherlock Holmes and the Disappearing Prince, Sherlock Holmes is set four mysteries to solve. The title story is set in the university town of Cambridge and features the Crown Prince of Japan who apparently vanishes without trace from his rooms. As always Dr. Watson relates the stories and describes the events in his usual ripping style.

O'r Cyrion

by Ioan Kidd

Dolenni Hud

by Owen Martell

A collection of prose based in American towns named after places in Wales, such as Llangollen, Llandaff, Cardiff, Bangor and Neath. Contains photographs of the various locations.

Tair Ochr Y Geiniog

by Mihangel Morgan

The Wine Bird

A Comedy

by John Barnie

Goreuon Y Ganrif

Detholiad O Straeon Byrion

by Christine M. Jones

Occasional Demons

by Raymond. Soltysek

Stuart Donald's Complete New Tales of Para Handy

The Continued Voyages of the Vital Spark : Chronicled With Affection, Acknowledgement and Apology to Neil Munro.

by Stuart. Donald

The Prussian Bride

by Yuri. Buida

Straeon Dot Com

by Gordon Jones