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  Sunstroke and Other Stories

  Tessa Hadley

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  A Picador Paperback OriginalTessa Hadley's stories trace the currents of desire, desperation, and mischief that that lie hidden inside domestic relationships.A mother hears her son's confession that he's cheating on his girlfriend; a student falls in love with a professor and initiates an affair with a man who looks just like him. A boy on a seaside vacation realizes that a grown-up woman is pressing dangerously close.In Tessa Hadley's Sunstroke and Other Stories, everyone conspires to hold the loving and stable surface of family life together, as old secrets and new appetites threaten to blow it apart.

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  Women of Consequence

  Greg Wolos

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  In these stories, readers will meet women like: the fallen starlet who revives her career by voicing a wretched dog-man in an animated horror film; the surrogate nearing her due date who, hoping for greater profit, runs off to Mexico with her valuable cargo; the meals-on-wheels driver with an eating disorder who survives on bits picked from the dinners of her clients; the casting agent who hires a performance artist to nurse her new baby; the young professional who, seeking eligibility for an exclusive dating service, pretends severe colorblindness; the dangerously protective mother who attempts to destroy her child’s faith in his physical senses. Victims or victimizers, the mothers, daughters, sisters, lovers, friends, and ghostly presences in this collection face their unique circumstances with passion and creativity. Whether or not they find satisfaction, they are all Women of Consequence.

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  A Woman's Worth

  Tracy Price-Thompson

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  Tracy Price-Thompson is the author of the best-selling Chocolate Sangria (F0156), which was chosen as a Main Selection of the Black Expressions Book Club. Gripping and soulful, A Woman's Worth is a tale of cultural divisions, emotional wounds, and a love that struggles to transcend them. In Kenya, when a young American man falls in love with the sophisticated daughter of an African chief, their marriage is strong. But tradition will soon put their union to the supreme test.

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  So Long - Stories: 1987–1992

  Lucia Berlin

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  By the New York Times–bestselling author of Evening in Paradise, poignant, personal short stories for fans of Grace Paley, Annie Proulx, and Alice Munro. In 1990, Black Sparrow Press published Lucia Berlin’s first full-length collection of stories and remained her publisher until her passing in 2004. With the recent publication of A Manual for Cleaning Women, and the sustained critical acclaim it has received, Berlin has finally been recognized as a master of the short story, allowing her work to reach the broad audience it deserves. This collection captures distilled moments of crisis or epiphany, placing the protagonists in moments of stress or personal strain, and all told in an almost offhand, matter of fact voice. Weaving through the places she loved–Chile, Mexico, the Southwest, and California–each story delivers a poignant moment that lingers in the mind, not resolved, not decoded, but resonating, as questions of the human condition always do, in the heart of the reader.Praise for So Long“Affecting . . . Compelling . . . Remarkably successful. Berlin places her memorable characters in gripping situations, plumbing their messed-up lives for pathos and allowing us to see deeply into their souls.” —Publishers Weekly“Most of the twenty-three stories in this collection are very short and very simple. They . . . have the casual, straightforward, immediate, and intimate style that distinguishes her work. They are told in a conversational voice and they move with a swift and often lyrical economy. They capture and communicate moments of grace and cast a lovely, lazy light that lasts. Berlin is one of our finest writers and here she is at the height of her powers.” —Molly Giles, San Francisco Chronicle

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  The Birth-Mark

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

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  Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on 4th July 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, a town synonymous with the earlier Salem Witch Trials. It was instrumental in Hawthorne’s later use of American Gothic and dark romanticism in his writing. 
   
  He was a mere four years old when his father died and his mother took him and his two sisters to live with her family and then on to their own home in Raymond, Maine. The young Hawthorne had a passion for fiction and poetry and voraciously read the works of Ann Radcliffe, Henry Fielding and Lord Byron.  
   
  He was sent to college at his maternal uncle’s insistence. During these years he met and befriended Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and future U S president Franklin Pierce. These friendships were lifelong and to have a crucial impact on his writings and career.  
   
  At college Hawthorne had made attempts at writing short stories and essays but without opportunities to publish. It was only in 1828 that he finally published his novel ‘Franshawe’ to little success and so he began work as editor for the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge.  
   
  Hawthorne’s short stories were first published in magazines but in 1837 were collected and published as ‘Twice-Told Tales’. A steady literary career still did not come his way and so he worked in a good position at Salem’s port and married the love of his life Sophia Peabody. They moved to live in ‘The Old Manse’ at Concord, Massachusetts.   
   
  Finally. in 1850 came spectacular literary and commercial success with ‘The Scarlet Letter’ followed by ‘The House of the Seven Gables’ the following year.  
   
  In 1852, Hawthorne published a biography of presidential candidate Franklin Pierce. After Pierce’s victory he was appointed consul in Liverpool, a position that offered prestige, money and fame. At the end of this appointment he returned several times to Europe before settling in Massachusetts and resuming writing and publication. 
   
  During the early 1860’s his health declined and on 19th May 1864 during a trip to Plymouth, New Hampshire. He was 59 and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.  
   
  The Birthmark is a classic tale from Hawthorne’s pen.  Georgina has a small red birthmark on her cheek.  Her husband, a brilliant scientist and philosopher becomes obsessed with what he thinks is this blemish on her beauty.

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  The Brazen Serpent

  R. Austin Freeman

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  Richard Austin Freeman (1862-1943) was a British writer of detective stories, many featuring the investigator Dr. Thorndyke, who uses a mixture of medical and forensic techniques to solve the most baffling crimes. "The Brazen Serpent" is an unusual crime story in that it is told from the perspective of the criminal. Danby, a young engineer and hobby metalsmith has just escaped from prison and is in search of a way to make a living while on the run. His friend Parmenter a collector of antiquities and owner of a rare and valuable medallion which is his most prized possession, offers him a position running an antiques business he has just acquired. Danby uses his visit to Parmenter to sneakily take a wax impression of the rare medallion which he later casts in silver. But will he manage to pass off his replica as an original? And who will buy it?

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