Monica was already nervous about riding in her first horse show. Then she hears Rory making a bet that she'll do well. If she doesn't, will she let him down?
Second-grade best friends Ivy and Bean beg for ballet lessons, then, when they are cast as squids in their first recital, scheme to find a way out of what seems to be boring, hard, and potentially embarrassing.
Alex, whose birthday it is, hijacks a story about Birthday Bunny on his special day and turns it into a battle between a supervillain and his enemies in the forest--who, in the original story, are simply planning a surprise party.
Alice Monroe is a good person who is about to do a very bad thing.A professional dancer at twenty-four, Alice had worked tirelessly for years to achieve perfection in all areas of her life. She had the perfect boyfriend, the perfect dream job in her pocket, and the unfortunate, naïve belief that perfection was built to last.All it took was one night to tear down everything Alice had built for herself until she was left single, jobless, and her heart stained with betrayal. With her tail tucked between her legs, she drives to Chicago to move in with her older sister until she's back on her feet.Little did she know that this was just the beginning of her twist of fate nightmare.Ethan Black is waiting for her in Chicago as a perfect stranger, but soon after he and Alice meet, it's impossible for either of them to deny that they're destined to be much more. The only problem?Ethan's engaged to be wed to her sister.
The acclaimed debut short story collection that introduced the world to an arresting and unforgettable new voice in fiction, from multi-award winning author ZZ Packer Her impressive range and talent are abundantly evident: Packer dazzles with her command of language, surprising and delighting us with unexpected turns and indelible images, as she takes us into the lives of characters on the periphery, unsure of where they belong. We meet a Brownie troop of black girls who are confronted with a troop of white girls; a young man who goes with his father to the Million Man March and must decide where his allegiance lies; an international group of drifters in Japan, who are starving, unable to find work; a girl in a Baltimore ghetto who has dreams of the larger world she has seen only on the screens in the television store nearby, where the Lithuanian shopkeeper holds out hope for attaining his own American Dream. With penetrating insight, ZZ Packer helps us see the world with a clearer vision. Fresh, versatile, and captivating, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is a striking and unforgettable collection, sure to stand out among the contemporary canon of fiction.
An electric collection of new short stories from the inimitable, bestselling writer of Talk to Me and Outside Looking In In the title story of Walk Between the Raindrops, a woman sits down next to a man at a bar and claims she has ESP. In “Thirteen Days,” passengers on a cruise line are quarantined, to horrifying and hilarious effect. And “Hyena” begins simply: “That was the day the hyena came for him, and never mind that there were no hyenas in the South of France, and especially not in Pont-Saint-Esprit—it was there and it came for him.” A virtuoso of the short form, T.C. Boyle returns with an inventive, uproarious, and masterfully told collection of short stories characterized by biting satire, resonant wit, and a boundless, irrepressible imagination.