Showing results for "Birds" in Anthologies & Short Stories

It all started with a simple, yet sneakily difficult challenge from global best-selling author Harlan Coben: Pick a bird of prey, then use it as the inspiration for a brand-new story. The response from some of the best writers on the planet: Game on! The result: Eleven stories that are twisty, scary, surprising and bursting with imagination. An egg worth more than its weight in gold. A mysterious operative known only as Owl. An eagle-watcher who sees more than she should. Even a story that somehow places the Maltese Falcon in a nursing home.

From the opening story, "Willing" - about a second-rate movie actress in her 30s who has moved back to Chicago, where she makes a seedy motel room her home and becomes involved with a mechanic who has not the least idea of who she is as a human being - Birds of America unfolds a startlingly brilliant series of portraits of the unhinged, the lost, the unsettled of our America. Lorrie Moore explores the personal and the universal, the idiosyncratic and the mundane, with all the wit, brio, and verve that have made her one of the best storytellers of our time.

Birds, Strangers and Psychos is a thrilling anthology that brings together the biggest names in mystery and crime fiction to pay homage to Alfred Hitchcock, the legendary filmmaker whose name is synonymous with suspense. Acclaimed editor Maxim Jakubowski curates 24 original short stories, each inspired by the mood, tension, and style that defined Hitchcock’s groundbreaking work.

These four plays, translated into blank verse by C. A. Wheelwright, present to us the wide range of this ancient playwright's fertile imagination. From war and peace to politics and society to the relationships between mena nd women, no topic is off-limits.

A classic of alienation and horror, The Birds was immortalised by Hitchcock in his celebrated film. The five other chilling stories in this collection echo a sense of dislocation and mock man's sense of dominance over the natural world.

"My pen is the wing of a bird; it will tell you those thoughts we are not allowed to think, those dreams we are not allowed to dream" A woman's fortitude saves her village from disaster. A teenager explores their identity in a moment of quiet. A petition writer reflects on his life as a dog lies...

As part of Counterpoint's celebration of beloved American author Wendell Berry comes this reissue of his 1986 classic, The Wild Birds: Six Stories of the Port William Membership. Those stories include "Thicker Than Liquor," "Where Did They Go?," "It Wasn't Me," "The Boundary," "That Distant Land," and the titular "The Wild Birds." Spanning more than three decades, from 1930 to 1967, these wonderful stories follow Wheeler Catlett, and reintroduce listeners to the beloved people who live in Berry's fictional town of Port William, Kentucky.

Brothel owner Joel Rankin refuses his fiancé's request to close the Bird Cage. As a result, he is punished with an evil spell that changes his life forever. "Pretty Bird" is a western historical short story with romantic elements.

A powerful, eerily unsettling story collection from a major international literary star. Unearthly and unexpected, the stories in Mouthful of Birds burrow their way into your psyche and don't let go. Samanta Schweblin haunts and mesmerizes in this extraordinary, masterful collection. Schweblin's...

Though published second after Altmann's Tongue, The Din of Celestial Birds (1997) consists of the best of Evenson's early stories. They take place in a country (perhaps several countries) that seems at once everywhere and nowhere, haunted by birds, ghosts, poverty, tyranny, and the permeability of the line between the living and the dead. These stories offer a heady mix of absurdity and bleakness on the one hand and exuberant magic realism on the other.

A Collection of Spellware Fantasy Short Stories. Welcome to Spellware Fantasy, a new literary genre developed by author Brett Vogeler for The Songbird Saga. This is not fantasy awkwardly borrowing technology, but a true and profound fusion. In this world, witchcraft meets code, a haunted house is an evolving AI, and a digital ghost is a literal consciousness woven from both ancestral magic and digital data. Spellware Fantasy is where the grimoire and the hard drive rest on the same shelf, focusing on the intimate, powerful magic of healing, connection, and repair.

"Slow Birds" tells the story of a strangely idyllic world that is plagued by mysterious invaders. Dubbed slow birds, because the cylindrical objects fly at the rate of only a few feet per minute, the artifacts are a complete mystery. Jason Babbidge's life is inexorably changed and linked to the slow birds when his brother, Daniel, climbs aboard a slowbird shortly before it disappears into the unknown.

In these tense, macabre stories, bodies fall from the sky, perfect nails conceal grisly secrets and violence pulses behind gleaming façades. From hellish visions to obsessive relationships, acclaimed author Agustina Bazterrica takes us to the dark heart of human desires and fears. Shocking, brutal, yet glinting with sharp humour, "Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird" is a breathtaking dive into human monstrousness from a master of contemporary horror.

An “astonishing debut collection, by a writer reminiscent of such greats as Alice Munro, Elizabeth Strout, and even Chekhov” (Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants), focusing on women navigating relationships with humans, animals, and the natural world. Exploring the way our choices and...

Leaping in space and time between near-future Earth and the distant reaches of our galaxy far in the future, this fourth installment of Sci-Fi shorts by P.E. Rowe covers rich territory. Each of these sixteen stand-alone stories explores deep ideas and unique characters. From new concepts in technology and their societal implications, to the personal journeys of people crossing forbidden cultural boundaries, meeting grave galactic challenges, and battling monsters within. This expansive collection introduces listeners to the reclusive shipbuilders of the Eden Cylinder Group.

An NPR Best Book of 2023 A collection of twenty dark, wildly imaginative short stories from the author of the award-winning TikTok sensation Tender Is the Flesh. From celebrated author Agustina Bazterrica, this collection of twenty brutal, darkly funny short stories takes into our deepest fears...

Franz Kafka is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most enigmatic geniuses of European literature. What happens when his idiosyncratic imagination meets some of the greatest literary minds writing in English across the globe today? From a future society who ask their AI servants to construct a giant tower to reach God; to a flat hunt that descends into a comically absurd bureaucratic nightmare; to a population experiencing a wave of unbearable, contagious panic attacks, these ten specially commissioned stories are by turns mind-bending, funny, unsettling and haunting.

From best-selling contemporary author, Hannah Lee Kidder, Little Birds is a collection of glimpses into some of the darkest corners of our lives – the lies we tell ourselves, the ways we hurt others, the painful truths we pretend to face. From single-line microfictions to full narratives, each story is a raw, unflinchingly human experience.

Con la publicación de Cadáver exquisito (Premio Clarín Novela 2017), Agustina Bazterrica logró dos cosas al mismo tiempo: consagrarse como una de las escritoras argentinas más leídas y respetadas en todo el mundo, y transformar el libro en un clásico instantáneo. Esa distopía acerca de un mundo casi inhumano, que no cesa de cuestionar nuestro modo de vida actual y que dispara toda clase de preguntas acerca de lo contemporáneo, tiene historia. La autora lleva muchos años escribiendo relatos y cuentos breves, que hoy Alfaguara reedita en este volumen.

From the moment Riley moves into the house by the river, she can feel it—something is wrong. The birds perch outside her window, black-feathered and unblinking. Every night, they whisper things in hushed human like voices. Her mother offers no answers. The town feels off-kilter. Whispers follow her through the halls at school. Only Anna seems to understand, and even she is keeping secrets. As sleep evades her and the nights stretch on, Riley finds herself caught in something she cannot name. The birds are always watching. And they are not alone.