Showing results for "grief" in Short Stories

Maya has always gotten wet in the rain. Her father never did. As a child, she watched him step out into storms and come back completely dry, urging her to “walk between the raindrops” and promising that, when she could, she’d finally know who she was and why she was here.

In this, Theodore Dalrymple’s second collection of short stories, he begins to let his imagination run. The absurdity of modern life is fully laid bare when taken to extremes. You will laugh through your tears.

A tender, mystical story for anyone who has carried grief—or an experience they couldn’t explain. Helen has seen lights for most of her life. Now, as she nears the end, those lights return—closer, brighter, and impossible to dismiss. When she finally shares what she sees, Maya listens with the kind of attention that only grief can teach… and the world quietly shifts. Because once Helen’s message is released, others begin to find it. People who thought they were alone. People who have been waiting—sometimes for decades—for someone to say, You’re not broken. I understand.

A grieving mother makes a spreadsheet of everyone she’s lost. Elsewhere, a professor develops a troubled intimacy with her hairdresser. And every year, a restless woman receives an email from a strange man twice her age and several states away. In Yiyun Li’s stories, people strive for an ordinary existence until doing so becomes unsustainable, until the surface cracks and the grand mysterious forces—death, violence, estrangement—come to light. And even everyday life is laden with meaning, studded with indelible details.

Exploring themes like hypocrisy, mental illness, individualism, toxic masculinity, environmentalism, relationships, death, and revenge, Of Grief and High Delight is certain to engage the mind and stir the spirit as it immerses listeners in vividly imagined worlds and introduces them to unforgettable characters that will bring them to see their own world with new perspectives.

In “The Pleasure of Her Company,” a lonely, single woman befriends the married couple next door, hoping to learn the secret of their happiness. In "Long Distance," a man finds himself relieved of the obligation to continue an affair that is no longer compelling to him, only to be waylaid by the guilt he feels at his easy escape. And in the incandescently wise and moving title novella, a dentist, aware that his wife has fallen in love with someone else, must comfort her when she is spurned....

“Oates is a fearless writer.” —Los Angeles Times “Oates is a master of the dark tale—stories of the hunted and the hunter, of violence, trauma, and deep psychic wounds.” —Booklist (starred review) Sourland is a gripping, haunting, and intensely moving collection of short stories by...

This short story collection will literally carry you through space on a quest for water due to a shortage of water on earth. Go along with the astronauts and specialized teams to Mars to find water for earth. The next story on your journey will take you to Clay County, Kentucky, to walk along with Crystal and Mother Pearl as they learn about love and forgiveness in a family that has been holding back a secret. Finally on your journey, you get to watch Abby, a senior at Ridgefield High School in Connecticut, struggle through her senior year, through pain and grief and in the end find hope.

This poignant and haunting tale begins with the narrator's journey of placing his mother in a rural nursing home—a sanctuary that feels more like a retreat. As he adjusts to this new chapter in their lives, he encounters peculiar events, including an old man conversing with an unseen companion over tea. This eerie experience fades into the background as the narrator becomes consumed by the demands of life, gradually visiting his mother less frequently.