Short stories, American. American fiction -- 20th century.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past. Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Sethe works at beating back the past, but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly in her memory and in the lives of those around her. When a mysterious teenage girl arrives, calling herself Beloved, Sethe’s terrible secret explodes into the present. Combining the visionary power of legend with the unassailable truth of history, Morrison’s unforgettable novel is one of the great and enduring works of American literature.

Cassie witnesses a black man address a white storekeeper by his first name. "A powerful story . . .Readers will be haunted by its drama and emotion long after they have closed the book." --Booklist

The most popular annual short story anthology includes contributions from thebest-known writers as well as new talents.

“Funny, incisive, frightening and eminently skillful."—New York Times The year is 1978, the tumultuous period leading up to the Iranian Revolution. While visiting Iran with her husband, Chloe Fowler is left to travel alone after he is summoned home. Much to her surprise, she finds herself drawn to the country, intoxicated by each unfamiliar sight that reminds her how far from home she really is, both comforted and unsettled by the group of foreign and Iranian physicians and their wives who take her in. However, her exhilaration crashes when odd, often frightening events begin to occur, exposing the darker side of this "colonial life." Chloe is about to be liberated from everything she has ever known—in a place where her ordinary notions of reason and reality will run headlong into a wall of intrigue, and where every idea she has about herself will be put to the test. Persian Nights follows Chloe on a voyage through the seductively inexplicable, and has all the qualities one expects from the gifted author of Le Divorce—the quirky, vivid atmosphere; the intelligent, humane voice; the compelling narrative. Once again, Diane Johnson delivers an entertaining novel of an appealing woman caught up in a mysterious world of change and intrigue.

National Book Award Finalist: A man, woman, and child are bound by a desperate need—and a terrible secret—in this suspenseful, “astonishing” novel (Vogue). Aubrey Wallace is the kind of man no one notices. Dotty Johnson is the kind of woman no one can ignore. One afternoon, they both disappear from the small Vermont town where they live. The next day, two hundred miles away, a toddler is kidnapped from her Massachusetts home. For the next five years, Aubrey, Dotty, and the kidnapped child—united by a mix of strange love, desperate need, and the crime that brought them together—are trapped in a nomadic existence governed by their constant fear of discovery. Canny, the little girl, becomes Aubrey’s entire existence. But Dotty wants out. She is tired of being saddled with this fearful man, and when she meets a brutal ex-convict, the wheels of Canny’s return to her natural parents are wrenched fatally into motion. A dark, riveting tale about the impulses and weaknesses that underlie an evil act, Vanished was nominated for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and marked the debut of the New York Times–bestselling author of Songs in Ordinary Time and A Dangerous Woman.