Short stories, American

Being tales of adventure and romance from a land of romance with stories of plantation life. Contains: Fire-hunt and its sequel; McLeod at the log-rolling; Day of rare sport and an exciting conclusion; Plantation scenes and incidents; Lost, and an awful encounter; Story of startling adventures; Panther hunt; Bee tree and the plan for a camp hunt; Story and adventure of Billy McLeod; Cracker -- Cracker courtship, or, Billy McLeod, the matchmaker.

Bullet is a collection of short stories that fictionalizes the last days of
twentieth century world authors. Inspired heavily by the biographies of each writer,
the stories depict the spiraling psyches of each suicide. Each narrator is carefully
crafted out of the real life of each author though, first and foremost, each story is
fiction. By the end, Bullet is a contemplation of both life and death from the
perspective of the greatest minds of the last one hundred years. Only now, in the new
millennium, can the twentieth century be definitively sketched. Bullet is one of the
first pieces of writing to do so.

The eleven short stories in this collection can be described as autobiographical fiction, combining true instances from the author’s life with fictional characters and events. The stories explore the themes of grief and loss, coming of age, and the importance of preserving the natural world.

From modern-day parking lot snipers to 18th century Romantic picturesque painters, At the Bank of Paradise: and Other Stories explores the unexpected boundaries of the Caribbean, following those who have come, those who have stayed, and those who have left the Caribbean behind. Inspired by real historical figures at the periphery of the Caribbean experience, these stories dive into untold narratives only glimpsed in the footnotes of history.

Language: the sounds of it, the richness of its rhythms, the connotative and the denotative meanings of words have all played a part in my development from a child to the adult I have become making a life for myself. Whether the words I heard flew like fiery darts, or whether they lifted my weary soul, I somehow always found they meant something to special me. Because of my love of language, I began early to read voraciously. The first novel that I read was Gone with the Wind. That story whisked my imagination to a dark and mysterious time and place that, along with the narrative powers of my mother, convinced me that Margaret Mitchell had recreated a real world from her imagination. I still have my own dream that there is a mysterious and hidden world waiting for me to recreate out of my imagination, too.

The following manuscript is a collection of eight short stories that center on the theme of how stories and storytelling, in all their different forms, fill our lives. In one story a girl that lives in other people's houses, longs to tell her story, while in another story a girl struggles with a secret her grandmother leaves behind as she tries to reconstruct her grandmother's story. Some stories use magical and fairy tale-like elements, which work as allusions in the stories and echo the events happening in characters' lives. Another theme present in the collection is that of family and how familial relationships affect identity and self-discovery. In one story, a wildfire allows the stories of different generations to be told, while a widow builds a family out of the aftermath of her husband's death in a different story.

Sharp Edges and Other Lessons is a collection of stories that share a loose thematic link suggested by the title. The various "lessons" encountered by the characters here represent the ways people respond to the many currents and fluctuations roiling beneath the surface of everyday life.

This is a collection of short stories that flirt with non-traditional forms. They are character-driven pieces, in which plot is of secondary importance to the relationships created and established. Ambiguity and abstraction are valued, as is the balance between mood and humor. Scientific principles fuel some of the pieces here, most of which do not attempt to take place in reality, but rather create their own arena to contain the events that follow.

These are collected short stories all dealing to varying extents with the theme of being stuck or captured in an experience or in a moment gone past, often events of hardship or trauma. Some characters explore this territory in desperation, and some seem to become stoic reminders of these pasts, unable to accept the responsibility to move on and allow the experience to mature them and help them grow. I have concentrated on this theme as an aspect of suburbia, the kind of place in which I have grown up and where my characters spend the most time. This collection has been a personal journey for me as well as an exploration in character motivation through imagery depicting the key influential moments in these characters' lives.

The Glass Catamount is concerned with one James Frederick Curling, a young, up-and-coming senator from Delaware. As Curling moves up through his political party, suspicion of infidelity begins to rise to the surface as a woman from his past appears and claims to know intimate details about the senator. Her intentions are unknown, but as the senator's old friend and aide, Robertson Peters, finds himself drawn in by her stories, unsure if they are truth or fabrication, the longevity of the career of the senator, and possibly even his life, come into question. Themes of truth versus reality are dealt with throughout, and the act of sexual exploration and discovery is broken down and analyzed in the context of the senator's past and what he constructs as truth, whether it was always the way he claims or not. The glass catamount of the title is a symbol of the fragility and rarity of an understood self, appearing only briefly as it passes through the trees on its climb back up the mountain.