short stories

Like a Prisoner

Winner of the English Pen Award

The book contains 11 dramatic and often horrifying stories, each describing the life of a different prisoner in the camps and prisons of communist Albania. The prisoners adapt, endure, and generally survive, all in different ways. They may conform, rebel, construct alternative realities of the imagination, cultivate hope, cling to memories of lost love, or devise increasingly strange and surreal strategies of resistance. The characters in different stories are linked to one another, and in their human relationships create a total picture of a secret and terrifying world. In the prisoners’ back stories, the anecdotes they tell, and their political discussions, the book also reaches out beyond the walls and barbed wire to give the reader a panoramic picture of life in totalitarian Albania.

Fatos Lubonja is Albania’s most distinguished opposition intellectual. He served 17 years in prison during communism, and since his release has been a fierce critic of the erosion of democracy.

“This is an incredible book because it is not a personal record of Fatos Lubonja's endurance in that grave, but of those of his other fellow prisoners whom he met in his odyssey through Albania's hellish prisons under the Enver Hoxha regime. Stories of survival, confrontation and horrendous, inhumane abuse.” —Anglo-Albanian Association

(A special thank you to book club member, Elke Richelsen for the suggestion.)

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Moving Parts

Winner, English PEN Translates Award

Selected by Asymptote for September World Book Club

Surreal and puncturing short stories from the Thai master of the form.

In a pink-walled motel, a teenage prostitute brings a grown man to tears. A love-struck young boy holds the dismembered hand of his crush, only to find himself the object of a complex ménage à trois. A naked body falls from the window of a twenty-story building, while two female office-workers offer each other consolation in the elevator…

In these wry and unsettling stories, Prabda Yoon once again illuminates something of the strangeness of modern cultural life in Bangkok. Disarming the reader with surprising charm, intensity and delicious horror, he explores what it means to have a body, and to interact with those of others.

“Sleek, supple and soaring – in this extraordinary translation, Prabda Yoon’s stories command your attention” — Eley Williams

“[Moving Parts] finds truth at the intersection of the absurd and the morbid” — Asymptote

“Scrappy, playful and morbid…. [Moving Parts] is a brilliant, surreal portrait of the Thai capital…: an alienated city with a cartoon-creepy vibe, shiny and dilapidated.” — White Review

“In Moving Parts, Prabda Yoon has created an essential imaginary of the twenty-first century metropolis; drily funny and deeply felt, vivid and vertiginous.” — David Hayden

“Yoon’s masterful stories unfold the drama of modern life, with all the stylistic resonances of the miraculous.” — Eka Kurniawan

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Welcome Me to the Kingdom

NY Times Editors’ Choice & Longlisted for the Pen/Robert W. Bingham Prize

An immersive debut set across the temples, slums, and gated estates of late-twentieth century Bangkok, telling the story of three families striving to control their destinies in a merciless, sometimes brutally violent, metropolis.

We came with the drought. From the window of the train, the rich brown of the Chao Phraya River marked the turn from the northeast into the central plains. We came for Bangkok on the delta. The thin tributaries that laced the provinces found full current at the capital. And in the city, we’d heard, the wealth was wide and deep.

In 1980, young lovers Pea and Nam arrive in Bangkok in search of a life, and a world, beyond Thailand’s rural outskirts. Thirty days, they promise each other. Thirty days for Pea to find work, for him to put aside his violent and unstable past and take root in this strange new land. But Bangkok does not want for male laborers, especially teenage boys with thick provincial accents, and when time finally runs out on their promise, it’s Nam who ultimately adapts to the capital’s ruthless logic and survives.

Spanning decades and perspectives, seamlessly shifting between the absurd and the tenderhearted, the interwoven stories of Welcome Me to the Kingdom introduce three families—Nam, her American husband, Rick, and their daughter, Lara; Vitat, a Thai Elvis impersonator, and his only daughter, Pinky; and Tintin and Benz, orphans who have adopted each other as brothers—who employ various schemes to lie, betray, and seduce their way to the “good life.”

These disparate citizens of Bangkok orbit each other over the next three decades—sometimes violently, passionately colliding. Through skin-whitening routines, cult conversion, gambling, and sex work, the collection’s characters look for reinvention in a city buckling under the weight of its own modernity.

Wildly imaginative and ambitious, Mai Nardone’s stories reveal the growing discrepancy between Bangkok’s smiling self-image and its ugly underbelly, and, in the process, offer a striking portrait of a city unmade by the whims of global capitalism, in a kingdom caught between this world and the next.

“An honest, crystalline depiction of what urbanization has done to complicate and erode human life. Bangkok is the true star here, a modern city at the center of a tale as old as civilization itself. Every brightly lit kingdom has an underbelly.” —NY Times Book Review

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Your Madness, Not Mine

Women's writing in Cameroon has so far been dominated by Francophone writers. The short stories in this collection represent the yearnings and vision of an Anglophone woman, who writes both as a Cameroonian and as a woman whose life has been shaped by the minority status her people occupy within the nation-state.

The stories in Your Madness, Not Mine are about postcolonial Cameroon, but especially about Cameroonian women, who probe their day-to-day experiences of survival and empowerment as they deal with gender oppression: from patriarchal expectations to the malaise of maldevelopment, unemployment, and the attraction of the West for young Cameroonians.

Makuchi has given us powerful portraits of the people of postcolonial Africa in the so-called global village who too often go unseen and unheard. 

“The characters Makuchi creates are survivors; they are scrappy and they are strong, especially the women. As we enter their world and see the neocolonial forces of gargantuan proportions that shape their daily living, Makuchi's pen guides us into a new literary space. She wields her pen like a pioneer's axe in the forest, clearing new spaces…that invite us to consider realities we would otherwise never know.” —Eloise A. Briere

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Never Whistle at Night

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A bold, clever, and sublimely sinister collection that dares to ask the question: “Are you ready to be un-settled?”

Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai’po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear—and even follow you home.

These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, these stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.

Featuring stories by: Norris Black • Amber Blaeser-Wardzala • Phoenix Boudreau • Cherie Dimaline • Carson Faust • Kelli Jo Ford • Kate Hart • Shane Hawk • Brandon Hobson • Darcie Little Badger • Conley Lyons • Nick Medina • Tiffany Morris • Tommy Orange • Mona Susan Power • Marcie R. Rendon • Waubgeshig Rice • Rebecca Roanhorse • Andrea L. Rogers • Morgan Talty • D.H. Trujillo • Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. • Richard Van Camp • David Heska Wanbli Weiden • Royce Young Wolf • Mathilda Zeller

“Never failed to surprise, delight, and shock.” —Nick Cutter, author of The Troop and Little Heaven

(A special thank you to book club member, Amanda Foxman for the suggestion.)

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Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

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Free to buy on Kindle! Make sure to click “buy”, not the Kindle Unlimited link.

In the twentieth-century literature of the supernatural, the single most important book, in the opinion of most scholars and enthusiasts, is Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, by M.R. James.

First printed in 1904, it is the landmark book that established the modern horror story. It has been reprinted more times than any other book in this field, and it contains several of the best ghost stories in the English language.

The antiquary here is M. R. James, Provost of Eton, one of the most formidable scholars that England has ever produced, who has drawn upon an unmatched knowledge of the hidden byways of the past to form a series of inimitable stories.

“These are stories meant to be read aloud at night, preferably by candlelight, when the shadows in the corners of our rooms could be hiding horrors. M. R. James has a well-deserved reputation for terrifying his readers. Most of his ghosts are only sketchily described, often only seen in brief glimpses, out of the corners of our eyes, yet the stories are more terrifying than any ‘slasher’-type horror movies. No one has ever told a better ghost story.” —Classic Mysteries

(A special thank you to book club member, Christine Jensen for the suggestion.)

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Grave Goods

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Renowned writer, philologist, and critic Miguel Garcia Posada says of this book: “It’s not a stretch to consider it one of the most notable revelations of recent Latin American literature.”

This is not a book of gore. Rather, the majority of these stories are creepy with touches of humor and twists at the end that will make you gasp or laugh in surprise and shock. It takes true talent to convey a solid micro-story and these are incredibly rich and well written for all their brevity. The author leaves much to the imagination which somehow adds more to the story and ups the creep factor.

A slim book, Grave Goods contains 98 pieces of flash fiction from one of Peru's best contemporary writers. While Fernando Iwasaki's stories—like all good horror stories—are intended to disconcert his readers, they are also often humorous in nature. Some re-create or re-envision urban legends, some come from dreams, and some are pure inventions of Iwasaki's remarkable mind.

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

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Cockfight

Named 1 of the best fiction books of 2018 by the NY Times en Español

In lucid and compelling prose, Ampuero sheds light on the hidden aspects of the home: the grotesque realities of family, coming of age, religion, and class struggle. A family’s maids witness a horrible cycle of abuse, a girl is auctioned off by a gang of criminals, and two sisters find themselves at the mercy of their spiteful brother. With violence masquerading as love, characters spend their lives trapped reenacting their past traumas.

“Heralding a brutal and singular new voice, Cockfight explores the power of the home to both create and destroy those within it.” —Independent Book Review

“Ampuero leads the international wave of Ecuadorian writers.” —NY Times en Español

“Ampuero writes with steely nerves and an ear for the beauty of simple, concrete language—not a word feels out of place.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Deftly written with spare, exacting prose, Cockfight. . . .presents searing portraits of family life.” —Latino Book Review

“Wielded like a righteous cudgel against exploitative power, this Ecuadorian debut makes no bones about its intentions from the get-go. . . . Ampuero fights dirty and, frankly, that’s just the sort of writer we need.” —Center for the Art of Translation

“Ampuero’s literary voice is tough and beautiful at once: her stories are exquisite and dangerous objects.” —Yuri Herrera

“María Fernanda Ampuero’s voice is urgent, intimate, lyrical while never forgetting to cast humor during the darkest of violent moments.” —Ernesto Quiñonez

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

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Apple and Knife

Inspired by horror, myths, and fairy tales, Apple and Knife is an unsettling ride that swerves into the supernatural to explore the dangers and power of occupying a female body in today’s world.

These short works of fiction set in the Indonesian everyday—in corporate boardrooms, in shanty towns, on Javanese dangdut music stages—reveal a soupy otherworld stewing just beneath the surface. Sometimes wacky and always engrossing, this is subversive feminist horror at its best, where men and women alike are arbiters of fear, and where revenge is sometimes sweetest when delivered from the grave.

Mara finds herself brainstorming an ad campaign for Free Maxi Pads, with a little help from the menstruation-eating hag of her childhood. Jamal falls in love with the rich and powerful Bambang, but it is the era of Indonesia's “smiling general” and, if he’s not careful, he may find himself recruited to Bambang’s brutal cause. Solihin would give anything to make dangdut singer Salimah his wife—anything at all.

In the globally connected and fast-developing Indonesia of Apple and Knife, taboos, inversions, sex and death all come together in a heady, intoxicating mix full of pointed critiques and bloody mutilations. Women carve a place for themselves in this world, finding ways to subvert norms or enacting brutalities on themselves and each other.

“In Apple and Knife, Intan Paramaditha has turned the fairytale on its head. Instead of helpless maidens, these fables are bursting with fierce and fabulous females, determined to exact justice in an unjust world. As the enigmatic title suggests, the writing is juicy and incisive. Every story is a gem and, as with all good fairytales, there are important lessons to be learned.” —Melanie Cheng,

“Deliciously dark and expertly disturbing, Intan Paramaditha’s compelling Apple and Knife will haunt you. Her weird, original stories reveal the darkness behind old tales and the shadows lurking at the edges of modern life.” —Ryan O’Neill

(Group read suggestion from Julie Jacobs, book club moderator.)

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The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives (aka The Secret Lives of the Four Wives)

First published as The Secret Lives of the Four Wives. Re-released in most countries as The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives.

Award-winning author Lola Shoneyin delivers an irresistible and entertaining story of marriage, family, power, and heartache set in modern-day Nigeria in her debut novel.

When Baba Segi woke up with a bellyache for the sixth day in a row, he knew it was time to do something drastic about his fourth wife’s childlessness.

For Baba Segi, his collection of wives and gaggle of children are a symbol of prosperity, success, and a validation of his manhood. All is well in this patriarchal home, until Baba arrives with wife number four, a quiet, college-educated, young woman named Bolanle. Jealous and resentful of this interloper who is stealing their husband’s attention, Baba’s three wives, begin to plan her downfall. How dare she not know her place, they whisper. How dare she offer to teach them to read. They will teach her instead, they vow, and open their husbands eyes to this wicked wind who has upturned the tranquility of their home.

Bolanle’s mother worked hard to educate her daughter and save her from a life of polygamy and dependence. She cannot understand why her daughter has chosen such a fate. But Bolanle hides a terrible secret—a secret that will unwittingly exposes the deception and lies, secrets and shame upon which Baba Segi’s household rests.

A stirring tale of men and women, mothers and children, servitude and independence, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives illuminates the common threads that connect the experiences of all women: the hardships they bear, their struggle to define themselves, and their fierce desire to protect those they love.

“Shoneyin's gripping debut set in modern-day Nigeria...masterfully disentangles four distinct stories, only to subtly expose what is common among them.” —Publishers Weekly

Important note: There are different versions of this book available. One version is a stage adaptation. Make sure you pick up the book & NOT the stage adaptation.

(Group read suggestion from Gemma Ware, book club moderator.)

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Butter Honey Pig Bread

Finalist - Lambda Literary Award, Governor General's Literary Award, Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize

An intergenerational saga about three Nigerian women: a novel about food, family, and forgiveness.

Butter Honey Pig Bread is a story of choices and their consequences, of motherhood, of the malleable line between the spirit and the mind, of finding new homes and mending old ones, of voracious appetites, of queer love, of friendship, faith, and above all, family.

Francesca Ekwuyasi's debut novel tells the interwoven stories of twin sisters, Kehinde and Taiye, and their mother, Kambirinachi. Kambirinachi feels she was born an Ogbanje, a spirit that plagues families with misfortune by dying in childhood to cause its mother misery. She believes that she has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family and now lives in fear of the consequences of that decision.

Some of Kambirinachi's worst fears come true when her daughter, Kehinde, experiences a devasting childhood trauma that causes the family to fracture in seemingly irreversible ways. As soon as she's of age, Kehinde moves away and cuts contact with her twin sister and mother. Alone in Montreal, she struggles to find ways to heal while building a life of her own. Meanwhile, Taiye, plagued by guilt for what happened to her sister, flees to London and attempts to numb the loss of the relationship with her twin through reckless hedonism.

Now, after more than a decade of living apart, Taiye and Kehinde have returned home to Lagos to visit their mother. It is here that the three women must face each other and address the wounds of the past if they are to reconcile and move forward.

“The stories of Kambirinachi and her daughters, Taiye and Kehinde, unfold in lyrical, emotionally affecting parallel narratives . .. Written in sizzling prose, Ekwuyasi's assured, inspired debut will impress fans of Akwaeke Emezi.” —Publishers Weekly

(A special thank you to book club member, Layne Percival for the suggestion.)

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The Wandering Falcon

Longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize

A haunting literary debut set in the forbidding remote tribal areas.

Traditions that have lasted for centuries, both brutal and beautiful, create a rigid structure for life in the wild, astonishing place where Pakistan (and Afghanistan) meet-the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). It is a formidable world, and the people who live there are constantly subjected to extremes-of place and of culture.

The Wandering Falcon begins with a young couple, refugees from their tribe, who have traveled to the middle of nowhere to escape the cruel punishments meted out upon those who transgress the boundaries of marriage and family. Their son, Tor Baz, descended from both chiefs and outlaws, becomes “The Wandering Falcon,” a character who travels among the tribes, over the mountains and the plains, into the towns and the tents that constitute the homes of the tribal people. The media today speak about this unimaginably remote region, a geopolitical hotbed of conspiracies, drone attacks, and conflict, but in the rich, dramatic tones of a master storyteller, this stunning, honor-bound culture is revealed from the inside throughout these short stories.

Jamil Ahmad has written an unforgettable portrait of a world of custom and compassion, of hardship and survival, a place fragile, unknown, and unforgiving.

“[Ahmad] proves a masterful guide to the landscape and to the captivating art of storytelling at its finest. This is a shadowy, enchanting journey…. A gripping book, as important for illuminating the current state of this region as it is timeless in its beautiful imagery and rhythmic prose.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“[A] rare and sympathetic glimpse into a world that most Westerners know only through news reports related to military operations…. A fascinating journey; essential reading.” —Library Journal, starred review

(A special thank you to book club member, Jordi Valbuena for the suggestion.)

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Guyana Memories

Dr. Hanif Gulmahamad was born in 1945 on a British colonial sugar plantation growing up in a small cottage on the Springlands Sugar Estate. He later emigrated to the US to attend university graduating with honors returning to his homeland for a single year to teach at the University of Guyana before permanently moving back to the US.

This book showcases 4 short stories, 11 works of nonfiction, and 48 poems of his. Some are of historical Guyanese significance that have previously been unrecorded and could well have been lost in the passage of time if not for this collection. Some pieces focus on local culture in Guyana—hunting birds with slingshots, crafting kites , catching fish at No. 73 waterside, and the notorious fowl thieves of the village. A few pieces represent the new Guyanese diaspora.

“A sentimental journey of the author's recollections of his boyhood in Guyana [evoking] the innocent and simple way of life in a long ago and far away land before moving to the US. Interesting, nostalgic, funny, sad, and thought-provoking.” —Guyanese Online

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Wild Mustard

Wild Mustard, an anthology of prizewinning short fiction by contemporary Vietnamese writers, captures the kaleidoscopic experiences of modern Vietnam's youth, navigating between home and newly expanded horizons, as they seek new opportunities through migration, education, and integration not only into their nation but into the world.

Following the tradition of the “Under 40” collections popularized by magazines such as the New Yorker and Granta, but with greater stakes and greater differences between the previous generation of writers and this new one, Wild Mustard seeks to change how North American readers think of Vietnam. Escaping the common fixation on the Vietnam War and its aftermath, these stories reflect the movement and dynamism of the young Vietnamese who find themselves in a vibrant world.

“This beautiful collection of short stories introduces a new side of Vietnam that pulls it out of the historical prison of the Vietnam War, where it’s been trapped for the last forty years. While the stories are specific to Vietnam, they are written in such a way that Anglophone readers of this translation can relate to, which makes them so relevant and important.” —Firpo

“The first anthology to focus on Vietnamese writers born after the Vietnam War, Wild Mustard makes you realize that whatever you thought you knew about Vietnam and its literature is woefully out of date. This is an important collection, one that shows Vietnamese fiction to be not only vibrant and alive, but also a very different creature than what you thought it was.” —Brian Evenson, noted author

(Group read suggestion from Julie Jacobs, book club moderator.)

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The King is Always above the People

Longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction

An urgent, essential collection of stories about Latin American families, immigration, broken dreams, LA gang members, and other tales of high stakes journeys

Betrayal. Family secrets. Doomed love. Uncertain futures. Migration. In Daniel Alarcón’s hands, these are transformed into deeply human stories with high stakes. In "The Thousands," people are on the move and forging new paths; hope and heartbreak abound. A man deals with the fallout of his blind relatives' mysterious deaths and his father's mental breakdown and incarceration in "The Bridge." A gang member discovers a way to forgiveness and redemption through the haze of violence and trauma in “The Ballad of Rocky Rontal.” And in the tour de force novella, "The Auroras", a man severs himself from his old life and seeks to make a new one in a new city, only to find himself seduced and controlled by a powerful woman. Richly drawn, full of unforgettable characters, The King is Always Above the People reveals experiences both unsettling and unknown, and yet eerily familiar in this new world.

“Alarcón is an empathic observer of the isolated human, whether isolated by emigration or ambition, blindness or loneliness, poverty or war. His stories have a reporter's mix of kindness and detachment, and his endings land like a punch in the gut. His purpose isn't to approve or condemn, or to liberate. He's writing to show us other people's lives, and in every case, it's a pleasure to be shown.” —NPR

"Showcases his talent as a master storyteller. In 10 vivid, captivating stories, Alarcón explores family relationships, secrets, betrayal, hope, love, heartbreak, immigration, forgiveness, and redemption." —Buzzfeed

“Dynamic novelist and journalist Alarcón delivers a collection of loosely affiliated short stories, each buzzing and alive…Alarcón’s gift for generating real, tangible characters propels readers through his recognizable yet half-real worlds.” —Booklist

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Something Will Happen, You’ll See

Something Will Happen, You’ll See is a heart-wrenching elegy on the impoverished working-class Greeks populating the neighborhoods around Piraeus, the large port southwest of Athens.

Ikonomou’s luminous and poignant short stories center around laid-off steelworkers, warehousemen, families, pensioners, and young couples faced with sudden loss and turmoil. Between docks, in tenement buildings, and on city streets Ikonomou’s men and women sustain their traumas on flickers of hope in the darkness and on their deep faith in humanity.

An illuminating examination of the human condition, Ikonomou’s award-winning book has become the literary emblem of the Greek crisis; stories so real, humane, and haunting that they will stay with the reader long after the final page.

“The Greek Faulkner... one of the most touching chronicles of the economic crisis to have come out of Greece.” —La Repubblica

(Group read suggestion from Mia DeGiovine Chaveco, book club co-founder.)

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The Word of the Speechless

The Peruvian writer Julio Ramón Ribeyro is one of the masters of the short story and a major contributor to the great flourishing of Latin American literature that followed the Second World War. In a letter to an editor, Ribeyro said about his stories, “in most of [them] those who are deprived of words in life find expression—the marginalized, the forgotten, those condemned to an existence without harmony and without voice. I have restored to them the breath they’ve been denied, and I’ve allowed them to modulate their own longings, outbursts, and distress.”

This is work of deep humanity, imbued with a disorienting lyricism that is Ribeyro’s alone. The Word of the Speechless, edited and translated by Katherine Silver, introduces readers to an indispensable and unforgettable voice of Latin American fiction.

“A magnificent storyteller, one of the best of Latin America and probably of the Spanish language, unjustly not recognized as such.” —Mario Vargas Llosa

(Group read suggestion from Ivor Watkins, book club moderator.)

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Out of Bounds

Jane Addams Book Award
ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults
NY Public Library Books for the Teen Age
Parents' Choice Silver Honor

“We are the young people,
We will not be broken!
We demand freedom
And say
Away with slavery
In our land of Africa!"

For almost fifty years, apartheid forced the young people of South Africa to live apart as Blacks, Whites, Indians, and “Coloreds.” This unique and dramatic collection of stories—by native South African and Carnegie Medalist Beverley Naidoo—is about young people's choices in a beautiful country made ugly by injustice.

Each story is set in a different decade during the last half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, and features fictional characters caught up in very real events. Included is a Timeline Across Apartheid, which recounts some of the restrictive laws passed during this era, the events leading up to South Africa's first free democratic elections, and the establishment of a new “rainbow government” that leads the country today.

(A special thank you to book club member, Sarah Howe for the suggestion.)

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Fools & Other Stories

These stories from the closing days of apartheid rule in South Africa won the Noma Award, Africa's highest literary award, and announced Njabulo Ndebele as an assured and impressive literary voice. He has gone on to become one of the most powerful voices for cultural freedom on the whole of the African continent today.

Ndebele evokes township life with humor and subtlety, rejecting the image of black South Africans as victims and focusing on the complexity and fierce energy of their lives. “Our literature,” says Ndebele, “ought to seek to move away from an easy preoccupation with demonstrating the obvious existence of oppression. It exists. The task is to explore how and why people can survive under such harsh conditions.”

The stories in Fools and Other Stories deal with the formative experiences of growing up in a Johannesburg township during the Apartheid years. “Fools,” the title story of the collection, is a tale of generations. Zamani, a disgraced middle-aged teacher and Zani, a young student activist, are inadvertently bound together by affection and hostility in an intense and unpredictable relationship. Finding each other means finding the common ground of their struggle. It also means re-examining their lives—and, notably, their relationships with women.

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Obsidian Worlds

Jason Werbeloff’s short stories have been downloaded over 50,000 times. Obsidian Worlds brings together his 11 best-selling sci-fi shorts into a mind-bending philosophical anthology.

In Your Averaged Joe, a man’s headache is large enough to hold the multiverse. Q46F is an obsessive-compulsive android who finds love in a zombie-embroiled apocalypse. The end of the world isn’t all that bad – The Experience Machine will fulfill your every desire (and some you hadn’t considered). A sex bot dares to dream of freedom in Dinner with Flexi. But mind what you eat, because The Photons in the Cheese Are Lost. Don’t fret though: The Cryo Killer guarantees that your death will be painless, or your money back when you’re thawed. Unless, that is, you’re The Man with Two Legs.

Plug into Obsidian Worlds for these and other immersive stories, including the hilarious Time-Traveling Chicken Sexer.

Your brain will never be the same again.

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