Heterick Summer Book Bingo 2019

The stories in "Specimen" are a unique exploration of science and the human heart, the place where physical reality collides with our spiritual and emotional lives. Stylistically varied and with settings that range from North Korea and Minsk to Vancouver and Gdansk, Kovalyova is a daring and confident new voice.

Personified animals, features of the natural world, and human creations are all characters in "The Teeth of the Comb." They aspire, they plot, they hope, they destroy, they fail, they love. These wonderful small stories animate new realities and make us see our reality anew; after reading the sly moral fables and sharp political allegories, the reader always sits up a little straighter, and a little wiser.

In these wildly imaginative, devilishly daring tales of the macabre, Enriquez brings contemporary Argentina to vibrant life as a place where shocking inequality, violence, and corruption are the law of the land, while military dictatorship and legions of desaparecidos loom large in the collective memory. Alongside black magic and disturbing disappearances, these stories are fueled by compassion for the frightened and the lost, and are a powerful exploration of what happens when our darkest desires are left to roam unchecked.

In these eleven stories, individuals who lift the curtains of their orderly homes and workplaces are confronted with the bizarre, the grotesque, the fantastic, the alien--and find a doorway to liberation.

Nobody has written more powerfully of the relationship between and within India and the Western middle classes than Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. In this selection of stories, her ability to tenderly and humorously view the situations faced by three (sometimes interacting) cultures--European, post-Independence Indian, and American--is never more acute; she rivals Jane Austen with her impeccable powers of observation. "At the End of the Century" celebrates a writer's astonishing lifetime gift for language.

The stories in "Mouthful of Birds" burrow their way into your psyche and don't let go. Each character must contend with the unexpected, whether a family coming apart at the seams, a child transforming, a ghostly hellscape, or a murder. Schweblin's stories have the feel of a sleepless night, where every shadow and bump in the dark take on huge implications, leaving your pulse racing, and where the line between the real and the strange blurs.

Three-time Hugo Award winner N. K. Jemisin sharply examines modern society in her first collection of short fiction, equally challenging and delighting readers with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption.