Ring in the New Year with a Good Book!

A ravishing, luminous selection of short stories from the prize-winning imagination of A. S. Byatt, "a storyteller who could keep a sultan on the edge of his throne for a thousand and one nights" (The New York Times Book Review). Mirrors shatter at the hairdresser's when a middle-aged client explodes in rage. Snow dusts the warm body of a princess, honing it into something sharp and frosted. Summer sunshine flickers on the face of a smiling child who may or may not be real. Medusa's Ankles celebrates the very best of A. S. Byatt's short fiction, carefully selected from a lifetime of writing. Peopled by artists, poets, and fabulous creatures, the stories blaze with creativity and color. From ancient myth to a British candy factory, from a Chinese restaurant to a Mediterranean swimming pool, from a Turkish bazaar to a fairy-tale palace, Byatt transports her readers beyond the veneer of the ordinary—even beyond the gloss of the fantastical—to places rich and strange and wholly unforgettable. (from Amazon.com)

Bestselling author Carlos Ruiz Zafón conceived of this collection of stories as an appreciation to the countless readers who joined him on the extraordinary journey that began with The Shadow of the Wind. Comprising eleven stories, most of them never before published in English, The City of Mist offers the reader compelling characters, unique situations, and a gothic atmosphere reminiscent of his beloved Cemetery of Forgotten Books quartet. The stories are mysterious, imbued with a sense of menace, and told with the warmth, wit, and humor of Zafón's inimitable voice. A boy decides to become a writer when he discovers that his creative gifts capture the attentions of an aloof young beauty who has stolen his heart. A labyrinth maker flees Constantinople to a plague-ridden Barcelona, with plans for building a library impervious to the destruction of time. A strange gentleman tempts Cervantes to write a book like no other, each page of which could prolong the life of the woman he loves. And a brilliant Catalan architect named Antoni Gaudí reluctantly agrees to cross the ocean to New York, a voyage that will determine the fate of an unfinished masterpiece. Imaginative and beguiling, these and other stories in The City of Mist summon up the mesmerizing magic of their brilliant creator and invite us to come dream along with him. (from Amazon.com)

Scary Short Stories to Enjoy

Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense is edited by Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger. The ghost story has long been a staple of world literature, but many of the genre's greatest tales have been forgotten, overshadowed in many cases by their authors' bestselling work in other genres. In this spine-tingling anthology, little known stories from literary titans like Charles Dickens and Edith Wharton are collected alongside overlooked works from masters of horror fiction like Edgar Allan Poe and M. R. James. Acclaimed anthologists Leslie S. Klinger (The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes) and Lisa Morton (Ghosts: A Haunted History) set these stories in historical context and trace the literary significance of ghosts in fiction over almost two hundred years—from a traditional English ballad first printed in 1724 through the Christmas-themed ghost stories of the Victorian era and up to the science fiction–tinged tales of the early twentieth century. 

A Wave of Fear: a Classic Horror Anthology is edited by Hugh Lamb. Includes selections by L.A. Lewis, Eleanor Scott, Ambrose Bierce, M.P. Shiel, H.R. Wakefield, Charles Birkin, L.T.C. Rolt, Marjorie Bowen, A.C. Benson, E.F. Benson, R.H. Benson, Joy Burnett, Frederick Cowles, D.K. Browster, J.D. Beresford, Robert W. Chambers, and Vivian Meik. Keep yourself up at night reading classic and contemporary stories of terror and suspense.

Nightmares and Dreamscapes--the classic short story collection from bestselling author Stephen King. A wrong turn on a lonely road lands a wayward couple in Rock and Roll Heaven, Oregon, where there’s no escaping the free nightly concert….A novelty toy becomes an unexpected and terrifying instrument of self-defense….An ex-con pieces together a map to unearth a stolen million dollars—but at what price?...A private investigator in Depression-era Los Angeles is finding his life unraveling as he discovers the shocking truth of who he really is….A third-grade teacher is willing to dig deep in order to exact revenge for his murdered wife.... These are just some of the haunting scenarios to be found in this classic collection—spellbinding tales from the darkest places and the unparalleled imagination of fiction’s master storyteller.

Games Creatures Play edited by Charlaine Harris, Toni L. P. Kelner. Welcome to the wide world of paranormal pastimes, where striking out might strike you dead. In this all-new story collection of the most peculiar plays ever made; sports fans live and die by their teams' successes and failures-though not literally. But these fifteen authors have written spirited--in more ways than one--new tales of killer competitions that would make even the most die-hard players ask to be benched. In Charlaine Harris's "The Blue Hereafter," Manfred Bernardo learns about softball from a certain blond barmaid in Louisiana. Life-and-death stakes make the competition get serious in William Kent Krueger's "Hide and Seek." r Mercedes Lackey's "False Knight on the Road" features a high-stakes drag race on a foggy mountain road between a clever young bootlegger and a mysterious stranger. In Laura Lippman's "Ice," a young girl learns the true story behind a bit of neighborhood folklore. Seanan McGuire presents "Jammed," in which a chimera loose during the Roller Derby makes it anyone's guess as to who will still be skating by the time the buzzer sounds. In Brandon Sanderson's "Dreamer," a game of cops and robbers is a new challenge when the players are able to switch bodies at will. And Scott Sigler follows ghost stomper Hunter Hunterson as he investigates a haunted, never-ending baseball game in "The Case of the Haunted Safeway." These and eight more supernatural sporting stories are guaranteed to have you rooting for the home team, or else.

Poetry and Short Stories

     For me, poetry and short stories are underrated and underrepresented in school and public libraries. People wrinkle their noses or tell me they do not like either one or both of these genres, but I always reply, "Then you haven't found the right author yet." Here are a few of our newest selections of short stories and poetry. Also included is the memoir of poet Nikki Grimes because she tells her story in verse. Enjoy!

Rumi: Unseen Poems is "a collection of never-before-translated poems by the widely beloved medieval Persian poet Rumi. Rumi (1207-1273) was trained in Sufism--a mystic tradition within Islam--and founded the Sufi order known to us as the Whirling Dervishes, who use dance and music as part of their spiritual devotion. Rumi's poetry has long been popular with contemporary Western audiences because of the way it combines the sacred and the sensual, describing divine love in rapturously human terms. However, a number of Rumi's English translators over the past century were not speakers of Persian and they based their sometimes very free interpretations on earlier translations. With Western audiences in mind, translators also tended to tone down or leave out elements of Persian culture and of Islam in Rumi's work, and hundreds of the prolific poet's works were never made available to English speakers at all. In this new translation -- composed almost entirely of untranslated gems from Rumi's vast ouevre -- Brad Gooch and Maryam Mortaz aim to achieve greater fidelity to the originals while still allowing Rumi's lyric exuberance to shine." (from Amazon.com)

"Internationally beloved poet Naomi Shihab Nye places her Palestinian American identity center stage in her latest full-length poetry collection for adults. The collection is inspired by the story of Janna Jihad Ayyad, the "Youngest Journalist in Palestine," who at age 7 began capturing videos of anti-occupation protests using her mother's smartphone. Nye draws upon her own family's roots in a West Bank village near Janna's hometown to offer empathy and insight to the young girl's reporting. Long an advocate for peaceful communication across all boundaries, Nye’s poems in The Tiny Journalist put a human face on war and the violence that divides us from each other." (from Amazon.com)

"The Best American Short Stories 2019 includes Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Jamel Brinkley, Jeffrey Eugenides, Ursula K. Le Guin, Manuel Muñoz, Sigrid Nunez, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, Jim Shepherd, Weike Wang, and others. 'As soon as you complete a description of what a good story must be, a new example flutters through an open window, lands on your sleeve, and proves your description wrong,' writes Anthony Doerr about the task of selecting The Best American Short Stories 2019. The year’s best stories are a diverse, addictive group exploring everything from America’s rich rural culture to its online teen culture to the fragile nature of the therapist-client relationship. This astonishing collection brings together the realistic and dystopic, humor and terror. For Doerr, “with every new artist, we simultaneously refine and expand our understanding of what the form can be.” (from Amazon.com)

"In her own voice, acclaimed author and poet Nikki Grimes explores the truth of a harrowing childhood in a compelling and moving memoir--Ordinary Hazards--in verse. Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted. At the age of six, she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night - and discovered the magic and impact of writing. For many years, Nikki's notebooks were her most enduing companions. In this accessible and inspiring memoir that will resonate with young readers and adults alike, Nikki shows how the power of those words helped her conquer the hazards - ordinary and extraordinary - of her life." (from Amazon.com)

Short Story Collections

With the long, hot summer ahead of us, I thought it would be nice to have a few quick, easy reads on our list. "What's a quicker read than a short story?," I thought, so here are a few new collections for your enjoyment.

Carmen Maria Machado is happy to obliterate the borders between genres in Her Body and Other Parties: Stories. These 8 stories relate the verisimilitude of women's lives and the violence that is often thrust upon them externally and internally. A wife refuses her husband's pleadings to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. Another woman recounts her sexual exploits as a plague sweeps through the world around her. A clerk in a mall makes a shocking discovery when she inspects seams of the prom dresses she has been selling. The included novella, "Especially Heinous," was inspired by Law & Order: SVU, but it smears the police procedural with all the hallmarks of a horror novel; including doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells-for-eyes. If you lean toward the sci-fi/fantasy/horror novels, then this collection may be for you.

If you lean toward political intrigue, spy/war thrillers, and the like, then Will Mackin's Bring Out the Dog: Stories may be right up your alley. These 11 stories draw from Mackin's many deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. He would scribble notes in grease pencil on the inner side of his arm and make lists on the flaps torn from MRE kits. He used these notes in his journals and, years later, those journals became this book. The world he relates is one of intense bonds, archaic tenets, and unexpected compassion. These stories are set at home and abroad and reflect the dual reality of war--victory and loss. There is not an ounce of grandiosity to these stories, they are told with the keen eye of someone who has lived each scenario.

Nine stories comprise Kelly Barnhill's collection entitled Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories. This is another collection of stories that bend reality and drift toward the bizarre. In "Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch," the titular widow decides to rekindle a long dormant relationship with a most unsuitable mate. The title story illustrates the strength and power--both known and unknown--of the imagination. In "Open the Door and the Light Pours Through," a young man struggles with intense grief and his sexuality in his letters to his long-distance love. Included in this collection is her award-winning novella "The Unlicensed Magician" which introduces the secret and magical life of an invisible girl who was once left for dead.

Finally, in Back Talk: Stories by Danielle Lazarin, women don't hate themselves, don't hate each other, not their mothers or sisters, their fathers, husbands, ex-husbands, and certainly not their children. Sound boring? Don't be so quick to judge. These women are just like you and I in that they are just trying to navigate the world without losing their minds. These 16 fresh, witty stories relate the ups and downs of strong, capable women and girls who still manage to be compassionate and tender.

A Couple of Louis L'Amour Story Collections

Louis L'Amour is, by far, the most recognized writer of Westerns anywhere. The library maintains a large collection of the writer's works and, to that end, we now present two collections of his stories for our Western-loving readers.

The first is The Man From Battle Flat: A Western Trio. In the title story, Krag Moran is a range rider who becomes entangled in a range war between ranchers and new settlers. This conflict leaves a town divided and, when the first shots are fired and the death toll rises, Krag is going to have to answer to the wrong people. In"Mistakes Can Kill You," Johnny O'Day was a sick child who was taken in and nursed back to health by a young couple. Growing up, he harbored nothing but resentment for their natural child, Sam. When Sam finds himself in a heap of trouble, however, Johnny must stand between him and a pair of gunman.  Finally, in "The Rider of Ruby Hills," twenty-seven-year-old Ross Haney is broke, armed, and ready to settle down. When a feud breaks out between two of the biggest landowners in Ruby Hills, Ross decides to put an end to the fighting that threatens to tear apart his new home. He may have been a loner before, but now he has allies and a plan.

Nine stories make up the second collection titled, Mistakes Can Kill You. These selections highlight some of L'Amours earlier short stories (sometimes written under the pen name Jim Mayo) that demonstrate the ambiguous morality of the best Western writing. For example, in "Black Rock Coffin-Makers," two men who readily kill over ownership of a ranch get more than they bargain for when a stranger gets caught in their crossfire. Other stories include, "The Nester and the Piute"; "Law of the Desert Born"; "Ride, You Tonto Raiders!"plus five more tales. As always, L'Amour's characters come vivaciously to life and the rough-and-tumble spirit of the Wild West leaps from the page.

Joyce Carol Oates Thrills

The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror is a collection of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. In the title story, a young boy becomes obsessed with his cousin’s doll when she dies from leukemia. As he gets older, he begins collecting “found dolls” from the surrounding neighborhoods. He stores his treasures in the abandoned carriage house on his family’s estate, but just what kind of dolls are these? In “Gun Accident,” a teenager is thrilled when her favorite teacher asks her to house-sit the old Colonial she lives in with her husband. When an intruder forces his way into the house, the fate of both their lives changes forever. “Equatorial” is set in the exotic Galapagos Islands where a wealthy American wife begins experiencing assaults on her knowledge of her charismatic husband. Just what are his plans for her? The last story is a biblio-mystery about the owner of a modest chain of bookstores who believes in some very unorthodox methods for business expansion. When his plan’s for the takeover of a rare bookstore in scenic New Hampshire devolves into a game of verbal to-and-fro, the consequences could be more than just business related. Joyce Carol Oates proves that she is the queen of chills and thrills with this collection.

200 Suggestions for Reading

Ever want a suggestion on something good to read?  Author and librarian Gina Sheridan offers you 200 titles to choose from in her new book, Check These Out.

The book is divided into fifteen chapters that break down the types of books.  There are even chapters on audio books and young adult fiction.  Each chapter gives you a selection of books with the author, when it was written and a brief description along with why the author enjoyed it.  The audio book chapter even tells you whose voice is reading the book.

So next time you feel stumped on what you'd like to read next, pick up this book for some great ideas.

Relax on a Supernatural Vacation

Summer is close at hand--although you can't really say that according to the cool weather we've been experiencing lately! I can think of no better way to celebrate the relaxation of summer time than by reading a vacation-themed book. Death's Excellent Vacation, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner, is a collection of thirteen short stories that center around the theme of vacation. The book is great entertainment for those folks who enjoy reading about tales of paranormal R & R. Trust me, there is a little bit of everything for everyone in these tales--from vampires, to werewolves and even leprechauns. I especially enjoyed being able to "taste" a little writing from some authors that I had heard of but never read. This collection is a great introduction to many current, popular supernatural writers such as Charlaine Harris, Toni L. P. Kelner, Jeff Abbott, Lilith Saintcrow and many more. The book is a quick read, so you'll have the chance to whet your appetite before delving into another, longer book by these authors.

Full Dark, No Stars

I haven't read any Stephen King books in a long time, so when Full Dark, No Stars came across my desk, I decided to try it out. The book consists of four short stories in one book: 1922, Big Driver, Fair Extension, and A Good Marriage. The stories are all creepy and scary and give you just enough information that you wish they lasted a little bit longer. This is truly "typical Stephen King writing" and if you love Cujo or Christy, you'll love these stories too. In the book's Afterword, King sums up the books purpose this way: "When it comes to fiction, the writer's only responsibility is to look for the truth inside his own heart. It won't always be the reader's truth, or the critic's truth, but as long as it's the writers' truth...all is well...I have tried my best in Full Dark, No Stars to record what people might do, and how they might behave, under dire circumstances." The people in these four short stories are basically ordinary people that are confronted with a sudden and drastic circumstance and must figure out how to act (or react). The writing is at times tense but never do the heroes and heroines act the way you expect. These four stories are as much an exploration of the human mind as they are creepy thrillers.

Try Grisham's Short Stories

John Grisham's Ford County is a warm, humorous and poignant collection of stories about the residents of Ford County, Mississippi. Although Ford County is a fictional place, the characters are very real and Grisham does an outstanding job at placing the reader exactly inside the minds of these folks. Each story invoves a different aspect of Ford County, from lawyers, to casinos, retirement home corruption, racial tension and family relationships. My favorite story in this collection is "Funny Boy," a sensitive story about a family who has ostracized and disowned their gay son and what happens when he contracts AIDS and moves home to die. These stories might make you laugh or cry, but they will definitely give you a snapshot of life in a small-town, gossipy Mississippi county. These short stories are a big departure from Grisham's usual legal thrillers, so be prepared for a different sort of story when you read Ford County!

Have a Laugh

I picked up Laugh Track by David Galef recently, because I noticed that my library had placed a "Mississippi Author" sticker on its spine. David Galef is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Mississippi who has published two novels (Flesh and Turning Japanese) as well as many short stories and essays and reviews that have appeared in the New York Times and Twentieth Century Literature. He has also written eight other books, including Japanese translations, literary criticism and children's stories. Laugh Track is a collection of fifteen stories that are an eclectic mix of styles and explore fifteen different worlds. Some of the stories are based in the United States, while others are set in Mexico or the not-too-distant future. According to the book flap, all of the stories "flirt with the veil of fantasy and yet in the end reveal vulnerable sides of humanity." Each character in the fifteen stories does share one common trait; they are all looking for the one thing in their lives that will solve all of their problems. However, what each person wishes for may end up not being the solution that they need. This story collection is a great exploration of complex characters and is an enjoyable read.

Take a Sip from a Strange Brew

Strange Brew is a collection of tales of powerful witches and dark magic, from nine contemporary urban fantasy authors: Patricia Briggs, Jim Butcher, Rachel Caine, Karen Chance, P. N. Elrod, Charlaine Harris, Faith Hunter, Catilin Kittredge and Jenna Maclaine. If you like tales of revenge and magic, witches, vampires, werewolves and wizards, then this collection of stories is the perfect book for you. Edited by P. N. Elrod, each story is approximately 40 pages long and can be read quickly. If you do not currently read some of the above authors, this book is the perfect way to explore a "taste" of their writing, and perhaps be encouraged to read other stories they have written. Sit a spell, open this book and lose yourself in a different reality!

Author Alexander S. Brown Visits the Library on January 29

Meet a dynamic young author on Thursday, January 29, 2009 at the library! A Vicksburg native, author Alexander S. Brown will be in the Library Auditorium from 5:30 - 7:00 PM, giving an author talk about his new book, Traumatized. The book talk will be followed by a reception and book signing. Alexander Brown published his first novel, Sweet Dreams in 2003, when he was only eighteen. The story is in the horror-suspense genre and involves a twisting tale of terror set in the fictional Southern town of Havesnburg in 1935. His second novel, published when he was twenty-three, is a more complex novel that shows his increased maturity and writing style. Traumatized is a collection of fifteen fascinating tales on a variety of topics. The stories examine many subjects, from witches, demons and hell to a disturbing exploration of a new type of sushi that has bizarre effects on those who ingest it. Like many younger authors, Mr. Brown is using new technologies to publicize the publication of Traumatized. The book can be purchased at http://www.amazon.com/, http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ and http://www.borders.com/ and copies will be available for purchase at the book signing. He is currently publicizing his book on facebook.com and on his myspace page located at http://myspace.com/alexbrownhorrormaster.