Purple couches, umbilical cords, strings of lovers, flotsam, incessant phone calls from babies: The Three States of Rice surprised me at every turn. Wildly inventive, sensual, surreal and very human, these stories of grief, longing and connection moved me and delighted me. Brandeis is a writer of great imagination, attention, curiosity and heart.

—Ananda Lima

ISBN:  978-1956907308 

Mark Baumgartner’s Last Chance for a Slow Dance is a fantastic story collection. It reminded me of how I felt reading Stuart Dybek or Tobias Wolff for the first time, the same instant recognition that something special is happening here and that I’ll be thinking about these stories not for days or weeks…but for years. 

—John McNally

ISBN: 978-1956907964

This is a charming, quirky narrative revolving around the recurrence and documentation of disorienting migraines. The eccentric protagonist (and their friends) and the overall irreverent aesthetic or anti-aesthetic of the narrative has a flawless, deadpan style, with dark humor and a skill for intriguing detail. This is an addictive, fascinating read. I highly recommend it!

—Jose Hernandez Diaz

ISBN: 9781956907254

Ambitious and wide-ranging, Every Galaxy a Circle does what genre does best: explore the depths and outer edges of what it means to be human. Clark plays beautifully with time and transformation, longing and grief, questioning what we have now and what comes after. This is a rich and textured collection that haunts.

—Erika Swyler

ISBN:  9781956907292

The stories in Kathryn Kruse’s collection startle with their attention to our most elemental selves: our bodies, our work, our health, our language. We share these traits with the characters, and what’s startling is not so much the familiar moments as the ways in which moments both familiar and unfamiliar intersect and entangle themselves into unusual arrangements. We’re never fully alone, this extraordinary collection suggests. Someone’s always trying to reach us. These stories are a wonderful reminders of that truth—shockingly accurate, bracingly funny, wonderful company all around. 

—Juan Martinez

ISBN: 9781956907124

Michaeal Chin examines everyday relationships and emotions through the lens of fantastical, unexpected, and often deeply strange situations—reframing the struggles of adolescence in a world where children are made of stone and glass, transforming the pain of first love and lost friendship through a tale at clown college, and asking what someone who can access all the answers in the universe would truly want to know most. This Year’s Ghost is a surprising and insightful collection that will leave readers unsettled in the very best way.

—Tara Karr Roberts

ISBN: 978-1956907179

Is it possible to leave behind one life and find a new one? This is the provocative question Hey Pickpocket poses, and the result is a deeply felt exploration of grief, redemption, and the human heart. Spanning cultures and continents, foggy mornings on the Arans, and hazy memories of the States, Allison Cundiff's debut novel probes the eternal riddle of home, and the enduring allure of hope.

—Jeffrey Zuckerman

ISBN: 9781956907087

Come Again No More is simply the best work of Southern literature I’ve ever read, a story so lyrical and lovingly drawn—and spit-take funny—that the ghost of William Faulkner might just throw rocks at his best work. I read the book in a day, and I never do that.

—Bryan Denson

ISBN: 9781956907193

Combining the powers of speculation of Kazuo Ishiguro and the sharp social critique of Aravind Adiga, this collection offers readers the ultimate experience of global fiction, stories bound and shaped by Katy, Texas, a place made by oil and capitalism. The stories weave between Bangladeshi characters experiencing the reality of the immigrant experience in America and those still in Bangladesh, wishing for the mythos of the American dream. With sharp intelligence and humor, Wahhaj explores the oil industry's destructive effect on those who live within Texas and those far beyond its borders. 

ISBN: 9781956907131

Hoax meets homage in this glorious collection, an imaginary where bespoke apocrypha and wishful thinking invite us into a labyrinth of possibility, association, and a kind of readerly revisionist collaboration. Funny, subversive, and authoritatively anti-authoritarian, Glage finds no tradition unassailable or otherwise invulnerable to his joyful repurposing. What Stanley Crawford did for travel writing in Travel Notes, Glage does for and to storytelling and bibliophilia. Joachim Glage is not only a writers’ writer but perhaps writing’s writer. Borges is dancing in his grave.

—Andrew Tonkovich

ISBN: 9781956907117