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Short Reads for the Shortest Day of the Year

December 21, 2020 is the shortest day of the year. Curl up indoors with hot cocoa and a collection of short stories, a book of essays, or even some poetry as you celebrate the first official day of Winter.

Southern Lady Code: Essays by Helen Ellis

The bestselling author of American Housewife is back with a fiercely funny collection of essays on marriage and manners, thank-you notes and three-ways, ghosts, gunshots, gynecology, and the Calgon-scented, onion-dipped, monogrammed art of living as a Southern Lady. Check out the ebook or digital audiobook, or request a print or Book-on-CD copy.


Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

These stories will dazzle your senses, haunt your imagination, and move you to the very depths of your soul. This extraordinary compilation reveals one of the world’s most gifted storytellers at the height of his powers. Check out the ebook or digital audiobook, or request a print or Book-on-CD copy.


Florida by Lauren Groff

The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Florida—its landscape, climate, history, and state of mind—becomes its gravitational center: an energy, a mood, as much as a place of residence.  Check out the ebook or digital audiobook, or request a print or Book-on-CD copy.


My Southern Journey by Rick Bragg

Collected from over a decade of his writing, with many never-before-published essays written specifically for this edition, My Southern Journey is an entertaining and engaging read, especially for Southerners (or feel Southern at heart) and anyone who appreciates great writing. Check out the ebook or digital audiobook, or request a print or Book-on-CD copy.


Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami

Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are vanishing cats and smoky bars, lonely hearts and mysterious women, baseball and the Beatles, woven together to tell stories that speak to us all. Check out the ebook or digital audiobook, or request a print or Book-on-CD copy.


A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin

With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own, Lucia Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the laundromats and halfway houses of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers and bad Christians. Request a print copy.


Everything’s Eventual by Stephen King

Whether writing about encounters with the dead, the near dead, or about the mundane dreads of life, from quitting smoking to yard sales, Stephen King is at the top of his form in the fourteen dark tales assembled in Everything’s Eventual. Intense, eerie, and instantly compelling, they announce the stunningly fertile imagination of perhaps the greatest storyteller of our time. Request a print or Book-on-CD copy.


The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen

From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will, the stories are a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of immigration. Check out the ebook or request a print copy.


We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby

Sometimes you just have to laugh, even when life is a dumpster fire. Blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette–she’s “35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something”–detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father’s ashes, or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms–hang in there for the Costco loot–she’s as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths. Check out the ebook or request a print copy.

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All text above is publicity copy written by the publishers of each book.

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