Tobias Wolff

The protagonist of Tobias Wolff’s shrewdly—and at times devastatingly—observed first novel is a boy at an elite prep school in 1960. He is an outsider who has learned to mimic the negligent manner of his more privileged classmates. Like many of them, he wants more than anything on earth to become a writer. But to do that he must first learn to tell the truth about himself.
The agency of revelation is the school literary contest,...

Tobias Wolff's first two books proved how the short story can “provoke our amazed appreciation” (New York Times Book Review). Now after writing numerous other works, he returns to the short story with fresh revelations—about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother—that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary: a retired Marine enrolled in college while her son trains...

Offers a collection of short stories that combines, in mostly domestic settings, intense feeling with wild imagination and familiar situations with extraordinary events.

Andre Dubus's short stories and novellas illuminate the lives of women and men cast against harrowing and heartrending circumstances. The gripping themes of Dubus's oeuvre - faith and family, violence and loyalty, guilt and morality - have earned him comparisons to master storytellers such as Raymond Carver, Flannery O'Connor, and Anton Chekhov. With a deft touch, Dubus tackles nearly unspeakable subjects. Yet, without succumbing to sentimentality,...

Award-winning series of classic and contemporary short fiction read by acclaimed actors.

Caroline just wants to settle down in one place, find a decent guy, and provide a better home for her handful of a son, Toby. When she moves to Seattle and meets Dwight, she thinks she's got it made. Toby, however, feels differently after spending time with Dwight while away from Caroline. Dwight seems to want to mold Toby into a better person, but to do so he emotionally, verbally, and physically abuses the kid. The marriage proceeds, and soon Caroline,...

Collects forty short stories published between 1915 and 2015, from writers that include Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, and Alice Munro that exemplify their era and stand the test of time.