Books in the Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction series

Kellie Wells's second collection of short stories and winner of the Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction, is populated with the world's castoffs, cranks, and inveterate oddballs, the deeply aggrieved, the ontologically challenged, the misunderstood mopes that haunt the shadowy wings of the world's main stage.

In his latest collection of literary fiction, Mark Brazaitis evokes with sympathy, insight, and humor the lives of characters in a small Ohio town. The ten short stories of The Incurables limn the mental landscape of people facing conditions they believe are insolvable, from the oppressive horrors of mental illness to the beguiling and baffling complexities of romantic and familial love. In the book's opening story, "e;The Bridge,"e; a new sheriff must confront a suicide epidemic as well as his own deteriorating mental health. In "e;Classmates,"e; a man sets off to visit the wife of a classmate who has killed himself. Is he hoping to write a story about his classmate or to observe the aftermath of what his own suicide attempt, if successful, would have been like? In the title story, a down-on-his-luck porn actor returns to his hometown and winds up in the mental health ward of the local hospital, where he meets a captivating woman. Other stories in the collection include "e;A Map of the Forbidden,"e; about a straight-laced man who is tempted to cheat on his wife after his adulterous father dies, and "e;The Boy behind the Tree,"e; about a problematic father-son relationship made more so by the arrival on the scene of a young man the son's age. In "e;I Return,"e; a father narrates a story from the afterlife, discovering as he does so that he is not as indispensable to his family as he had believed.

This volume contains ten darkly funny stories by Maura Stanton. Characters include a girl with a clown phobia who falls in love with Joujou the clown; Gertrude Stein playing ping-pong with the GI's in Paris; and a woman who discovers her dead sister has written a bad novel.

What I Found Out About Her: Stories of Dreaming American, winner of the 2014 Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction, reaffirms Peter LaSalle's reputation as one of the most startlingly original writers working in the short fiction genre today. In this collection of eleven stories, LaSalle explores how everyday life for many-an FBI agent, a study-abroad student, a drug dealer's chic girlfriend, a trio of Broadway playwrights, among others-can often take on something much larger than that, almost the texture of a haunting dream. Marked by stylistic daring and a rare lyricism in language, this is intense, thoroughly moving fiction that probes the contemporary American psyche, portraying it in all its frequently painful sadness and also its brave and unflagging hope.

This collection represents Arturo Vivante's quest to use writing to uncover hidden truths. Although not explicitly autobiographical, many of these stories do have an autobiographical tone. Vivante's stories often stem from the observation of a bright or meaningful moment and always centre on exploring the ideas and emotions of his characters.

John Mort's fourth short-story collection and winner of the Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction. With settings in Florida, California, Mexico, Chicago, the Texas Panhandle, and, of course, the Ozarks themselves, these thirteen stories portray the unsung, amusing, brutal, forever hopeful lives of ordinary people.

Winner of the 2010 Richard Sullivan Prize in Fiction, Joan Frank's second story collection, In Envy Country, explores the uncertainties and triumphs of women and men in and out of love and marriage, at varying ages and stages of contemporary American life. By turns wry, pained, and amused, In Envy Country investigates those small, complex truths that gain clarity with time and distance. Frank, whose earlier books have been reviewed in The New York Times Book Review and Publisher's Weekly, sets these stories in Paris, California, and Spain.