Books in the Yellow Shoe Fiction series

The innovative and dazzling short stories collected in Josh Russell's King of the Animals explore love and heartbreak, growing up and growing old, cities and suburbs, the fantastic and the everyday.

Bed is where we sleep and dream, where we make love and give ourselves nightmares. The thirteen stories in Wendy Rawlings's Time for Bed traverse the complicated terrain of bedtime activity, from adulterous couplings to nightmares that come to life, in terms that can feel lurid, unsettling, or disturbingly funny.

The sixteen stories in Margaret Luongo's If the Heart Is Lean etch sharp portraits of people in odd and sometimes surreal situations who thus have the opportunity to view their lives from a unique perspective.

Set against a backdrop of a nation exhausted by war, in a decadent city that for years has been denied its butter, sugar, and Mardi Gras, My Bright Midnight is a novel about the complications of loyalties to country, to friends, and to those we love.

Meghan Kenny's debut collection, Love Is No Small Thing, gives readers an assembly of keenly drawn characters each navigating the world looking for an understanding of love in its many forms and complexities, be it romantic, parental, elusive, or eternal.

Debra Spark's fourth novel, Unknown Caller, tells the story of a brief, failed marriage and its complicated aftermath. Spark's candid, intricate novel highlights the near-impossibility of truly knowing another person, the pain in failing relationships, and the joy in successful ones.

The stories in History of Art examine the definitive, yet paradoxical, preoccupations of humankind - namely art-making and war - and the emotions that underpin both: passion and sentimentality, obsession and delusion, ambition and insecurity, fear and envy.

The insightful and provocative stories in Tom Paine's collection spring from a series of seismic events that rocked the post-millennium world. News headlines from the last decade not only inspire the settings but also raise ethical questions that percolate throughout this ominous and timely work.

A darkly insightful evocation of the post-industrial era, Joy, PA tells the story of a family teetering on the precipice of ruin. Both transfixing and disconcerting, Steven Sherrill's empathetic portrait of alienation elicits hope and sympathy amidst shattered but no-less-dignified lives.

A quiet tour de force, Chris Bachelder's Abbott Awaits transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary, startlingly depicting the intense and poignant challenges of a vulnerable, imaginative father as he lives his everyday American existence.

Dramatic and lyrical, Allison Amend's first novel, steeped in the history and lore of the Oklahoma Territory, tells an unforgettable multigenerational - and very American - story of Jewish pioneers, their adopted family, and the challenges they face.

In the best tradition of southern storytelling, Uke Rivers Delivers features raconteurs as beguiling as the tales they tell. These lyrical, darkly humorous monologues portray a range of denizens of the American South desperately trying to come to grips with their inherited pasts.

The debut short-story collection from award-winning fiction writer Nicholas Montemarano. These eleven stories show why Jayne Anne Phillips has called Montemarano "an American stylist capable of redeeming our darkest dreams."