Elizabeth McCracken

"Award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken is an undisputed virtuoso of the short story, and this new collection features her most vibrant and heartrending work to date"-- Provided by publisher. In these stories, the mysterious bonds of family are tested, transformed, fractured, and fortified. A recent widower and his adult son ferry to a craggy Scottish island in search of puffins. An actress who plays a children's game show villainess ushers in...

"Ten months after her mother's death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book takes a trip to London. The city was a favorite of her mother's, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she finds herself reflecting on her mother's life and their relationship. Thoughts of the past meld with questions of the future: Back in New England, the family home is now up for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed. The narrator, a writer, recalls all that...

The author traces her marriage and relocation to France at the height of her writing career, her devastation over her stillborn son in her ninth month of pregnancy, and her heart-wrenching grieving process.

The singular, enchanting debut story collection from Elizabeth McCracken, now back in print as part of Ecco's "Art of the Story" series, and with a new introduction from the author. The nine stories that make up Elizabeth McCracken's debut story collection deal with oddball characters doing their very best to forge connections with those around them. In "It's Bad Luck to Die" a woman marries an older tattoo artist and finds comfort in agreeing to...

A short story by Elizabeth McCracken from the collection Reader, I Married Him: Stories inspired by Jane Eyre. In 'Robinson Crusoe at the Waterpark', a family trip to a Texan waterpark prompts a life-changing decision. Edited by Tracy Chevalier, the full collection, Reader I Married Him, brings together some of the finest and most creative voices in fiction today, to celebrate and salute the strength and lasting relevance of Charlotte Brontë's game-changing...

From the author of the beloved novel The Giant's House comes a collection of nine new stories. In Property, a scholar refurbishes a rental house by removing his landlord's possessions. In Peter Elroy: A Documentary by Ian Casey, a filmmaker is visited years later by his famous first subject. In The Lost & Found Department of Greater Boston, a grocery store manager becomes fixated on the case of a missing woman. In Thunderstruck, a family flees Paris...

A tale of family secrets and the damaging corruption of the British legal system from the author of Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. In Bleak House, Charles Dickens not only pries apart the stultifying and ponderous conduct and contracts of British moneyed society, but also takes specific aim at an English judicial system in desperate need of modernization and reform. Featuring the voice of Esther Summerson-Dickens's only female narrator-the story...

Featuring guest editor contributions by the author of "Less," the latest edition of the respected literary annual collects twenty top-selected short stories from the previous year.

""To read their stories felt to me the way I suspect other people feel hearing jazz for the first time," recalls Curtis Sittenfeld of her initial encounter with the Best American Short Stories series. "They were windows into emotions I had and hadn't had, into other settings and circumstances and observations and relationships." Sittenfeld was met by the same feeling selecting the stories for this year's edition. The result is a striking and nuanced...

This collection of original stories by today's finest women writers--including Tracy Chevalier, Francine Prose, Elizabeth McCracken, Tessa Hadley, Audrey Niffenegger, and more--takes inspiration from the opening line in Charlotte Brontë's most beloved novel, Jane Eyre. A fixture in the literary canon, Charlotte Brontë is revered by readers all over the world. Her novels featuring unforgettable, strong heroines still resonate with millions today....