“Charming. . . . A moving testament to the diversity and depths of love.” —Publishers Weekly You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be swept away—in less time than it takes to read this paragraph. Here are 175 true stories—honest, funny, tender and wise—each as moving as a lyric poem, all told in no more than one hundred words. An electrician lights up a woman’s life, a sister longs for her homeless brother, strangers dream of what might have been. Love lost, found and reclaimed. Love that’s romantic, familial, platonic and unexpected. Most of all, these stories celebrate love as it exists in real life: a silly remark that leads to a lifetime together, a father who struggles to remember his son, ordinary moments that burn bright.

The most popular, provocative, and unforgettable essays from the past fifteen years of the New York Times “Modern Love” column—including stories from the anthology series starring Tina Fey, Andy Garcia, Anne Hathaway, Catherine Keener, Dev Patel, and John Slattery A young woman goes through the five stages of ghosting grief. A man’s promising fourth date ends in the emergency room. A female lawyer with bipolar disorder experiences the highs and lows of dating. A widower hesitates about introducing his children to his new girlfriend. A divorcée in her seventies looks back at the beauty and rubble of past relationships. These are just a few of the people who tell their stories in Modern Love, Revised and Updated, featuring dozens of the most memorable essays to run in The New York Times “Modern Love” column since its debut in 2004. Some of the stories are unconventional, while others hit close to home. Some reveal the way technology has changed dating forever; others explore the timeless struggles experienced by anyone who has ever searched for love. But all of the stories are, above everything else, honest. Together, they tell the larger story of how relationships begin, often fail, and—when we’re lucky—endure. Edited by longtime “Modern Love” editor Daniel Jones and featuring a diverse selection of contributors, this is the perfect book for anyone who’s loved, lost, stalked an ex on social media, or pined for true romance: In other words, anyone interested in the endlessly complicated workings of the human heart. Featuring essays by: Veronica Chambers • Terri Cheney • Deborah Copaken • Trey Ellis • Jean Hanff Korelitz • Ann Hood • Mindy Hung • Amy Krouse Rosenthal • Ann Leary • Andrew Rannells • Larry Smith • Ayelet Waldman • and more!

A list for the best romances in a novella or short story format. All of the following sub-genres are included: contemporary, inspirational, paranormal, fantasy, sci-fi, time travel, erotic, romantic suspense."Short stories are tiny windows into other worlds and other minds and other dreams. They are journeys you can make to the far side of the universe and still be back in time for dinner."The short story is one of the finest forms of writing. As short as a paragraph at times, or as lengthy as a novel, short stories are widely read and immensely lauded. Some of the most exceptional writers have dabbled in this form penning beautiful, unforgettable stories.This storybook is especially great for traveling, bedtime, and reading aloud at home. Also available in paperback format!-Great bedtime stories -Excellent for beginning and early readers-short stories that are great for a quick bedtime story

The #1 New York Times Bestseller “An engaging look at the often head-scratching, frequently infuriating mating behaviors that shape our love lives.” —Refinery 29 A hilarious, thoughtful, and in-depth exploration of the pleasures and perils of modern romance from Aziz Ansari, the star of Master of None and one of this generation’s sharpest comedic voices At some point, every one of us embarks on a journey to find love. We meet people, date, get into and out of relationships, all with the hope of finding someone with whom we share a deep connection. This seems standard now, but it’s wildly different from what people did even just decades ago. Single people today have more romantic options than at any point in human history. With technology, our abilities to connect with and sort through these options are staggering. So why are so many people frustrated? Some of our problems are unique to our time. “Why did this guy just text me an emoji of a pizza?” “Should I go out with this girl even though she listed Combos as one of her favorite snack foods? Combos?!” “My girlfriend just got a message from some dude named Nathan. Who’s Nathan? Did he just send her a photo of his penis? Should I check just to be sure?” But the transformation of our romantic lives can’t be explained by technology alone. In a short period of time, the whole culture of finding love has changed dramatically. A few decades ago, people would find a decent person who lived in their neighborhood. Their families would meet and, after deciding neither party seemed like a murderer, they would get married and soon have a kid, all by the time they were twenty-four. Today, people marry later than ever and spend years of their lives on a quest to find the perfect person, a soul mate. For years, Aziz Ansari has been aiming his comic insight at modern romance, but for Modern Romance, the book, he decided he needed to take things to another level. He teamed up with NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg and designed a massive research project, including hundreds of interviews and focus groups conducted everywhere from Tokyo to Buenos Aires to Wichita. They analyzed behavioral data and surveys and created their own online research forum on Reddit, which drew thousands of messages. They enlisted the world’s leading social scientists, including Andrew Cherlin, Eli Finkel, Helen Fisher, Sheena Iyengar, Barry Schwartz, Sherry Turkle, and Robb Willer. The result is unlike any social science or humor book we’ve seen before. In Modern Romance, Ansari combines his irreverent humor with cutting-edge social science to give us an unforgettable tour of our new romantic world.

Three unique short stories that read like a full novel plus one bonus short from the Modern Romance series. Meet Shaleah Hart & Eddie Lancing... Eddie was her high school sweetheart but things didn't work out. Now years later He is back in town. Can Shaleah & Eddie find their way back to each other? Meet Tyre & The Twins. Tyre's luck start to change after meeting former police detective Breona Wells and her twin. Can they put their past behind them and find true love? Say hello to Soren & Tanis, old friends attempting to sort out their friendship in a changing world. A Dialog driven, Rhyming Romance. Fashion designer, Felicitee take a leap of faith after meeting billionaire, Ronan Baptiste. But will a college prank come back to haunt her and destroy any chance of happiness? Fun and flowing language made this collection a breeze to read. Description is vivid and dialogue is natural. Best of all, the characters are realistic and relatable. Good for readers of any age, who prefer tasteful to explicit.

Raymond Carver, Alice Munro, John Updike, Gabriel García Márquez, Mavis Gallant, Julian Barnes, Michael Chabon, Jamaica Kincaid, John O'Hara, Muriel Spark, Ann Beattie, and William Maxwell are among the contributors to Nothing But You: Love Stories from The New Yorker--assembled by Roger Angell, senior editor at The New Yorker. This is the first fiction anthology in more than three decades from the magazine that has defined the American short story for almost a century. As noteworthy for its range as for its excellence, Nothing But You features a stunning array of present and past masters writing about love in all its varieties, from the classic love story to dislocated narratives of weird modern romance. Taken separately, these stories suggest the infinite variety of the human heart. Taken together, they are a literary milestone, a comprehensive review of the way we live and love now.

This anthology is in many was a ‘best of the best’, containing gems from thirty-four of Britain's outstanding contemporary writers. It is a book to dip into, to read from cover to cover, to lend to friends and read again. It includes stories of love and crime, stories touched with comedy and the supernatural, stories set in London, Los Angeles, Bucharest and Tokyo. Above all, as you will discover, it satisfies Samuel Butler's anarchic pleasure principle: 'I should like to like Schumann's music better than I do; I daresay I could make myself like it better if I tried; but I do not like having to try to make myself like things; I like things that make me like them at once and no trying at all ...'

While observing exotic animal trainers for her acclaimed book Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched, journalist Amy Sutherland had an epiphany: What if she used these training techniques with the human animals in her own life–namely her dear husband, Scott? In this lively and perceptive book, Sutherland tells how she took the trainers’ lessons home. The next time her forgetful husband stomped through the house in search of his mislaid car keys, she asked herself, “What would a dolphin trainer do?” The answer was: nothing. Trainers reward the behavior they want and, just as important, ignore the behavior they don’t. Rather than appease her mate’s rising temper by joining in the search, or fuel his temper by nagging him to keep better track of his things in the first place, Sutherland kept her mouth shut and her eyes on the dishes she was washing. In short order, Scott found his keys and regained his cool. “I felt like I should throw him a mackerel,” she writes. In time, as she put more training principles into action, she noticed that she became more optimistic and less judgmental, and their twelve-year marriage was better than ever. What started as a goofy experiment had such good results that Sutherland began using the training techniques with all the people in her life, including her mother, her friends, her students, even the clerk at the post office. In the end, the biggest lesson she learned is that the only animal you can truly change is yourself. Full of fun facts, fascinating insights, hilarious anecdotes, and practical tips, What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage describes Sutherland’s Alice-in-Wonderland experience of stumbling into a world where cheetahs walk nicely on leashes and elephants paint with watercolors, and of leaving a new, improved Homo sapiens.

‘A sizzling summer read! – Sarah Morgan Is home always where the heart is?

A selection of the best and most representative contemporary American short fiction from 1970 to 2020, including such authors as Ursula K. LeGuin, Toni Cade Bambara, Jhumpa Lahiri, Sandra Cisneros, and Ted Chiang, hand-selected by celebrated editor and anthologist John Freeman In the past fifty years, the American short story has changed dramatically. New voices, forms, and mixtures of styles have brought this unique genre a thrilling burst of energy. The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story celebrates this avalanche of talent. This rich anthology begins in 1970 and brings together a half century of powerful American short stories from all genres, including—for the first time in a collection of this scale—science fiction, horror, and fantasy, placing writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Ken Liu, and Stephen King next to some beloved greats of the literary form: Raymond Carver, Grace Paley, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Denis Johnson. Culling widely, John Freeman, the former editor of Granta and now editor of his own literary annual, brings forward some astonishing work to be regarded in a new light. Often overlooked tales by Dorothy Allison, Percival Everett, and Charles Johnson will recast the shape and texture of today’s enlarging atmosphere of literary dialogue. Stories by Lauren Groff and Ted Chiang raise the specter of engagement in ecocidal times. Short tales by Tobias Wolff, George Saunders, and Lydia Davis rub shoulders with near novellas by Susan Sontag and Andrew Holleran. This book will be a treasure trove for readers, writers, and teachers alike.