The "original, first-rate, serious, and beautiful" short fiction (New York Times Book Review) that introduced J. D. Salinger to American readers in the years after World War II, including "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and the first appearance of Salinger's fictional Glass family. Nine exceptional stories from one of the great literary voices of the twentieth century. Witty, urbane, and frequently affecting, Nine Stories sits alongside Salinger's very best work--a treasure that will passed down for many generations to come. The stories: A Perfect Day for Bananafish Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut Just Before the War with the Eskimos The Laughing Man Down at the Dinghy For Esmé--with Love and Squalor Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period Teddy

A New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year at Esquire, Seattle Times, Minnesota Star Tribune, Huffington Post, and Publishers Weekly. From “quite possibly America’s best living writer of short stories” (NPR), Ninety-Nine Stories of God finds Joy Williams reeling between the sublime and the surreal, knocking down the barriers between the workaday and the divine. Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Joy Williams has a one-of-a-kind gift for capturing both the absurdity and the darkness of everyday life. In Ninety-Nine Stories of God, she takes on one of mankind’s most confounding preoccupations: the Supreme Being. This series of short, fictional vignettes explores our day-to-day interactions with an ever-elusive and arbitrary God. It’s the Book of Common Prayer as seen through a looking glass—a powerfully vivid collection of seemingly random life moments. The figures that haunt these stories range from Kafka (talking to a fish) to the Aztecs, Tolstoy to Abraham and Sarah, O. J. Simpson to a pack of wolves. Most of Williams’s characters, however, are like the rest of us: anonymous strivers and bumblers who brush up against God in the least expected places or go searching for Him when He’s standing right there. The Lord shows up at a hot-dog-eating contest, a demolition derby, a formal gala, and a drugstore, where he’s in line to get a shingles vaccination. At turns comic and yearning, lyric and aphoristic, Ninety-Nine Stories of God serves as a pure distillation of one of our great artists.

This “gripping, tender, and at times disturbing tale” (Entertainment Weekly) of unlikely devotion and sudden violence in an isolated Midwestern summer camp is a compelling follow up to the award-winning Heaven’s Lake. From the prizewinning author of Heaven Lake comes an extraordinary story of unlikely devotion and sudden crisis in an isolated summer camp. Late on a warm summer night in rural Missouri, an elderly camp director hears a squeal of female laughter and goes to investigate. At the camp swimming pool he comes upon a bewildering scene: his counselors stripped naked and engaged in a provocative celebration. The first camp session is set to start in two days. He fires them all. As a result, new counselors must be hired and brought to Kindermann Forest Summer Camp. One of them is Wyatt Huddy, a genetically disfigured young man who has been living in a Salvation Army facility. Gentle and diligent, Wyatt suffers a deep anxiety that his intelligence might be subnormal. But while Wyatt is not worldly, he is also not an innocent. He has escaped a punishing home life with a reclusive and violent older sister. Along with the other new counselors, Wyatt arrives expecting to care for children. To their astonishment, they learn that they will be responsible for 104 severely developmentally disabled adults, all of them wards of the state. For Wyatt it is a dilemma that turns his world inside out. Physically, he is indistinguishable from the campers he cares for. Inwardly, he would like to believe he is not of their tribe. Fortunately for Wyatt, there is a young woman on staff who understands his predicament better than he might have hoped. The Inverted Forest is filled with yearning, desire, lust, banked hope, and unexpected devotion. This remarkable novel confirms John Dalton’s rising prominence as a major American novelist.

From one of the greatest writers of our time, his first collection of short stories, written between 1979 and 2011, chronicling—and foretelling—three decades of American life Set in Greece, the Caribbean, Manhattan, a white-collar prison and outer space, these nine stories are a mesmerizing introduction to Don DeLillo’s iconic voice, from the rich, startling, jazz-infused rhythms of his early work to the spare, distilled, monastic language of the later stories. In “Creation,” a couple at the end of a cruise somewhere in the West Indies can’t get off the island—flights canceled, unconfirmed reservations, a dysfunctional economy. In “Human Moments in World War III,” two men orbiting the earth, charged with gathering intelligence and reporting to Colorado Command, hear the voices of American radio, from a half century earlier. In the title story, Sisters Edgar and Grace, nuns working the violent streets of the South Bronx, confirm the neighborhood’s miracle, the apparition of a dead child, Esmeralda. Nuns, astronauts, athletes, terrorists and travelers, the characters in The Angel Esmeralda propel themselves into the world and define it. DeLillo’s sentences are instantly recognizable, as original as the splatter of Jackson Pollock or the luminous rectangles of Mark Rothko. These nine stories describe an extraordinary journey of one great writer whose prescience about world events and ear for American language changed the literary landscape.

Includes a reading group guide with discussion questions.

Elliott Zzaimix loved living in a nine-story house. It made living with eight other family members stress free. One night, she and her family, nine people strong, awaken to the sound of breaking glass. An intruder has smashed their belongings...and he's still in the house! The Zzaimix family scares off the intruder when they investigate the break-in. As they compare each family member's account of the night's events, they realize they have Nine Stories. The mystery deepens as the break-in appears to be more than a random act of burglary. The intruder breaks in a second time while the Zzaimixes stay with their Uncle Preston. Who is the intruder? Why would he break into their house once and then return to break in again? What does the intruder have against the Zzaimixes? Join Elliott and the rest of the Zzaimix family in their adventure as they investigate and uncover clues to the shocking identity of the intruder and a hidden family secret.

“In troubles times, hope often seems elusive, a vague promise of the future. But Anne Howard transforms hope into a tangible practice of faith by sharing the stories of young adults who take Jesus’ beatitudes both literally and seriously. Read Claiming the Beatitudes and glimpse a transformational wisdom for church that grounds life in God’s beauty, truth, and goodness.” - Diana Butler Bass, author, Christianity for the Rest of Us and A People’s History of Christianity “Anne Howard interprets each beatitude through the story of a present-day student as well as Jesus’ beatitudes. She brings the beatitudes into our experience now, beautifully, readably, so we can answer the question, ‘Where do you see God’s presence in our world?’ And so we can say, ‘yes, thanks’ to God’s invitation to participate.” - Glen Harold Stassen, Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics, Fuller Theological Seminary “By focusing on how Jesus’ beatitudes are actually being lived in the lives of twenty-and thirty-somethings today, Anne Howard accomplishes what few before her have done; she takes the beatitudes out of the realm of pietistic platitudes or arcane academics and puts flesh and blood on them. In so doing, she instills a craving in each of us to wrap our own lives around these simple yet revolutionary words.” - Eric Elnes, author of The Phoenix Affirmations and Asphalt Jesus “Can the beatitudes come alive for us today? The moving stories and compelling reflections of Claiming the Beatitudes say ‘Yes!’ The questions at the end of each chapter offer true-to-life challenges. The entire book is an invitation to conversation and conversion. Try it!” - Bishop Frederick Borsch, Professor of New Testament, Chair of Anglican Studies, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia