Amber Sparks

Feminism fuels fantasy in this genre-busting collection by "master of the fantastic" (Roxane Gay) Amber Sparks.

Stories and Other Revenges

And I Do Not Forgive You

In the weird and wonderful tradition of Kelly Link and Karen Russell, Amber Sparks’s dazzling new collection bursts forth with stories that render the apocalyptic and otherworldly hauntingly familiar. In “The Cemetery for Lost Faces,” two orphans translate their grief into taxidermy, artfully arresting the passage of time. The anchoring novella, “The Unfinished World,” unfurls a surprising love story between a free and adventurous young woman and a dashing filmmaker burdened by a mysterious family. Sparks’s stories—populated with sculptors, librarians, astronauts, and warriors—form a veritable cabinet of curiosities. Mythical, bizarre, and deeply moving, heralds the arrival of a major writer and illuminates the search for a brief encounter with the extraordinary.

And Other Stories

The Unfinished World

May We Shed These Human Bodies peers through vast spaces and skies with the world's most powerful telescope to find humanity: wild and bright and hard as diamonds. Here is humanity building: families reconstruct themselves, mothers fashion babies from two-by-fours and nails, boys make a mother out of leaves and twigs and wishes. Here is humanity tearing down: a wife sets her house on fire in revenge, a young girl plots to kill the ghosts that stalk her, a dying man takes the whole human race with him. Here is humanity transforming: feral children, cannibalistic seniors, animal wives—a whole sideshow's worth of oddballs and freaks.

May We Shed These Human Bodies

Matt Kish

Robert Kloss

This hybrid text explores the evolution of evil in worlds both seen and unseen.

The Desert Places

The Unfinished World and Other Stories

Meg Pokrass

Gary Fincke

Fiction. Short Stories. Edited by Meg Pokrass and Gary Fincke with guest editor Amber Sparks. THE BEST MICROFICTION anthology series provides recognition for outstanding literary stories of 400 words or fewer. Co-edited by award-winning microfiction writer/editor Meg Pokrass; and Flannery O'Connor Prize-winning author Gary Fincke; the anthology features Amber Sparks serving as final judge; and one hundred and five of the world's best very short short stories.

Best Microfiction 2021

Amber Sparks holds her crown in the canon of the weird with this fantastical collection of “eye-popping range” (John Domini, Washington Post). Boldly blending fables and myths with apocalyptic technologies, Amber Sparks has built a cultlike following with And I Do Not Forgive You. Fueled by feminism in all its colors, her surreal worlds—like Kelly Link’s and Karen Russell’s—are all-too-real. In “Mildly Happy, With Moments of Joy,” a friend is ghosted by a text message; in “Everyone’s a Winner at Meadow Park,” a teen coming-of-age in a trailer park befriends an actual ghost. Rife with “sharp wit, and an abiding tenderness” (Ilana Masad, NPR), these stories shine an interrogating light on the adage that “history likes to lie about women,” as the subjects of “You Won’t Believe What Really Happened to the Sabine Women” will attest. Written in prose that both shimmers and stings, the result is “nothing short of a raging success, a volume that points to a potentially incandescent literary future” (Kurt Baumeister, The Brooklyn Rail).

And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges

Carol Anne Davis

Art Taylor

Brendan DuBois

Sherry Harris

Alison McMahan

Donna Andrews

Matthew Iden

Michael Bracken

Barb Goffman

John M. Floyd

David Dean

Elaine Viets

Tara Laskowski

Greg Herren

Abby Bardi

Christine Poulson

Edith Maxwell

Ricki Thomas

Marilyn Todd

Mindy Quigley

Stacy Woodson

Kathryn O'Sullivan

Emily Hockaday

Adam Meyer

Alan S. Orloff

Jackie Sherbow

1/3 of the author royalties will be donated to the Brain Aneurysm Foundation in Joni Mitchell's name. **WINNER** 2021 Derringer Award for Best Short Story: Stacy Woodson for "River" **NOMINATED** 2021 Anthony Award for Best Anthology **NOMINATED** 2021 International Thriller Awards for Best Short Story: Elaine Viets for "Dog Eat Dog" **NOMINATED** 2021 Macavity Award for Best Short Story: Elaine Viets for "Dog Eat Dog" With nine Grammys, multiple lifetime achievement awards, inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and a Top Ten ranking on Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time,” Joni Mitchell has established herself as one of the most important singer/songwriters, not only of her generation, but in the history of popular music. In this collection, 28 crime writers pay tribute to Joni’s musical legacy with short stories inspired by her lyrics, representing each of her seventeen studio albums from 1968’s Song to a Seagull to 2007’s Shine. Many of the classics are represented here, including “Both Sides, Now” (in the first literary collaboration between Art Taylor and Tara Laskowski, who have each won major awards for their fiction), “Big Yellow Taxi” (by Kathryn O’Sullivan, author of the Colleen McCabe series), and “River” (by Stacy Woodson, winner of the 2019 Readers Choice Award from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine), plus such equally fascinating titles as “Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire” (by Donna Andrews, author of the award-winning Meg Lanslow series), “The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines” (by Amber Sparks), and “Ray’s Dad’s Cadillac” (by Michael Bracken).

Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Joni Mitchell

The Beat of Black Wings

Amber Sparks

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