Showing results by publisher "Macmillan Audio" in Anthologies

Cat O'Nine Tales is the fifth collection of irresistible short stories from the master storyteller and bestselling author Jeffrey Archer. Ingeniously plotted, with richly drawn characters and Archer's trademark of deliciously unexpected conclusions, some of these thirteen stories were inspired by the two years Jeffrey Archer spent in prison, including the story of a company chairman who tries to poison his wife while on a trip to St Petersburg—with unexpected consequences.

In this thrilling collection of original stories, some of today’s hottest paranormal authors delight, thrill and captivate readers with otherworldly tales of magic and mischief.

What if you were told that you could make a fortune just by pushing a button on a box? But pressing this button will simultaneously cause the death of another human being somewhere in the world . . . someone you don't know. Would you still push the button?

It's autumn in Painter's Mill, and 14-year-old Katie Burkholder has been tasked with picking apples in Zimmerman's Orchard with her brother. It's just another day filled with chores - until her best friend, Mattie, arrives to help. Somehow boredom transforms into fun and games whenever the girls are together. The innocent fun comes to an end when Billy Marquardt and his gang of friends interrupt. Katie is no prude, but she knows better than to associate with the older English boys.

Tom Perrotta’s first book, Bad Haircut, consisted of linked stories featuring a shared protagonist. Now, nineteen years later, he has written and compiled his first true short story collection. This twelve story book features a group set in Perrotta’s trademark suburban setting, focusing on the fissures in families and unexpected connections among members of typical American communities, including “Senior Season” and "Nine Inches".

Twelve stories: A young girl, desperate for a way out of her small town, finds support in an unlikely place. A ranger working along the Blue Ridge Parkway realizes that the dark side of the job, the all-too-frequent discovery of dead bodies, has taken its toll on her. Haunted by his past, and his future, a tech sergeant reluctantly spends a night with his estranged parents before being deployed to Afghanistan. Nearing 50 and facing new medical problems, a woman wonders if her short stint at the local chemical plant is to blame.

In 11 sharp, surprising stories, Neel Patel gives voice to our deeply held stereotypes and then slowly undermines them. His characters, almost all of who are first-generation Indian Americans, subvert our expectations that they will sit quietly by. We meet two brothers caught in an elaborate web of envy and loathing; a young gay man who becomes involved with an older man whose secret he could never guess; three women who throw off the pleasant agreeability society asks of them; and, in the final pair of linked stories, a young couple struggling against the force of community gossip.

A poisoned apple and a monkey's paw with the power to change fate; a girl whose extraordinarily long hair causes catastrophe; a man with one human arm and one swan's wing; and a house deep in the forest, constructed of gumdrops and gingerbread, vanilla frosting and boiled sugar. In A Wild Swan and Other Tales, the people and the talismans of lands far, far away—the mythic figures of our childhoods and the source of so much of our wonder—are transformed by Michael Cunningham into stories of sublime revelation.

A wrongly convicted murderer exacts a flawless plan of revenge. Headlights in a rear-view mirror tail a female traveler on a lonely stretch of road. A serial bride secures her future by marrying only the wealthiest of men. An escaped Iraqi with a price on his head pays an involuntary visit to his homeland. A brush with death proves the biggest break of an aspiring artist's career. Two strangers, struck by lust-at-first-sight, consider a myriad of possibilities for where the day will take them.

From London to China, and New York to Nigeria, Jeffrey Archer takes the reader on a tour of ancient heirlooms and modern romance, of cutthroat business and kindly strangers, of lives lived in the realms of power and lives freed from the gloom of oppression. Fortunes are made and squandered, honor betrayed and redeemed, and love lost and rediscovered.

There are two types of people who think professionally about the future: Foresight strategists are civil futurists who think about geoengineering and smart cities and ways to evade Our Coming Doom; strategic forecasters are spook futurists, who think about geopolitical upheaval and drone warfare and ways to prepare clients for Our Coming Doom. The former are paid by nonprofits and charities, the latter by global security groups and corporate think tanks.

One of the most accomplished, acclaimed, and garlanded writers, Hilary Mantel delivers a brilliant collection of contemporary stories. Cutting to the core of human experience, Mantel brutally and acutely writes about marriage, class, family, and sex. Unpredictable, diverse, and sometimes shocking, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher displays a magnificent writer at the peak of her powers.

From the wicked imagination of award-winning writer Warren Ellis comes Dead Pig Collector, a love story with a classic Ellis twist. So while it might be a love story, it's also about killing people and disposing of their bodies in the most efficient manner possible.

Using science fiction, allegory, and magical realism to challenge the perception of what it means to be "the other", this groundbreaking anthology contains stories that are heartbreakingly surreal and yet utterly recognizable to the human experience. Though born out of exhaustion, fear, and despair, Iraq + 100 is also fueled by themes of love, family, and endurance and woven through with a delicate thread of hope for the future.

The citizens of Plainfield, Texas, have had it with the broke-down United States. So they vote to secede, rename themselves America in memory of their former country, and happily set themselves up to receive tourists from their closest neighbor: America. Couldn’t happen? Well, it might, and so it goes in the 13 stories in Matthew Baker’s brilliantly illuminating, incisive, and heartbreaking collection Why Visit America.

Following the publication of his widely acclaimed Man Booker-nominated novel Hystopia, David Means here returns to his signature form: the short story. Thanks to his four previous story collections, Means has won himself an international reputation as one of the most innovative short fiction writers working today: an “established master of the form.” (Laura Miller, The Guardian).

Mark Sullivan, the co-author of James Patterson’s Private Games, has, in Robin Monarch, created a compelling new hero. Monarch is a world-class thief and a highly skilled operative - a man with skills, a rigid code of honor, powerful friends, and implacable enemies. In The Art of Rendition, Monarch is an agent for the CIA, called upon to use his unique skills to kidnap and interrogate a Russian nuclear scientist suspected of selling technology to the Iranians. But that’s only part of the challenge....

Investigative reporter Nora Hesper spends her nights cloaked in shadows. As Indigo she's become an urban myth, a brutal vigilante who can forge darkness into weapons and travel across the city by slipping from one patch of shadow to another. Her primary focus both as Nora and as Indigo has become a murderous criminal cult called the Children of Phonos. Children are being murdered in New York, and Nora is determined to make it stop, even if that means Indigo must eliminate every member.

Hunter’s Moon is set in Michigan’s wild, starkly beautiful Upper Peninsula, where a cast of recurring characters move into and out of each other’s lives, building friendships, facing loss, confronting violence, trying to bury the past, or seeking to unearth it. Once-a-year lovers, old high-school buddies on a hunting trip, a college professor and his wayward son, and a middle-aged man and his grief-stricken father come together, break apart, and, if they’re fortunate, find a way forward.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Lora Leigh has captivated millions with her sizzling tales. Here, together for the first time, in a short story collection.