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The Tiger Came to the Mountains
“The night of the tiger, our neighbors came late, warning of trouble.”
Mexico, 1917. On a farm during the violent tumult of revolution, a more immediate threat prowls in a short, emotional story about survival by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, the New York Times best-selling author of Mexican Gothic.
She is the adventurer of the family. Her brother, the gentle dreamer. Even as they bond over folktales and hold each other close, their world has never felt so dangerous. Revolutionaries and pelones are in conflict, soldiers have turned into scavengers, and an escaped tiger has slipped up the mountain, looking for easy prey. As the darkest of legends becomes real, a young girl will do anything to save her brother’s life.
“Some other, new thing, rising to the surface, out of the ravine.”
Nature offers sanctuary for a woman with a violent past. But anything can happen when borderlands are crossed in a short story about the menace next door by Jeff VanderMeer, the New York Times best-selling author. Sam has retreated to her late father’s rental house, a safe place to commune with the animals in the greenbelt out back, tend to her garden, and keep her secrets. Her sense of security slowly returns—until an aggressive neighbor from the other side of the ravine fells a tree on her property. How little he regards nature. Or understands its darkness. How little he knows Sam.
“As one, every prairie dog turned to her, fixed her in a sea of unblinking black eyes, not a whisker twitching.”
An American Indian woman’s past and future collide in unthinkable ways in this richly imagined short story of deep secrets and Lovecraftian horrors by New York Times best-selling author Stephen Graham Jones.
Millie Two Bears lives alone in a trailer in the heart of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. Since her husband went to jail, she’s been on the outs with the reservation. And it’s not just people she has to contend with. Now the prairie dogs are moving in on her patch of land. When a strange woman comes into Millie’s life, and Millie’s rodent war escalates, a fateful confrontation with vengeance, secrets, and survival is just underfoot.
“Please let there be a world outside the world, life beyond life. Be led.”
Feeling alone? Join the party in a darkly comedic and deeply felt short story about fragility and resilience in the Mojave Desert by the New York Times best-selling author of Swamplandia!, Karen Russell.
Still recovering from a brutal breakup, Stan Dobrev crashes a “divorce party” in the Southern California desert. An unknown extra in a stranger’s drama, he’s on his way back to the bar when a fellow interloper catches his wandering eye. She’s a formidable tortoise named Greeley, trudging through the drunken revelry and chaos like a true survivor. Before the night is over, she’ll lead Stan on a strange journey beyond oblivion.
“At night, when the winds howl and the heat is but a mite below unbearable, I close my eyes and pray.”
A missionary in 19th-century Africa suffers a chilling crisis of faith in a short story about deliverance, friendship, and metamorphosis by the award-winning author of Riot Baby Tochi Onyebuchi.
Nathaniel is a well-intentioned, if naive, British cleric feeling blessed to educate a West African village about the benevolent power of God. But as slavers encroach, Nathaniel’s endeavor is daunted by the realities unfolding on the beautiful homeland of his congregation. It seems the devil has power, too. What follows for Nathaniel is a profound spiritual upheaval, as he questions his purpose and even his humanity.
“For what is a child but a caged tiger, something that should have never been trapped in the first place?”
What do children know that adults can’t begin to believe? The answer is hidden in plain sight in this haunting short story by Carmen Maria Machado, the best-selling author of Her Body and Other Parties.
“Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night.”
In the town of Never-Again, Pennsylvania, this hand-game song contains a history—centuries of inexplicable tiger sightings. It also reveals a frightening prophecy, one that only a small circle of players envisions. After Never-Again becomes the scene of unimaginable violence, a researcher uncovers the truth about the game, right down to its final chilling verse.
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