Frank Carlson Library

The eleven beautifully crafted stories in Bad Kansas reveal the complicated underbelly of the country’s most flown-over state and the quirky characters that call it home. In this darkly humorous collection, Kansas becomes a state of mind as Mandelbaum’s characters struggle to define their relationship to home and what it means to stay or leave, to hold on or let go. When a desperate woman finds herself on a date with a rugged man she has nothing...

From the snowcapped mountains of Asia to the deceptive glitter of Hollywood to the bloodstained canvas of the boxing ring, these are stories of mystery, romance, crime and punishment.

Meet the women of American Housewife: they wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it's cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. They pump the salad spinner like it's a CPR dummy. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies out of the oven. These twelve irresistible stories take us from a haunted prewar Manhattan apartment building to the set of a rigged reality television show, from the unique initiation...

Contains stories and novellas which were the precursors to, and show the evolution of, the full-length classic novel Fahrenheit 451.

Open this book and face prom night with linebacker Angus Bethune, the fattest, nerdiest kid ever to be named Winter Ball King (even as a joke); Johnny, who's had enough of doing push-ups every time he tells a joke his father doesn't like; and Petey, who gets volunteered to wrestle the toughest, meanest, and most beautiful female opponent around. Meet these and other quirky, sometimes lovable, often bitingly sarcastic teenage athletes. Their deeply...

The bestselling, award-winning author’s “fiercely freewheeling collection of stories and poems about the tragicomedies of ordinary lives” (O, The Oprah Magazine).
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, War Dances blends short stories, poems, call-and-response, and more into something that only Sherman Alexie could have written. Ordinary men stand at the threshold of profound change, from...

A romance unexpectedly sparks between two wounded friends. A marriage ends for what seem like noble reasons, but with irreparable consequences. A young woman holds on to an impossible dream even as she fights for her survival. Two lovers reunite after unimaginable tragedy, both for their country and in their lives. A baby's christening brings three generations of a family to a precarious dance between old and new. A man falls to his death in slow...

A celebrated and enduring classic of space travel on a cosmic scale, Ole Doc Methuselah mixes equal parts of vivid action, spectacle and mystery -- and a broad vein of humor -- to chronicle his voyages and exploits as a heroic physician who fights the disease, corruption and socio-political upheavals that have spread through mankind's lost planetary colonies.

Meet lady ivory and alabaster duchess, who interview their favorite rock star, Nick Agate, only to discover the magic and power in themselves. Meet Tuck Budd, who is happy living in Manhattan with her two moms, Izzy and Anastasia, until she begins to wonder who her father is. Meet La, who faces the loss of her mother with the help of an imaginary androgynous blue friend who lives in her closet.