San Antonio College Library

Presents the author's selection of his best short stories, as well as a new piece, in a collection that includes "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary," "Mono No Aware" and "The Waves."

After a seventeen-year-old African American boy is shot dead by a white man, the boy's mother and the shooter's wife face difficulties.

Traces the experiences of protagonists from a range of cultures, including a blacklisted Hollywood actor who struggles to connect with his son, and a dissenting gallery worker who begins smuggling and curating underground art.

"Sheriff Patrick Drake tried to lead an upstanding life and maintain some financial stability until his wife passed away. He did okay for a while, singlehandedly raising his family in a small mountain town. Then he was hit with money troubles, fell in with some unsavory men, and ended up convicted of one of the biggest crimes in local history. Twelve years later Patrick is on parole under the watchful eye of his son Bobby, who just happens to be a...

"In The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Mantel's trademark gifts of penetrating characterization, unsparing eye, and rascally intelligence are once again fully on display. Her classic wicked humor in each story--which range from a ghost story to a vampire story to near-memoir to mini-sagas of family and social fracture--brilliantly unsettles the reader in that unmistakably Mantel way. Mantel brutally and acutely writes about gender, marriage,...

The day gets off to a rough start, but soon the smell of pancakes fills the air and a family gathers for a breakfast feast.

Fleeing her family home in Wisconsin in the wake of a tragedy that compels her to pursue her acting career in golden-age Hollywood, Elsa enjoys the heady extravagances of her fame while struggling to remain true to herself and balance the needs of her family.

As the years go by, the members of Leo Leotardi's family continue to think he is just a baby. "I'm not a baby!" Leo Leotardi insists, but his family just won't listen. Leo doesn't want runny spinach ("Poopie," he says); he wants potato salad, like everyone else. But what the family (including Leo's older siblings) don't seem to notice is that, while Leo may be the baby of the family, he isn't actually a baby anymore. His bonnet is getting too tight,...

In this tongue-in-cheek take on classic themes in children's literature, the four Willoughby children set about to become "deserving orphans" after their neglectful parents embark on a treacherous around-the-world adventure, leaving them in the care of an odious nanny

"Inez wanders a post-pandemic world, strangely immune to disease, making her living by volunteering as a test subject. She is hired to provide genetic material to a grief-stricken, affluent mother, who lost all four of her daughters within four short weeks. This experimental genetic work is policed by a hazy network of governmental Ethics committees, and threatened by the Knights of Life, religious zealots who raze the rural farms where much of this...