A collection of short fiction explores the complexities of human relationships and emotions in stories about a housekeeper entering old-maidhood whose life is transformed by a practical joke and a lifelong philanderer who finds the tables turned.

A selection of the best short stories of the year, selected from the thousands published in literary magazine, literary journals, and on literary websites.

"Paige Cooper's short stories catalogue moments in love. These are stories about women who built time machines when they were nine, or who predict cataclysm, or who think their dreams are reality. They include police horses with talons and giant eagles and weredeer. At the center of it all is love. And if love is the problem, what is the solution? Being closer? Or being alone?"--

Here are his notorious First Nation narratives of indigenous Canadians, and a literary homage to J. D. Salinger. Alongside the "real" story of the 1951 Giants and the afterlife of Roberto Clemente, are the legends of a pirated radio station and a hockey game rigged by tribal magic.

"Kara Davis is a girl caught in the middle--of her Canadian nationality and her desire to be a "true" Jamaican, of her mother and grandmother's rages and life lessons, of having to avoid being thought of as too "faas" or too "quiet" or too "bold" or too "soft." Set in "Little Jamaica," Toronto's Eglinton West neighbourhood, Kara moves from girlhood to the threshold of adulthood, from elementary school to high school graduation, in these twelve interconnected...

Following the success of Toronto Noir, the Noir Series explores new Canadian terrain, featuring both English and Francophone authors.

"In "War at the Snow White Motel," Rex and his family are vacationing in Vermont. A thoughtless act launches him into war with an older teenager at their motel, but a much bigger conflict -- the Vietnam War -- looms large on the horizon. Ant wants to join the #FridaysForFuture movement -- and impressing the new girl at school is only one good reason why. Joseph and Danny are determined to right an old wrong, no matter the consequences. Michel takes...

John Metcalf has been the leading student, scholar, writer and champion of the Canadian short story for more than five decades. As an editor, he has worked with several generations of Canada's best short fiction writers, from Alice Munro and Norman Levine to Caroline Adderson, Rebecca Rosenblum and Annabel Lyon. In his new critical book, The Canadian Short Story, he sifts and sorts through a lifetime of reading, writing and thinking about the short...