Showing results for "Real-Life Stories" in Anthologies & Short Stories

An aspiring short-story writer grapples with his father's sudden success with the form. McSweeney's is a literary journal based in San Francisco.

The Real Osamu Dazai features twenty unforgettable tales—some autobiographical, others fictional—that chart the inner life of one of modern Japan's most brilliant and tormented writers. From darkly comic meditations on fashion and identity to heartrending accounts of childhood, love, and war, Dazai's prose is both timeless and emotionally raw.

Fifteen linked stories chart a true course through the lives of families, farmers, loggers, former classmates, and the occasional stripper. In the richly imagined town of Renata, Oregon, a man watches his neighbor's big-screen TV through binoculars, an errant son paints himself silver, mysterious electrical humming emanates from an enormous barn. In A Simplified Map of the Real World, intimate boundaries are loosened by history - and high above the strife and the hope and the often hilarious, geese seek the perfect tailwind. Stevan Allred's stunning debut deftly navigates the stubborn geography of the human heart.

Across time and across the world, an ancient serpent cult once dominated mankind. Then a great battle ensued and Christianity stamped its authority on the face of the planet. Now, after years of research, the real religious history of the world can be told. In Secrets of the Serpent, Philip Gardiner for the first time reveals the secret of the Holy Grail and Elixir of Life, and how the world's most mysterious places were once sacred to the serpent cult.