Showing results by narrator "Fleet Cooper" in All Categories

Dr. Ibrahim Bihi of Somaliland has an advanced degree in economics and, as far as worldly goods go, a goat with three legs. Using his knowledge of temporary market inefficiencies and the propellers of a UN food plane, he turns his goat into capital and sends the global economy into a speculative frenzy. Soon most of the world's wealth is tied up in goat-backed securities. What could possibly go wrong? Only everything, and with our faithful orphan Jude as guide, we can sit back and laugh our way toward the resolution of this uproariously instructive satire.

Honored in the Best American Short Stories 2014, the hilarious and dreamy "Love on Mars" takes us to that melancholy place where even though we desire intimacy, we’re too afraid to show our real selves. In Louisville, Kentucky, Dylan, a down-and-out substitute teacher goes to Craigslist to make a connection and meets a woman who whisks him away to her imaginary life on Mars. Dylan plays along with the ruse; online, he’s a Sanskrit scholar and penguin hunter in Antarctica.

Very funny and very pointed, Adam Haslet’s "Seibert", honored in the Best American Short Stories 2014, gets to the root of how technology—our personal obsession with it and its role in creating a society built on surveillance—disrupts our relationships with each other. Single in New York and connected to her smartphone, Sylvia has a problem living in reality. Or, rather, she lives in an alternate reality of constant scrolling headlines promising apocalypse and of friendships mediated through text messaging.

In celebrated Canadian author Clark Blaise's eerily rendered Cold-War-era suburbia, a teenage boy faces an enemy that is much closer to home when his brother is diagnosed with a debilitating disease.

Funny, absurd, and heart-wrenching, Cam Terwilliger's Happy Trails introduces us to a young man whose visions of Roy Rogers - his abusive, dying father's childhood hero - guide him through his family's tough past.

In this collection, best-sellers, award winners, and emerging voices lead us through the murky, overblown, hungry mindset of youth. From parental dysfunction to new sexual experiences to dealing with illness and death, the coming-of-age story has never been so newly and complicatedly rendered.

At the start of this vibrant and invigorating novel, Robert Brill has a farm, a law practice, a daughter in high school, a son fighting in Vietnam, and a wife who deep-dives into the sherry bottle every night. What more can a typical Midwesterner ask for in the late 1960s? A lot, thinks Brill.

A disgraced Hong Kong pop star wavers between acceptance and revenge after a sex tape scandal. An OKCupid hookup becomes a missed connection even while it's happening. A couple's quest for ever-safer sex leads to a near-fatal love triangle.

Set in the scorched cityscape of the Reagan-era Lower East Side of Manhattan, The Lotus Crew is Stewart Meyer's harrowing yet humorous tale of loyalty and betrayal in the face of heroin addiction. Two street junkies, the introverted Alvira and the gregarious Tommy, team up to spark a street-retailing crew pushing the best heroin in town. In the abandoned buildings and back alleys of an Alphabet City that is as dangerous as the Wild West, the stamp of the Triad crew on a glassine bag of dope means it's a smoker.

Neal Griffin is a twenty-five year veteran of law enforcement. He's seen it all, from routine patrols to drug enforcement to homicide investigations, from corrupt cops to men and women who went far above and beyond the call of duty.

Everyone thinks they know the real story behind the villains in fairy tales - but the villains themselves beg to differ. In Troll's-Eye View, you'll hear from the Giant's wife ("Jack and the Beanstalk"), Rumpelstiltskin, the oldest of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, and many more. A stellar lineup of authors, including Garth Nix, Jane Yolen, and Nancy Farmer, makes sure that these old stories do new tricks!

On September 10, 1976, exiled Chilean leader Orlando Letelier delivered a blistering rebuke of Augusto Pinochet's brutal right-wing regime in a speech at Madison Square Garden. Eleven days later, while Letelier was on Embassy Row in Washington, DC, a bomb affixed to the bottom of his car exploded, killing him and his coworker Ronni Moffitt. The slaying, staggering in its own right, exposed an international conspiracy that reached well into US territory.

Zombies and Calculus is the account of Craig Williams, a math professor at a small liberal arts college in New England, who, in the middle of a calculus class, finds himself suddenly confronted by a late-arriving student whose hunger is not for knowledge. As the zombie virus spreads and civilization crumbles, Williams uses calculus to help his small band of survivors defeat the hordes of the undead.

Buying the Vote analyzes the rise and decline of campaign finance reform by tracking the evolution of both the ways in which presidential campaigns have been funded since the late nineteenth century. Through close examinations of major Supreme Court decisions, Mutch shows how the Court has fashioned a new and profoundly inegalitarian definition of American democracy.

Marty Nothstein, one of the greatest cyclists of all time, arrived at the 1996 Olympic Games a heavy favorite. In the match sprint at the Atlanta Olympics, an event akin to prizefighting on a bicycle, he raced around a banked, oval track. Nothstein lost by a hair's width on the finish line and vowed to win the gold at the next Olympics, saying, "I didn't come here for a silver medal."

This collection of five stories and four essays showcases the work of Mike Heppner, the writer whom Entertainment Weekly calls, "A fearsome cultural critic disguised in a novelist's clothing," and whose funny and biting fiction has been praised in Esquire, The Washington Post, and The Millions. Most of these pieces have not been published before. Featured performers include: A deluded Lothario, a man obsessed with corn, Charlie Watts, the dude from Def Leppard, and a sweet old lady who meets her untimely end at a Boston Market.

Matt Dojny's "You Are the Stepson" is one story told three different ways. Dojny uses "variations on a theme, like movements in a symphony, or parallel universes, existing side by side but never intersecting," writes Halimah Marcus, co-editor of Electric Literature, in her introduction this issue. "The opening to 'You Are the Stepson' tips the [listener] off to the elements that will appear in all three tales contained herein: a cancer-ridden stepfather and his stepson, a bicycle and a gun, and the desperate need for an apology, 'due to the situation with the ant.'”

Using the writings of Cosmas and a wealth of other historical and archaeological evidence from the period, eminent historian G. W. Bowersock carefully reconstructs this fascinating but overlooked chapter in pre-Islamic Arabian history. The flashpoint of the war, Bowersock tells us, occurred when Yusuf, the Jewish king of Himyar, massacred hundreds of Christians living in Najran. The Christian ruler of Ethiopia, Kaleb, urged on by the Byzantine emperor Justin, led a force of 120,000 men across the Red Sea to defeat Yusuf.

Avraham Bahar leaves debt-ridden and depressed Albania to seek a better life in, ironically, Stalinist Russia. A professional barber, he curries favor with the Communist regime, ultimately being invited to become Stalin’s personal barber at the Kremlin, where he is entitled to live in a government house with other Soviet dignitaries. In the intrigue that follows, Avraham, now known as Razan, is not only barber to Stalin but also to the many Stalin look-alikes that the paranoid dictator circulates to thwart possible assassination attempts - including one from Razan himself.

Theophilos and Claudia, jesters with the Guild, are sent to enlist the help of a former guild member - the minstrel Folquet, now the abbot Folq at a Cistercian monastery - to intercede with the pope on their behalf.