Emma Donoghue, author of the international bestseller Room, delivers a volume of short stories that showcase her powers of invention and eye for strange figures in history -- from the Tammany Hall bigwig who turned out to a be a woman to the conspirators who tried to hold Abraham Lincoln's body for ransom.

The uncategorizable tales of Robert Sheckley ranged from hilarious social satires to haunting science-fiction fables. Jonathan Lethem and Alex Abramovich have collected the most potent of his myriad visions in this new volume.

A tiger mauls his handler out of affection. A woman prepares Thanksgiving dinner with her husband sprawled dead on the floor. A man, the executioner of the title, seeks to assure his new wife that he's not a bad person. The characters in Rajesh Parameswaran's stories navigate the uncertain ground between love and death, where passion and violence meet and meld. A daring debut told in the author's charged, poetic style.

Adam Levin follows up his sprawling debut novel, The Instructions, with a collection of compact gems. Hot Pink contains ten short stories that concern themselves with the uncanny and absurd mysteries of life. As Levin himself wittily confides: "There's a story about a legless girl who's in love with a girl who has both legs, a story about a doll that pukes, a story about some violent mimes, a story about a comedian with dementia, and then six or seven other stories about none of the above."