Engine Books: 26 books

Winner of the 2013 Engine Books Novel Prize, selected by Robin Black.

"A smart, funny, wry, and winning book."-Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted Delia Arco spends her workdays counseling teenagers as outcast as she was and her nights caring for the baby daughter she loves fiercely. Searching furiously for the mother in herself, she struggles...

Blurbs forthcoming from Karen Russell, David Wroblewski, Lori Ostlund, Celeste Ng, and Andre Dubus III. Published to coincide with AWP conference in Los Angeles and with fall 2016 course adoptions. Marketing to three markets: readers of author biographies and memoirs, students of writing...

"This fast-paced story of a family secret will keep readers turning pages."—Krys Lee, author of Drifting House Allison flies to Seoul to discover the truth about her adopted sister. A tangled history of love and deception reunites two sisters whose fates were shaped by a long-lost...

The characters in Scott Nadelson’s latest collection abandon their lands of origin, sever their roots, and distance themselves from the people they once were. These stories roam geographically and historically, featuring a would-be assassin in 1920s Paris, Jewish utopians in 1880s Oregon, and teenage...

The mysteries of blues legend Robert Johnson’s live and death long ago became myth. Part researched reconstruction, part vivid imagination, this lyrical novel brings Johnson alive through the voices of his six wives, revealing the husband and son inside the legend, illuminating the vacuum Johnson left in the worlds of those who loved him and those he would never meet.

Blurbs forthcoming from Christine Sneed and Suzanne Berne.

"Throughout her powerful story collection, Other Heartbreaks, Patricia Henley lays bare the souls of women coping with the ache of losing love."—O, The Oprah Magazine This collection of elegant, moving stories explores the bonds and betrayals among women. Patricia Henley's characters...

Author's novel The Miracle Girl was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. Stories in this collection first appeared in Glimmer Train Stories, Tin House, One Story, The Good Men Project, Kenyon Review, Storyglossia, Wigleaf, The Cincinnati Review, and Failbetter, and author was selected as a One Story Debutante.

Years after her brother Sam's suicide, Sarah Pelton remains unable to fully occupy her world without him in it. Now, while her surviving brothers prepare to sell the family's tenant farm and a young woman's life hangs in the balance, Sarah is forced to confront the life Sam lived and the secrets he...

When Cee-Cee closes her eyes, she can suddenly see all the missing girls in the Mohawk Valley. It's part of the message: they are buried in wheat fields and stashed behind train tracks, or sprawled at the bottom of the canal. Could have been you*, one dead girl says, smart-mouthed.* But instead it...

A grieving couple rents a desperate landlord's house in an effort to recover lost intimacy. Twins are irrevocably separated by events both beyond and within their control. A nighttime prank and its gruesome aftermath forge connections no one anticipated. Each with the depth and breadth of a novel, these stories reverberate long after they've ended, like beautiful and disturbing dreams.

Broke and stranded in a half-finished tract house in a swamp, Ida Overdorff discovers the strange community around her—a millionaire living in a tree house, two feral child theives. Ida clings to her dream of returning to New York while weathering storms both meteorological and emotional, and comes to understand that nobody’s luck—even hers—is all bad.

"Trip Through Your Wires is compulsively readable."—Porter Shreve, author of Drives Like a Dream A clue to her boyfriend's murder draws Carey back into the mystery that led to his death, forcing her to re-examine her own culpability and the self-delusion that blinded her to the...