Short Stories

2021 Write Michigan Promotional Poster

The Canton Public Library is partnering with Kent District Library to present the tenth annual Write Michigan Short Story Contest, which drew almost 1,000 Michigan writers last year.

Canton residents and writers of all ages are invited to enter beginning September 1, with separate categories for youth, teens, adults and Spanish language (12 and younger). Winning entries will be published and receive cash prizes.

Stories can be submitted at writemichigan.org through Tuesday, November 30 at noon. Details include a 3,000-word maximum length; $10 entry fee for ages 18 and above, free for 17 and under; current Michigan residents only; all entries must be submitted online. Those who enjoy reading stories are encouraged to sign up to be a volunteer story reviewer.

Winners will be honored during an awards ceremony in March and their story will be published in an anthology by Chapbook Press.

Show off your writing skills and visit writemichigan.org for more details and to enter. 

Large print is not just a bigger font size that makes reading accessible for the visually impaired. It’s also proven to improve letter and word recognition, aid reading comprehension, and increase feelings of confidence and satisfaction when reading. That makes it perfect for beginning or reluctant readers and ESL/ELL students. Large print books are an essential resource for any literacy program.

The golfing master reevaluates his many life experiences, sharing details about familiar stories while offering new anecdotes and his time-tested insights into relationships, business success, and living a life of integrity.

Trajectory [large print] by Richard Russo

Following the best-selling Everybody's Fool, a new collection of short fiction that demonstrates that Richard Russo--winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls --is also a master of this genre. Russo's characters in these four expansive stories bear little similarity to the blue-collar citizens we're familiar with from many of his novels. In "Horseman," a professor confronts a young plagiarist as well as her own weaknesses as the Thanksgiving holiday looms closer and closer: "And after that, who knew?" In "Intervention," a realtor facing an ominous medical prognosis finds himself in his father's shadow while he presses forward--or not. In "Voice," a semiretired academic is conned by his increasingly estranged brother into coming along on a group tour of the Venice Biennale, fleeing a mortifying incident with a traumatized student back in Massachusetts but encountering further complications in the maze of Venice. And in "Milton and Marcus," a lapsed novelist struggles with his wife's illness and tries to rekindle his screenwriting career, only to be stymied by the pratfalls of that trade when he's called to an aging, iconic star's mountaintop retreat in Wyoming. 

"The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think." —James McCosh (1811-1894)

In The Unruly City, historian Mike Rapport offers a vivid history of three intertwined cities toward the end of the eighteenth century-Paris, London, and New York-all in the midst of political chaos and revolution. From the British occupation of New York during the Revolutionary War, to agitation for democracy in London and popular uprisings, and ultimately regicide in Paris, Rapport explores the relationship between city and revolution, asking why some cities engender upheaval and some suppress it. Why did Paris experience a devastating revolution while London avoided one? And how did American independence ignite activism in cities across the Atlantic? Rapport takes readers from the politically charged taverns and coffeehouses on Fleet Street, through a sea battle between the British and French in the New York Harbor, to the scaffold during the Terror in Paris. The Unruly City shows how the cities themselves became protagonists in the great drama of revolution.

Also available in: e-book | audiobook | e-audiobook

"In this incredible follow-up to the New York Times and USA TODAY bestseller FaceOff, twenty-two of the world's most popular thriller writers come together for an unforgettable anthology. MatchUp takes the never-before-seen bestseller pairings of FaceOff and adds a delicious new twist: gender. Eleven of the world's best female thriller writers from Diana Gabaldon to Charlene Harris are paired with eleven of the world's best male thriller writers, including John Sandford, C.J. Box, and Nelson DeMille. The stories are edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child"--.

Teen Writers' Studio

Do you love making up stories, poems or dreaming about writing a novel one day? Do you want to meet other teens who share the same passion? Join us for an informal session where you can meet other writers, do a few exercises, talk about how to improve your work and bounce ideas off each other. You will never be required to share your work, but if you'd like to, this is a safe space and judgment free zone. Your stories and poems produced during these sessions will also be bound together at the end of the school year, creating a book or zine of your work. Open to all middle and high school students. 

Untitled by Elizabeth M is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Upcoming sessions

There are no upcoming sessions available.

Mapp and Lucia by E. F. Benson

 Lucia, recently widowed, is the newcomer to the village of Tilling and eager to wrest the reins of social supremacy from the incumbant Miss Mapp and install herself as its benevolent dictator. In their polite acts of sabotage and ruthless jockeying for the position of cultural arbiter Mapp and Lucia tear up the conventions of drawing-room bridge evenings as their deadly weapons. Things finally come to a head with Miss Mapp's audacious attempt to steal her rival's celebrated Lobster a la Riseholme. E.F. Benson's charming satrical bent turns the pretensions and snobberies of English village life into a vicious comedy.

Merry Hall by Beverley Nichols

First in a trilogy, Merry Hall is the account of the restoration of a house and garden in post-war England. Though Mr. Nichols's horticultural undertaking is serious, his writing is high-spirited, riotously funny, and, at times, deliciously malicious.

Shot down over Siberia in what was to be a simple meet-and-greet-mission, ex-Justice Department agent Cotton Malone is forced into a fight for survival against Aleksandr Zorin, whose loyalty to the former Soviet Union has festered for decades into an intense hatred of the United States. Before escaping, Malone learns that Zorin and another ex-KGB officer, this one a sleeper still imbedded in the West, are headed overseas to Washington D.C. Inauguration Day -- noon on January 20th -- is only hours away. A flaw in the Constitution, and an even more flawed presidential succession act, have opened the door to political chaos and Zorin intends to exploit both weaknesses to their fullest. Armed with a weapon leftover from the Cold War, one long thought to be just a myth, Zorin plans to attack. He's aided by a shocking secret hidden in the archives of America's oldest fraternal organization, the Society of Cincinnati, a group that once lent out its military savvy to presidents, including helping to formulate three covert invasion plans of Canada. In a race against the clock that starts in the frozen extremes of Russia and ultimately ends at the White House itself, Malone must not only battle Zorin, he must also confront his deepest fear, a crippling weakness that he's long denied but one that now jeopardizes everything..

Still mourning the loss of her brother, Ellie encourages the carving talents of his friend, Lloyd, while working at a gift shop in town. But his father disapproves. Every week, Hannah brings home-churned butter to market, and Ezra purchases some. Is he in the market for love? Embarassed by shattering a jar of beets at the Combination Store of Bee County, Texas, Isabella doesn't expect the handsome manager's frosty reaction. And, working together at the Old Amish Mill, Stella and David must find out what's behind strange happenings there..

Looking for a good mystery and a way to earn the Connect Your Summer 2016 Super Bookworm: My Mitten badge?  Check out this selection of mysteries set in Michigan.

The 10th installment of the beloved Woods Cop Mystery series! The traditional firearm deer season in Michigan lasts two weeks, a time in which the most hunters are afield during the year and the time when most things happen. Game wardens cannot count on having any life but work during this period, and in this case Grady Service, who takes longtime violator and archrival Limpy Allerdyce on as his partner for deer season runs into the most bizarre string of big cases involving deer that he has ever encountered. Buckular Dystrophy is the term coined by Conservation Officers to describe the condition whereby people cannot help killing deer, not for sport or food, but for other reasons - an addiction of sorts, and unlike other addictions, one not medically organized, but just as real.
 

Tracking the beast by Henry Kisor

When the remains of three little girls turn up inside railroad hopper cars, Sheriff Steve Martinez faces a troublesome case, for the cars had sat for years on a siding deep inside his beloved Porcupine County. After Steve and his comrades do the spadework, the FBI moves in, thinking their Unsub is both rapist and murderer. But Steve believes the killer--or killers--instead hired someone to dispose of the bodies. With the help of lawmen of all kinds, including the Ontario Provincial Police, and even Detroit mobsters, Steve doggedly tracks "the Beast." This intricate police procedural, set in the wilds of Upper Michigan, features not only an exciting high-tech chase around Lake Superior but also the revival of a clever World War II deception.

Michigan native, author, and poet Jim Harrison passed on this weekend. Harrison's body of work included, "...21 volumes of fiction, including 'Legends of the Fall', a collection of three novellas whose title piece, about a Montana family ravaged by World War I, became a 1994 film starring Brad Pitt; 14 books of poetry; two books of essays; a memoir; and a children’s book." (New York Times) He was known for tales of outdoors and rural life in the U.P. and his rugged, masculine characters were often compared to those of Hemingway. Below we offer a selection of his works, many available on audio Book CD, in honor of his career. His 2016 release, The ancient minstrel : novellas, can be found on the New Book Shelf.

An epic Western saga about a woman and the three sons of a Montana rancher who love her, told against the backdrop of World War I.

Legends of the fall by Jim Harrison
Also available in: audiobook | e-audiobook

Stories of dislocation and family fracture, of whimsical infidelities and sudden deaths with sinister causes, brilliantly unsettle the reader in that unmistakably Mantel way.

Also available in: audiobook

Thirteen-year-old Lizzie seeks out answers when her best friend and next-door neighbor Evie Verver goes missing after the two girls saw a dark car driving past earlier in the day, and throughout her efforts, Lizzie begins to question how well she knew Evie.

One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Also available in: audiobook | e-audiobook

The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the noble, ridiculous, beautiful, and tawdry story of the Buendia family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America. Love and lust, war and revolution, riches and poverty, youth and senility -- the variety of life, the endlessness of death, the search for peace and truth -- these universal themes dominate the novel. 

Can't Choose? Try a collection of short stories. Read one or read the whole book, either way it's an adventure. Don't forget to take advantage of the alternate formats listed. Titles available as audio or eBooks can be used to earn eLectrified versions of the You Choose badge.

A little girl tells very short stories about herself, but her full adventures are revealed in the artwork.

Also available in: e-video

Five new episodes in the friendship of the two hippopotamuses. Find more short stories about George and Martha and their friendship in our catalog.

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