Short Story Collections

Another Quiet Night in Desperation and Other Stories

For those unafraid of the dark . . . . Comes a series of entertaining and thought-provoking stories as modern as MySpace and as timeless as revenge. Welcome to Desperation, the small north Florida mill town that is purgatory to 3,636 doomed souls-less after tonight. Beneath the billowing smoke that blots out the sun, its inhabitants lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. Another Quiet Night in Desperation is a powerful collection of literate, provocative tales of lost innocence, doomed romanticism, hard-edged cynicism, obsession, desperate desire, and shadowy sexuality-stories about adults for adults. In these fictions of fate and futility, entropy and eroticism, acclaimed author Michael Lister takes readers on an exciting and twisting tour of the heartbreak of human frailty in a dead-end town dangling on the edge of oblivion.

Delta Blues

From the introduction by Morgan Freeman:

This collection of short fiction captures both the art of the tale and the power of the blues, and is a nod at the human condition that often inspires musicians to write and sing the blues. These stories tell about bad men and bad women who sometimes do good—or sometimes follow their true nature. Some of these characters know all about the dangers of making a bargain with the devil. And some know the power of redemption. These are characters who would not be out of place in a Honeyboy Edwards tune, and would be right at home alongside the desolate wail of Clarksdale, Mississippi, native Son House.

Contributing to the volume are Ace Atkins, Lynne Barrett, James Lee Burke, Suzann Ellingsworth, Beth Ann Fennelly, Bill Fitzhugh, Tom Franklin, John Grisham, Carolyn Haines, Charlaine Harris, Suzanne Hudson, Alice Jackson, Dean James, Toni L.P. Kelner, Michael Lister, Daniel Martine, Mary Saums, David Sheffield, Nathan Singer, and Les Standiford.

Florida Heatwave

Florida—like hell, only hotter.

Florida Heat Wave, edited by Michael Lister, is a collection of crime stories set in the gun-shaped state by Florida’s foremost crime writers. 

The suffocating heat makes you do things—it seeps in through your pores and sucks the life out of you. Like the bloody smear of a swatted mosquito on sweat-soaked skin, violence erupts suddenly, but the damage it does lingers long after.

From the pine-tree lined rural highways of North Florida through the tourist traps of Central Florida to the tropical, international environs of SOBE, come stories of sun-faded noir, orange pulp served up freshly squeezed by the Sunshine State’s very best practitioners.

Stories from: James O. Born, James W. Hall, Lisa Unger, Alice Jackson, Jonathon King, Jim Pascoe, Carolyn Haines, Tom Corcoran, Raven McMillian, Mark Raymond Falk, Christine Kling, John Lutz, Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, Michael Lister, John Dufresne, Bob Morris, John Bond, and Mary Anna Evans