When Mona Gray is ten, her father contracts a mysterious illness. His gradual withdrawal from everyday life marks a similar change in Mona, who removes herself from anything - or anyone - that might bring her happiness. Numbers provide a kind of solace, and help her make sense of the world: she counts words in her head, adds her steps, and multiplies people in the park against one another. As a maths teacher, Mona delights her pupils by encouraging them to find objects that take the form of numbers. But when seven-year-old Lisa appears with a zero that displays real turmoil, Mona knows that in order to help a person in pain, she needs to find a way to connect with the world she has been afraid of for so long.An Invisible Sign of My Own is a story about children and adults, and how we protect ourselves from the things we fear the most. It is about superstition and logic and the big muddy area in between. Written with the same eloquence and flair that characterisesThe Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, this novel marks the sign of a unique talent in contemporary fiction.

Invisible Sign of My Own

Aimee Bender

WINDMILL

The Color Master

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Windmill Books

On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents' attention, bites into her mother's homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother's emotions in the slice. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother - her cheerful, can-do mother - tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes perilous. Anything can be revealed at any meal. Rose's gift forces her to confront the secret knowledge all families keep hidden - truths about her mother's life outside the home, her father's strange detachment and her brother's clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up, she realises there are some secrets that even her taste buds cannot discern. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the heartbreak of loving those whom you know too much about. It is profound and funny, wise and sad, and Aimee Bender's dazzling prose illuminates the strangeness of everyday life.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

BOOKS ON TAPE]

An Invisible Sign of My Own

Contemporary

Doubleday, N. Y.

The bestselling author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake returns with a wondrous collection of dreamy, strange, and magical stories.Truly beloved by readers and critics alike, Aimee Bender has become known as something of an enchantress whose lush prose is “moving, fanciful, and gorgeously strange” (People), “richly imagined and bittersweet” (Vanity Fair), and “full of provocative ideas” (The Boston Globe). In her deft hands, “relationships and mundane activities take on mythic qualities” (The Wall Street Journal).In this collection, Bender’s unique talents sparkle brilliantly in stories about people searching for connection through love, sex, and family—while navigating the often painful realities of their lives. A traumatic event unfolds when a girl with flowing hair of golden wheat appears in an apple orchard, where a group of people await her. A woman plays out a prostitution fantasy with her husband and finds she cannot go back to her old sex life. An ugly woman marries an ogre and struggles to decide if she should stay with him after he mistakenly eats their children. Two sisters travel deep into Malaysia, where one learns the art of mending tigers who have been ripped to shreds.In these deeply resonant stories—evocative, funny, beautiful, and sad—we see ourselves reflected as if in a funhouse mirror. Aimee Bender has once again proven herself to be among the most imaginative, exciting, and intelligent writers of our time.

The Land-Grant College Review's first issue features new fiction by Aimee Bender,  Josip Novakovich,  Robert Olmstead,  Ron Carlson, and  Stephen Dixon, an interview with Thisbe Nissen, and artwork by Joy Kolitsky.

Land-Grant College Review Issue No. One

Ron Carlson

Sara Gran

Josip Novakovich

Robert Olmstead

Jonathan Tel

Stephen Dixon

Chris Potter

Marc Estrin

Dave Koch

Joy Kolitsky

Josh Melrod

Thisbe Nissen

Karen Rile

Thaddeus Rutkowski

Ken Sparling

Tara Wray

Land-Grant College Review

The Third Elevator

Madras Press

The Best Small Fictions is the first contemporary anthology solely devoted to honoring the best short hybrid fiction published in a calendar year. The series, which began in 2015, has featured an international group of both seasoned and emerging authors who work in flash, micro fiction, prose poetry, haibun, and other hybrid forms. Tara L. Masih founded this annual series and now serves as consulting editor. For our 2018 edition, we welcomed Sherrie Flick as series editor and Pushcart Prize winning author Aimee Bender as guest editor. This latest edition includes 53 works by writers such as Lydia Davis, Rumaan Alam, Diane Williams, Kathy Fish, Matt Bell, Aleksandar Hemon, Maxim Loskutoff, Michael Parker, Meg Pokrass, Deb Olin Unferth, and Desiree Cooper. Past guest editors have included Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Olen Butler (2015), PEN/Malamud Award winner and O. Henry Prize winner Stuart Dybek (2016), Rea Award and PEN/Malamud Award winner Amy Hempel (2017).

The Best Small Fictions 2018

Guest Editor

Sherrie Flick

Series Editor

Short Stories & Anthologies

Braddock Avenue Books

A feeling has been tearing up the underground of the fiction world. It’s a nightmare reflection of the society you inhabit, a surreal explosion of pop, punk, and the post-apocalypse. Over the last decade, Bizarro Fiction has changed the definition of avant garde, it’s abolished the traditional prose of yesterday and established a new precedent for awesome. Collected in this anthology is some of the best weird fiction from the past decade. Award-winning writers, cult prodigies and burgeoning talents all collected together in one place. This is what you’ve done with the last ten years of your life. 
 With stories by: 
 D. Harlan Wilson, Alissa Nutting, Joe R. Lansdale, Carlton Mellick III, Kevin L. Donihe, Blake Butler, Ryan Boudinot, Vincent Sakowski, Cody Goodfellow, Amelia Gray, Robert Devereaux, Mykle Hansen, Athena Villaverde, Matthew Revert, Garrett Cook, Roy Kesey, Jeremy Robert Johnson, Aimee Bender, Ian Watson &amp; Roberto Quaglia, Jeremy C. Shipp, Andersen Prunty, Jedediah Berry, Andrea Kneeland, Kurt Dinan, David Agranoff, Ben Loory, Kris Saknussemm, Stephen Graham Jones, Bentley Little, David W. Barbee, and Tom Piccirilli.

The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade

Carlton Mellick III

Jeremy Robert Johnson

Alissa Nutting

Ryan Boudinot

Ben Loory

Amelia Gray

Bentley, Little

joe-r-lansdale

Eraserhead Press

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Books by Aimee Bender