13 by 11: short stories of life in diverse places and spaces - Paperback

by Bradley Harper (Author), Derek McFadden (Author), Greg Gerke (Author)

An anthology spanning genres and places:13 short stories by 11 award-winning* and up-and-coming authors

"A uniformly powerful collection where each piece shines." - D. Donovan, senior reviewer Midwest Book Review

Part ONE encounters life both within and outside of the earthly realm. Stories by Vincent Czyz and Derek McFadden ask readers to consider the ties that bind and define us in our earthly existence, with tragic, yet hopeful, tales of loss and love.

Part TWO visits characters at different stages of life: childhood, early adulthood, and parenthood. Jeffrey Kahrs's charming vignette journeys back to a childhood incident and its effects-both immediate and lasting-on family dynamics, while Caroline Scott introduces us to two teens embarking on adulthood while coping with the pressure of their pasts. Erol Engin warns us how the first child-and Steve Jobs-can change a marriage, leading to competition and vicarious coping, shall we say.

Be careful what you wish for in part THREE, where enticing temptation meets delicious pleasure, but at what cost? Your life? Your soul? Bradley Harper's dark, tantalizing poems wrap around Lilla Glass's unfurling tale of hunter and prey ... and hunter, before Harper spins a whodunit, with a dash of whimsy and perhaps time travel, if the detective's client is to be believed.

Part FOUR transports readers to other spaces. Harriet James shows the futility of resisting the spark of attraction in a charged love-across-the-divides spec-fiction story. Carla Rehse whisks us off to outer space, where we find two partners, divided in a way we could never imagine, fleeing from a Church determined to part them. Will Knight's dialogue-driven diary tale looks for smiles as it touches on hope vs. reality, even as we wonder what the space of that reality is.

The anthology concludes in part FIVE by considering loss. Bradley Harper's short passage here is a true story of loss of life, while Greg Gerke brings the collection to a close on a pensive note as he describes a gradual loss of self, finding that travel does not necessarily enrich the soul.

Enjoy this delightful mix of award-winning and up-and-coming authors. Together, they blend literary, historical, speculative, mystery, and romantic fiction with a dash of light sci-fi thrown in ... with stories all centering on connection to others-in life, in death, in school, in families, in space, in cyberspace. Even in France.

"Readers seeking a literary anthology filled with satisfying revelations and unexpected forays into other worlds will find 13 By 11 a uniformly powerful collection where each piece shines. Another plus is that one can start anyplace in the book to choose a standout piece...there is no linear progression to stories, allowing for reader flexibility."
- D. Donovan, senior reviewer Midwest Book Review

• Vincent Czyz received the 2016 Eric Hoffer Award for Best in Small Press for Adrift in a Vanishing City.
• Erol Engin's The Sea Monkeys won the Page Seventeen Short Story Contest in 2012.
• Lilla Glass earned a Silver Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future Winter 2021 Quarter competition for her short story Best Spuds.
• Bradley Harper's debut, A Knife in the Fog, was a finalist for a 2019 Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America for Best First Novel by an American Author and won Killer Nashville's 2019 Silver Falchion as Best Mystery. The sequel, Queen's Gambit, won Killer Nashville's 2020 Silver Falchion Award twice-for both Best Suspense and Book of the Year.
• Derek McFadden's What Death Taught Terrence was a 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist and a Silver Medal winner at the 2021 Wishing Shelf Book Awards.