Your Pick

2019 Eric Hoffer Award, Short Story/Anthology Category

2019 Montaigne Medal Finalist

Your Pick is the ideal introduction to the short fiction of V.S. Kemanis. Carefully selected from the author’s four collections, the dozen stories in this volume are reader favorites. These are the stories that have resonated deepest, bringing tears and smiles, wonder and discovery.

“Powerful and thought provoking... Recommended without reservation.” (Book Viral)

“Kemanis knows how to build a story and keep it going.” (Foreword Reviews on Love and Crime: Stories).

From the introduction by the author:

“Dear Readers, I’ve listened to you and learned from you. These are your picks. New Readers, take these stories and escape into worlds unknown yet familiar, imbued with universal situations, conflicts, and emotions. My characters are everyday people navigating the breadth of human experience: love, loss, attraction, repulsion, rejection, acceptance, despair, joy, temptation, loneliness, creativity, self-discovery, failure, success. Enter the lives of these characters and let them stir feelings deep within you.”

Your Pick includes stories from these collections by V.S. Kemanis:

Love and Crime: Stories (Top Shelf Book Awards 2018 Finalist): “Rosemary and Reuben” and “Journal Entry, Franklin DeWitt” (first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine)

Dust of the Universe, tales of family (Commended—SPR Book Awards 2014): “My Latvian Aunt” (a Glimmer Train Top-25 award winner), “Like Love,” “Reckoning,” and “Dust of the Universe”

Everyone But Us, tales of women (The Kindle Book Review Awards 2013 Nominee): “The Cost of Ice Cream,” “Pianissimo, Fortissimo,” and “The Missing and Uninvited”

Malocclusion, tales of misdemeanor (BP Readers’ Choice Awards 2014 Nominee): “Malocclusion,” “Gray Zone,” and “Fractals”