Your Pick: Selected Stories

Eric Hoffer Award, Short Story/Anthology Category

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.

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); Dust of the Universe, tales of family (Commended, SPR Book Awards 2014); Everyone But Us, tales of women (The Kindle Book Review Awards 2013 Finalist); Malocclusion, tales of misdemeanor (BP Readers' Choice Awards 2014 Finalist)

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Your Pick, an award-winning collection of literary short fiction:

"Powerful and thought provoking... An exceptional collection of literary triumphs that showcase the variety and vibrancy of the modern short story, Your Pick is recommended without reservation." — Book Viral

"Rich in metaphors and intensely provocative descriptive passages, these stories are to be tasted, savored, enjoyed and read over and over again. Your Pick: Selected Stories is a powerful tribute to this author's mastery of the art of creating not just a good story, but a story that needs to be read many times to appreciate the full power of its presentation. From themes of love (acceptance and rejection), to racial issues, to life's unexplained tragedies, and everything in between, this collection presents a raw view of life... The greatest power in this author's writing is the use of description... These stories sing. With both power and conviction." — Readers' Favorite (5-Stars)

"Kemanis' stories run the gamut of experience and emotion, and within virtually every one, a secret is revealed that reinforces or explains behavior. To reveal what's initially hidden would spoil the reader's moment of enlightenment, which occurs less often as shock and more frequently as gradual illumination. What do the stories actually include? The same things that life includes: regret, longing, dissatisfaction, friendships blossoming, relationships falling apart, fear, love, loss, hope—all the things that make life simultaneously mesmerizing and mystifying... Kemanis is a writer of substance. She exposes expressions of despair hidden behind masks of joviality. She hears and conveys what people think regardless of what they say. She creates moments of tension, drama, and pathos in the midst of seemingly benign situations. Proof of this is her tale of a tax audit that will break your heart. A wise person once said there are no boring stories, only boring writers. Kemanis authors the former and is the polar opposite of the latter.  RECOMMENDED." — The U.S. Review of Books