Short stories by Elizabeth McCracken
Elizabeth McCracken is the author of seven books: Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry, The Giant’s House, Niagara Falls All Over Again, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, Thunderstruck & Other Stories, Bowlaway, and the forthcoming collection of short stories The Souvenir Museum. She’s received grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Liguria Study Center, the American Academy in Berlin, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Thunderstruck & Other Stories won the 2015 Story Prize. Her work has been published in The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, The O. Henry Prize, The New York Times Magazine, and many other places.
Listing 5 stories.
A grandmother takes care of her granddaughter Lisa for the summer while her son, Lisa's father, is in the hospital on life support. On the last day of her son's life, the grandmother distracts Lisa by taking her to a 4th of July block party.
A Midwestern woman reflects on a past heartbreak from 1993 that led her to check into a tacky hotel, drink her worries away, seduce a married late-night radio talk show host, and doubtfully come to a personal realization.
When a young academic's wife dies suddenly on the couples' honeymoon voyage across Europe, he copes by turning to his landlord.
A man meets his girlfriend’s mother. While at first she is cold to him, because of a secret his girlfriend won’t speak of, they grow close, begin to depend on each other.
An American family visits Paris in hopes of understanding their difficult pre-teenage daughter. But when their daughter is severely injured after sneaking out at night, the courses of all their relationships change.