SOUVENIRS FROM ANOTHER LIFE
Product Details
Souvenirs from Another Life by Leah Browning
Quiet Ocean Studio & Press, February 2026
Trade paperback, $18.00, Stories, 248 pages
Print paperback ISBN-13: 979-8-9990752-0-8
E-book ISBN-13: 979-0-8
Audiobook ISBN-13: 979-0-8
Front cover photograph by Jonathan Kemper
Back cover photograph by Sarah Trummer
Please visit Indiebound, Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and other online and brick-and-mortar booksellers for additional information or to purchase a copy of the book.
Sample from the Collection
She grew up in New Brunswick, in a small house a few streets down from the thrift store and The Painted Pony Bar and Grill. Her dad was dead, but she had his old record player and a life-sized poster of Jim Morrison hanging on the wall above her bed, and she used to lie on her back and listen to Jimi Hendrix and The Doors and think about William Blake, and the known and the unknown.
While she’d been gone, her mother had hung a sign with the word Family on the living room wall, above a series of framed photos. Outside the kitchen window, there was a red barn. Three black cats lived in the hayloft, emerging to eat scraps that her mother left in a bowl by the back door. When the weather was nice, they sat in the setting sun and licked their paws.
This excerpt from “Dark Horse,” a story by Leah Browning, was first published in Terrain.org.
Discussion Guide for Readers
A discussion guide for readers is available for Souvenirs from Another Life: Stories by Leah Browning. This printable PDF is intended for book clubs and other discussion groups.
Discussion guide for Souvenirs from Another Life: LINK
About the Book
Souvenirs from Another Life, the first full-length collection of short fiction by Leah Browning, features an abundant selection of stories. Relationships are at the forefront: those between friends, siblings, partners, or parents and children, as well as the more tangential relationships between neighbors or coworkers. By turns sharp and tender, the stories delve into the reality and surreality of love, companionship, and family.
In “Caught,” a man finds his Tinder date surrounded by vaguely threatening birds. Toward the beginning of “The Surrogate Wife,” a woman returns after a long journey to discover that her husband’s new housekeeper has taken over her home. And in “The Costume Wedding,” a doctor and her boyfriend travel to Albuquerque to attend a front yard ceremony where they’ve been instructed to dress up.
Slippery and hypnotic, these short stories illuminate hidden corners of courtship, marriage, divorce, friendship, and familial devotion. Souvenirs from Another Life includes full-length literary fiction, flash, microfiction, and linked stories about the pleasures and absurdities of everyday life.
About the Author
Leah Browning is the author of Two Good Ears and Loud Snow, a pair of flash fiction mini-books published by Silent Station Press, and When the Sun Comes Out After Three Days of Rain, a collection of poetry published by Kelsay Books. She is also the author of three short nonfiction books published by Capstone Press and six chapbooks of poetry and fiction. Browning’s work has appeared in Four Way Review, Harpur Palate, Valparaiso Fiction Review, The Threepenny Review, Necessary Fiction, Waxwing, Flock, Contrary Magazine, Passages North, Watershed Review, Parhelion Literary Magazine, Newfound, The Forge Literary Magazine, Superstition Review, Santa Ana River Review, The Homestead Review, Thin Air Magazine, Belle Ombre, The Petigru Review, Belletrist Magazine, The Ilanot Review, The Westchester Review, The Big Windows Review, The Broadkill Review, Funicular Magazine, Ponder Review, The Stillwater Review, and other literary journals and anthologies. Her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize anthology, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions, and the storySouth Million Writers Award. In addition to writing, Browning has edited the Apple Valley Review since 2005. Souvenirs from Another Life is her first full-length story collection.

For More Information
Please visit Indiebound, Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and other online and brick-and-mortar booksellers for additional information or to purchase a copy of the book.
Please view the Fiction page for selected excerpts from Souvenirs from Another Life and other stories by Leah Browning.
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