Best of
American-Fiction
2004
Selected Poems and Tales
Edgar Allan Poe - 2004
Their somber poetry and rich moods of menace and melancholy have conjured some of the most haunting images in American literature: the accusing echo of the tell-tale heart, the beloved but doomed Annabel Lee, the gloom-shrouded House of Usher, the maddening tortures of the pit and pendulum, the eerie and enigmatic Raven.Dramatic and irreversible, Poe's work invites us to match our darkest imaginings to his vision of the world colored by grief and madness and haunted by specters of guilt and death. This illustrated edition captures Poe's best-known works in all their shadowy splendor through the incomparable art of Mark Summers. His striking full-page color illustrations and ghostly black-and-white pencil sketches reveal the skull beneath the skin of Poe's obsessed and mournful characters and subtly express their heart of emotional darkness that gives them life and purpose.The book also features and introduction by best-selling fantasist and graphic novelist Neil Gaiman, who discusses his personal relationship with Poe's writing and its enduring impact. "Poe", he writes, "for all his short life and unfulfilled potential, remains as much read today, his finest stories as successful, as readable, as contemporary as anyone can desire." This new edition of Poe's unforgettable writing is a colorful and imaginative tribute to this most contemporary of classic writers.
Collected Stories I: Gimpel the Fool to The Letter Writer
Isaac Bashevis Singer - 2004
Beginning with Gimpel the Fool, whose title story brought Singer to sudden prominence in America when translated by Saul Bellow in 1953, and concluding with The Death of Methuselah, the collection published three years before his death in 1991, this three-volume edition brings together for the first time all the story collections Singer published in English in the versions he called his "second originals"--translations he supervised and collaborated on, revising as he worked. In addition, Collected Stories includes previously uncollected or unpublished stories from his manuscripts in the Ransom Center collections, providing a rare glimpse into the workshop of a literary genius. Here are nearly 200 stories--the full range of Singer's vision--encompassing Old World shtetl and New World exile. Born in Poland in 1904 into a family of rabbis, Singer was raised in a traditional culture that perished at the hands of the Nazis during the Second World War, and his haunting stories testify to the richness of that vanished world. Singer's Old World tales reveal a wild, mischievous, often disturbing supernaturalism evocative of local storytelling traditions. After his immigration to America, Singer's stories increasingly explore the daily lived reality and imaginative boundaries of Jewish culture as it was transplanted to the United States, revealing him to be the emblematic immigrant American writer, a writer whose vision and insights enlarged our idea of what it is to be an American.
Collected Stories II: A Friend of Kafka to Passions
Isaac Bashevis Singer - 2004
Beginning with Gimpel the Fool, whose title story brought Singer to sudden prominence in America when translated by Saul Bellow in 1953, and concluding with The Death of Methuselah, the collection published three years before his death in 1991, this three-volume edition brings together for the first time all the story collections Singer published in English in the versions he called his "second originals"--translations he supervised and collaborated on, revising as he worked. In addition, Collected Stories includes previously uncollected or unpublished stories from his manuscripts in the Ransom Center collections, providing a rare glimpse into the workshop of a literary genius. Here are nearly 200 stories--the full range of Singer's vision--encompassing Old World shtetl and New World exile. Born in Poland in 1904 into a family of rabbis, Singer was raised in a traditional culture that perished at the hands of the Nazis during the Second World War, and his haunting stories testify to the richness of that vanished world. Singer's Old World tales reveal a wild, mischievous, often disturbing supernaturalism evocative of local storytelling traditions. After his immigration to America, Singer's stories increasingly explore the daily lived reality and imaginative boundaries of Jewish culture as it was transplanted to the United States, revealing him to be the emblematic immigrant American writer, a writer whose vision and insights enlarged our idea of what it is to be an American.
Saints at the River
Ron Rash - 2004
The girl's parents want to attempt a rescue of the body; environmentalists areconvinced the rescue operation will cause permanent damage to the river and set a dangerous precedent. Torn between the two sides is Maggie Glenn, a twenty-eightyear-old newspaper photographer who grew up in the town and has been sent to document the incident. Since leaving home almost ten years ago, Maggie has done her best to avoid her father, but now, as the town's conflict opens old wounds, she finds herself revisiting the past she's fought so hard to leave behind.
The Dorothy Parker Audio Collection
Dorothy Parker - 2004
Regarded as brilliant, but known to be an alcoholic and often depressed, Parker’s work pushes all buttons at once: humor, anger, love, pity and everything in between…she pulled no punches, writing with pure, unadulterated passion; her work is timeless and as pertinent to today’s society as it was to that of the time she wrote.Among the gems included in this collection are her first published short story, Such a Pretty Little Picture and her O. Henry Award winner Big Blonde, several other short stories, and, unlike other audio collections, some of her work, including her 1918 New Yorker piece on Tolstoy’s play Redemption and a 1927 Vanity Fair review of Emily Post’s Ettiquette./
Collected Stories III: One Night in Brazil to The Death of Methuselah
Isaac Bashevis Singer - 2004
Stretching back to “The Jew from Babylon,” a story first published in Yiddish in 1932, and gathering tales such as “Brother Beetle” and “There Are No Coincidences” from the 1960s, the works in Collected Stories: One Night in Brazil to The Death of Methuselah serve as a retrospective view of Singer’s achievement as a storyteller.Collected Stories: One Night in Brazil to The Death of Methuselah also contains ten stories published in English translation for the first time, selected from the extensive collection of Singer’s papers at the University of Texas. Ranging from “Between Shadows,” an evocative, naturalistic sketch set in Warsaw, to the bittersweet melodrama “Morris and Timna,” to the beguiling fable “Hershele and Hanele, or The Power of a Dream,” these stories enrich our understanding of Singer as a writer. The volume also includes “The Bird,” “My Adventures as an Idealist,” and “Exes,” stories published in magazines that were not included in any of Singer’s collections. Complementing the 78 stories gathered here is the introduction to Gifts (1985), a version of a lecture Singer had delivered since the early 1960s sometimes called “Why I Write as I Do,” which illuminates his biography, philosophical outlook, and literary aims.
Resistance
Barry Lopez - 2004
In nine fictional testimonies, men and women who have resisted the mainstream and who are now suddenly “parties of interest” to the government tell their stories.A young woman in Buenos Aires watches bitterly as her family dissolves in betrayal and illness, but chooses to seek a new understanding of compassion rather than revenge. A carpenter traveling in India changes his life when he explodes in an act of violence out of proportion to its cause. The beginning of the end of a man’s lifelong search for coherence is sparked by a Montana grizzly. A man blinded in the war in Vietnam wrestles with the implications of his actions as a soldier–and with innocence, both lost and regained.Punctuated with haunting images by acclaimed artist Alan Magee, Resistance is powerful fiction with enormous significance for our times.