As the Old Empire crumbles into barbarism throughout the million worlds of the galaxy, Hari Seldon and his band of psychologists must create a new entity, the Foundation-dedicated to art, science, and technology-as the beginning of a new empire. FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE describes the mighty struggle for power amid the chaos of the stars in which man stands at the threshold of a new enlightened life which could easily be destroyed by the old forces of barbarism. SECOND FOUNDATION follows the Seldon Plan after the First Empire's defeat and describes its greatest threat-a dangerous mutant strain gone wild, which produces a mind capable of bending men's wills, directing their thoughts, reshaping their desires, and destroying the universe.

    This giant omnibus volume collects three major works by this genre titan: The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and The Golden Apples of the Sun. It would be nearly impossible to identify three works more central to sci-fi than this trio.

    In the foothills of the French Alps the narrator meets a shepherd who has quietly taken on the task of planting one hundred acorns a day in an effort to reforest his desolate region. Not even two world wars can keep the shepherd from continuing his solitary work. Gradually, this gentle, persistent man's work comes to fruition: the region is transformed; life and hope return; the world is renewed.

    novel, originally published in Field & Stream, illustrationed w/line drawings by Walter Dower

    D. Salinger published in April 1953. It includes two of his most famous short stories, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "For Esmé – with Love and Squalor". (Nine Stories is the U.S. title; the book is published in many other countries as For Esmé - with Love and Squalor, and Other Stories.)The stories are:"A Perfect Day for Bananafish""Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut""Just Before the War with the Eskimos""The Laughing Man""Down at the Dinghy""For Esmé – with Love and Squalor""Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes""De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period""Teddy"

    Isaac Asimov's Robot novels chronicle the unlikely partnership between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together. Like most people left behind on an over-populated Earth, New York City police detective Elijah Baley had little love for either the arrogant Spacers or their robotic companions. But when a prominent Spacer is murdered under mysterious circumstances, Baley is ordered to the Outer Worlds to help track down the killer. The relationship between Life and his Spacer superiors, who distrusted all Earthmen, was strained from the start. Then he learned that they had assigned him a partner: R. Daneel Olivaw. Worst of all was that the "R" stood for robot--and his positronic partner was made in the image and likeness of the murder victim!

    But he was soon to gain his sea legs.Amid battle, action and adventure he proves himself time and time again - courageous in danger, resourceful in moments of difficulty and decisive in times of trouble. The reader stands right beside him as he prepares to fight his first duel, feels the heat as he battles to control a blazing ship and shares his horror as he experiences for the first time the panic of the Plague.C.S. Forester's classic Hornblower books are now lavishly adapted for the screen in a major new ITV series.This omnibus edition contains: Mr Midshipman Hornblower, Lieutenant Hornblower and Hornblower and the 'Hotspur'.

    Parson's Pleasure is a country tale, A Piece of Cake, a wartime reminiscence, Lamb to the Slaughter a story of vengeful murder, and the remaining two, The Bookseller and The Butler, are on favorite themes of greed and snobbery.

    The story follows the exploits of a Greek: Captain Michalis and his blood brother, Nurey Bey, a Turk, through war, love , friendship, hatred and a backdrop of the island of Crete with all its beauty, drama, joy and sadness. This book was unanimously praised by critics worldwide as the work of a master with characters that come to life and destined to live forever.

    It was initially rejected, along with four other stories, by The New Yorker, but was ultimately published in Harper's Magazine in September 1953. It was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and starred Barbara Bel Geddes. Originally broadcast on April 13, 1958, it was one of only 17 AHP episodes directed by Hitchcock himself. The story was subsequently adapted for Dahl's British TV series Tales of the Unexpected. Dahl included it in his short story compilation Someone Like You."Lamb to the Slaughter" demonstrates Dahl's fascination with horror (with elements of black comedy), a theme that would influence both his in adult fiction as well as his children stories.

    They are a rough–and–ready tangle of guys from America's cities and farms and reservations. Led by a tough veteran sergeant, these soldiers band together to emerge as part of one of the most elite fighting forces in the world. With staggering realism and detail, we follow them into intense battles – Guadalcanal and Tarawa – and through exceptional moments of camaraderie and bravery. Battle Cry does not extol the glories of war, but proves itself to be one of the greatest war stories of all time.

    (The first book in the series is the collection of short stories I, Robot or the expanded collection The Complete Robot.)

    Earbrass begins writing his new novel. Weeks ago he chose its title at random from a list of them he keeps in a little green note-book. It being tea-time of the 17th, he is alarmed not to have thought of a plot to which The Unstrung Harp might apply, but his mind will keep reverting to the last biscuit on the plate. So begins what the Times Literary Supplement called "a small masterpiece." TUH is a look at the literary life and its "attendant woes: isolation, writer's block, professional jealousy, and plain boredom." But, as with all of Edward Gorey's books, TUH is also about life in general, with its anguish, turnips, conjunctions, illness, defeat, string, parties, no parties, urns, desuetude, disaffection, claws, loss, trebizond, napkins, shame, stones, distance, fever, antipodes, mush, glaciers, incoherence, labels, miasma, amputation, tides, deceit, mourning, elsewards. You get the point. Finally, TUH is about Edward Gorey the writer, about Edward Gorey writing The Unstrung Harp. It's a cracked mirror of a book, and it's dedicated to RDP or Real Dear Person.

    Benevolent, they made few demands: unify earth, eliminate poverty, and end war. With little rebellion, humankind agreed, and a golden age began.But at what cost? With the advent of peace, man ceases to strive for creative greatness, and a malaise settles over the human race. To those who resist, it becomes evident that the Overlords have an agenda of their own. As civilization approaches the crossroads, will the Overlords spell the end for humankind . . . or the beginning?

    Apparently 'a fairly ordinary tale about the destruction of a happy marriage' (Nina Bawden) yet 'it makes compulsive reading' in its description of an ordinary family struck by disaster when the husband, in a moment of weak, mid-life vanity, runs off with a French girl. Dorothy Whipple is a superb stylist, with a calm intelligence in the tradition of Elizabeth Gaskell.

     In the background of the story are the hills of home and the noise and bustle of London; in the foreground are the people, alive, vigorous and full of personality, who play their parts in the shaping of David’s life. The canvas is broad and there is space for gaiety and sorrow, for light and shade and for the quiet humour of a man who can laugh at himself. There are five windows in his life—five phases of experience—and the pattern which is begun at Haines, amongst the border hills, is completed when he looks at the view from the fifth window in his life and sees in the distance, veiled in mist, the city of enchantment... Praise for Five Windows: 'In conception it is a bigger book than this writer has yet given us. Once again Miss Stevenson excels in character drawing' - Glasgow Herald 'Here again is a woman novelist gifted with a shrewd temperament capable of enjoyment over the antics of men and women who are somewhat too conscious of their efforts to turn life the way they want it. A long and fully developed tale' - John O'London's D. E. Stevenson was born in Edinburgh. Her father was a first cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson. She was educated privately and travelled widely in France and Italy with her parents. She married a major in the Highland Light Infantry and moved with the regiment from place to place gaining valuable experience of life and people.

    Cross Damon is a man at odds with society and with himself, a man who hungers for peace but who brings terror and destruction wherever he goes.As Maryemma Graham writes in her Introduction to this edition, with its restored text established by the Library of America, "The Outsider is Richard Wright's second installment in a story of epic proportions, a complex master narrative designed to show American racism in raw and ugly terms ... The stories of Bigger Thomas ... and Cross Damon bear an uncanny resemblance to many contemporary cases of street crime and violence. There is also a prophetic note in Wright's construction of the criminal mind as intelligent, introspective, and transformative."In addition to the Introduction by Maryemma Graham, this edition includes a notes section by Arnold Rampersad."

    Through pithy and poetic chapter-moments - "spring landscape: detail," "death of grandmother," "first beau," "low yellow," "everybody will be surprised" - Maud Martha grows up, gets married, and gives birth to a daughter. Maud Martha, a gentle woman with "scraps of baffled hate in her, hate with no eyes, no smile..." who knows "while people did live they would be grand, would be glorious and brave, would have nimble hearts that would beat and beat," is portrayed with exquisitely imaginative and tender detail by Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African-American to win a Pulitzer Prize

    This best-selling novel, first published in 1953 to wide acclaim by author Grubb, (who like Powers lived in Clarksburg, West Virginia), served as the basis for Charles Laughton's noir classic . Renamed "Harry Powell," the lead character in this book, with LOVE and HATE tattooed on his fingers, is remembered as one of the creepiest men in book and cinema history.

    There he befriends the young, bright Andrew, a conscientious objector serving as an orderly. As they find solace and companionship together in the idyllic surroundings of the hospital, their friendship blooms into a discreet, chaste romance. Then one day, Ralph Lanyon, a mentor from Laurie’s schoolboy days, suddenly reappears in Laurie’s life, and draws him into a tight-knit social circle of world-weary gay men. Laurie is forced to choose between the sweet ideals of innocence and the distinct pleasures of experience. Originally published in the United States in 1959, The Charioteer is a bold, unapologetic portrayal of male homosexuality during World War II that stands with Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar and Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories as a monumental work in gay literature.

    The one book Black Lizard never published, it's the dream-like tale of a man after a jailbreak, who meets up with the woman of his dreams... and his nightmares. Phenomenal work of the period, ranking with the best efforts of Thompson, Woolrich, Goodis et al.

    (1st serialized in Galaxy, '58)."The Monsters" (F&SF 1953/3) "Cost of Living" (Galaxy 1952/12) "The Altar" (Fantastic 1953/7&8) "Keep Your Shape" (Galaxy 1953/11; aka Shape) "The Impacted Man" (Astounding 1952/12) "Untouched by Human Hands" (Galaxy 1953/12; aka One Man's Poison) "The King's Wishes" (F&SF 1953/7) "Warm" (Galaxy 1953/6) "The Demons" (Fantasy Magazine 1953/3) "Specialist" (Galaxy 1953/5) "Seventh Victim" (Galaxy 1953/4--later expanded"Ritual" (Climax 1953; aka Strange Ritual) "Beside Still Waters" (Amazing 1953/10&11)

    In Saul Bellow’s masterly translation, the title story follows the exploits of Gimpel, an ingenuous baker who is universally deceived but who declines to retaliate against his tormentors. Gimpel and the protagonists of the other stories in this volume all inhabit the distinctive pre–World War II ghettos of Poland and, beyond that, the larger world created by Singer’s unforgettable prose.

    Spanning a period of four reigns, from King Chulalongkorn to the reign of his grandson King Ananda, this popular modern classic gives insight into the social and political issues facing Thailand from the 1890s through the turbulent years of World War II.

    But Kitty was in no hurry to conclude such a contract. By hook or by crook she meant to go to London, where anything might happen and very often did...

    First, the moving van carrying their toys and their father's important new invention disappears. Next, they learn that their house may be haunted, with a treasure hidden somewhere inside! Right away they all set out to solve these mysteries. Each one of the Hollister children - Pete (age 12), Pam (10), Ricky (7), Holly (6) and Sue (4) - plays an important role in finding clues, along with their parents who are always ready to join in on the excitement. Even Zip, the collie, and White Nose, the cat, are part of the family, and find thrilling adventures of their own. As the Hollisters explore their new town and make friends, they discover what happened to the moving van, and learn more about the mystery surrounding their new home. Excitement abounds when a secret stairway is discovered. Then, on the trail of a mysterious intruder, their chase leads them to a deserted hut on nearby Blackberry Island. Over seventy action-packed illustrations make the story- and the Hollister family- so vivid that the reader has a feeling of really sharing in on the adventures of this lovable and interesting family.

    He saw the skin peel from the rocket beehive, men thus revealed running, running, mouths shrieking, soundless. Space was a black mossed well where life drowned its roars and terrors. Scream a big scream, but space snuffed it out before it was half up your throat. Men scurried, ants in a flaming matchbox; the ship was dripping lava, gushing steam, nothing!Journey with the century's most popular fantasy writer into a world of wonder and horror beyond your wildest dreams.Contents:- The Fog Horn (1951)- The Pedestrian (1951)- The April Witch (1952)- The Wilderness (1952)- The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl (1948)- Invisible Boy (1945)- The Flying Machine (1953)- The Murderer (1953)- The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind (1953)- I See You Never (1947)- Embroidery (1951)- The Big Black and White Game (1945)- A Sound of Thunder (1952)- The Great Wide World Over There (1952)- Powerhouse (1948)- En la Noche (1952)- Sun and Shadow (1953)- The Meadow (1953)- The Garbage Collector (1953)- The Great Fire (1949)- Hail and Farewell (1953)- The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)

    With humility and deep religious conviction, the famous Catholic novelist Louis de Wohl takes us into the mind and heart of this great missionary and saint who went by order of St. Ignatius of Loyola to set all afire in the Orient. Louis de Wohl captivates the reader as he follows Xavier's life from student days in Paris, through his meeting with Ignatius, his rather reluctant conversion, and his travels as one of the first Jesuits. The story takes the reader from Europe to Goa, India, Malaysia, Japan, and finally, to an island off the coast of China, where the exiled Xavier dies virtually alone. The book captures the dramatic struggles and inspiring zeal of this remarkable saint, giving at the same time an enthralling picture of the age in which he lived.

    Named Brighty by the prospector who befriended him, he remained a free spirit at heart. But when a ruthless claim-jumper murdered the prospector, loyal Brighty risked everything to bring the killer to justice. Brighty's adventures have delighted generations of readers, and he has become the symbol of a joyous way of life. Some people say that you can even see his spirit roving the canyon on moonlit nights-forever wild, forever free.

    Nine of his finest stories were selected by Mishima himself for translation in this book; they represent his extraordinary ability to depict, with deftness and penetration, a wide variety of human beings in moments of significance. Often his characters are sophisticated modern Japanese who turn out to be not so liberated from the past as they had thought.In the title story, "Death in Midsummer," which is set at a beach resort, a triple tragedy becomes a cloud of doom that requires exorcising. In another, "Patriotism," a young army officer and his wife choose a way of vindicating their belief in ancient values that is as violent as it is traditional; it prefigured his own death by seppuku in November 1970. There is a story in which the sad truth of the relationship between a businessman and his former mistress is revealed through a suggestion of the unknown, and another in which a working-class couple, touching in their simple love for each other, pursue financial security by rather shocking means.Also included is one of Mishima's "modern Nō plays," remarkable for the impact which its brevity and uncanny intensity achieve. The English versions have been done by four outstanding translators: Donald Keene, Ivan Morris, Geoffrey Sargent, and Edward Seidensticker.Photograph on back cover by T. Kamiya; cover design by David Ford

    When Kafka's literary executor, Max Brod, published the diaries in 1948, he omitted these notebooks--which include short stories, fragments of stories and other literary writings--because, he wrote, -notations of a diary nature, dates, are found in them only as a rare exception.- The Blue Octavo Notebooks have thus remained little known and yet are among the most characteristic and brilliantly gnomic of Kafka's work. In addition to otherwise unpublished material, the notebooks contain some of Kafka's most famous aphorisms within their original context. This edition of the English translation has been corrected with reference to the German text for certain omissions and discrepancies of sequence. Followers of Kafka will require this book and will find it most rewarding.- --Library Journal.

    Michener crafts a tale of the American men who fought the Korean War, detailing their exploits in the air as well as their lives on the ground. Young and innocent, they arrive in a place they have barely ever heard of, on a ship massive enough to carry planes and helicopters. Trained as professionals, they prepare for the rituals of war that countless men before them have endured, and face the same fears. They are American fighter pilots. Together they face an enemy they do not understand, knowing their only hope for survival is to win.  Praise for The Bridges at Toko-Ri   “A vivid and moving story, as well as an exciting one . . . The humanity of the people is deeply felt.”—Chicago Tribune   “The Banshees screaming over Korea, the perilous landings on an aircraft carrier deck ‘bouncing around like a derelict rowboat,’ a helicopter rescue from the freezing waters . . . all are stirringly rendered.”—The Denver Post   “Michener’s best . . . a story of action, ideas, and civilization’s responsibilities.”—Saturday Review

    He was not dreaming; it was his stepfather!The man watched Kinza as a snake might watch a baby rabbit at play, waiting for the moment to strike. And for one breathless moment Hamid was sure that he would reach out and snatch her away. Hamid does not want his little blind sister, Kinza, to be sold to a beggar by their stepfather, so he decides to rescue her. Together they escape from their mountain village to a town where there may be a new home for Kinza. But this is only the start of their adventures.Will Kinza be safe' What will happen to Hamid, who dares not go back home' Set in North Africa, readers will be delighted by yet another of Patricia St. John's exciting, freshly edited novels.

    Set in the 1950s, this unforgettable classic deftly evokes a tragic love affair and offers a window onto the powerful ways in which class, race, and love intersected in midcentury America.

    With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.

    Merciless in its suspense, flawless in its grasp of the ways in which ordinary people hurtle over the edge, The Hot Spot is a superb example of fifties roman noir.

    Her work as an actress has temporarily come to a halt. She believes there is no finer place to be "at liberty" than the sun-drenched isle of Corfu, the alleged locale for Shakespeare's The Tempest. Even the suspicious actions of the handsome, arrogant son of a famous actor cannot dampen her enthusiasm for this wonderland in the Ionian Sea.But the peaceful idyll does not last long. A series of incidents, seemingly unconnected - but all surrounded in mystery - throws Lucy's life into a dangerous spin, as fear, danger and death - as well as romance - supplant the former tranquility. Then a human corpse is carried ashore on the incoming tide... And without warning, she found she had stumbled into a nightmare of strange violence, stalked by shadows of terror and sudden death.

    Set in the years leading up to World War II, it is the fictionalized account of the time spent in Mallorca by the author and his wife, who experience the most unpredictable and surreal adventures, pursued all the while by Nazis and Francoists. And just as the chaos comes to seem manageable, the Spanish Civil War erupts. Drawing comparisons to Don Quixote and The Man Without Qualities, The Island of Second Sight is a novel of astonishing and singular richness of language and purpose. At once ironic and humanistic, hilarious and profoundly serious, philosophical and grotesque, The Island of Second Sight is a literary tour de force.Praise for The Island of Second Sight"A masterpiece...Fabulous in all senses of the word." —Iain Bamforth, Times Literary Supplement"A genuine work of art." —Paul Celan"[The Island of Second Sight] is comparable in profundity as well as in complexity to Mann's own Magic Mountain. It is in a class with two other massive German masterpieces...: Hermann Broch's The Death of Virgil and Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities." —Allen Guttmann, Amherst Magazine"There is a widely held misconception that Germans have no sense of humor. Here is evidence to the contrary as Thelen, belatedly, through his translator, gets a chance to show the English speaking world." —Anthea Bell, Literary Review

    Murders: A is for Ascher, cudgeled in Andover. B is for Barnard, strangled in Bexhill. C is for Clarke, struck down in Churston. Beside each body is an A.B.C. Railway guide; before each murder Hercule Poirot is notified. In one of Christie's most twisted tales, the meticulous Belgian sleuth must navigate the eerie maze of a serial killer's mind. D is for Doncaster, where the next victim dies ... E is for evidence, ingeniously analyzed.Funerals are Fatal: Richard Abernethie's unscrupulous relatives, interested only in their respective shares of the rich man's estate, become suspects in Hercule Poirot's search for a killer.

    He is also known to be paranoid, spendthrift, and wayward. In sixteenth-century Prague, seat of Christendom, he rules without the ongoing assistance of the Jewish financier Mordechai Meisl.In the ghetto, the Great Rabbi and mystic seer guides his people in the uneasy cohabitation of Jew and Christian. Meanwhile, under Rudolph’s imprimatur, Meisl becomes fabulously wealthy with a hand in transactions across Europe. But his beautiful wife, Esther, also forms a unique bond with Rudolf II . . .By night under the stone bridge, she and the emperor entwine in their dreams under the guise of a white rosemary bush and a red rose. Only by severing the two plants can the Great Rabbi break the spell of forbidden love and deliver the city from the wrath of God.In this “tantalizing blend of the occult and the laughable, of chaos and divine order,” Perutz brings Old Prague to life with a cast of characters ranging from alchemists to the angel Asael, and including the likes of Johannes Kepler and the outlaw prince Wallenstein (The New York Times Book Review).

    MacDonald, the mastermind behind Cape Fear and the Travis McGee novels. On the coast of Florida, a working stiff is wrongfully accused of murdering his boss—and must outwit one of MacDonald’s signature villains to save his life.Introduction by Dean KoontzA college graduate and amateur fisherman, Andy McClintock is stuck toiling in the office of a construction company. But when Andy tries to quit, his boss offers him a promotion and a raise—and then promptly kills himself with a harpoon gun. At least, that’s what it looks like, until the police rule it homicide—with the murder weapon belonging to Andy.The harpoon gun had been stolen out of Andy’s garage, and the boss’s wife makes the outrageous claim that she and Andy were having an affair. He’s been set up. To clear his name, he’ll have to find the real killer. But Andy soon discovers that he’s up against more than a two-bit thief—he’s been targeted by absolute evil, a monster with no compassion for his fellow man.Praise for John D. MacDonald and Dead Low Tide“John D. MacDonald was the great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.”—Stephen King“The writing is marked by sharp observation, vivid dialogue, and a sense of sweet warm horror.” —The New York Times “To diggers a thousand years from now, the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.”—Kurt VonnegutFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

    He is the author of seven collections of stories and five novels. His first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, won the 1958 National Book Award. In 1965 he received the Howells Medal for Fiction from the National Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1978 The Stories of John Cheever won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Shortly before his death, in 1982, he was awarded the National Medal for Literature from the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

    Contents:· The Silken-Swift · nv F&SF Nov ’53 · The Professor’s Teddy-Bear · ss Weird Tales Mar ’48 · Bianca’s Hands · ss Argosy (UK) May ’47 · Saucer of Loneliness · ss Galaxy Feb ’53 · The World Well Lost · ss Universe Jun ’53 · It Wasn’t Syzygy [“The Deadly Ratio”] · nv Weird Tales Jan ’48 · The Music · vi * · Scars · ss Zane Grey’s Western Magazine May ’49 · Fluffy · ss Weird Tales Mar ’47 · The Sex Opposite · nv Fantastic Fll ’52 · Die, Maestro, Die! · nv Dime Detective Magazine May ’49 · Cellmate · ss Weird Tales Jan ’47 · A Way of Thinking · nv Amazing Oct/Nov ’53

    Until Tony's controlling mother arrives. A compelling drama of the unexpected seems to seal off any return to their early married happiness, yet an astounding chain of events sets them on the path to restoration.

    Vonnegut’s absolute familiarity with science fiction tropes and his mocking contempt for them are well displayed in a story which shifts between tragic cartoon and straightforward projection. His highly evolved humans in an indeterminate future have become body-transcending spirits and Vonnegut handles this vaporous situation with deadpan comedy suspended over unspeakable loss, a characteristic technique. In its fluidity--the story is parody masked as extrapolation; no, it is a horror story in the form of a parody. This kind of cross-category narrative attack was often used by Vonnegut and makes him difficult to label; he is too serious to be funny, too absurd (as in jailbreak or as in the concept of Billy Pilgrim’s alien Tralmalfadorians) to be taken as realism. Vonnegut when he wrote this story at 30 was still trying to find his voice, identify his material; as a laboratory of his enveloping subject matter and technique UNREADY TO WEAR is particularly interesting and disturbing, demonstrating that Vonnegut could have gone in any number of directions and perhaps by deliberately failing to make a decision, found his voice through indeterminacy. It is as a poet of indeterminacy then that Vonnegut went on to write his most famous novel, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE.ABOUT THE AUTHORKurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) is one of the most beloved American writers of the twentieth century. Vonnegut's audience increased steadily since his first five pieces in the 1950s and grew from there. His 1968 novel Slaughterhouse-Five has become a canonic war novel with Joseph Heller's Catch-22 to form the truest and darkest of what came from World War II.Vonnegut began his career as a science fiction writer, and his early novels--Player Piano and The Sirens of Titan--were categorized as such even as they appealed to an audience far beyond the reach of the category. In the 1960s, Vonnegut became closely associated with the Baby Boomer generation, a writer on that side, so to speak.Now that Vonnegut's work has been studied as a large body of work, it has been more deeply understood and unified. There is a consistency to his satirical insight, humor and anger which makes his work so synergistic. It seems clear that the more of Vonnegut's work you read, the more it resonates and the more you wish to read. Scholars believe that Vonnegut's reputation (like Mark Twain's) will grow steadily through the decades as his work continues to increase in relevance and new connections are formed, new insights made.ABOUT THE SERIESHorace Gold led GALAXY magazine from its first issue dated October 1950 to science fiction’s most admired, widely circulated and influential magazine throughout its initial decade. Its legendary importance came from publication of full length novels, novellas and novelettes. GALAXY published nearly every giant in the science fiction field.The Galaxy Project is a selection of the best of GALAXY with new forewords by some of today’s best science fiction writers. The initial selections in alphabetical order include work by Ray Bradbury, Frederic Brown, Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein, Damon Knight, C. M. Kornbluth, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Frederik Pohl, Robert Scheckley, Robert Silverberg, William Tenn (Phillip Klass) and Kurt Vonnegut with new Forewords by Paul di Filippo, David Drake, John Lutz, Barry Malzberg and Robert Silverberg. The Galaxy Project is committed to publishing new work in the spirit GALAXY magazine and its founding editor Horace Gold.

    Lorimer's quiet content. ... Both wrote; each admired the other's work. Lucy possessed what Gray knew she herself would never have, a quality which for want of a better name she called "saleability."In what is surely Molly Clavering's most autobiographical novel, two middle-aged women writers, close friends and neighbours, offer one another advice and support while navigating life in a lively Border village. Lucy Lorimer, the more successful author, with her four children, in-laws, and grandchildren gathered for a summer reunion, must try to avert disaster in one daughter's marriage, help a daughter-in-law restless with mundane married life after flying planes in the war, and deal with the awkward reappearance of an old flame. Unmarried Grace ('Gray') Douglas, meanwhile, has struggles of her own, but is drawn delightfully into her friend's difficulties.In real life, Molly Clavering was herself for many years a neighbour and close friend of bestselling author D.E. Stevenson. First published in 1953, Mrs. Lorimer's Quiet Summer is not only an irresistible family story, but undoubtedly provides some indication of the inspiring friendship between these two brilliantly talented women. This new edition includes an introduction by Elizabeth Crawford.

    A dystopian novel set in a perversely benevolent future in which an attempt is made to remould the identity of a so-called heretic, Professor Burden, who had, up until then, regarded himself as a loyal citizen of the State.

    With his trend-setting Mike Hammer detective novels, Mickey Spillane shot to superstardom as one of the most notorious bestselling sensations in publishing history. This powerhouse collection includes three of the master's long-out-of-print greatest novels-together for the first time in one explosive volume:The Big KillOne Lonely NightKiss Me, DeadlyIncludes a special introduction by Shamus and Edgar Award-winner Lawrence Block

    I heard the squeal of his tires as he gunned it, and then I saw him cutting in front of me like a red bug. My car piled into his and the bug turned over, spilling him and the girl with him out onto the street.By the time our iron touched I'd swung my car to the right, so it wasn't much of a crash. I climbed out in a hurry, angry and ready to go.The MG pilot was up and ready to go, too. The girl was beside him, brushing the skirt over her long legs. Nobody drew even a scratch out of the bump.This was a tall, lean lad with a pale face and hot, dark eyes. I saw that much before his left fist smashed into my face. Not a Sunday punch—a real fighter's hard, straight left.I was looking up at the cloud-rimmed blue sky. My face was numb; this boy had a solid, exploding punch. I tried to roll over fast—stomping on the down man's face is popular these days. I was right but I was slow. I saw the heel coming down and I brought my hands up. But the heel swung back from me and I pushed up into a low crouch.The girl had him from behind, pulling his jacket down over his wide shoulders, her right knee high in the small of his back. This was a girl who must have seen action. She knew just the trick to keep her boy friend from grinding my nose into my teeth with his heel.I was up and ready again, but he was satisfied with his one-punch job. He was laughing, his head back, his narrow face white, his teeth gleaming in the sunlight.

    An obsessive questioning back and forth builds up Blanchot's narrative, with its sense--shared with Kafka's famous "doorkeeper" parable--that behind each question lies the spooky possibility of a further, more imposing, more insoluble question. Thematically, powerlessness, inertia, insufficient speech, weariness, falling, faltering--everything tied to a negative or nonexistent value in ordinary discourse--is given value here by its being articulated, moved into writing and thought. What's insignificant or worthless gathers weight through its troubling persistence, its failure to disappear. The "endless" conversation of Blanchot's writing turns "fiction" toward an experience of listening--a far cry from the storytelling most fiction (still) takes itself to be.

    Featuring a new Introduction written by Lillian Ross, a friend and colleague of Thurber's from The New Yorker, this volume gathers together 26 humorous pieces on themes varying from relationships between men and women to Thurber's correspondence with his publishers.

    Left to their own devices, however, the claws develop robots of their own. II-V, the second variety, remains unknown to the few humans left on Earth. Or does it?Second Variety was adapted into the film Screamers.

    But this is not a Mormon story.It is the story of Dorney Leaf, who comes to Salt Lake City as a girl of fourteen to live with her much older sister Madge and Madge's spoiled and selfish daughter. Through the magic of her warm and loving nature Dorney transforms the drudgery of her daily existence into a dream world where anything might happen. She lives for the day the famous outlaw, Butch Cassidy, will come and carry her off on his black horse. To Dorney, all things are possible, so it is wonderful but hardly surprising that she should find herself working for the Queen of Salt Lake City, that the handsome young professor from New York should constitute himself as her friend and benefactor, or even her hero, the great Butch Cassidy, should come to Madge's house to find her.This is a romantic fantasy played against a background that is rich and warm and down-to-earth. Dorney is more than a Cinderella, she is an eager, appealing and very human girl and no one can read about her without loving her.

    The stories collected here range from delightfully barbed portraits of the British upper classes to an alternative ending to Waugh's novel A Handful of Dust; from a "missing chapter" in the life of Charles Ryder, the nostalgic hero of Brideshead Revisited, to a plot-packed morality tale that Waugh composed at a very tender age; from an epistolary lark in the voice of "a young lady of leisure" to a darkly comic tale of scandal in a remote (and imaginary) African outpost.The Complete Stories is a dazzling distillation of Waugh's genius-abundant evidence that one of the twentieth century's most admired and enjoyed English novelists was also a master of the short form.

    Elizabeth Small, who knows how to magically make herself doll-size, knocks on the tiny front door of her dolls' house and joins in the fun inside.

    Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.

    Yet despite critical acclaim, this exciting and controversial book has long been unavailable to readers. Unlike Sneider’s previous novel, the humorous bestseller The Teahouse of the August Moon, this 1953 publication has a dark, menacing tone. Set against the political repression and poverty of the White Terror era, A Pail of Oysters tells the moving story of nineteen-year-old villager Li Liu and his quest to recover his family’s stolen kitchen god. Li Liu’s fate becomes entwined with that of American journalist Ralph Barton, who, in trying to report honestly about KMT rule of the island, investigates the situation beyond the propaganda, learns of a massacre, and is drawn into the world of the Formosan underground. The Chicago Sunday Tribune said, “This book will hold the reader enthralled to the very end and will probably give him more information about this unhappy spot than he has gathered before. It will certainly not win converts to the side of the generalissimo.” Indeed, the novel made enemies. Banned in Taiwan, in the United States it was denounced by Chiang Kai-shek’s supporters: the powerful China Lobby. Anecdotal evidence suggests – and Sneider himself suspected – that his book was subject to suppression even in the United States by pro-KMT agents. A Pail of Oysters is a landmark work from a time when novels were often seen as a moral force. But politics and historical importance aside, A Pail of Oysters is simply a good story well told. In the words of the San Francisco Chronicle, “The novel is touching, tragic and oddly gay sometimes in spite of this; a testimony to the stubbornly optimistic human spirit.” This Camphor Press edition comes with a new introduction and a brief biography of the author.

    He is also an obsessed, driven man determined to murder a rival. To avoid capture, in a society where murderers can be detected even before they commit their crime, is the greatest challenge of his life.

    

    Hartley's finest novel, encounters a world of unimagined luxury. But when his friend's beautiful older sister enlists him as the unwitting messenger in her illicit love affair, the aftershocks will be felt for years. The inspiration for the brilliant Joseph Losey/Harold Pinter film starring Julie Christie and Alan Bates, The Go-Between is a masterpiece—a richly layered, spellbinding story about past and present, naiveté and knowledge, and the mysteries of the human heart. This volume includes, for the first time ever in North America, Hartley's own introduction to the novel.

    An unusual situation gives Tracy legal guardianship of her younger sister, Tina, who is equally anxious to escape from their Aunt Martha, who sends her from one boarding school to another on an irresponsible merry-go-round of loneliness. Both girls agree that they have had the wrong kind of luxury, and being without money is their price for freedom and the chance for a wholesome, normal life.

    . .Mankind has reached the heights of civilization. Men live thousands of years in perfect freedom and leisure—their wants are attended to by ingenious machines—peace and culture flourish in ways undreamed of in our time. And yet ... mankind is dying. The price of peace has been the loss of the needed human qualities of curiosity and drive—they have been bred out of the human race. So when young Alvin of Diaspar began asking questions, he was looked on as a dangerous freak, a throwback. But Alvin kept asking, kept looking, kept seeking out the truth ...... and what he found offered his people a dreadful choice—battle and destruction, or a new and richer destiny!

    The rhetoric was one specific to the pulpit, with words like:- Good and evil, beautiful and uglyThe man hated those words because he felt that they are responsible for his sufferings.Life consisted exclusively of big words

    Includes the title story plus: The Birds ~ The Little Photographer ~ Monte Verita ~ The Apple Tree ~ The Old Man ~ The Split Second ~ No Motive.

    Anthony of Padua has been a friend to millions of Catholics asking his help to recover lost objects. But few seem to know much about his remarkable life. The son of a knight in the court of Portugal's king, he renounced his heritage of wealth and power to become a Franciscan priest. In the years to come, he earned international fame as a preacher, reformer, miracle worker, champion of the poor, and Doctor of the Church. A generation ago, the American Catholic novelist John Edward Beahn presented Anthony's life and legends in a biographical novel, A Rich Young Man: A Novel Based on the Life of St. Anthony of Padua , published in 1953. This imaginative re-telling of the saint s story, based on historical records and traditions, now comes to life again in the TAN Legend series of biographical fiction. The tale unfolds in the epic setting of medieval Europe of the thirteenth century. Monarchs, courtiers, churchmen, knights, nobles and serfs maneuver like chess pieces in an elaborate game of alliances and conflicts between Church and state, Christian and Muslim, Catholic and heretic. Anthony's story takes us from North Africa where divine providence saved the young friar from his mistaken zeal for martyrdom to Italy and France, where his extraordinary gifts and heroic passion for God blazed a path to the rescue and conversion of countless souls. This TAN Legend edition of A Rich Young Man: A Novel Based on the Life of St. Anthony of Padua paints a rich, fascinating portrait of an astonishing saint who turned the medieval Christian world upside down.

    It's a party all the townspeople will remember...always!Voted as one of the greatest stories by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the story was also adapted into a classic Twilight Zone episode.

    Unwisely, she is as captivated by the live man as by her dead hero.

    Was Romaine Heilger another captive of handsome Leonard Vole's magnetism - his plaything? Was this young woman playing a game of deceit that would send her lover to the gallows for a crime?The accused in the prisoner's box, the judge, jury, and packed courtroom waited as Romaine mounted the stand to deliver the testimony that has made this the masterpiece of suspense and shock.

    His family happens to be a gang of burglars. Now Nat has met a woman so hypnotically seductive that he will leave his partners and his trade to possess her. But you don't get away from family that easily.The Burglar has the hallmarks that made David Goodis one of the great practitioners of the hard-boiled crime novel: a haunting identification with life's losers, and a hero who finds out who he is only by betraying everything he believes in.

    

    Basically Malo – the Bad One – runs a protection racket in that if the villagers don’t pay him ‘tax’, nasty things are going to happen to them. Malo has an affinity with cats and he has the same habit of playing with his victims.Father Keogh, a young priest from Ireland, is chosen for the difficult position. Just about the first thing he has to do is get Father Gomez out of the village alive as Gomez believes Malo will kill him.The whole book becomes a fight for the lives and souls of the villagers as Malo is determined to keep his evil hold on them and tries to humiliate the priest. Father Keogh struggles against Malo for the good of the people who are all terrified of the bandit gang.

    This book precedes the Rasta story of Brother Man.

    Included here is Crown-Fire, Country Full of Swedes, The Windfall, Horse Thief, Yellow Girl and Kneel to the Rising Sun.

    The once peaceful, closely knit family is suddenly full of mistrust and tensions.Serpent's Delight, a story of five women, each determined to get her own way, is a tender and perceptive study that highlights the irony of the human condition.

    Past the point of no return, things start to go wrong on a flight from Hawaii to San Francisco. Can they make it? This plot has been done and redone many times since 1953, but the only two which come close are Nevil Shute's No Highway and Arthur Hailey's Airport.

    Now a modern classic, as gripping in its tautly plotted action as it is penetrating in its exploration of a criminal mind, it tells the shocking tale of a young man who will stop at nothing--not even murder--to get where he wants to go. For he has dreams; plans. He also has charm, good looks, sex appeal, intelligence. And he has a problem. Her name is Dorothy; she loves him, and she's pregnant. The solution may demand desperate measures. But, then, he looks like the kind of guy who could get away with murder. Compellingly, step by determined step, the novel follows this young man in his execution of one plan he had neither dreamed nor foreseen. Nor does he foresee how inexorably he will be enmeshed in the consequences of his own extreme deed.

    He was small for his age and couldn't shoot a rifle. He couldn't even chop down a tree or skin a deer. But none of this seemed to bother Chapman Green, the Long Hunter with whom Flan was to make the dangerous journey over the Wilderness Trail from the Holston River settlement to the French Salt Lick. As the days came and went, Flan came to realize that size wasn't everything. Quick wit and endurance counted for a lot in the wilderness. Slowly his self-reliance grew and, with it, his skill in the woods, and when hostile Indians attacked the group of settlers with whom they were then traveling, Flan was able to give warning and carry out the Long Hunter's instructions. By the time Flan reached a French Salt Lick, he'd learned that it didn't matter so much whether a boy grew up to be a lawyer or a Long Hunter; what did matter was knowing you could make a few mistakes and still win out if you did your best. Like Mr. Steele's earlier book, The Buffalo Knife, this is an authentic, exciting, and well-told story of frontier life in 1782, which will hold young readers' interest to the end.

    Rich tells about being a widowed mother of two children, from the time they lived in the wilderness of the North Woods, through their days in a small town where they moved when the kids were of school age, up to their move back home to Bridgewater, Mass.

    Novel based on the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti who were convicted of murder,and wrongfully executed.

     Juliet, an only child, is delighted to have Ellen, or Fenny, as she becomes, as her governess. And when Fenny is introduced to Madeleine’s close friend, Lucrezia Warner and their new tutor Daniel, her life seems to take on another level of happiness. Though she is not entirely sure that his feelings for her are as strong as her feelings for him… When Juliet and her father return to London, Fenny decides to take up employment with the Warners and even though Daniel’s time with the Warners ends along with all chance of romance, Fenny’s love of Italy and her love for the children fulfils her future. Unmarried and following a series of unfortunate relationships, she finds herself content with watching the children grow up and lead their lives. But things don’t seem as idyllic as the farms, hillsides and valleys that surround them as fascism threatens the heart of Italy. As appealing as the views are, life at the villa is far from perfect…. Praise for Lettice Cooper ‘Certainly Lettice Cooper’s finest novel’ – Storm Jameson Lettice Cooper was an English writer. She began to write stories when she was seven, and studied Classics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford graduating in 1918. Her first novel, The Lighted Room, one of ten novels written whilst she was in Yorkshire, was published in 1925. Cooper went to live with her sister in Bayswater, London, and spent a year as Associate Editor of the Time and Tide. She published twenty novels, in addition to children’s books and non-fiction, including biographies of Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson.

    ForewordFrom: In our time: Big Two-Hearted River The torrents of springThe sun also rises From: A farewell to arms: The retreat from Caporetto; StresaStories: A way you'll never be; Fifty grand; A clean well-lighted place; The light of the world; After the stormFrom: Death in the afternoon: The bullfight; The last chapterFrom: Green hills of Africa: Chapter 1From: To have & have not: One trip across From: For whom the bell tolls: Sordo's standStories: The short happy life of Francis Macomber; The capital of the world; The snows of Kilimanjaro; Old man at the bridge; The fable of the good lionFrom: Across the river & into the trees: Venice & the VenetoFrom: The old man and the sea: The fight with the sharks

    

    Inscribed by Bill Manchester to Annie Dillard when they both taught creative writing and the author has also drawn a creative little figure for Annie.

    Susan's friendship with Larry, the glamorous wife of a local farmer, is one of the things that keeps her going during tough times.

    

    Helpless, without food or weapons, Brokell faced certain death—but for the friendship of the ant called ATTA.

    He tells the tales as they can only be told: in the open spaces of the Old West. In these memorable narratives Schaefer depicts the unique conflicts of settler life and captures the spirit of the resolute, willful, determined, and broken characters found on the Western frontier. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jack Schaefer was a journalist and writer known for his authentic and memorable characters set in the American West. Schaefer received the Western Literature Association’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 1975 and the Saddleman Award in 1986 from the Western Writers of America. His popular Western novels include Shane (1949) and Monte Walsh (1963). ACCLAIM “[The Big Range] is a roundup of short stories of the West that in their verbatim realism of place and character, in their dramatic precision and occasional humor, repeat the superiority of his earlier Shane. . . . A collection that lends a real distinction to this medium.” -- Kirkus

    What use is an iron that turns everything to gold? How can you get rid of a ghostly governess who makes you do homework all night? What would happen if you got everything you wanted? These are some of the questions answered in these tales.Contents include: All You've Ever Wanted / Yes, But Today Is Tuesday / The Ghostly Governess / Sweet Singeing In the Choir / Harriet's Birthday Present / Dragon Monday / The Frozen Cuckoo / The Parrot Pirate Princess / John Sculpin and the Witches / The Magic Iron / Cooks and Prophecies / The Gardener and the Fork / Musicians Out of Work / The King Who Stood All Night / The Brat Who Knew Too Much / The True History of Good King Wenceslas / The Rocking Donkey / The Lobster's Birthday / The Wolves and the Mermaids.

    Wonderful old fashioned mystical romance!

    Jesse Harker was just a raw kid, but they pinned a tin star on him and forced him to make a man's decision—kill or be killed....First Blood is a stirring saga of the Old West, full of the heroism, brutality and unquenchable passion of a crude country struggling to be a nation, by the author of the famous and immortal Shane.

    A Collection of the Best of Olaf Stapledon

    

    We follow him through the vivid scenes of his boyhood in South Africa, to England, where he makes a reputation and an unfortunate marriage which comes close to destroying both his vision and his integrity.

    Fripsey's business was coming on a visit that would bear on his promotion. Marcy, the next door neighbor, gets involved to help save the day.

    

    

    

    When Pauline Avon first arrived, as a secretary to old Mr Cedar, she didn't expect to find such disparity.But the old man's obsession with the past left little room for his family - and they had all turned inwardly destructive. Pauline soon found that Mark Cedar could not return her love, and that his brother Derek, for his own warped reasons, was content to let Mark think that Pauline was his mistress ...

    A puny man becomes a big-shot after finding a magic lantern in "The Treacherous Genie". A fraternity hazing goes wrong in "Test of Terror". A pyromaniac is haunted by his only friend in "The Fiend of Flames". A prisoner receives an unexpected visitor in "The Wierdest Suicide Pact of All Times!" An all night deli has just the cure for your hangover cure in "Special on Beet Soup". An evening in Paris, not Green Bay in "Brief Stop at Lambeau" and favorite vintage advertisements. First published in the 50's, Tales of Horror explores mysterious tales of gruesome monsters, fantasy and science fiction. Many popular comics and movies draw their roots from these mysterious, creepy and sometimes cheesy stories of terror. Enjoy a nostalgic trip down memory lane with the best titles from the golden age of comics. Yojimbo Press has lovingly remastered these timeless classics with vivid color correction, image restoration and has also added an enhanced reading experience with Kindle Panel View.

    Lefthander Henry Wiggen, six feet three, a hundred ninety-five pounds, and the greatest pitcher going, grows to manhood in a right-handed world. From his small-town beginnings to the top of the game, Henry finds out how hard it is to please his coach, his girl, and the sports page—and himself, too—all at once. Written in Henry’s own words, this exuberant, funny novel follows his eccentric course from bush league to the World Series. Although Mark Harris loves and writes tellingly about the pleasures of baseball, his primary subject has always been the human condition and the shifts of mortal men and women as they try to understand and survive what life has dealt them. This new Bison Books edition celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Southpaw. In his introduction to this edition, Mark Harris discusses the genesis of the novel in his own life experience. Also available in Bison Books editions are The Southpaw, It Looked Like For Ever, and A Ticket for a Seamstitch, the other three volumes in the Henry Wiggen series.