Davies was awarded the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1955 for Leaven of Malice.The trilogy revolves around the residents of the imaginary town of Salterton, Ontario. Described by some reviewers as satirical, bawdily humourous, and witty.

    of the one hundred stories gathered here, thirty-one appear for the first time in English and another twenty-nine have been newly translated for this volume.

    The Floating Opera and The End Of The Road are John Barth's first two novels.  Their relationship to each other is evident not only in their ribald subject matter but in the eccentric characters and bitterly humorous tone of the narratives.  Both concern strange, consuming love triangles and the destructive effect of an overactive intellect on the emotions.  Separately they give two very different views of a universal human drama.

    In "The Immortal Story," a miserly old tea-trader living in Canton wishes for power and finds redemption as he turns an oft-told sailors' tale into reality for a young man and woman. And in the magnificent novella Ehrengard, Dinesen tells of the powerful yet restrained rapport between a noble Wagnerian beauty and a rakish artist. Hauntingly evoked and sensuously realized, the five stories read and novella collected here have the hold of "fairy stories read in childhood . . . of dreams . . . and of our life as dreams" (The New York Times).

    A new bell, legendary symbol of religion and magic, is rediscovered. Dora Greenfield, erring wife, returns to her husband. Michael Mead, leader of the community, is confronted by Nick Fawley, with whom he had disastrous homosexual relations, while the wise old Abbess watches and prays and exercises discreet authority. And everyone, or almost everyone, hopes to be saved, whatever that may mean....Iris Murdoch's funny and sad novel has themes of religion, the fight between good and evil, and the terrible accidents of human frailty.

    Wilmet's interest wanders to the nearby Anglo-Catholic church, where at last she can neglect her comfortable household in the company of three priests and engaging Piers Longridge who happens to be living with another man. Her limited life has its fragile "blessings."

    This is the most complete and generous sampling of the first half of an indispensable American writer's career.

    Completed in the eleventh century A.D. by the poet Abol-Qasem Ferdowsi, the Shahname describes in more than 80,000 lines of verse the pre-Islamic history of Persia from mythological times down to the invasion of the armies of Islam in the mid-seventh century A.D.From this long saga, Jerome Clinton has translated into English blank verse the most famous episode, the story of Rostam and Sohrab. It is a stark and classic tragedy set against the exotic backdrop of a mythological Persia where feasting, hunting, and warring are accomplished on the most magnificent scale. Matching the English translation line by line on the facing pages is the Persian text of the poem, based on the earliest complete manuscript of the Shahname, which is preserved in the British Museum.This lyrical translation of the tragedy of Sohrab and Rostam captures the narrative power and driving rhythm of the Shahname as no other English translation has. His rendering into modern blank verse is both faithful to the original and pleasing to the ear of the contemporary reader.

    In "The Immortal Story," a miserly old tea-trader living in Canton wishes for power and finds redemption as he turns an oft-told sailors' tale into reality for a young man and woman. And in the magnificent novella Ehrengard, Dinesen tells of the powerful yet restrained rapport between a noble Wagnerian beauty and a rakish artist. Hauntingly evoked and sensuously realized, the five stories and novella collected here have the hold of "fairy stories read in childhood . . . of dreams . . . and of our life as dreams" (The New York Times).

    Set in a small town in Mississippi, The Long Dream is a novel rich in characterization and plot that dramatizes Richard Wright's themes of oppression, exploitation, corruption, and flight. It is the story of Fishbelly (called Fish), the son of Tyree Tucker, a prominent black mortician and owner of a brothel whose wealth and power were attained by forging business arrangements with corrupt white police officers and politicians. The riveting narrative centers on the explosive and tragic events that shape and alter the relationship between Fish and his father.

    Regarded as one of the greatest Hindi novels ever written, this comprises of the journey of the characters through the tumultuous times of India - Pakistan partition of 1947.

    Somewhere in Germany. Only a few days before the capitulation. Seven Hitler-youth, who’ve been stuck into Wehrmacht uniforms, are deployed to defend a bridge of no strategic significance, equipped with nothing more than a few carbines and bazookas. Abandoned by their senior officer, helplessly torn between a thirst for adventure and a confused belief that they must save the Fatherland, they take up the futile struggle just as the American tanks roll in. The Bridge, which achieved worldwide success as a book initially, followed by the equally successful film version directed by Bernhard Wicki, is a memorial to a duped generation that was sent to the slaughter in the final days of World War Two.

    Each book in the series has been designed with today's young reader in mind. As the words come to life, students will develop a lasting appreciation for great literature.The humor of Mark Twain...the suspense of Edgar Allan Poe...the danger of Jack London...the sensitivity of Katherine Mansfield. Creative Short Stories has it all and will prove to be a welcome addition to any library.

    It richly chronicles one man's rise to wealth, power, and prominence - and the haunting sense of failure at his heart.

    Now in hand is every single one of her forty-one marvelous stories. Ranging from South Africa to the West End, her dazzling stories feature hanging judges, fortune-tellers, shy girls, psychiatrists, dress designers, pensive ghosts, never-departing guests, and imaginary chauffers.Contents: - The Portobello Road- The Curtain Blown by the Breeze- The Black Madonna- Bang-Bang You're Dead- The Seraph and the Zambesi- The Twins- The Playhouse Called Remarkable- The Pawnbroker's Wife- Miss Pinkerton's Apocalypse- 'A Sad Tale's Best for Winter'- The Leaf-Sweeper- Daisy Overend- You Should Have Seen the Mess- Come Along, Marjorie- The Ormolu Clock- The Dark Glasses- A Member of the Family- The House of the Famous Poet- The Fathers' Daughters- Open to the Public- Alice Long's Dachshunds- The Go-Away Bird- The First Year of My Life- The Gentile Jewesses- The Executor- The Fortune-Teller- Another Pair of Hands- The Dragon- The Girl I Left Behind Me- Going Up and Coming Down- The Pearly Shadow- Chimes- The Thing About Police Stations- Harper and Wilton- Ladies and Gentlemen- Quest for Lavishes Ghast- The Hanging Judge- The Snobs- The Young Man Who Discovered the Secret of Life- Christmas Fugue- A Hundred and Eleven Years Without a Chauffeur

    Rezzori surrounds Tildy with a host of fantastic characters, engaging us in a kaleidoscopic experience of a city where nothing is as it appears—a city of discordant voices, of wild ugliness, and heartbreaking disappointment, in which, however, “laughter was everywhere, part of the air we breathed, a crackling tension in the atmosphere, always ready to erupt in showers of sparks or discharge itself in thunderous peals."

    Here Jarrell presents ballads, parables, anecdotes, and legends along with some of the finest work of Chekhov, Babel, Elizabeth Bowen, Isak Dinesen, Kafka, Peter Taylor, and Katherine Anne Porter. This wonderful anthology, with its celebrated introductory essay, enlarges and deepens our perception of the storyteller's art and its central place in the world of our feelings.1 • A Country Doctor • (1948) • short story by Franz Kafka (trans. of Ein Landarzt 1918)36 • The Witch of Coös • (1923) • poem by Robert Frost47 • The Nose • (1957) • novelette by Николай Гоголь? (trans. of Нос? 1836) [as by Nicolai Gogol]85 • Fair Eckbert • (1913) • novelette by Ludwig Tieck (trans. of Der blonde Eckbert 1797)105 • The Three Hermits • (1907) • short story by Лев Толстой? (trans. of Три старца? 1886) [as by Lev Tolstoy]131 • The Fir Tree • juvenile • (1912) • short story by Hans Christian Andersen (trans. of Grantræet 1844)151 • The Red King and the Witch: A Gypsy Folk-Tale • (1889) • short story by Anonymous167 • Cat and Mouse in Partnership • [KHM (Kinder- und Hausmärchen)? • 2] • (1897) • short story by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm (trans. of Katze und Maus in Gesellschaft 1812) [as by The Brothers Grimm]170 • The Story of the Siren • (1920) • short story by E. M. Forster179 • The Book of Jonah • (1611) • short story by uncredited (trans. of ספר יונה? unknown)183 • The Bucket-Rider • [Der Kübelreiter] • (1933) • short story by Franz Kafka (trans. of Der Kübelreiter 1921)213 • On Letting Alone • (1889) • short story by 莊子? (trans. of 在宥? unknown) [as by Chuang T'zu]216 • A Tale of the Cavalry • (1952) • short story by Hugo von Hofmannsthal (trans. of Reitergeschichte 1899)226 • The Mental Traveller • (1863) • poem by William Blake247 • The Porcelain Doll • (1920) • short story by Лев Толстой? (trans. of Фарфоровая Кукла? 1863) [as by Lev Tolstoy]252 • Byezhin Prairie • (1897) • short story by Иван Тургенев? (trans. of Бежин луг? 1851) [as by Ivan Turgenev]

    is at once a gripping intellectual and moral detective story and a book whose aesthetic insights make it a companion piece to John Berger's great works of art criticism.

    As part of a schedule of unorthodox therapies, Horner's nameless Doctor has him take a teaching job at a local teachers college. There Horner befriends the super-rational existentialist Joe Morgan and his wife Rennie, with whom he becomes entangled in a love triangle, with tragic results. The book deals with several issues that were controversial at the time, including racial segregation and abortion. (from wikipedia)

    These short fictions capture Rodoreda's full range of expression, from quiet literary realism to fragmentary impressionism to dark symbolism. Few writers have captured so clearly, or explored so deeply, the lives of women who are stuck somewhere between senseless modernity and suffocating tradition-Rodoreda's "women are notable for their almost pathological lack of volition, but also for their acute sensitivity, a nearly painful awareness of beauty" (Natasha Wimmer).

    The slender thread of factual record informs a live, at times repellent, portrait of the man he calls Claude Morel, but where Morel's story departs from Rimbaud's is not evident to the reader. Born in the Ardennes of northern France, his childhood dominated by a strange mother and his need to escape her, Claude finally reaches Paris- there to become a drifter, and in a second return, a depraved waster, involved with another poet- Maurice Druard (recognizably Paul Verlaine), but writing, ceaselessly, brilliantly, with a decadence then virtually unknown. Their relationship ends with a shooting- and from then on Claude becomes even more of a wanderer, up and down the length of France, then briefly as a soldier of the Dutch in Asia, a deserter, a hunter, trader, perhaps a slaver, a pilgrim. Finally a teacher at the court of the Lion of Judah, Menelik, he returned to France to die in Marseilles. A haunting tale with an obsessive fascination, it is a tragic book, symbolic of waste, frustration, lost genius. Ullman has used Rimbaud's own work as an integral part of his text.

    This volume also contains 'Something Unspoken' and 'Summer and Smoke'.

    In "The Crazy Hunter," the killing of a blind gelding is pivotal in a power struggle between a businesslike mother, a feckless father, and an almost grown daughter. In "The Bridegroom's Body," swans become surrogates for human emotion in a story of suppressed passion and the unquestioned male subjugation of women. "Decision," the only overtly political story in the collection, deals with the liberating power of moral choice—even if the choice means almost certain death—in Franco's Spain. As Robert Smith wrote about Kay Boyle in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "Few American writers have written so beautifully of the human condition with a mind that recognizes the limitations of conduct and with a heart that sees the need to test those limits always by love and courage."