Best of
Short-Stories

1929

The Dunwich Horror and Others


H.P. Lovecraft - 1929
    Lovecraft and His Work · August Derleth · in 10 · In the Vault · ss The Tryout Nov ’25; Weird Tales Apr ’32 19 · Pickman’s Model · ss Weird Tales Oct ’27 33 · The Rats in the Walls · ss Weird Tales Mar ’24 53 · The Outsider · ss Weird Tales Apr ’26 60 · The Colour Out of Space · nv Amazing Sep ’27 89 · The Music of Erich Zann · ss The National Amateur Mar ’22; Weird Tales Nov ’34 98 · The Haunter of the Dark · nv Weird Tales Dec ’36 121 · The Picture in the House · ss The National Amateur Jul ’19; Weird Tales Mar ’37 130 · The Call of Cthulhu [Inspector Legrasse] · nv Weird Tales Feb ’28 160 · The Dunwich Horror · nv Weird Tales Apr ’29 203 · Cool Air · ss Tales of Magic and Mystery Mar ’28; Weird Tales Jul ’27 212 · The Whisperer in Darkness · na Weird Tales Aug ’31 278 · The Terrible Old Man · vi The Tryout Jul ’20; Weird Tales Aug ’26 281 · The Thing on the Door-step · nv Weird Tales Jan ’37 308 · The Shadow Over Innsmouth · na Visionary Press: Everett, PA, 1936; Weird Tales Jan ’42 370 · The Shadow Out of Time · na Astounding Jun ’36

Tales from Two Pockets


Karel Čapek - 1929
    His unique approaches to the mysteries of justice and truth are full of the ordinary and the extraordinary, humor and humanism.

The Complete Father Brown


G.K. Chesterton - 1929
    Chesterton's endearing amateur sleuth has entertained countless generations of readers. For, as his admirers know, Father Brown's cherubic face and unworldly simplicity, his glasses and his huge umbrella, disguise a quite uncanny understanding of the criminal mind at work.This Penguin omnibus edition contains* The Innocence of Father Brown* The Wisdom of Father Brown* The Incredulity of Father Brown* The Secret of Father Brown* The Scandal of Father Brown

The Best of O. Henry


O. Henry - 1929
    Henry's talents, including such classics asThe Gift of the Magi and The Furnished Room.

The Works of Anton Checkov (100+ stories and plays with an active table of contents)


Anton Chekhov - 1929
    6, and In the Ravine.

A Piece of Steak


Jack London - 1929
    He has earned and spent a lot of money, both on himself and others, but is now so poor that he cannot even loan the money for a piece of steak. He has to fight a young opponent, Sandel, and in his preparation he can only eat bread and gravy. Though King is the more experienced and tactically much better boxer, he loses the fight to the younger man who has better stamina and recuperation. But King just knows that, if he could have eaten a steak before the fight, he could have won...

Big Blonde and Other Stories


Dorothy Parker - 1929
    Somerset Maugham on Parker: 'Dorothy Parker has a wonderfully delicate ear for human speech .... Her style is easy without being slipshod and cultivated without affectation. It is a perfect instrument for the display of her many-sided humour, her irony, her sarcasm, her tenderness, her pathos.'

The Omnibus of Crime


Dorothy L. Sayers - 1929
    Every tale in this book is guaranteed to have puzzled or horrified somebody; with any luck at all, some of them may puzzle and horrify you."

Memories of the Future


Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky - 1929
    Written in Soviet Moscow in the 1920s—but considered too subversive even to show to a publisher—the seven tales included here attest to Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s boundless imagination, black humor, and breathtaking irony: a man loses his way in the vast black waste of his own small room; the Eiffel Tower runs amok; a kind soul dreams of selling “everything you need for suicide”; an absentminded passenger boards the wrong train, winding up in a place where night is day, nightmares are the reality, and the backs of all facts have been broken; a man out looking for work comes across a line for logic but doesn’t join it as there’s no guarantee the logic will last; a sociable corpse misses his own funeral; an inventor gets a glimpse of the far-from-radiant communist future.

Ghouls in My Grave


Jean Ray - 1929
    Gold Teeth 2. The Shadowy Street 3. I Killed Alfred Heavenrock 4. The Cemetery Watchman 5. The Mainz Psalter 6. The Last Traveler 7. The Black Mirror 8. Mr Glass Changes Direction Author's real name is Raymundus Joannes de Kremer. He also published work under the name John Flanders.

Alexander Botts - Earthworm Tractors


William Hazlett Upson - 1929
    When sent to sell a tractor to an English lord, he reveals himself as a man of culture and innate refinement who realizes that a cutaway and all the etceteras are necessities when dealing with the titled nobility. Although in general he tries to cultivate a polite and ingratiating manner, Botts on a collecting job is a hard-boiled bozo, in a very softhearted way. Whether it means diving into a well for a drowned cat, promoting a beauty contest, or riding into a swamp, Alexander Botts always makes his sale, and even if you're not interested in a tractor, you're sure to be interested in and delighted by Botts. Share this book with someone in uniform.

Seven Tales and Alexander


H.E. Bates - 1929
    On its original release in 1929 (The Scholartis Press), The New Statesman observed that Bates has 'by seeing with a child's eyes, found a world of marvellous and strange beauty, and has given the smallest shades of change and emotion the magnitude and drama they have in the minds of children and poets.'In 'The Child' we meet a young girl mesmerised by the sea seen through a multi-coloured window, and, in contrast, 'The Comic Actor' sees an unsuccessful farmer who, encouraged by his devoted family, fulfils a life ambition by participating in a village play.Bates draws on his own experiences of the barber shops of his youth in 'The Barber'. Forced to visit them on Saturdays, he was made to wait until the barber had served the army of 'black-necked, poaching, shoemaking, prizefighting, often stinking men.'The title story, 'Alexander', follows a young boy as he travels with his uncle by horse cart to the garden of an eccentric old lady, where each year they pick fruit. The boy becomes enamoured with a young girl, meets a darkly cunning and cynical poacher, picks a forbidden apricot as a gift for the girl, and is consequently thrust into first reflections on pleasure, pain, and life itself in this most charming story.

Sentimental Tales


Mikhail Zoshchenko - 1929
    The tales are narrated by one Kolenkorov, a writer not very good at his job, who takes credit for editing the tales in a series of comic prefaces.Yet beneath Kolenkorov's intrusive narration and sublime blathering, the stories are genuinely moving. They tell tales of unrequited love and amorous misadventures among down-on-their-luck musicians, provincial damsels, aspiring poets, and liberal aristocrats hopelessly out of place in the new Russia, against a backdrop of overcrowded apartments, scheming, and daydreaming. Zoshchenko's deadpan style and sly ventriloquy mask a biting critique of Soviet life--and perhaps life in general. An original perspective on Soviet society in the 1920s and simply uproariously funny, Sentimental Tales at last shows Anglophone readers why Zoshchenko is considered among the greatest humorists of the Soviet era. "A book that would make Gogol guffaw."--Kirkus Reviews"If you find Chekhov a bit tame and want a more bite to your fiction, then you need a dose of Zoshchenko, the premier Russian satirist of the twentieth century . . . Snap up this thin volume and enjoy."--Russian Life"Mikhail Zoshchenko masterfully exhibits a playful seriousness. . . . Juxtaposing joyful wit with the bleakness of Soviet Russia, Sentimental Tales is a potent antidote for Russian literature's dour reputation."--Foreword Reviews"Superb."--Los Angeles Review of Books

Chains


Frigyes Karinthy - 1929
    He offered a bet that we could name any person among earth’s one and a half billion inhabitants and through at most five acquaintances, one of which he knew personally, he could link to the chosen one.