P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the 20th century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.”—Stephen KingThe most important tales of the godfather of the modern horror genre—a master who influenced the works of a generation of writers including Stephen King and Anne Rice—are gathered in one volume by National Book Award-winning author Joyce Carol Oates.Combining the 19th-century gothic sensibility of Edgar Allan Poe with a daring internal vision, Lovecraft’s tales foretold a psychically troubled world to come. Set in a meticulously wrought, historically grounded New England landscape, his harrowing stories explore the collapse of sanity beneath the weight of chaotic events. Lovecraft’s universe is a frightening shadow world were reality and nightmare intertwine, and redemption can come only from below. For aficionados and a new generation of 21st-century readers , Tales of H. P. Lovecraft is a classic not to be missed.

    AbrahamsMules and Men is the first great collection of black America's folk world. In the 1930's, Zora Neale Hurston returned to her "native village" of Eatonville, Florida to record the oral histories, sermons and songs, dating back to the time of slavery, which she remembered hearing as a child. In her quest, she found herself and her history throughout these highly metaphorical folk-tales, "big old lies," and the lyrical language of song. With this collection, Zora Neale Hurston has come to reveal'and preserve'a beautiful and important part of American culture.Zora Neale Hurston (1901-1960) was a novelist, folklorist, anthropologist and playwright whose fictional and factual accounts of black heritage are unparalleled. She is also the author of Tell My Horse, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Dust Tracks on a Road, and Mule Bone.Ruby Dee, a member of the Theatre Hall of Fame, starred on Broadway in the original productions of A Raisin in the Sun and Purlie Victorious, and was featured in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. She is also an award-winning author and the producer of numerous television dramas.

    P. Lovecraft into calling him "perhaps unexcelled by any other writer, dead or living” or compel Fritz Lieber to employ the worthy term sui generis. Clark Ashton Smith—autodidact, prolific poet, amateur philosopher, bizarre sculptor, and unmatched storyteller—simply wrote like no one else, before or since. This new collection of his very best tales and poems is selected and introduced by supernatural literature scholar S. T. Joshi and allows readers to encounter Smith’s visionary brand of fantastical, phantasmagorical worlds, each one filled with invention, terror, and a superlative sense of metaphysical wonder.

    

    Here he reveals his delight in re-creating (or making up) colorful stories from the Orient, the Islamic world, and the Wild West, as well as his horrified fascination with knife fights, political and personal betrayal, and bloodthirsty revenge. Sparkling with the sheer exuberant pleasure of story-telling, this wonderful collection marked the emergence of an utterly distinctive literary voice.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

    Stories of Lives:Socialist PleasuresThe Friendly OneSchoolgirlsThe SecretThe Incurable VirtueDaisy and VenisonThree Times RoundII. Stories of Ideas:Reality as Port HuntladyMiss Banquett, or The Populating of CosmaniaIII. Nearly True Stories:The Story-PigThe PlaygroundA Fairy Tale for Older PeopleA Last Lesson in GeographyIV. A Crown for Hans AndersenV. More Stories:In the BeginningEve's Side of ItPrivatenessIn the EndFrom Anarchism Is Not Enough:How Came It AboutHungry to HearIn a CaféAn Anonymous BookFrom Experts Are Puzzled:Mademoiselle CometThe Fortunate LiarMolly BarleywaterButtercupThe Fable of the DicePerhaps an IndiscretionArista ManuscriptThat WorkshopFinale:A Later Story: Christmastime (1966)

    K. Chesterton’s Father Brown may seem a pleasantly doddering Roman Catholic priest, but appearances deceive. With keen observation and an unerring sense of man’s frailties–gained during his years listening to confessions–Father Brown succeeds in bringing even the most elusive criminals to justice. This definitive collection of fifteen stories, selected by the American Chesterton Society, includes such classics as “The Blue Cross,” “The Secret Garden,” and “The Paradise of Thieves.” As P. D. James writes in her Introduction, “We read the Father Brown stories for a variety pleasures, including their ingenuity, their wit and intelligence, and for the brilliance of the writing. But they provide more. Chesterton was concerned with the greatest of all problems, the vagaries of the human heart.”

    Since then, readers have continued to be charmed by these accounts of the simple and common activities of the characters in 1920s rural Ireland. The lives of Hugh Forbes, Paddy Bawn Enright, Archibald MacDonald, Joan Hyland, and Nuala Kierley intermingle as the themes of nationalism, human dignity, honor, and love are given full play. Made famous by John Ford's Oscar-winning film The Quiet Man, starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, these remain humorous and poignant tales set against a backdrop of intrigue and Irish civil unrest.

    Hers is, one soon discovers, also a wholly feminine voice: compelling, filled with insight, acute at observation, sure of its tone, and everywhere discovering the reality behind human appearances and pretensions. This is a remarkable collection of short stories by a brilliant young writer who was cut off in her prime when she died of cancer in 1945. On being told that her second husband has taken his first lover --After the party --The times so unsettled are --Mother to dinner --Relax is all --Jobs in the sky --White on black --The mouse-trap --Missis Flinders --the Friedmans' Annie --The answer on the magnolia tree --A life in the day of a writer

    

    Selected Short Stories contains those selected by Lewis himself for a 1935 edition and illustrates the wide range of his art and interest: tales of romantic fantasy or escape, melodramas of heroic or mock-heroic adventure, boy-meets-girl stories, satires of pretension and folly, and tales of isolation and loneliness. Lewis often played variations on themes more fully developed in his novels. In his introduction, James W. Tuttleton calls Lewis an excellent storyteller with an enviable command of narrative At his best Lewis s short stories, like his novels, accomplish the remarkable feat described by E.M. Forster: What Mr. Lewis has done for myself and thousands of others is to lodge a piece of a continent in our imagination.

    The humor is ridden with pathos, and yet is quite sharp. This collection has 36 stories including: "The Gentleman is Cold," "Everything is Wild," "Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife," "Hell Only Breaks Loose Once," "If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox," and "How to See a Bad Play." The London Times said, "There may be greater humorists writing in America today than James Thurber, but none with quite his individual touch and his flavor."

    His best known character is ex-British Army Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond, DSO, MC, a wealthy former World War I officer of the Loamshire Regiment. His adventures -which extended through the ten books of this collection-, start after he places an advertisement in The Times stating his desire for an adventure. Throughout his novels Drummond is captured several times, and manages to escape several times, before eventually defeating the bad guys with the aid of ex-army friends.The novels are as follows:Bulldog DrummondThe Black GangThe Third RoundThe Final CountThe Female of the SpeciesTemple TowerThe Return of Bulldog DrummondBulldog Drummond Strikes Back (Knock Out)Bulldog Drummond at Bay

    

    A collection of brief stories, sketches, fragmentary bits out of the literature of Soviet Russia — each item selected as evidence in the claim that humor survives the revolution!

    An anthology of some of Alexander Woollcott's favorite short fiction by Barrie, Anthony Hope, Thornton Wilder, Saki, Evelyn Waugh, and others, with a foreword, afterword, and commentary on each story, by Woollcott.

    Glass -- The dagger with wings -- The oracle of the dog -- The insoluble problem