However, this anecdote is told ninety-nine more times, each in a radically different style, as a sonnet, an opera, in slang, and with many more permutations. This virtuoso set of variations is a linguistic rust-remover, and a guide to literary forms.

    But his literary stature and popularity have grown steadily with the years, and he is accounted the single most important influence on the development of the modern short story.Edited and with an introduction by Avrahm Yarmolinsky, The Portable Chekhov presents twenty-eight of Chekhov's best stories, chosen as particularly representative of his many-sided portrayal of the human comedy--including "The Kiss," "The Darling," and "In the Ravine"--as well as two complete plays; The Boor, an example of Chekhov's earlier dramatic work, and The Cherry Orchard, his last and finest play. In addition, this volume includes a selection of letters, candidly revealing of Chekhov's impassioned convictions on life and art, his high aspirations, his marriage, and his omnipresent compassion.

    Dark Carnival - With Signed Bookplate. Sauk City: Arkham House, 1947. First edition, limited to 3000 copies. Octavo. 313 pages. "The author's first book and his most representative story collection. Similar but not identical to the later collection The October Country" (Chalker 30).

    • Four complete works: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, Collected Poems (including Chamber Music) and Exiles, James Joyce's only drama• A generous sampling from Ulysses • Selections from Finnegans Wake (including the famous "Anna Livia Plurabelle" episode)• “A volume that makes Joyce easily available, in compact form, to peripatetic Joyceans”—Leon Edel

    Like our own Mark Twain, Herman Charles Bosman wields a laughing intolerance of foolishness and prejudice, a dazzling use of wit and clear- sighted judgment. Spun by the plainclothes local visionary and storyteller Oom Shalk Lourens, these moving and satirical glimpses of lethargic herdsmen, ambitious concertina players, legendary leopards and mambas, and love-struck dreamers lay bare immense emotions, contradictions, and mysteries within the smallest movements and unadorned talk of the Groot Marico District. Leading oral tradition by the hand into a territory all his own, Bosman maps a world at once lucid and layered, distant yet powerfully familiar.

    The story explores themes of death, redemption, and the nature of monstrosity. Its narrative style has been referred to as a "literary puzzle", with the narrator's identity not fully revealed until the end of the story.

    Swallow Press in Denver, Colorado, first printed the book in 1947. Professor Alan Swallow believe that these short stores abou the Philippine life were worth sharingwith American readers. The first to appreciate this slim volume of short stories was the Director of Humanities Division of the Rockefeller Foundation, Dr Charles Fahs. He came to the Philippines and sought out NVM who was then editor of the Evening News Maagazine. In 1949 NVM was named the first Filipino fellow of the Humanities Division of the Rockefeller Foundation. NVM did not try to earn a degree. He wanted instead to meet with writers and critics teaching in selected universities in the U.S. He started in Stanford University and met Wallace Stegner and Katherine Porter. His two classmates in Stanford, Ed Loomis (University of Santa Barbara) and Bob Williams (of California State University, Hayward) were later responsible in asking NVM to go to the U.S. to teach. When NVM came home in 1950, he started to teach creative writing in University of Santo Tomas, Philippine Women's University, and University of the Philippines."Narita M. GonzalezU.P. Diliaman, 2001

    Contents: Horror Stories:Adept's gambit Man who never grew young Smoke ghost Automatic pistol Inheritance Hill and the hole Dreams of Albert Moreland Hound Diary in the snowGirl with the hungry eyesBit of the dark worldFantasy:The Sunken land (Fafhrd & Gray Mouser)

    You passed her on the street with a surreptitious glance, though she was well worth looking at-in her furs and laces and plumes. She had the only full-length mink coat in our town, and Ganz's shoe store sent to Chicago for her shoes. Hers were the miraculously small feet you frequently see in stout women. Usually she walked alone; but on rare occasions, especially round Christmastime, she might have been seen accompanied by some silent, dull-eyed, stupid-looking girl, who would follow her dumbly in and out of stores, stopping now and then to admire a cheap comb or a chain set with flashy imitation stones-or, queerly enough, a doll with yellow hair and blue eyes and very pink cheeks. But, alone or in company, her appearance in the stores of our town was the signal for a sudden jump in the cost of living. The storekeepers mulcted her; and she knew it and paid in silence, for she was of the class that has no redress. She owned the House with the Closed Shutters, near the freight depot-did Blanche Devine.

    The Games of the Night is the only collection of short stories that Stig Dagerman himself has compiled and consists of seventeen short stories about people who are united by their loneliness.

    In this collection, Perelman puzzles over the nature of the secret chocolate blend in Hostess Cupcakes, captures the excesses of Russian prose style in a story about cigarettes, and ponders the question of our time: poisonous mushrooms--yes or no?

    He states that he "has never pretended to be anything but a story teller. It has amused me to tell stories and I have told a great many. It is a misfortune for me that the telling of a story just for the sake of the story is not an activity that is in favor with the intelligentsia. I endeavor to bear my misfortunes with fortitude." The short stories in this extraordinary collection—with the exception of one—were written after the close of World War I. Maugham shrewdly and brilliantly exploited the public taste of his time to put on display the changing morality of the twentieth century. An expert storyteller, he was also a master of fictional technique.His fiction offers a synthesis of pleasures in the form of realism, exoticism, shrewd and ironic observation, careful craftsmanship, and characteriation. Among the stories included in Creatures of Circumstance are "The Colonel’s Lady," "Flotsam and Jetsam," "Sanatorium," "Appearance and Reality," "The Point of Honor," "A Woman of Fifty," "The Man from Glasgow," and "The Kite." W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was an English novelist and playwright. Maugham was famous as a dramatist before he was known for his novels and short stories. His clarity of style, the perfection of his form, the subtlety of his thought, veiled thinly behind a worldly cynicism made him an international figure. Among his novels are Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence, and The Raor’s Edge.

    In a world where genetically engineered animals are run of the mill Jerry and his sponsor, the 'World's Richest Woman,' decide that it is time to stand up for anthropoids' rights. In Jerry is a Man Grand Master Robert A. Heinlein explores what it means to be human and the importance of civil liberties.

    A giant among American writers, he fought throughout his career to capture life in realistic terms. In his stories as well as his celebrated novels, he sought to uncover the problems of common Americans at the turn of the century-their struggles with society and their dreams of power and wealth against a backdrop of threatening poverty. "Dreiser has no peer in the American short story....As fine as his novels are, they do not attain the artistic wholeness of his short tales. Among the moderns, there is almost no one capable of writing tales like these. The best of today is pallid and non-human when compared with Dreiser's compassionate searchings."-from the Introduction by Howard Fast.

    Forster that does justice to his literary genius. This collection provides an intriguing glimpse into E.M. Forster's abiding interest in paganism and mythology , the mysteries of nature, fantasies of the afterlife, and the possibility of magical transformation.

    A collection of Penn Warren’s best short fiction: two novelettes and twelve stories that skillfully handle a variety of themes and styles.”Worth reading for their craftsmanship and variety” (Charles Poore, New York Times).

    Long unavailable, and essential reading for all fans of classic fantasy. Introduction by Sir Arthur C. Clarke.Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

    Contents:The Lord's DayThe TroubleLions, Harts, Leaping DoesJamesieHe Don't Plant CottonThe ForksRennerThe Valiant WomanThe EyeThe Old Bird, A Love StoryPrince of Darkness

    

    A bed-ridden boy relies on his dog for contact with the outside world.Note: First published in Bradbury's collection Dark Carnival, Arkham House, 1947.

    

    Peretz, the acknowledged "Father of Modern Yiddish Literature, " captured the essence of Eastern European Jewish Life. He wrote of the magical quality of kindness, and the bitter fruits of blind faith. Our collection features the classic tales If Not Higher, Bontsche Shvayg and Three Gifts and a brand new translation of All for a Pinch of Snuff. It also includes a wonderful essay on this great writer and his times by Harvard Professor Ruth Wisse, author of The Modern Jewish Canon.

    

    All three Greaves children came home for the holidays. Each brought a new triumph, but each triumph presented a frustrating problem, and the problems outlasted a festivity which had in some way lost something of its radiance. When everyone had left, Margaret Greaves turned for comfort to the carefully treasured Christmas trappings of the past - the 'baubles' as her elder daughter disdainfully called them - Cecily's angel, Penny's favourite golden peach, Hank's silver trumpet. Another tree rose in the living-room. And as Mrs. Greaves lovingly recreated the happy past, its magic reached out to another generation, and each found his own second chance in the celebration of Twelfth Night's 'Little Christmas.'