We are proud to be reprinting this warm and delicately illustrated edition of A Christmas Memory--"a tiny gem of a holiday story" (School Library Journal, starred review). Seven-year-old Buddy inaugurates the Christmas season by crying out to his cousin, Miss Sook Falk: "It's fruitcake weather!" Thus begins an unforgettable portrait of an odd but enduring friendship between two innocent souls--one young and one old--and the memories they share of beloved holiday rituals.

      Filled with kings and peasants, saints and ogres—as well as some quite extraordinary plants and animals—these two hundred tales bring to life Italy’s folklore, sometimes with earthy humor, sometimes with noble mystery, and sometimes with the playfulness of sheer nonsense.   Selected and retold by one of the country’s greatest literary icons, “this collection stands with the finest folktale collections anywhere” (The New York Times Book Review).   “For readers of any age . . . A masterwork.” —The Wall Street Journal   “A magic book, and a classic to boot.” —Time

    The Grunder, a thing of horror which, if defeated, restores love... The Noise-Eater, created by a child out of his fevered imagination, gobbles up anything--or anyone--that makes a sound... The Coveti, residents of an alien world poisoned by the intrusion of the stranger from Earth... The Beast Hill, an ordinary mound of earth, except that its grass resembles fur, and--doesn't it move?

    This rememberance of Singer's pious father, his rational yet adoring mother, and the never-ending parade of humanity that marched through their home is a portrait of a magnificent writer's childhood self and of the world, now gone, that formed him.

    Collected in this chilling volume are some of the famous Japanese mystery writer Edogawa Rampo's best stories—bizarre and blood-curdling expeditions into the fantastic, the perverse, and the strange, in a marvelous homage to Rampo's literary 'mentor', Edgar Allan Poe.

    Most of the pieces in this collection are drawn from the greatest period in his writing life, the fifteen or so years beginning in 1929, when he published The Sound and the Fury. They explore many of the themes found in the novels and feature characters of small-town Mississippi life that are uniquely Faulkner’s. In “A Rose for Emily,” the first of his stories to appear in a national magazine, a straightforward, neighborly narrator relates a tale of love, betrayal, and murder. The vicious family of the Snopes trilogy turns up in “Barn Burning,” about a son’s response to the activities of his arsonist father. And Jason and Caddy Compson, two other inhabitants of Faulkner’s mythical Yoknapatawpha County, are witnesses to the terrorizing of a pregnant black laundress in “That Evening Sun.” These and the other stories gathered here attest to the fact that Faulkner is, as Ralph Ellison so aptly noted, “the greatest artist the South has produced.”

    AS they pass sweet yet hazardous hours in a china tree, The Grass Harp manages to convey all the pleasures and responsibilities of freedom. But most of all it teaches us about the sacredness of love, "that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life."This volume also includes Capote's A Tree of Night and Other Stories, which the Washington Post called "unobstrusively beautiful...a superlative book."

    It was later collected in Earth Is Room Enough (1957) and The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973), and adapted into an episode of the science-fiction television series Out of the Unknown. Its pattern is that of dystopian fiction, but of a subtly nuanced flavour. It is considered by some people to be one of his best short stories

    Шигаева (Pamyati L.I. Shigaeva); English translation: In the Memory of L.I. Shigaeva (1934)• Посещение музея (Poseshchenie muzeya); English translation: The Visit to the Museum (1931)• Набор (Nabor); English translation: Recruiting (1935)• Лик (Lik); English translation: Lik (1939)• Истребление тиранов (Istreblenie tiranov); English translation: Tyrants Destroyed (1938)• Василий Шишков (Vasiliy Shishkov); English translation: Vasiliy Shishkov (1939)• Адмиралтейская игла (Admiralteyskaya igla); English translation: The Admiralty Spire (1933)• Облако, озеро, башня (Oblako, ozero, bashnya); English translation: Cloud, Castle, Lake (1937)• Уста к устам (Usta k ustam); English translation: Lips to Lips (1932)'Spring in Fialta is cloudy and dull'. With his senses wide open, Victor wanders the streets. He meets Nina. Again. For fifteen years, their fleeting, chance encounters have made Nina a faint but constant presence in the margins of his life. As they happen upon one another once again, his mind wanders back into the past and relives each brief memory: their kiss in Russia, when she met his wife, when he met her husband, their affair in Paris. Each time she captivated him, each time she seemed to almost forget him, each time he noticed a lurking sense of apprehension that began to grow.

    Disturbingly atmospheric, these stories are told with the force and simplicity of allegory. This special volume includes rare stories as well as some never-before-seen illustrations.

    Now its contents have been updated and its cultural framework enlarged by the orginal editors. Many of the 44 stories come from a new writing generation with a contemporary consciousness, and this brilliant blending of masters of the past and the brightest talents of the present achieves the goal of making a great collection even greater.

    Lao and Other Improbable Stories): Ray Bradbury• The Circus of Dr. Lao: Charles G. Finney• The Pond: Nigel Kneale• The Hour of Letdown: E. B. White• The Wish: Roald Dahl• The Summer People: Shirley Jackson• Earth's Holocaust: Nathaniel Hawthorne• Busby's Petrified Woman: Loren Eiseley• The Resting Place: Oliver La Farge• Threshold: Henry Kuttner• Greenface: James H. Schmitz• The Limits of Walter Horton: John S. Sharnik• The Man Who Vanished: Robert M. CoatesCover Illustration: D. Schwartz

    Seven stories of South Africa deal with a missing body, a mysterious Rhodesian visitor, a pass law protest, a white geologist and his Black secretary, and a pair of childhood sweethearts.

    

    Nicholas (The Night Before Christmas)The Real Princess (The Princess and the Pea)Hansel and GretelA KiteThe Three SilliesRumpelstiltskinApril Rain SongBed in SummerCan Men be Such Fools as all ThatThe Ugly DucklingRainThe Adventures of a Brownie...The brownie and the CookThe Peterkin Papers...Mrs. Peterkin Wishes to go to a DriveWinnie-the-Pooh...Pooh Goes VisitingWhere go the Boats?The Little TurtleThe Little ElfmanThe 500 Hats of Bartholomew CubbingBoats Sail on the RiversThe King's Breakfast

    from the uproariously irreverent Why I Live at the P.O. and the quieter, richly perceptive A Memory and A Worn Path to sponteneous Powerhouse and the insightful voice of women's truth's in Petrified Man, Welty opens up her stories and invites the listener in.Description: 2 sound cassettes (1 hr., 38 min.) : analog, Dolby processed.

    

    Henry, Daphne du Maurier, Alexander Dumas, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, Edgar Allen Poe & others.

    This edition STANDS ALONE!!!!!

    But we do not think many readers know of the dead parish priest who came to have a look at his successor, the lady ghost who went to the midnight Mass and helped a lame friend to the altar rail as she had been accustomed to do, the Protestant children who learned to sing plainchant by 'listening' to a table which had been an altar (some harassed pastors might like to try this method) or of the ghostly nun who has been seen, time and again, busily scubbing the convent steps.Most of the stories are more amusing than alarming, but a few are as terrifying as anyone could wish - in particular the gruesome account of a house whose occupants were constantly tempted to suicide."

    Here, in a collection of stories, she reveals her particular gift for insight and irony: a plain girl attains beauty through love; a possessive father drives his daughter into a sanctuary of lies; a bit of gossip disrupts a tentative romance; a dumb athlete teaches his flirtatious girl to appreciate him; a wife learns her place. These and other stories of a high literary quality will move, entertain, and enrich the readers into whose fortunate hands the collection will fall.

    

    These nine stories of adventure, exploration and voyage are peopled with ravenous explorers, fortune hunters, foreign revolutionaries, ill-fated seafarers, intrepid ship's captains, and ruthless smugglers.

    In her sweetly vibrant Mississippi drawl, Ms. Welty deftly draws the listener in to the uproariously multilayered "Why I Live at the P.O.," the spontaneous "Powerhouse" and the insightful voice of women's truths in "Petrified Man." Ms. Welty's reading brings immediacy and resonance to these wonderful tales.