Morbid, cynical, eerie, they take you to a twilight region of flesh and spirit — and into the darkest recesses of the human mind. These are unusual constructions of terror and grim irony, reminiscent of Poe, the Gothic novel, and the Romantic short story, but having the unmistakable individual stamp of a man who knew first-hand something of the fears and specters which haunt men.In this volume you will come across a number of old favorites: "An Inhabitant of Carcosa," "The Eyes of the Panther," "The Death of Halpin Frayser," "An Adventure at Brownville," and such classics as "The Middle Toe of the Right Foot," "The Damned Thing," and "Moonlit Road," a minor masterpiece in which events of the story are told from three different points of view, including that of the victim as spoken through a medium. You will also find some less familiar, but equally fascinating stories and pieces not available elsewhere, including "Visions of the Night," in which Bierce gives us a rationale for his "reverse holiness" and the surrealistic morality that permeates these writings. Bierce's characters — possessed poets, shabby aristocrats, grimy professional men, revived corpses, haunted malefactors — live in a spare, perverse world. Patricide, the revenge of the dead, inexplicable disappearances, dreadful ironies, hypnotism and second sight, and the like, form much of the substance of these unsettling tales.

    Half these stories never published before in U.S.

    In Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth, Zelazny's rare ability to mix the dream-like, disturbing imagery of fantasy with the real-life hardware of science fiction is on full display. His vivid imagination and fine prose made him one of the most highly acclaimed writers in his field.Contents:· The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth · nv F&SF Mar ’65 · The Keys to December · nv New Worlds Aug ’66 · Devil Car [Sam Nurdock] · ss Galaxy Jun ’65 · A Rose for Ecclesiastes · nv F&SF Nov ’63 · The Monster and the Maiden · vi Galaxy Dec ’64 · Collector’s Fever · vi Galaxy Jun ’64 · This Mortal Mountain · nv If Mar ’67 · This Moment of the Storm · nv F&SF Jun ’66 · The Great Slow Kings · ss Worlds of Tomorrow Dec ’63 · A Museum Piece · ss Fantastic Jun ’63 · Divine Madness · ss Magazine of Horror Sum ’66 · Corrida · ss Anubis v1 #3 ’68 · Love Is an Imaginary Number · ss New Worlds Jan ’66 · The Man Who Loved the Faioli · ss Galaxy Jun ’67 · Lucifer · ss Worlds of Tomorrow Jun ’64

    But as night falls and the season begins to change, Neddy sinks from optimistic bliss to utter despair.

    It opens with thirteen stories and the second part of the book presents newspaper crônicas, which Lispector said she retrieved from a bottom drawer.

    The Machineries of Joy • (1962)The One Who Waits • (1949) Tyrannosaurus Rex • (1962) The Vacation • (1963)The Drummer Boy of Shiloh • (1960)Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar! • (1962)Almost the End of the World • (1957)Perhaps We Are Going Away • (1962) And the Sailor, Home from the Sea • (1960) El Dia de Muerte • (1947)The Illustrated Woman • (1961)Some Live Like Lazarus • (1960) A Miracle of Rare Device • (1961)And So Died Riabouchinska • (1953)The Beggar on O'Connell Bridge • (1961) Death and the Maiden • (1960)A Flight of Ravens • (1952)The Best of All Possible Worlds • (1960) The Lifework of Juan Diaz • (1963)To the Chicago Abyss • (1963)The Anthem Sprinters • (1963)

    With full-cloth binding and a silk ribbon marker. EVERYMAN'S POCKET CLASSICS.In an interview, Updike once said, "If I had to give anybody one book of me, it would be the Olinger Stories." These stories were originally published in The New Yorker and then in various collections before Vintage first put them together in one volume in 1964, as a paperback original. They follow the life of one character from the age of ten through manhood, in the small Pennsylvania town of Olinger (pronounced, according to Updike, with a long O and a hard G), which was loosely based on Updike's own hometown. "All the stories draw from the same autobiographical well," Updike explained, "the only child, the small town, the grandparental home, the move in adolescence to a farm." The selection was made and arranged by Updike himself, and was prefaced by a lovely 1,400-word essay by the author that has never been reprinted in full elsewhere until now.

    350 copies.(Out of print).Contents: "Introduction by Glen Cavaliero, "The School Friend", "Ringing the Changes", "Choice of Weapons", "The Waiting Room", "The View" and "Bind Your Hair".As Dr Glen Cavaliero states in his introduction to this new edition of Dark Entries, "It is Robert Aickman's peculiar achievement that he should invest the daylight world with all the terrors of the night".Dark Entries was the first solo collection of "strange stories" by British short story writer, critic, lecturer and novelist, Robert Aickman. First published in 1964 it contains the classic "Ringing the Changes" and perhaps Aickman's best femme fatale in "Choice of Weapons." The version of "The View" is slightly re-written from its first appearance in We are for the Dark.

    Phrases like ‘Let me tell you a story,’ and ‘Now listen to this,’ and ‘My story is about,’ recur in his work.” This new book of sixteen stories is his fourth collection, following Gimpel the Fool, The Spinoza of Market Street and Short Friday. Many readers will rank it with Mr. Singer’s best work.The title story, an account of an old man who regularly visits an unconvincing medium on Central Park West, exemplifies what David Boroff calls Singer’s rare ability to “transmute metaphysical ideas into pure emotion.” “Getzel the Monkey” is the story of a moneylender who mimics the town’s richest man so successfully that he becomes like him to the point of tragedy. “Zeitl and Rickel,” the story of two women who wish to marry in the next world since they cannot do so in this one, contains the sentence, “Who can tell what goes on in another’s head?” The murderer who tells his story in “The Parrot” is driven to kill his mistress-wife because she takes out her unhappiness on their bird. “The Slaughterer” is a brilliant portrait of the progressive madness of a man persuaded against his nature to become a ritual slaughterer.“The Brooch” is the story of a thief who is able to work at his profession only as long as he can rely on his wife’s probity and uprightness. “The Warehouse” recounts the bureaucratic snarl-ups that plague souls in the after-life. In “The Plagiarist” a rabbi defrauded by a young disciple is asked to pray for his recovery and when the man dies he resigns to perform penance in exile. “The Lecture,” a story set in modern Montreal, reveals the reason behind an old lady’s interest in a visiting author. “The Needle” tells how a mother in search of a wife for her son devises an infallible test for prospective brides. “The Dead Fiddler” is the story of a dybbuk that talks, sings and curses in the body of a young girl. “Yanda” and “Henne Fire” are character studies of, respectively, a goodhearted Polish slavey who is fated to work for other people all her life, and a demon-like woman who causes trouble for people even after death. “The Letter Writer,” one of the major stories in the collection, relates the world of the unseen to the harsh realities of lonely old age and sickness in an alien modern city. This and the companion stories prove the truth of Miss Hughes’ assertion: “Singer is a master story-teller, one of the very few who can faithfully re-create a time forever past and render it meaningful to a troubled present.”

    This new collection of sixteen stories reveals John Cheever's expertness employed with greater power to even more impressive effect than heretofore.

    They brought mankind into a new age of freedom and leisure. And every robot was completely incpable of harming a human being. So ... why did men hate and fear them?In THE REST OF THE ROBOTS, Isaac Asimov - author of a whole library of science fiction and fact - explores the fascinating future of men and their metal slaves in dramatic detailed stories of high imagination and wonder.This is a pre-ISBN bookPublisher's catalog number R-1783. 511-01783-050

    These short stories are all set in Mozambique.

    "Edson's brief, tightly-packed, highly-charged paragraphs are the crystallized essence of what could be long stories, and they are prose poems, and they are ontological probings into the nature of things: objects, animals, people."

    Le Guin is renowned for her spare, elegant prose, rich characterization, and diverse worlds. "Semley's Necklace" is a short story originally published in the collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters.

    They represent the earliest work of William Melvin Kelley and provided a rich source of stories and characters who were to fill out his later novels. Spanning generations from the Deep South during Reconstruction to New York City in the 1960s, these insightful stories depict African American families—their struggles, their heartbreak, and their love.

    The crowd is the American landscape: indelible characters drawn coast-to-coast from the teeming streets of New York to tables at Hollywood's legendary nightclub, Ciro's. In these sparkling stories, Schulberg brings us vivid, restless people haunted by abrupt failure in the wake of rapid success. In "The Arkansas Traveler" he gives us Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes's down-home stories of Riddle, Arkansas, which later became the stuff of the celebrated movie A Face in the Crowd.

    

    An anthology of literature.The principal idea behind this book is that the best way to study literature is to read it--that the work of literature itself is more important than anything that can be said about it....Therefore, with the hope that it will be read and discussed by thousands of women throughout the world, this book has been prepared and published for use in the literature program of the Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

    not only in haunted houses and ruined abbeys but suddenly, in everyday places and in the hearts of ordinary people. Here are eleven tales of horror and the supernatural by a master of the art of bringing fear to your doorstep.

    

    Windham's recollections contrast the emotional weather of childhood with the memory of a devoted mother struggling alone to maintain family harmony in the face of mounting financial turmoil.Windham eloquently relates the often idyllic time his family lived in the Victorian home of his grandparents on historic Peachtree Street. Tempering these memories are Windham's recollections of such trials as the loss of the family "homeplace" and a move to the newly constructed Techwood Homes housing project.As Windham grows aware of the restraints placed upon him by his life, he becomes no longer willing to accept an expected career with the Coca-Cola company, where he has started to work making barrels. Spurred on by newfound friendships, weekend excursions, and his love of books, Windham increasingly yearns for a world beyond Atlanta. Finally, at nineteen, he leaves for New York, intending never to return.Praised as "a masterpiece" by Georges Simenon, Windham's tale is at once a portrait of a bygone era in Atlanta and a moving statement about the physical and spiritual need of youth to take risks.

    AmbrusAll the stories in this book were told by gypsies. A few of them ("Brian and the Fox" and "The Little Bull-Calf," for example), were told in English. But most of the stories were told by the gypsies in their own language, which is Romani, and were taken down and translated by scholars. The stories came from many different countries; for the gypsies, who are believed to have lived originally in India, have wandered all over the world. And, as they wandered, they picked up more stories from whatever country they happened to be in, as well as repeating to the people of that country the stories they had brought with them.Through the years, as they were told and retold, the stories became altered, sometimes not very much, sometimes greatly. It all depended on the particular fancies of the narrator: an ogre might become a dragon, a prince might be put in the place of a princess, or a poor boy in the place of a poor girl; but the idea at the back of the story would remain. For instance, you all know the story of "Cinderella," but you may not know "The Tale of a Foolish Brother and of a Wonderful Bush," which is just a Polish gypsy's version of the same idea.And now, since it may interest you to see what the gypsy language looks like, here is a familiar fairy tale ending in Romani:"T'a doi jivena kano misto."(And they live there happily to this day.)

    She said she wanted to make the choice as representative as possible of her entire body of work, but knew this would be difficult. So she took one story from each of the eleven volumes of stories already published, and to simplify the choice further, she selected the title story in each case. One snag was that her first book of stories did not have a title story, so one of the storties was chosen at random. In the Middle of the Fields is one of her most highly regarded stories, and it is here, and the others include Lilacs,The Long Ago, A Likely Story, Happiness, and The Shrine.

    

    

    C. Tubb Trojan Horse Laugh • (1949) • novelette by John D. MacDonald Some Day We'll Find You • (1942) • novella by Cleve Cartmill

    

    First published in The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants (1964) and collected in Cold Print (1985) and The Children of Gla'aki (2017)

    Selected by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg.Includes:Outward bound by Norman SpinradThe Kragen by Jack VanceThe master key by Poul AndersonThe crime and the glory of commander Suzdal by Cordwainer SmithThe graveyard heart by Roger ZelaznyPurple priestess of the mad moon by Leigh BrackettThe last lonely man by John BrunnerSoldier, ask not by Gordon R. DicksonA man of the renaissance by Wyman GuinThe dowry of Angyar by Ursula K. Le GuinWhen the change-winds blow by Fritz LeiberThe fiend by Frederik PohlThe life hater by Fred SaberhagenNeighbor by Robert SilverbergFour brands of impossible by Norman Kagan

    32 --The Maples had talked and thought about separation so long it seemed it would never come. He wished her to be happy & away from her he could not know if she were happy or not. This formed the final door barring his way when all others had been opened.

    The visionary, the poetic, the humorous and the surrealistic inform each story, and yet there is no terror merely without responsible intelligence. A maiden lady steals from a bank to buy gifts for a goat which appears at night outside her window; a young married couple "adjust" to our world of time payments and credit; a writer makes his living by selling parts of his own body to unsuspecting insurance companies; a "bandit" is obsessed by the contents of freezers, and steals to feed a river; a doctor takes his dying, extroverted old father away from the home place, and in the process sees the first intimations of his own death. We see the "have nots," the middle class, artists and professors all caught in worlds they do not fully apprehend. Taken together these stories present a complex view of a hard world.