Best of
Short-Stories

1981

Scary Stories Treasury


Alvin Schwartz - 1981
     Reviews "A wonderful collection of tales that range from creepy to silly to haunting. ...Gammell's drawings add just the right touch..." -- John Scieszka, Entertinment Weekly"Guaranteed to make your teeth chatter and your spine tingle." -- School Library Journal"Read these if you dare." -- The New York Times

At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror


H.P. Lovecraft - 1981
    The Barren, windswept interior of the Antarctic plateau was lifeless--or so the expedition from Miskatonic University thought. Then they found the strange fossils of unheard-of creatures...and the carved stones tens of millions of years old...and, finally, the mind-blasting terror of the City of the Old Ones. Three additional strange tales, written as only H.P. Lovecraft can write, are also included in this macabre collection of the strange and the weird.Table of Contents:At the Mountains of Madness • [Cthulhu Mythos] • (1936) • novel by H. P. Lovecraft The Dreams in the Witch-House • [Cthulhu Mythos] • (1933) • novelette by H. P. Lovecraft The Shunned House • (1928) • novelette by H. P. Lovecraft The Statement of Randolph Carter • [Randolph Carter] • (1920) • shortstory by H. P. Lovecraft

Sandkings


George R.R. Martin - 1981
    Now, in search of some new pets to satisfy his cruel pursuit of amusement, Simon finds a new shop in the city where he is intrigued by a new lifeform he has never heard of before... a collection of multi-colored sandkings. The curator explains that the insect-like animals, no larger than Simon's fingernails, are not insects, but animals with a highly-evolved hive intelligence capable of staging wars between the different colors, and even religion - in the form of worship of their owner. The curator's warning to Simon about the regularity of their feeding, unfortunately, was not taken seriously...Contents:- The Way of Cross and Dragon (1979)- Bitterblooms (1977)- In the House of the Worm (1976)- Fast-Friend (1976)- The Stone City (1977)- Starlady (1976)- Sandkings (1979)Cover illustration by Michael Whelan

Sixty Stories


Donald Barthelme - 1981
    Here are urban upheavals reimagined as frontier myth; travelogues through countries that might have been created by Kafka; cryptic dialogues that bore down to the bedrock of our longings, dreams, and angsts. Like all of Donald's work, the sixty stories collected in this volume are triumphs of language and perception, at once unsettling and irresistible.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love


Raymond Carver - 1981
    Alternate-cover edition can be found here In his second collection, Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated and beloved short-story writers in American literature—a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark.

In the Land of Dreamy Dreams


Ellen Gilchrist - 1981
    Peopled largely with young southern females who chafe against the restrictions of their upper-class lives, these stories convey the humor and tragedy to be found wherever retreat into imagination is preferred over reality. Introduced here are Nora Jane Whittington, Rhoda Manning, and other recurring Gilchrist characters beloved for their failures, tenacity, and all-too-human hope in the face of frustrated love.

In the Garden of the North American Martyrs


Tobias Wolff - 1981
    Among the characters you'll find in this collection of twelve stories by Tobias Wolff, are a teenage boy who tells morbid lies about his home life, a timid professor who, in the first genuine outburst of her life, pours out her opinions in spite of a protesting audience, a prudish loner who gives an obnoxious hitchhiker a ride, and an elderly couple on a golden anniversary cruise who endure the offensive conviviality of the ship's social director.Fondly yet sharply drawn, Wolff's characters stumble over each other in their baffled yet resolute search for the "right path."

Moments of Reprieve


Primo Levi - 1981
    Levi was a master storyteller but he did not write fairytales. These stories are an elegy to the human figures who stood out against the tragic background of Auschwitz, 'the ones in whom I had recognized the will and capacity to react, and hence a rudiment of virtue'. Each centres on an individual who - whether it be through a juggling trick, a slice of apple or a letter - discovers one of the 'bizarre, marginal moments of reprieve'.The English edition includes just one section of the three originally published in Italian under the title 'Lilít', tales from the other two sections have been published in 'A Tranquil Star'.

Drunk with Love


Ellen Gilchrist - 1981
    Presents thirteen short stories peopled by such characters as Rhoda, a precocious nine-year-old; Nora Jane, an expectant mother of twins; and Crystal, an outrageous Southern belle.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark


Alvin Schwartz - 1981
    This spooky addition to Alvin Schwartz's popular books on American folklore is filled with tales of eerie horror and dark revenge that will make you jump with fright.There is a story here for everyone—skeletons with torn and tangled flesh who roam the earth; a ghost who takes revenge on her murderer; and a haunted house where every night a bloody head falls down the chimney.Stephen Gammell's splendidly creepy drawings perfectly capture the mood of more than two dozen scary stories—and even scary songs—all just right for reading alone or for telling aloud in the dark.If You Dare!

The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes


Arthur Conan Doyle - 1981
    A collection of stories, plays, & poems provide the final account of the great sleuth Holmes.

The Lone Pilgrim


Laurie Colwin - 1981
    In these stories, the reader moves among young men and women: pianists, historians, book illustrators, architects; women who are composed and inimitably sassy; and men who are magnetic, adventurous in love, or fiendishly elusive. They are people who are experiencing, often for the first time, the starting, enriching, and maddening complications of adult life.

Collected Stories


Frank O'Connor - 1981
    From “Guests of the Nation” to “The Mad Lomasneys” to “First Confession” to “My Oedipus Complex,” these tales of Ireland have touched generations of readers the world over and placed O'Connor alongside W. B. Yeats and James Joyce as the greatest of Irish authors.Analyzing a Robert Browning poem, O'Connor once wrote: “Since a whole lifetime must be crowded into a few minutes, those minutes must be carefully chosen indeed and lit by an unearthly glow.” Each of the sixty-seven stories gathered here achieves the same incredible feat of the imagination, laying bare entire lives and histories within the space of a few pages. Dublin schoolteacher Ned Keating waves good-bye to a charming girl and to any thoughts of returning to his village home in the lyrical and melancholy “Uprooted.” A boy on an important mission is waylaid by a green-eyed temptress and seeks forgiveness in his mother’s loving arms in “The Man of the House,” a tale that draws on O'Connor’s own difficult childhood. A series of awkward encounters and humorous misunderstandings perfectly encapsulates the complicated legacy of Irish immigration in “Ghosts,” the bittersweet account of an American family’s pilgrimage to the land of their forefathers.As a writer, critic, and teacher, O'Connor elevated the short story to astonishing new heights. This career-spanning anthology, epic in scope yet brimming with the small moments and intimate details that earned him a reputation as Ireland’s Chekhov, is a testament to Frank O’Connor's magnificent storytelling and a true pleasure to read from first page to last.

Liars in Love


Richard Yates - 1981
    Whether it be in the depiction of the complications of divorced families, grown-up daughters, estranged sisters, office friendships or fleeting love affairs, the pieces in this collection showcase Richard Yates's extraordinary gift for observation and his understanding of human frailty.

Palm Sunday/Welcome to the Monkeyhouse


Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - 1981
    A diabolical government asserts control by eliminating orgasms from sex in the title story of Welcome to the Monkey House - setting the tone for a collection shot through with Vonnegut's acrid wit, and his bewilderment at the corruption of humanity.From riffs on country music, George Bush, and his mother's midnight mania, to a bittersweet tribute to a dead friend, Palm Sunday demonstrates why Kurt Vonnegut is equally well known as an essayist and commentator as he is a novelist.This caustic, funny and poignant collection resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice.

Winter Count


Barry Lopez - 1981
    . . . [These] stories expand of their own accord, lingering in the mind the way intense light lingers in the retina."  --Los Angeles Times"Animals and landscapes have not had this weight, this precision, in American fiction since Hemingway's young heroes were fishing the streams of upper Michigan and Spain." --San Francisco ChronicleA flock of great blue herons descending through a snowstorm to the streets of New York. . . . A river in Nebraska disappearing mysteriously. . . . A ghostly herd of buffalo that sings a song of death. . . . A mystic who raises constellations of stones from the desert floor. . . . All these are to be found in Winter Count, the exquisite and rapturous collection by the National Book Award-winning author of Arctic Dreams.In these resonant and unpredictable stories Barry Lopez proves that he is one of the most important and original writers at work in America today. With breathtaking skill and a few deft strokes he produces painfully beautiful scenes. Combining the real with the wondrous, he offers us a pure vision of people alive to the immediacy and spiritual truth of nature."Powerful. . . . [Lopez] can steal your breath away." --Minneapolis Tribune"Richly allusive, moving, compassionate, these stories celebrate the web of nature that holds the world together." --The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume III: The Nebula Winners


Arthur C. Clarke - 1981
    Clarke2 • "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman • (1965) • shortstory by Harlan Ellison15 • The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth • (1965) • novelette by Roger Zelazny49 • The Saliva Tree • (1965) • novella by Brian W. Aldiss122 • He Who Shapes • (1965) • novella by Roger Zelazny216 • The Secret Place • (1966) • shortstory by Richard McKenna232 • Call Him Lord • (1966) • novelette by Gordon R. Dickson254 • The Last Castle • (1966) • novella by Jack Vance318 • Aye, and Gomorrah. . . • (1967) • shortstory by Samuel R. Delany329 • Gonna Roll the Bones • (1967) • novelette by Fritz Leiber352 • Behold the Man • (1966) • novella by Michael Moorcock406 • The Planners • (1968) • shortstory by Kate Wilhelm422 • Mother to the World • (1968) • novelette by Richard Wilson461 • Dragonrider • (1967) • novella by Anne McCaffrey580 • Passengers • (1968) • shortstory by Robert Silverberg593 • Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones • (1968) • novelette by Samuel R. Delany632 • A Boy and His Dog • [Vic and Blood • 2] • (1969) • novella by Harlan Ellison

Wodehouse on Crime


P.G. Wodehouse - 1981
    One dozen prime examples of the late writer's stories about crime, criminals, and cunning detectives include "The Crime Wave at Blandings," "Strychnine in the Soup," and "Ukridge's Accident Syndicate"

The Maid of the North: Feminist Folk Tales from Around the World


Ethel Johnston Phelps - 1981
    In this collection of mostly nineteenth-century folk and fairy tales, Ethel Johnston Phelps's heroines successfully portray women as being spirited, courageous and smart. This type of heroine is not easily found in most collections; in most traditional folk and fairy tales we encounter women are portrayed as being good, obedient, submissive, and, of course, beautiful. These women—and girls—are resourceful; they take action to solve a problem and use cleverness or shrewd common sense to solve the dilemmas they face.The tales themselves are part of an oral tradition that document a generation according to the values of the time. Phelps has given these older tales a fresh, contemporary retelling for a new generation of readers, young and old. She shapes each story—adding or omitting details—to reflect her sense of a feminist folk or fairy tale. The twenty-one tales collected represent a wide variety of countries; approximately seventeen ethnic cultures from North America to Europe to Asia tell a story in which women play a leading or crucial role in the story.

Evening in Paradise: More Stories


Lucia Berlin - 1981
    It was a New York Times bestseller; the paper's Book Review named it one of the Ten Best Books of 2015; and NPR, Time, Entertainment Weekly, The Guardian, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and other outlets gave the book rave reviews.Evening in Paradise is a careful selection from the remaining Berlin stories--a jewel box follow-up for Lucia Berlin's hungry fans.Foreword: The story is the thing / by Mark Berlin --The musical vanity boxes --Sometimes in summer --Andado: a Gothic romance --Dust to dust --Itinerary --Lead Street, Albuquerque --NoeÌ⁸l. Texas. 1956 --The adobe house with a tin roof --A foggy day --Cherry blossom time --Evening in Paradise --La Barca de la Ilusion --My life is an open book --The wives --NoeÌ⁸l, 1974 --The pony bar, Oakland --Daughters --Rainy day --Our brother's keeper --Lost in the Louvre --Sombra --Luna nueva --A note on Lucia Berlin

A Small, Good Thing


Raymond Carver - 1981
    It was included in the story collection Cathedral, published in 1983.

Ellis Island and Other Stories


Mark Helprin - 1981
    Winner of the Prix de Rome and the National Jewish Book Award, these ten stories and the title novella, "Ellis Island," exhibit tremendous range and versatility of style and technique, yet are closely unified in their beauty and in their concern with enduring and universal questions.

Out of the Everywhere, and Other Extraordinary Visions


James Tiptree Jr. - 1981
    Collection of science fiction stories, two of which are original. STORIES: Angel Fix (1974); Beaver Tears (1976); Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! (1976); The Screwfly Solution (1977); Time-Sharing Angel (1977); We Who Stole the Dream (1978); Slow Music (1980); A Source of Innocent Merriment (1980); Out of the Everywhere; With Delicate Mad Hands.

In The Shade of Spring Leaves: The Life of Higuchi Ichiyo, With Nine of Her Best Stories


Ichiyō Higuchi - 1981
    In her brief life she wrote poems, essays, short stories and a great, multivolume diary. This book is made up of a critical biography, interlaced with extracts from the diary, and Robert Danly's translations of nine representative stories.

The Hollow Land


Jane Gardam - 1981
    Everyday challenges give a daring edge to this rural work and play. There are ancient mysteries to explore and uncover, like the case of the Egg Witch, and everyone is curious about the Household Name, a wildly famous Londoner moving in to the jewel of the territory, Light Trees Farm. With painterly ease, Jane Gardam’s stories fly with a marvelous spirit that will delight readers of all ages!

Mysteries of the Worm


Robert Bloch - 1981
    To know them will be to know him. And thus we have decided to release a new and expanded third edition of Robert Bloch’s Mysteries of the Worm. This collection contains four more Mythos tales–”The Opener of the Way”, “The Eyes of the Mummy”, “Black Bargain”, and “Philtre Tip”–not included in the first two editions.

The Art of Living and Other Stories


John Gardner - 1981
    Here are enchanting tales about queens and kings and princesses in magical, timeless lands; marvelously warm and funny stories that move, amuse, and enlighten us as they probe the mysterious and profound relation between art and life." This is a hardcover edition of The Art of Living and Other Stories, written by John Gardner and published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1981. It is a self-stated First Printing, with stunning woodcuts by Mary Azarian.

The Collected Stories


Elizabeth Bowen - 1981
    Vividly featuring scenes of bomb-scarred London during the Blitz, frustrated lovers, acutely obcerved children, and even vengeful ghosts, these stories reinforce Bowen's reputation as an artist whose finely chiseled narratives—rich in imagination, psychological insight, and craft—transcend their time and place.

Company / Ill Seen Ill Said / Worstward Ho / Stirrings Still


Samuel Beckett - 1981
    In Company a solitary hearer lying in blackness calls up images from the far-off past. Ill Seen Ill Said meditates upon an old woman living out her last days alone in an isolated snow-bound cottage, watched over by twelve mysterious sentinels. In Worstward Ho, a breathless speaker unravels the sense of things, acting out the unending injunction to ‘Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ And Stirrings Still, published in the Guardian a few months before Beckett’s death in 1989, is the last prose work and testament of ‘this great soothsayer of the age, and of the aged’ (Christopher Ricks).The present edition includes several short prose texts (Heard in the Dark I & II, One Evening, The Way, Ceiling) which represent work in progress or works ancillary to the composition of these late masterpieces.Edited by Dirk Van Hulle.

The Bamboo Sword: And Other Samurai Tales


Shuhei Fujisawa - 1981
    It was a period of upheaval and change as the rulers carved out their territories and clan politics were full of intrigue, rivalry and betrayals. The samurai were still valued for their swordsmanship, and were a cut above the peasants, artisans, and merchants in the social hierarchy. Without battles to fight, however, they struggled to retain their sense of pride and meaning in life as they devoted themselves to mundane jobs, marriage and family. The occasional flash of the sword and samurai discipline were tempered by the unexpected intrusion of human interaction. Sympathies, conspiracies, kindnesses, enmities-all kinds of odd relationships were formed and conflicts resolved in surprising ways. These tales are colorful, atmospheric, exciting, tender, violent and gently ironic.The Bamboo Sword and Other Samurai Tales is published as part of the Japanese Literature Publishing Project (JLPP), which is run by the Japanese Literature Publishing and Promotion Center (J-Lit Center) on behalf of the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan.

Eclogues: Eight Stories


Guy Davenport - 1981
    Eclogues is a delight, and Guy Davenport proves a companionable and witty guide.

An Astrologer's Day and Other Stories


R.K. Narayan - 1981
    Narayan's own publishing house, Indian Thought Publications; well told and humorous tales of the fictional small South Indian town of Malgudi.

The India Rubber Boy: Russian Classical Stories for Children


Igor MotyashovDmitry Grigorovich - 1981
    

Pork


Cris Freddi - 1981
    and sets in motion this powerful - and unusual - collection of animal stories for adults.There is mystery and terror in the great woodland, and there is love. It is a world where fear and death and the survival of the fittest are the pitiless underlying themes. Though they are loosely linked, the stories are written to be read as separate tales, usually with a single main character: an ugly, love-lost squirrel, a wantonly savage stoat, a bat, a veteran hare running before the hounds. They are suspense thrillers or romantic interludes, pure adventure narratives, even horror stories; they all draw us deep into the stern forest through the elements we share with the animals - cold and dark, rain and sun, suspicion, loyalty, the need for warmth and the safety of shelter - above all, the feeling that, even in a world where death is inevitable, there is always enough to make life worth living.The style is clear, straightforward, often very simple, but there is passion as well as knowledge in the book. It brings the wild creates fiercely to life, in a disturbing way, with menace and unease - but vividly, in a literary debut of great imaginative strength.

The Bloodhounds of Broadway and Other Stories


Damon Runyon - 1981
    Populated by guys and dolls, show girls and gangsters, Runyon's world captured the imagination of a vast public "more than somewhat," as he would have put it. It is a world of sentiment and surprise, and above all, humor. Runyon intorduced millions of readers to a milieu of colorful smalltime hoodlums and hustlers--the likes of Nathan Detroit, Harry the Horse and Nicely Johnson--and their "dolls," such as Dark Dolores, Madame La Gimp, and Miss Missouri Martin. Runyon described his characters in the inimitable idiom her adapted from real-life street talk. Runyon's ever-present narrator serves as our eyes and ears, whether the scene is Broadway, the racetracks of Miami and Saratoga, football games in Ivy League New England, or even (in his Christmas fable, "The Three Wise Guys") Bethlehem (Pennsylvania). Many readers know Runyon's work better from movies than from his writings--hardly surprising, considering that more than two dozen films have been made from his stories, including Guys and Dolls, The Lemon Drop Kid and Pocketful of Miracles from this collection. This volume once again makes available an outstanding selection of Runyon's hugely entertaining Broadway stories, many of them for the first time in paperback

Midnight Mass (Peter Owen Modern Classic)


Paul Bowles - 1981
    Thirteen stories written in the five years between 1976 and 1981, "Midnight Mass" picks up where Bowles' Collected Stories left off, and includes the wonderful novella-length "Here to Learn", concerning a young Moroccan woman 'adopted' by various affluent Europeans.

The Penguin Book of Russian Short Stories


D.J. Richards - 1981
    20 Russian writers are represented in this collection, beginning with Pushkin, the founder of modern Russian literature, and concluding with contributions from such modern writers as Vladimir Nabokov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Scenes of Childhood and Other Stories


Sylvia Townsend Warner - 1981
    However, from the 1930s to the 1970s she did contribute a series of short reminiscences to the "New Yorker." "Scenes of Childhood" collects and orders those reminiscences, thus forming a volume that reads as a joyous, wry and moving testament to the experience of being alive. The collection evokes a recognisably English world of nannies, butlers, pet podles, public schools, 'good works' and country churches, but the resonances of these stories are universal - funny and touching by turns.

SKETCHES FOR A LIFE OF WASSILY


Lydia Davis - 1981
    

The Big Golden Book of Fairy Tales


Lornie Leete-Hodge - 1981
    Full color printing on every page. Made in Italy.

Road to Brightcity


Máirtín Ó Cadhain - 1981
    * The Withering Branch * The Year 1912 * Tabu * Son of the Tax-King * The Road to Brightcity * The Gnarled and Stony Clods * Of Townland's Tip * The Hare-lip * Floodtide * Going on

A Treasury of Modern Fantasy


Terry Carr - 1981
    Wolheim / Thirteen O'Clock by C. M. Kornbluth / Trouble with Water by H. L. Gold / The Woman of the Wood by A. Merritt / The Rats in the Walls by H. P. Lovecraft / Sail On! Sail On! by Philip Jose Farmer / The Loom of Darkness by Jack Vance / The Hellbound Train by Robert Bloch / Come and Go Mad by Fredric Brown / Narrow Valley by R. A. Lafferty / Divine Madness by Roger Zelazny / Longtooth by Edgar Pangborn / Man Overboard by John Collier / Descending by Thomas M. Disch / My Dear Emily by Joanna Russ / Our Fair City by Robert A. Heinlein / They Bite by Anthony Boucher / Call Him Demon by Henry Kuttner / Daemon by C. L. Moore / There Shall Be No Darkness by James Blish / The Coming of the White Worm by Clark Ashton Smith / One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts by Shirley Jackson / Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Richard Cowper / Nine Yards of Other Cloth by Manly Wade Wellman / Yesterday Was Monday by Theodore Sturgeon / Through a Glass - Darkly by Zenna Henderson / The Montavarde Camera by Avram Davidson / Within the Walls of Tyre by Michael Bishop / Four Ghosts in Hamlet by Fritz Leiber / Displaced Person by Eric Frank Russell / The Black Ferris by Ray Bradbury.

Angels Laundromat


Lucia Berlin - 1981
    Cover art and illustrations by Michael Shannon Moore.Contents: The Musical Vanity Boxes Mama and Dad El Tim A Foggy Day Maggie May Angels Laundromat

The Complete Shock Suspenstories (The Complete EC Library)


William M. GainesAl Williamson - 1981
    into three hardcover volumes stored in a handsome slipcover. The stories, and stark black-and-white artwork by Johnny Craig, Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Al Felstein, et. al. are superb. They date from 1952 to 1955.

Where Am I?


Daniel C. Dennett - 1981
    One of the most bizarre tales of phillosofic SF at the height of Lem, Dick or Egan, it set out subjects as reality, identity and conexion body mind.

The Penguin Book of Russian Short Stories


David Richards - 1981
    Twenty major Russian writers are represented in this collection, beginning with Pushkin, the founder of modern Russian literature, and concluding with contributions from such eminent modern writers as Vladimir Nabokov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The great novelists of the nineteenth century are included here, from Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky to Turgenev, alongside those writers who devoted their genius almost exclusively to the short story: Bunin, Babel and that master of the genre, Chekhov.

Envy, and Other Works


Yury Olesha - 1981
    CONTENTSIntroduction viiEnvy (1927) 1The Chain (1929) 123Love (1928) 131Lyompa (1928) 141The Cherry Stone (1929) 147Aldebaran (1931) 159From the Secret Notebook ofFellow-Traveler Sand (1931) 167Natasha (1936) 181I Look into the Past (1928) 185Human Material (1928) 195Jottings of a Writer (1930) 201Speech to the First Congress ofSoviet Writers (1934) 213A List of Assets (1931) 221

La mente alien


Philip K. Dick - 1981
    "Five minutes." "Okay," he said, and struggled out of his deep sleep. He had five minutes to adjust the course of his ship; something had gone wrong with the auto-control system. An error on his part? Not likely; he never made errors. Jason Bedford make errors? Hardly.

The Stories of Elizabeth Spencer


Elizabeth Spencer - 1981
    She shares the heritage and reputation of important Southern writers such as Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams, and Eudora Welty, yet Spencer consistently transcends her roots to explore the unbounded territories of human lives. The thirty-three stories in this collection are testaments to her acclaimed ability to observe character and evoke a sense of place and atmosphere in settings as varied as Venice, Montreal, Rome, and the Mississippi of her childhood.

The Best of Avram Davidson


Avram Davidson - 1981
    With an introduction by Michael Kurland.

The Company of Wolves


Angela Carter - 1981
    The first story is about a witch that turned a whole wedding ceremony into wolves. She likes them coming to her cabin and howling their misery for it soothes her. The following story is about a young lady and a man that are about to have sex on their wedding night. As they get ready, the husband says he needs to stop and relieve himself in the forest. The wife waits and he never returns. Off in the distance you can hear a wolf howling. She then figures her husband will never return and marries a new man. With her new husband she bears children. Her first husband comes back and sees his wife and the story unravels... Later we meet a girl walking in the woods. She was loved by everyone and feared nothing. She made a deal with a hunter; whoever can get to the grandmothers house first wins. If the hunter wins she owes him a kiss. She lets the hunter win because she wants to kiss him. The hunter arrives at the grandmothers house but she's frail and sick, holding a Bible for protection. The last thing she sees is the young man at the foot of her bed.... "See! sweet and sound she sleeps in granny's bed, between the paws of the tender wolf."

The Arabian Nights Entertainments


Anonymous - 1981
    Part of the The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written Collection of Easton Press.

The Platt & Munk Treasury of Stories for Children


Nancy Christensen Hall - 1981
    Collection of several children's stories with original illustrations.Tasha Tudor cover art, and illustrations through the book

Nothing To Be Afraid Of


Jan Mark - 1981
    Ten short stories explore the grotesque and the humorous in everyday events.

Oedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories


Blume Lempel - 1981
    We didn’t know we’d meet a young woman lying on the table at an abortion clinic. We didn’t know we’d meet a middle-aged woman full of erotic imaginings as she readies herself for a blind date. Buried in this forgotten Yiddish-language material, we found modernist stories and modernist story-telling techniques – imagine reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez with the conversational touch of Grace Paley."Lempel (1907–1999) was one of a small number of writers in the United States who wrote in Yiddish into the 1990s. Though many of her stories opened a window on the Old World and the Holocaust, she did not confine herself to these landscapes or themes. She often wrote about the margins of society, and about subjects considered untouchable. her prize-winning fiction is remarkable for its psychological acuity, its unflinching examination of erotic themes and gender relations, and its technical virtuosity. Mirroring the dislocation of mostly women protagonists, her stories move between present and past, Old World and New, dream and reality.

Hairs in the Palm of the Hand (Handi-read)


Jan Mark - 1981
    In Chutzpah, Eileen is determined to cause as much disruption as possible on the first day of school to support her idea of democracy and women's rights.

Girls' Adventure Stories Of Long Ago


Various - 1981
    

Modest Proposals


Randy Cohen - 1981
    Randy Cohen has dedicated himself to the outlandish caper, the outrageous suggestion, the out-and-out crazy scheme--the modest proposal. A great step backward in the history of ideas, Modest Proposals asks why we have never sold frozen yogurt to North Africa, or why dishwashers and laundry machines have never been combined (the GE Pots and Pants Scrubber?), and like Jonathan Swift’s famous suggestion that children be eaten in times of famine, Modest Proposals is guaranteed to shock some people, while giving others a bellyful of laughsRandy Cohen ls a New York-based humorist whose previous books are Easy Answers to Hard Questions (1979) and Why Didn't I Think of That (1980). He is a nice person, but a very strange guy.

The Way Up to Heaven and Other Stories


Roald Dahl - 1981
    

The Congress of the World


Jorge Luis Borges - 1981
    

Beyond the Pale


William Trevor - 1981
    

The Evil Image


Patricia L. Skarda - 1981
    

Masters of Fantasy: 31 Strange and Imaginative Tales from the Masters in the Art of The...


Martin H. Greenberg - 1981
    L. Moore; One Ordinary Day with Peanuts by Shirley Jackson; The Woman of the Wood by A. Merritt; The Loom of Darkness by Jack Vance; Trouble with Water by H. L. Gold; The Rats in the Walls by H. P. Lovecraft; Thriteen O'Clock by C. M. Kornbluth; The Rag Thing by Donald A. Wollheim; Jeffty is Five by Harlan Ellison; Timothy by Keith Roberts; Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Richard Cowper; Yesterday Was Monday by Theodore Sturgeon; The Montavarde Camera by Avram Davidson; Within the Walls of Tyre by Michael Bishop; Four Ghosts in Hamlet by Fritz Leiber; Displaced Person by Eric Frank Russell; The Black Ferris by Ray Bradbury; Our Fair City by Robert A. Heinlein; My Dear Emily by Joanna Russ; Descending by Thomas M. Disch; Man Overboard by John Collier; Longtooth by Edgar Pangborn; Divine Madness by Roger Zelazny; Narrow Valley by R. A. Lafferty; Come and Go Mad by Fredric Brown; That Hell-Bound Train by Robert Bloch; and Sail On Sail On by Philip Jose Farmer. That Hell-Bound Train by Robert Bloch won the Hugo Award for best short story in 1959; Jeffty is Five by Harlan Ellison won the Nebula Award for best short story in 1977 and the Hugo Award for best short story in 1978.

Tales of the Sacred and the Supernatural


Mircea Eliade - 1981