In collections such as Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Carver wrote with unflinching exactness about men and women enduring lives on the knife-edge of poverty and other deprivations. Beneath his pared-down surfaces run disturbing, violent undercurrents. Suggestive rather than explicit, and seeming all the more powerful for what is left unsaid, Carver’s stories were held up as exemplars of a new school in American fiction known as minimalism or “dirty realism,” a movement whose wide influence continues to this day. Carver’s stories were brilliant in their detachment and use of the oblique, ambiguous gesture, yet there were signs of a different sort of sensibility at work. In books such as Cathedral and the later tales included in the collected stories volume Where I’m Calling From, Carver revealed himself to be a more expansive writer than in the earlier published books, displaying Chekhovian sympathies toward his characters and relying less on elliptical effects.In gathering all of Carver’s stories, including early sketches and posthumously discovered works, The Library of America’s Collected Stories provides a comprehensive overview of Carver’s career as we have come to know it: the promise of Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and the breakthrough of What We Talk About, on through the departures taken in Cathedral and the pathos of the late stories. But it also prompts a fresh consideration of Carver by presenting Beginners, an edition of the manuscript of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love that Carver submitted to Gordon Lish, his editor and a crucial influence on his development. Lish’s editing was so extensive that at one point Carver wrote him an anguished letter asking him not to publish the book; now, for the first time, readers can read both the manuscript and published versions of the collection that established Carver as a major American writer. Offering a fascinating window into the complex, fraught relationship between writer and editor, Beginners expands our sense of Carver and is essential reading for anyone who cares about his achievement.Contents--What We Talk About When We Talk About LoveWhy Don’t You Dance?ViewfinderMr. Coffee and Mr. FixitGazeboI Could See the Smallest ThingsSacksThe BathTell the Women We’re GoingAfter the DenimSo Much Water So Close to HomeThe Third Thing That Killed My Father OffA Serious TalkThe CalmPopular MechanicsEverything Stuck to HimWhat We Talk About When We Talk About LoveOne More ThingStories from FiresThe LieThe CabinHarry’s DeathThe PheasantCathedralFeathersChef’s HousePreservationThe CompartmentA Small, Good ThingVitaminsCarefulWhere I’m Calling FromThe TrainFeverThe BridleCathedralFrom Where I’m Calling FromBoxesWhoever Was Using This BedIntimacyMenudoElephantBlackbird PieErrandOther FictionThe HairThe AficionadosPoseidon and CompanyBright Red ApplesFrom The Augustine NotebooksKindlingWhat Would You Like to See?DreamsVandalsCall If You Need MeSelected EssaysMy Father’s LifeOn WritingFiresAuthor’s Note to Where I’m Calling FromBeginners (The Manuscript Version of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love)Why Don’t You Dance?ViewfinderWhere Is Everyone?GazeboWant to See Something?The FlingA Small, Good ThingTell the Women We’re GoingIf It Please YouSo Much Water So Close to HomeDummyPieThe CalmMineDistanceBeginnersOne More Thing--loa.org

    In her Selected Stories, Alice Munro makes lives that seem small unfold until they are revealed to be as spacious as prairies and locates the moments of love and betrayal, desire and forgiveness, that change those lives forever. To read these stories--about a traveling salesman and his children on an impromptu journey; an abandoned woman choosing between seduction and solitude--is to succumb to the spell of a writer who enchants her readers utterly even as she restores them to their truest selves.Walker brothers cowboy --Dance of the happy shades --Postcard --Images --Something I've been meaning to tell you --The Ottawa Valley --Material --Royal beatings --Wild swans --The beggar maid --Simon's luck --Chaddeleys and Flemings --Dulse --The turkey season --Labor Day dinner --The moons of Jupiter --The progress of love --Lichen --Miles City, Montana --White dump --Fits --Friend of my youth --Meneseteung --Differently --Carried away --The Albanian virgin --A wilderness station --Vandals.

    They are a map of that dark highway that leads out of life towards unknown destinations. Few will have to take it. Most will go peacefully along lamplit streets, ushered out of living with prayers and caresses. But for a few, the horrors will come, skipping, to fetch them off to the highway of the damned ...From the brilliant World Fantasy Award winner Clive Barker come fourteen spine-chilling stories of darkness unleashed, gathered together in one volume for the first time. These are visionary tales of terror which will curdle the very marrow in your bones ...

    There are short stories too.Jane Marple is from the village of St Mary Mead and applies her skills of observation and deduction to a wide variety of mysteries. Several of the supporting characters appear in many of these stories, including her nephew Raymond West, Dolly and Arthur Bantry of Gossington Hall, and Sir Henry Clithering formerly of Scotland Yard. The twenty stories are: 1. The Tuesday Night Club; 2. The Idol House of Astarte; 3. Ingots of Gold; 4. The Bloodstained Pavement; 5. Motive v. Opportunity; 6. The Thumbmark of St Peter; 7. The Blue Geranium; 8. The Companion; 9. The Four Suspects; 10. A Christmas Tragedy; 11. The Herb of Death; 12. The Affair at the Bungalow; 13. Death by Drowning; 14. Miss Marple Tells a Story; 15. Strange Jest; 16. The Case of the Perfect Maid; 17. The Case of the Caretaker; 18. Tape-Measure Murder; 19. Greenshaw's Folly; and 20. Sanctuary.Librarian's note: this title includes all 20 Miss Marple short stories. They are taken from four earlier collections: "The Thirteen Problems," "The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories," "Three Blind Mice and Other Stories," and "Double Sin and Other Stories." Entries for each short story, the 12 Miss Marple novels, and these other collections, are located elsewhere on Goodreads. Readers can find individual entries for the short stories by searching Goodreads for: "a Miss Marple Short Story."

    Filled with the sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language Moore has become famous for, these nine glittering tales marked the introduction of an extravagantly gifted writer.

    A gripping, chilling collection of 47 stories and six poems, dating back to Shelley and Stevenson, but also including modern masters.

    Cathedral

    Traditional resources—home, parents, lovers, friends, even willpower—are not dependable. And so the characters in these short, compelling stories have learned to depend on small triumphs of wit, irony, and spirit.A widow, surrounded by a small menagerie, comes to terms with her veterinarian husband's death; a young woman entertains her dying friend with trivia and reaffirms her own life; in the aftermath of an abortion, a woman compulsively knits a complete wardrobe for a friend's baby. Buffeted by rude shocks, thwarted by misconnections, the characters recognize that anything can finally become a reason to live.

    Arranged chronologically, the forty-nine stories, when taken together with the memoir of his father that serves as a preface, not only establish Williams as a major American fiction writer of the twentieth century, but also, in Gore Vidal’s view, constitute the real autobiography of Williams’ "art and inner life."

    Serling was a serious admirer of horror, fantasy, and science fiction, and he scoured every magazine and collection available to find stories suitable for his series. This anthology showcases almost every original story that had been adapted into an episode. The result is a masterful collection of 30 classic tales by Richard Matheson (who also wrote the warmly nostalgic introduction), Charles Beaumont, Ray Bradbury, Damon Knight, Lewis Padgett, Jerome Bixby, and Manly Wade Wellman, among others. Fans of The Twilight Zone will enjoy revisiting their favorite episodes in literary form, but even if you've never seen the show, you'll enjoy this fine anthology. --Stanley WiaterCONTENTSPreface · Carol Serling · prIntroduction · Richard Matheson · inOne for the Angels · Anne Serling-Sutton·Perchance to Dream Charles BeaumontDisappearing Act · Richard Matheson Time Enough at Last · Lynn A. Venable · What You Need · Lewis Padgett · Third from the Sun · Richard Matheson · Elegy · Charles Beaumont · Brothers Beyond the Void · Paul W. Fairman · The Howling Man [as by C. B. Lovehill] · Charles Beaumont · It’s a Good Life · Jerome Bixby · The Valley Was Still · Manly Wade Wellman · The Jungle · Charles Beaumont ·To Serve Man · Damon Knight ·Little Girl Lost · Richard Matheson · Four O’Clock · Price Day · I Sing the Body Electric! [“The Beautiful One Is Here”] · Ray Bradbury · The Changing of the Guard · Anne Serling-Sutton · In His Image [“The Man Who Made Himself”] · Charles BeaumontMute · Richard Matheson ·Death Ship · Richard Matheson · The Devil, You Say? · Charles Beaumont ·Blind Alley · Malcolm Jameson · Song for a Lady · Charles Beaumont ·Steel · Richard Matheson · Nightmare at 20,000 Feet · Richard Matheson ·The Old Man · Henry Slesar · The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross · Henry Slesar · The Beautiful People · Charles Beaumont · Long Distance Call [“Sorry, Right Number”] · Richard Matheson · An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge · Ambrose Bierce

    . . Razor sharp . . . piercingly profound." Once again, Ellison's writing defies all labels. These seventeen stories by a modern master are an "assembled artifact" of anger and faith - as bittersweet as a"jalapeno-laced cinnamon bear." The sixteen stories collected here are spread over the farthest stretches of time and space, but even the bleakest of them is warmed by a passionate faith in the endurance of life and its ultimate possibilities.

    They focus on the internal conflict of individuals, the power of the dead over the living, and psychological explorations of darker human emotion.An American writer of fantastical, bizarre and sometimes disturbing short stories, Poe wrote in the first half of the nineteenth century. Preoccupied with delving into the darker reaches of the human psyche, Poe is inventor of the detective story and master of the macabre.

    Contains the stories in Dago Red, first published in 1940, together with seven new stories, including "A Nun No More" and "My Father’s God."

    

    These narrow strips of paper (many of them written during his hospitalization in the Waldau sanatorium) covered with tiny ant-like markings only a millimeter or two high, came to light only after the author’s death in 1956. At first considered a secret code, the microscripts were eventually discovered to be a radically miniaturized form of a German script: a whole story could fit on the back of a business card.Selected from the six-volume German transcriptions from the original microscripts, these 25 short pieces are gathered in this gorgeously illustrated co-publication with the Christine Burgin Gallery.  Each microscript is reproduced in full color in its original form: the detached cover of a trashy crime novel, a disappointing letter, a receipt of payment. Sometimes Walser used the pages of small tear-off calendars (but only after cutting them lengthwise and filling up each half with text). Schnapps, rotten husbands, small town life, the radio, pigs (and how none of us can deny being one), jealousy, Van Gogh and marriage proposals are some of Walser’s subjects.  These texts take strength from Walser’s motto: “To be small and to stay small.”

    To Tobias Wolff's characters, Back in the World is where lives that have veered out of control just might become normal again. Unfortunately, the men and women in these gripping, pungent, and wonderfully skewed stories have only the vaguest notion of what normal is. A gentle priest finds himself in a Vegas hotel with a hysterical, sun-burned stranger. A show-biz hopeful undergoes a dubious audition in a hearse speeding across the California desert. An aging soldier is distracted from a night of philandering by a gun-toting neighbor and a suicidal enlisted man. As he moves among these unfortunates, Wolff observes the disparity between their realities and their dreams, in ten stories of exhilarating lucidity and grace.Stories included are: "The Missing Person," "Say Yes," "The Poor Are Always With Us," "Sister," "Soldier's Joy," "Desert Breakdown," "Our Story Begins," "Leviathan," and "The Rich Brother." "Terrific...The magic of his fiction cannot be explained. It is the ancient art of the master storyteller."--Tim O'Brien

    The title story won several awards when it was published in 1925.

    The themes are familiar: friendship, commitment, responsibility, love, political idealism and activism, children, the nuclear shadow.

    Included here are some of del Toro's favorites, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Ray Russell's short story 'Sardonicus', considered by Stephen King to be 'perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written', to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, Ted Klein, and Robert E. Howard. These stunningly creepy deluxe hardcovers will be perfect additions to the shelves of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and paranormal aficionados everywhere.Haunted CastlesHaunted Castles is the definitive, complete collection of Ray Russell's masterful Gothic horror stories, including the famously terrifying novella trio of 'Sardonicus', 'Sanguinarius', and 'Sagittarius'. The characters that sprawl through Haunted Castles are frightful to the core: the heartless monster holding two lovers in limbo; the beautiful dame journeying down a damned road toward depravity (with the help of an evil gypsy); the man who must wear his fatal crimes on his face in the form of an awful smile. Engrossing, grotesque, perverted, and completely entrancing, Russell's Gothic tales are the best kind of dreadful.RAY RUSSELL was born in 1924 in Chicago, Illinois, and served in the United States Air Force during World War II in the South Pacific. After the war, he attended the Chicago Conservatory of Music and eventually joined the editorial staff at Playboy, where he published such writers as Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Matheson, Jack Finney, Robert Bloch, and Charles Beaumont. His best-known work, 'Sardonicus', was called by Stephen King 'perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written'. He died in Los Angeles in 1999.GUILLERMO DEL TORO is a Mexican director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, and designer, most famous for his Academy Award-winning film,Pan's Labyrinth, and the Hellboy film franchise. He has received the Nebula, Hugo, and Bram Stoker awards and is an avid collector and student of arcane memorabilia and weird fiction.

    These shattering stories describe the lives of ordinary people as they are compelled to do the unimaginable.

    In the tradition of Poe and Stevenson, of Lovecraft and The Twilight Zone, Stephen King has fused images of fear as old as time with the iconography of contemporary American life to create his own special brand of horror--one that has kept millions of readers turning the pages even as they gasp.In the book-length story "The Mist," a supermarket becomes the last bastion of humanity as a peril beyond dimension invades the earth. . .Touch "The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands," and say your prayers . . .There are some things in attics which are better left alone, things like "The Monkey" . . .The most sublime woman driver on earth offers a man "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" to paradise . . .A boy's sanity is pushed to the edge when he's left alone with the odious corpse of "Gramma" . . .If you were stunned by Gremlins, the Fornits of "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet" will knock your socks off . . .Trucks that punish and beautiful teen demons who seduce a young man to massacre; curses whose malevolence grows through the years; obscene presences and angels of grace--here, indeed, is a night-blooming bouquet of chills and thrills.

    These masterful stories are at once poignant portrayals of the rugged, conflicted Southern man as well as explorations of themes long familiar to Burke's readership: loss and hard-won courage, betrayal and friendship, violence and heroism, and the inveitability of death.

    THE MOTHS AND OTHER STORIES, Helena Maria Viramontes' stories exploring women's struggles to overcome the dictates of family, culture, and church, is in a new edition. Prejudice and the social and economic status of Chicanos often form the backdrop for these haunting stories, but their central, unifying theme deals with the social and cultural values which shape women's lives and which they struggle against with varying degrees of success.

    

    Each captures the moment when someone's life changes -- when an animal causes a human being to see things in a different way, and, perhaps, changes his life.

    This format will delight both those who know the great dramatist's works and those who are new to them. Michael Foreman's dramatic color illustrations and varied black-and-white line drawings are the perfect complement to this celebration of Shakespeare's genius.

    The stories cover the entire spectrum, from sad to sparkling to terrifying, from classics to hard-to-find treasures with everything in between -- orangutans, Egypt, earthworms, roast goose, college professors, mothers-in-law, aliens, secret codes, Secret Santas, tube stations, choir practice, the post office, the green light on Daisy's dock, weddings, divorces, death, and assorted plagues, from scarlet fever to "It's a Wonderful Life." And a dog.Famous for her "sure-hand plotting, unforgettable characters, and top-notch writing," Willis has been called, "the most relentlessly delightful science fiction writer alive," and there are numerous examples here. Among them, Willis's most famous stories -- the Hugo- and Nebula-Award-winning "Fire Watch" and "Even the Queen" and "The Last of the Winnebagos" -- along with undiscovered gems like Willis's heartfelt homage to Jack Williamson, "Nonstop to Portales." Her magical Christmas stories are here, too, from "Newsletter" to "Just Like the Ones We Used to Know..." which last year was made into the TV movie, Snow Wonder, starring Mary Tyler Moore.We've collected stories from throughout Willis's career, from early ones like "Cash Crop" and "Daisy, in the Sun," right up to her newest stories, including the wonderful "The Winds of Marble Arch." There's literally something for everyone here. If you're a diehard Willis fan, you'll be delighted with hard-to-find treasures like the until-now uncollected, "The Soul Selects Her Own Society..." If you've never read Connie Willis, this is your chance to discover "A Letter from the Clearys" and, well, "Chance." To say nothing of, "At the Rialto," the funniest story ever written about quantum physicists. And Willis's chilling, "All My Darling Daughters."And...oh, there are too many great stories here to list and pleasures galore. So enjoy! --subterraneanpress.com

    The seven stories of In the Penny Arcade blend both the real and the fantastic in a seductive mix that illuminates the full range of Steven Millhauser's gifts, from 'August Eschenburg', the story of a clockmaker's son whose extraordinary talent for creating animated figures is lost on a world whose taste for the perverse and crude supersedes that of the refined and beautiful, to 'Cathay', a kingdom whose wonders include landscape paintings executed on the bodies of court ladies.

    

    Here some of Japan’s best and most representative writers chronicle and re-create the impact of this tragedy on the daily lives of peasants, city professionals, artists, children, and families. From the “crazy” iris that grows out of season to the artist who no longer paints in color, the simple details described in these superbly crafted stories testify to the enormity of change in Japanese life, as well as in the future of our civilization. Included are “The Crazy Iris” by Masuji Ibuse, “Summer Flower” by Tamiki Hara, “The Land of Heart’s Desire” by Tamiki Hara, “Human Ashes” by Katsuzo Oda, “Fireflies” by Yoka Ota, “The Colorless Paintings” by Ineko Sata, “The Empty Can” by Kyoko Hayashi, “The House of Hands” by Mitsuharu Inoue, and “The Rite” by Hiroko Takenishi.

    A treasury of four bestsellers: THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER OVER THE SEPTIC TANK, IF LIFE IS A BOWL OF CHERRIES-WHAT AM I DOING IN THE PITS?, AUNT ERMA'S COPE BOOK and MOTHERHOOD: THE SECOND OLDEST PROFESSION.

    Many of the stories in Rough Translations have been anthologized and adapted for radio performance.A master of the complexities of language, Molly Giles writes of the missed connections in life and of the rough translations that we employ when we try to convey, through words and gestures, what we are thinking and what we want from our loved ones.

    Whether they know it or not, Baxter's characters are floating above an abyss of unruly desire, inexplicable dread, unforeseen tragedy, and sudden moments of grace.A drunken graduate student hurtles cheerfully through a snowstorm to rescue a fiancee who no longer wants him. A hospital maintenance worker makes a perverse bid for his place in the sunlight of celebrity. A man and a woman who have lost their only child cling fiercely to the one thing they have left of her--their grief. Lit by the quiet lightning of Baxter's prose, Through the Safety Net is filled with rare artistry and feeling.

    Set on a mysterious island, Bioy's novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious.Inspired by Bioy Casares's fascination with the movie star Louise Brooks, The Invention of Morel has gone on to live a secret life of its own. Greatly admired by Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and Octavio Paz, the novella helped to usher in Latin American fiction's now famous postwar boom. As the model for Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet's Last Year in Marienbad, it also changed the history of film.

    Twenty six stories drawn from his two published collections and from unpublished work in the Welch archive.

    first published in The New Yorker, January 21, 1985

    Coraghessan Boyle's development from "a prodigy's audacity to something that packs even more of a wallop: mature artistry." They cover everything, from a terrifying encounter between a bunch of suburban adolescents and a murderous, drug-dealing biker, to a touching though doomed love affair between Eisenhower and Nina Khruschev.

    In acclaimed stories such as 'Rain', 'The Letter', 'The Vessel of Wrath' and 'The Alien Corn', Maugham illustrates his wry perception of human weakness and his genius for evoking compelling drama and an acute sense of time and place.

    Rebbe Nachman practiced this ancient method to perfection. More elaborate than any of his previous teachings, the stories are fast-moving, richly structured and filled with penetrating insights -- while spellbinding and entertaining. Rabbi Kaplan's translation is accompanied by a masterful commentary drawn from the works of Rebbe Nachman's pupils. For the first time the English-speaking reader has access to authentic interpretations of the stories.

    Angela Carter takes real people and literary legends - most often women - who have been mythologized or marginalized and recasts them in a new light. In a style that is sensual, cerebral, almost hypnotic, "The Fall River Axe-Murders" portrays the last hours before Lizzie Borden's infamous act: the sweltering heat, the weight of flannel and corsets, the clanging of the factory bells, the food reheated and reserved despite the lack of adequate refrigeration, the house "full of locked doors that open only into other rooms with other locked doors." In "Our Lady of the Massacre" the no-nonsense voice of an eighteenth-century prostitute/runaway slave questions who is civilized - the Indians or the white men? "Black Venus" gives voice to Charles Baudelaire's Creole mistress, Jeanne Duval: "you could say, not so much that Jeanne did not understand the lapidary, troubled serenity of her lover's poetry but, that it was a perpetual affront to her. He recited it to her by the hour and she ached, raged and chafed under it because his eloquence denied her language." "The Kiss" takes the traditional story of Tamburlaine's wife and gives it a new and refreshing ending. Sometimes disquieting, sometimes funny, always thought-provoking, Angela Carter's stories offer a feminist revision of images that lie deep in the public psyche.

    Expert cooks bring a thoughtful balance of both simple and gourmet recipes spectacularly presented in full color by noted food photographers and stylists.

    The reader is drawn as if by magnetic force into a world rendered in breathtaking, painterly detail. These stories are marvelous entertainments, rich with amusement, yet Taylor renders his characters truly and understands them in a profoundly meaningful way.

    Butler82 • Blued Moon • (1984) • novelette by Connie Willis113 • A Message to the King of Brobdingnag • (1984) • novelette by Richard Cowper135 • The Affair • (1984) • shortstory by Robert Silverberg153 • Press Enter [] • (1984) • novella by John Varley207 • New Rose Hotel • (1984) • shortstory by William Gibson219 • The Map • [Solar Cycle] • (1984) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe232 • Interlocking Pieces • (1984) • shortstory by Molly Gloss239 • Trojan Horse • (1984) • novelette by Michael Swanwick269 • Bad Medicine • (1984) • novelette by Jack Dann291 • At the Embassy Club • (1984) • shortstory by Elizabeth A. Lynn301 • Pursuit of Excellence • (1984) • novelette by Rena Yount319 • The Kindly Isle • (1984) • shortstory by Frederik Pohl341 • Rock On • (1984) • shortstory by Pat Cadigan350 • Sunken Gardens • [Shaper/Mechanist] • (1984) • shortstory by Bruce Sterling365 • Trinity • (1984) • novella by Nancy Kress409 • The Trouble With the Cotton People • (1984) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le Guin420 • Twilight Time • (1984) • novelette by Lewis Shiner440 • Black Coral • (1984) • novelette by Lucius Shepard466 • Friend • (1984) • novelette by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel484 • Foreign Skins • (1984) • novelette by Tanith Lee511 • Company in the Wings • (1983) • shortstory by R. A. Lafferty524 • A Cabin on the Coast • (1984) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe536 • The Lucky Strike • (1984) • novelette by Kim Stanley Robinson569 • Honorable Mentions: 1984 • essay by Gardner Dozois

    A collection of Ramsey campbell's horror stories, including The Church in the High Street, The Room in the Castle, The Horrors from the Bridge, The Insects from Shaggai, The Render of the Veils, The Inhabitant of the Lake, The Will of Stanley Brooke, The Moon-Lens, Before the Storm, Cold Print, Among These Pictures Are, The Tugging, The Faces at Pine Dunes, Blacked Out, and The Voice of the Beach.

    Johannesburg; Jonathan Ball, 1985. Hardcover, 286 pages. "Herman Charles Bosman (February 3, 1905 ­ October 14, 1951) is the South African writer widely regarded as South Africa's greatest short story writer. He studied the works of Edgar Alan Poe and Mark Twain, and developed a style emphasizing the use of irony. His English-language works utilize primarily Afrikaner characters and point to the many contradictions of Afrikaner society in the first half of the twentieth century. The poet Roy Campbell called him "the only literary genius that South Africa has produced." - Wikipedia

    Because he is given to interior musing, we learn the workings of the mind of a thoughtful de­tective. Showing Leopold’s mind, Hoch develops nuances of character rare in mystery stories. “The House by the Ferris” poses a typical Hoch problem. Ancient crone Stella Gaze predicts that four men will die—by earth, air, fire, and water. Leo­pold is called in when one man drowns, is called again when another burns. The crimes seem to have been concocted by a witch.

    Contents:Idris' Pig (1964)The Gardener (1949)Child of Void (1949)Hathor's Pets (1950)The Pillows (1950)The Listening Child (1950)Brightness Falls from the Air (1951)The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles (1951)The Causes (1952)An Egg a Month from All Over (1952)Prott (1953)New Ritual (1953)Brenda (1954)Short in the Chest (1954)Horrer Howce (1956)The Wines of Earth (1957)The Invested Libido (1958)The Nuse Man (1960)An Old-Fashioned Bird Christmas (1961)Wryneck, Draw Me (1980)

    Time after time the reader anticipates the ending only to discover that once more the author has proved too clever. Yet Brown never “cheats,” never feeds false clues, and his endings are always plausible. His imag­ination is by turns puckish, grim, out­landish—but forever fresh.   Brown’s stories run from the fifty-word “Mistake” to a novelette (“The Case of the Dancing Sandwiches”). In “Granny’s Birthday,” a two-page short short, with Granny supervising like a benign queen, the party goes splendidly, marred only by manslaughter and murder. Contents:-Town Wanted-Little Apple Hard to Peel-A Little White Lye-Blue Murder-The Djinn Murder-Murder While You Wait-Mr. Smith Kicks the Bucket-The Dangerous People-The Night the World Ended-The Voice Behind Him-Don't Look Behind You-Miss Darkness-I'll Cut Your Throat Again, Kathleen-The Laughing Butcher-The Joke-Cry Silence-Cain-The Case of the Dancing Sandwiches-Witness in the Dark-Granny's Birthday-Hobbyist-Nightmare in Yellow-Mistake

    Dhlomo, H.C. Bosman, Casey Motsisi, Can Themba, Alan Paton, Dan Jacobson, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Bessie Head, Nat Nakasa, Richard Rive, Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, Ahmed Essop, Lionel Abrahams, Mbulelo Mzamane, Mtutuzeli Matshoba, and Njabulo Ndebele.

    

    For over forty years Andre Norton has been telling unique fantasy and science fiction stories that have enchanted millions of readers. Now a whole generation of writers, all of whom have been inspired by Andre Norton, is giving gifts to the giver, in a collection of original fantasy stories written especially for this volume. Read on and enjoy these delightful stories.Contents: Introduction: Andre Norton: Beyond the Siege Perilous (Moonsinger's Friends) • essay by Susan Shwartz; Cover art: Moonsinger's Friends by Victoria Poyser Sea Wrack (1985) [Lythande] / novelette by Marion Zimmer Bradley Lior and the Sea (1985) / novelette by Diane Duane The Pale Girl, the Dark Mage, and the Green Sea (1985) / short story by Tanith Lee The Forest (1985) / novelette by Poul Anderson The Shadow Har (1985)t / short story by Sandra Miesel The Woman Who Loved Reindeer (1985) / novelette by Meredith Ann Pierce The Price of Lightning (1985) / novelette by Jayge Carr Bright-Eyed Black Pony (1985) / short story by Nancy Springer A Flock of Geese (1985) / short story by Anne McCaffrey Of Law and Magic (1985) / novelette by C. J. Cherryh Team Venture (1985) / novelette by Jo Clayton Sky Sister (1985) [Shanna of Sharteyn] / short story by Diana L. Paxson Defender of the Faith (1985) / short story by Judith Tarr Catalyst (1985) [Deryni Universe] / short story by Katherine Kurtz The Foxwife (1984) / short story by Jane Yolen An Open Letter to Andre Norton (Moonsinger's Friends) • essay by Joan D. Vinge.

    

    Spanning the centuries from the first wars of the ancient Irish kings through the Celtic Renaissance of Yeats to our own time, they are set in cities, villages, fields and forestsfrom the wild Gaelic western coast to the modern streets of Dublin and Belfast.Part of the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library

    

    

    These are the Gifts of Age: the time, the freedom, and hopefully the wisdom to develop creative new images of oneself and one's place in the complexities of a long life. All of the women in this book are more than sixty-five years of age, and included are such well-known personalities as Julia Child, M.F.K. Fisher, Joan Baez Senior, and Louise M. Davies. No two have followed the same path, but each has been successful in achieving some new, frequently unanticipated distinction in her latter years. Gifts of Age is a fascinating insight into just how productive one's extended life can be, and inspiration for anyone who believes that the creative talent for living need not diminish with the passage of years.

    Not an incredibly old man; obsolete, spavined; not as worn as the sway-backed stone steps ascending the Pyramid of the Sun to an ancient temple; not yet a relic. But even so, a very old man, this old man perched on an antique shooting stick, its handles open to form a seat, its spike thrust at an angle into the soft ground and trimmed grass of the cemetery. Gray, thin rain misted down at almost the same, angle as that at which the spike pierced the ground.

     [This story is also available in Howard Waldrop's collection Dream Factories and Radio Pictures].

    Stories deal with dragons, kings, outlaws, dream weavers, an alien poet, a frustrated musician, a water spirit, mermaids, demons, and an enchanted dove

    They know how to beat it and how to endure. Quarantined in a Leningrad maternity ward after giving birth, ten women from all walks of Soviet life amuse themselves by telling stories—stories that provide an astonishingly intimate and dramatic insight into the lives of Russia today.The women recount one hundred stories—one story told each day by each of the ten women for ten days—on such themes as love, jealousy, infidelity, seduction, farcical sex, money, revenge, and finally, happiness. Beneath their gossip runs the stark reality of a society torn apart by suicide, divorce, and alcoholism; by the difficulties of finding food and a place to live; by the threat of harrowing imprisonment. Voznesenskaya writes vividly about everyday Soviet life as well as politics, and her revealing book conveys a passionate belief in the spiritual strength of the Russian woman, to which readers everywhere will respond with sympathy and shocks of recognition.

    

    In these stories Jim Heynen develops a unique fictional form that touches us with truth and beauty.

    The volume features: prose, poetry, one play and a large section of fiction.

    The story's protagonist is a man named Rice, who works for a company that obtains natural resources and valuable artifacts from alternate timelines created in the past (whenever one engages in time travel, a new timeline forms, making it impossible to alter the original history). The story centers around hostility from the people in the 18th-century timeline, who are angry about their exploitation and the effective robbery of their resources, land, and artwork; these alternate versions of our ancestors ultimately force the company to evacuate the timeline.

    Four short stories present the adventures of itinerant artisans and tradesmiths as they travel through a small New England town in the year 1800.

    Now she invites you to share the full spectrum of life's moods and emotions through her very first collection of stories. From a child's first knowledge of death, through city and country, to an elderly woman's newfound freedom, "The Blue Bedroom "is a welcoming experience full of the honesty and warmth unique to Rosamunde Pilcher.

    Aickman --The bird / T. Burke --A thing about machines / R. Serling --A woman seldom found / W. Sansom --The squaw / B. Stoker --The cloth of madness / S. Quinn --The sea raiders / H.G. Wells --The Dunwich horror / H.P. Lovecraft --Dad / J. Blackburn --The cold embrace / Miss Braddon --Royal jelly / R. Dahl --The boarded window / A. Bierce. Earth to earth / R. Graves --A warning to the curious / M.R. James --The night of the tiger / S. King --The interruption / W.W. Jacobs --Back from the grave / R. Silverberg --The derelict / W.H. Hodgson --Vendetta / G. de Maupassant --Edifice complex / R. Bloch --The red lodge / H.R. Wakefield --Mary Postgate / R. Kipling --The cradle demon / R. Chetwynd-Hayes --The horror of Abbot's Grange / F. Cowles. Sredni Vashtar / Saki --The wall / R. Haining --An account of some strange disturbances in Aungier Street / J.S. Le Fanu --The whining / R. Campbell --Verenice / E.A. Poe --The finless death / R.E. Vernede --And the dead spake / E.F. Benson.

    Sensuous, spare language exploring color, race and love in the Third World from the author's Jamaican perspective.

    5 volume hardcover set of the complete run of The Haunt of Fear from EC Comics

    For only fifty pence, Sophy will tackle any problem: from bossy grandmothers to disappearing tomatoes. The only trouble is, everyone needs helping at once!

    Featuring personalities and characters to be found in the China of those times, and told with Lao She's usual wit, satire, insight and sympathy. They create a panorama of Chinese society.

    This book is characterized by narrative vitality and emotional range.  In Wetherell’s stories a suburban retiree’s assumptions about the ethos of Long Island life are challenged and dismissed by a younger generation, a young English woman achieves miracles by dancing with wounded soldiers during World War II, a tennis-mad bachelor plays an interior game as real to him as an actual match, and a black drifter converts an Asian couple to his bleak vision of American life and finds strange kinship with them.

    "Wonderfully vivid, often hilarious."--The Guardi

    A selection of short stories reminding us of the inhumanities people practise on one another and of the inconclusive aspects of our destiny and how they can sometimes be mastered by acts of recognition.This Faber & Faber edition contains both Gallant's previous collections Overhead in a Ballon and Home Truths in a single volume.

    

    Butler 38 • The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule • [Griaule] • (1984) • novelette by Lucius Shepard 69 • Press Enter [] • (1984) • novella by John Varley 136 • New Rose Hotel • (1984) • shortstory by William Gibson 149 • The Greening of Bed-Stuy • [The Years of the City] • (1984) • novelette by Frederik Pohl 213 • The Lucky Strike • (1984) • novelette by Kim Stanley Robinson 252 • Morning Child • (1984) • shortstory by Gardner Dozois [as by Gardner R. Dozois ] 260 • The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything • (1984) • shortstory by George Alec Effinger 278 • A Cabin on the Coast • (1984) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe 292 • Dogs' Lives • (1984) • novelette by Michael Bishop 313 • The Eichmann Variations • (1984) • shortstory by George Zebrowski 323 • Love Song to Lucy • (1983) • poem by Helen Ehrlich 324 • Lucy Answers Back • (1983) • poem by Helen Ehrlich 325 • Saul's Death • (1983) • poem by Joe Haldeman 328 • Science Fiction Films of 1984 • essay by Bill Warren 355 • SFWA, the Guild • essay by Norman Spinrad

    We are drawn, too, into a world of sharply observed characters: a comedy writer whose wife is dying, a couple who still get Christmas cards from a man they assisted twenty-five years before, an aging woman cutting the grass.

    In “Parachutes,” the narrator reels in the aftermath of a breakup with the woman he loves; “Oldfashioned” isthe story of Johnny, a country boy oddly drawn to the elderly English couple for whom he represents the son they lost in the War; and in “Eddie Mac” and “The Conversion of William Kirkwood,” a wealthy family and its hired help learn that the relationship of master and servant is the most enduring relationship of all.In High Ground, John McGahern displays all of his acclaimed mastery, and both deepens and extends the world of his generous imagination.

    

    

    Rush was born in St. Monans, one of the many fishing communities condemned by factory farming methods. He writes of the crews that sailed the Firth; the net-mending and hull-caulking; the manufacture of creels; the whelk-gathering when the fishing failed; the lobsters of August, the herring of winter; practices that Rush clearly thinks preferable to those of the present, when fishing is only 'an industry, a service, a wage packet that used to be a way of life'.Such halcyon evocations have a long lineage in Scottish writing; there has always been something: fallen leaders, should-have-won battles to bewail and mourn (Rush's most apparent predecessors are Edwin Muir and George Mackay Brown, both of whom wrote Edenic accounts of their Orkney childhoods). Rush's lyricism and reliance on a degree of alliteration more associated with an oral tradition suggests a similar desire to mythicise. But the prose never stoops to sentiment: the moon is 'a drowned skull'; the classroom 'a varnished coffin'.The book is also a lament for a time of life: 'that first conscious corner of belonging cut for me out of time'; a youth spent in the fields and on the shore; deciphering the kirkyard graves; listening to eerie tales of things glimpsed at sea. Rush offers a series of portraits of those loved and gone, an attempt to extricate the 'bright splinters of people still sticking in our hearts'. And if the reader sometimes wonders if it was ever really thus and how much its lyric tone can be trusted, then, as Rush says, 'what mattered was the telling'.

    

    History and tales of the Southwest told with excitement and humor.A Capsule History of Frontier Arizona The Battles of the Salt River Caves The Cowboys: Legends in Levis Steamboats in the Desert The Bungling Brothers The Baron of Arizona Tombstone Lawyers Steel Ribbons

    

    The sons of cowboys and roughnecks meet the men who flock to the sunbelt in search of work and each other in these erotic stories by a Texas author.

    The story, a novelette first published in Asimov's SF Magazine in 1985, concerns a voyage of both discovery and pillage by a crew of 23rd century pirates from the "Catskill Archipelago" of islands, south, in search of the fabled "Empire State."

    37 Horror Stories

    Reproduced from the collection The South & Bene by Adelaida García Morales, translated by Thomas G. Deveny, by permission of The University of Nebraska Press.

    Set in a fictional community, these linked stories are alive with the people, gossip, humor, and legends of Japanese America in the 1930s and 1940s.Replaces ISBN 9780295961675

    Short story about authorities and scientists in the far future.Their civilization has found Voyager and her "Golden Record", and are trying to discover their origin.First published in 1985, the year before "Star Trek: The Voyage Home".(Note: In "The Big Book of Science Fiction" (Ann & Jeff Vandermeer, eds), the story is 17 pages long, so that's the page numbers I entered in the details here.)

    From the very beginnings of this youngest of literary forms, American writers have played a crucial role in its development.Here are thirty-three of their finest stories, ranging from the brooding romanticism of Hawthorne and Poe to the wit of Twain and Thurber--from the high moral consciousness of James to the sheer high spirits of Saroyan. Taken together, these classic tales form a remarkably rich and vital record of one of our literature's proudest and most original achievements.The specter bridegroom / Washington Irving --Young Goodman Brown / Nathaniel Hawthorne --The gold bug / Edgar Allan Poe --Bartleby the scrivener / Herman Melville --Miss Asphyxia / Harriet Beecher Stowe --The Iliad of Sandy Bar / Bret Harte --Who was she? / Bayard Taylor --Grit / Rose Terry Cooke --An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge / Ambrose Bierce --The return of a private / Hamlin Garland --A New England nun / Mary E. Wilkins Freeman --The real thing / Henry James --The yellow wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins Gilman --The flight of Betsey Lane / Sarah O. Jewett --La grande demoiselle / Grace Elizabeth King --The war widow / Harold Frederic --Madame Célestin's divorce / Kate Chopin --The blue hotel / Stephen Crane --A journey / Edith Wharton --The man that corrupted Hadleyburg / Mark Twain --All gold canyon / Jack London --The rajah of Bungpore / F. Hopkinson Smith --Nobody sick, nobody poor / Zona Gale --One thousand dollars / O. Henry --"Queer" / Sherwood Anderson --Up in Michigan / Ernest Hemingway --Great lady on a white horse / John Dos Passos --The king of the cats / Stephen Vincent Benét --Neighbour Rosicky / Willa Cather --Turnabout / William Faulkner --The evening's at seven / James Thurber --The long way out / F. Scott Fitzgerald --Ever fall in love with a midget? / William Saroyan

    Vi Hilbert, a Skagit Indian, grew up at a time when many of the old social patterns survived and when everyone still spoke the ancestral language. As an adult, when she realized that native language and culture were being forgotten, she began to work with linguists and anthropologists in recording and translating as much of the Lushootseed oral tradition as possible. Haboo is her collection of thirty-three stories.Most of the stories in the book take place in the Myth Age, before the world was transformed. Animals, plants, trees, and even rocks had human attributes as well as the characteristics we know today. Characters included Wolf, Salmon, and Changer, who made things the way they are now. Especially prominent are Mink, Raven, and Coyote--three tricksters who are usually caught in their duplicity but who can occasionally rise to heroic deeds. Other worlds exist--the sky world, the Salmon People's world--and it is possible to walk from one to another. Many of the stories are light, humorous, and earthy, reflecting the foibles of human nature. While a serious moral is usually implied, instruction is achieved by humorously detailing the unfortunate, even disastrous consequences of breaking taboos.In his Introduction, Thom Hess, professor of linguistics at the University of Victoria, places the stories in the context of the Lushootseed world view. Vi Hilbert in her Preface describes the storytellers, many of them relatives and older friends with special knowledge of the old ways.The vivid and humorous stories in Haboo will be of interest to linguists, anthropologists, and folklorists, as well as to future generations of Lushootseed people and all others concerned with native languages and cultures.

    

    The 11 authors (Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Edith Wharton are both represented twice) are all American women writers. "The Yellow Wallpaper," "Luella Miller," and "The Bell in the Fog" are some of the best-known selections.

    Before her death in 1996, this Irish writer had received many honors and prizes not only for her luminous short stories but also for several highly regarded novels. William Trevor praised Lavin's ability to "make moments timeless, to illuminate people and places, words and things, by touching them with the magic of the rarely-gifted storyteller." In a Cafe makes available for the first time in the United States a collection of her most beloved pieces as compiled by her daughter. In masterworks such as the title story, an unsettling portrayal of widowhood, and "The Will, " which Layin considered the finest expression of her art, the justice in Trevor's declaration we recognize that "the short story of today owes her a very great debt."

    SeabrookSalt is Not for Slaves – G.W. HutterThe Country of the Comers-Back – Lafcadio HearnJumbee – Henry S. WhiteheadWhite Zombie – Vivian MeikI Walked with a Zombie – Inez WallaceAmerican Zombie – Dr. Gordon Leigh BromleyWhile Zombies Walked – Thorp McCluskyThe House in the Magnolias – August DerlethThe Zombie of Alto Parana – W. Stanley MossBallet Negre – Charles BirkinThe Hollow Man – Thomas Burke

    Here, for the first time, is a new collection of some of his most private and autobiographical fiction and poetry, much of it the inspiration for his recent award-winning film, Paris, Texas.