California Cooper writes with a transparent clarity and such exuberant energy that her characters leap off the page, bursting with stories they've got to tell--stories of simple people, stories of families and fate, of love and marriage, of death and the triumph of the human spirit.

    Here are nineteen stories that explore her signature themes: wounded adolescence, loneliness in marriage, and the tragicomedy of life in the South. Here too are "The Member of the Wedding" and "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe," novellas that Tennessee Williams judged to be "assuredly among the masterpieces of our language." (A Mariner Reissue)

    Dick the greatest science fiction mind on any planet. Since his untimely death in 1982, interest in his works has continued to mount, and his reputation has been further enhanced by a growing body of critical attention. Dick won the prestigious Hugo Award for best novel of 1963 for "The Man in the High Castle, " and in the last year of his life, the film Blade Runner was made from his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?This volume includes all of the writer's earliest short and medium-length fiction (including some previously unpublished stories) covering the years 1952-1955. These fascinating stories include "Beyond Lies the Wub, " "The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford, " "The Variable Man, " and twenty-two others.

    Adopted by colleges across the country to be used in literature courses, The Dark Descent showcases some of the finest horror fiction ever written.Contents: Pt. 1 - The Color of EvilThe Reach / Stephen KingEvening Primrose / John CollierThe Ash-Tree / M. R. JamesThe New Mother / Lucy CliffordThere's a Long, Long Trail A-winding / Russell KirkThe Call of Cthulhu / H. P. LovecraftThe Summer People / Shirley JacksonThe Whimper of Whipped Dogs / Harlan EllisonYoung Goodman Brown / Nathaniel HawthorneMr. Justice Harbottle / J. Sheridan Le FanuThe Crowd / Ray BradburyThe Autopsy / Michael SheaJohn Charrington's Wedding / E. NesbitSticks / Karl Edward WagnerLarger Than Oneself / Robert AickmanBelsen Express / Fritz LeiberYours Truly, Jack the Ripper / Robert BlochIf Damon Comes / Charles L. GrantVandy, Vandy / Manly Wade WellmanPt. 2 - The Medusa in the ShieldThe Swords / Robert AickmanThe Roaches / Thomas M. DischBright Segment / Theodore SturgeonDread / Clive BarkerThe Fall of the House of Usher / Edgar Allan PoeThe Monkey / Stephen KingWithin the Walls of Tyre / Michael BishopThe Rats in the Walls / H. P. LovecraftSchalken the Painter / J. Sheridan Le FanuThe Yellow Wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins GilmanA Rose for Emily / William FaulknerHow Love Came to Professor Guildea / Robert HichensBorn of Man and Woman / Richard MathesonMy Dear Emily / Joanna RussYou Can Go Now / Dennis EtchisonThe Rocking-Horse Winner / D. H. LawrenceThree Days / Tanith LeeGood Country People / Flannery O'ConnorMackintosh Willy / Ramsey CampbellThe Jolly Corner / Henry JamesPt. 3 - A Fabulous Formless Darkness Smoke Ghost / Fritz LeiberSeven American Nights / Gene WolfeThe Signal-Man / Charles DickensCrouch End / Stephen KingNight-Side / Joyce Carol OatesSeaton's Aunt / Walter de la MareClara Militch / Ivan TurgenevThe Repairer of Reputations / Robert W. ChambersThe Beckoning Fair One / Oliver OnionsWhat Was It? / Fitz-James O'BrienThe Beautiful Stranger / Shirley JacksonThe Damned Thing / Ambrose BierceAfterward / Edith WhartonThe Willows / Algernon BlackwoodThe Asian Shore / Thomas M. DischThe Hospice / Robert AickmanA Little Something for Us Tempunauts / Philip K. Dick

    Barthelme spotlights the idiosyncratic, haughty, sometimes downright ludicrous behavior of human beings, but it is style rather than content which takes precedence.

    These new adventures are the only ones to be specially authorised by Dame Jean Conan Doyle, celebrating the centennial of Holmes' first appearance in print.Greeted with unanimous acclaim, the traditionally crafted stories feature dazzling encounters with Holmes rising to new challenges and revealing new feats of brilliant, deductive logic ... culminating in a mental duel of frightening intensity with the master criminal Moriarty. And Watson - God bless him - has his share of the spotlight too.

    In these twenty-seven stories, written and published while America was in the grip of McCarthyism, Philip K. Dick speaks up for ordinary people and against militarism, paranoia and xenophobia - and always in his marvellously varied, quirky and entertainingly idiosyncratic style.Comprising:The Cookie Lady;Beyond the Door;Second Variety;Jon's World;The Cosmic Poachers;Progeny;Some Kinds of Life;Martians Come in Clouds;The Commuter;The World She Wanted;A Surface Raid;Project: Earth;The Trouble with Bubbles;Breakfast at Twilight;A Present for Pat;The Hood Maker;Of Withered Apples;Human Is;Adjustment Team;The Impossible Planet;Imposter;James P. Crow;Planet for Transients;Small Town;Souvenir;Survey Team;Prominent Author.

    Disch- The Little Black Box (1964)- The War With the Fnools (1964)- A Game of Unchance (1964)- Precious Artifact (1964)- Retreat Syndrome (1965)- A Terran Odyssey (1987)- Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday (1966)- Holy Quarrel (1966)- We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1966)- Not by Its Cover (1968)- Return Match (1967)- Faith of Our Fathers (1967)- The Story to End All Stories (1968)- The Electric Ant (1969)- Cadbury, the Beaver Who Lacked (1987)- A Little Something for Us Tempunauts (1974)- The Pre-Persons (1974)- The Eye of the Sibyl (1987)- The Day Mr. Computer Fell Out of Its Tree (1987)- The Exit Door Leads In (1979)- Chains of Air, Web of Aether (1980)- Strange Memories of Death (1984)- I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon (1980, variant of Frozen Journey)- Rautavaara's Case (1980)- The Alien Mind (1981)- NotesFront cover illustration by Chris Moore

    Spaceship- Piper in the Woods- The Infinites- The Preserving Machine- Expendable- The Variable Man- The Indefatigable Frog- The Crystal Crypt- The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford- The Builder- Meddler- Paycheck- The Great C- Out in the Garden- The King of the Elves- Colony- Prize Ship- Nanny

    Then one day I started writing . . .' Truman Capote began writing at the age of eight, and never looked back. A Capote Reader contains much of the author's published work: his brilliant and prolific oeuvre of fiction, travel sketches, portraits, reportage and essays. It includes all twelve of his celebrated short stories, together with The Grass Harp and Breakfast at Tiffany's. There are vivid sketches of places from Tangiers to Brooklyn, and fascinating insights into the lives of his contemporaries, from Jane Bowles and Cecil Beaton to Marilyn Monroe and Tennessee Williams. Generous space is devoted to reportage including 'The Muses Are Heard', on his trip to Communist Europe in the 1950s with the cast of Porgy and Bess. In all, A Capote Reader demonstrates the chameleon talents of one of America's most versatile and gifted writers.

    Rock Springs is a masterpiece of taut narration, cleanly chiseled prose, and empathy so generous that it feels like a kind of grace.

    The stories range from Grossman’s first success, “In the Town of Berdichev,” a piercing reckoning with the cost of war, to such haunting later works as “Mama,” based on the life of a girl who was adopted at the height of the Great Terror by the head of the NKVD and packed off to an orphanage after her father’s downfall. The girl grows up struggling with the discovery that the parents she cherishes in memory are part of a collective nightmare that everyone else wants to forget. The Road also includes the complete text of Grossman’s harrowing report from Treblinka, one of the first anatomies of the workings of a death camp; “The Sistine Madonna,” a reflection on art and atrocity; as well as two heartbreaking letters that Grossman wrote to his mother after her death at the hands of the Nazis and carried with him for the rest of his life. Meticulously edited and presented by Robert Chandler, The Road allows us to see one of the great figures of twentieth-century literature discovering his calling both as a writer and as a man.

    Dick's first novel, Solar Lottery, was published in 1956. Many of these stories are previously uncollected, but also included here are some of Dick's most famous pieces, like Foster, You're Dead, a powerful extrapolation of nuclear war hysteria, and The Golden Man, a very different story about a super-evolved mutant human.This is a brilliant collection vividlly displaying some of the best of Dick's originality, quirky-humour and overflowing ideas.One of the most original practitioners writing any kind of fiction. Philip K. Dick made most of the European avant-garde seem navel-gazers in a cul-de-sac - Sunday TimesA stunning composite portrait of our times - The ObserverThe most consitently brilliant SF writer in the world... author of more good short stories than I can count - John BrunnerCover Illustration: Chris MooreComprising:Fair Game;The Hanging Stranger;The Eyes Have It;The Golden Man;The Turning Wheel;The Last of the Masters;The Father-Thing;Strange Eden;Tony and the Beetles;Null-O;To Serve the Master;Exhibit Piece;The Crawlers;Sales Pitch;Shell Game;Upon the Dull Earth;Foster, You're Dead;Pay for the Printer;War Veteran;The Chromium Fence;Misadjustment;A World of Talent;Psi-Man Heal My Child!

    6Ariadne The House with an AtticIonychThe DarlingThe Lady with the LapdogAnton Pavlovich Chekhov may be likened to his contemporaries, the "pointilliste" painters. Piece by piece, episode by episode, character by character, he constructs in prose a survey of the human condition. As David Magarshack writes in his introduction, on reading these stories 'one gets the impression of holding life itself, like a fluttering bird, in one's cupped hands'.

    Also published in Bloodchild and Other Stories

    In fact Charles Willard a fellow scientist claimed to have actually seen them in Tibet but unfortunately died shortly afterwards. So when Shonku learns that another expedition is starting off for Tibet he jumps at the opportunity to trace Willard's route and find the unicorns. Tibet is just one of the exotic places Professor Shonku's exploits take him in this volume of stories. In the Sahara Desert he comes face to face with a massive pyramid like structure no one knew of earlier he travels underwater in a submarine with two Japanese scientists to investigate the sudden appearance of deadly red fish that have taken to eating humans in the caves of Bolivia he meets a primitive man who has been painting his dwelling with animal figures and strange mathematical formulae and on a peculiar island which has appeared out of nowhere in the Pacific Ocean horrific plants suck out all his learning from his brain. Professor Shonku is at the height of his ingenuity and daring in this collection and thrills and surprises await us around every bend as we follow him on his astonishing adventures.

    Contents:The Jaguar Hunter (1985)The Night of White Bhairab (1984)Salvador (1984)How the Wind Spoke at Madaket (1985)Black Coral (1984)The End of Life as We Know It (1985)A Traveler's Tale (1984)Mengele (1985)The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule (1984)A Spanish Lesson (1985)

    Those who are found the next day, if they are still alive, will have gone mad.”  Chills and thrills to make your flesh crawl with fear! Turn the lights down low and grab your favorite reading chair. But first, you’d better check behind you. . . .   Ghosts, monsters, murders, and madmen! These thirty stories have been collected for your reading displeasure from all over the globe, and represent the world’s best scary stories and frightening folktales, featuring famous authors such as Washington Irving and the Brothers Grimm. Welcome to a chilling world of hair-raising tales!

    Here for the first time in one volume are her complete stories.

    With a bias toward realism editors Raymond Carver and Tom Jenks have selected fiction that “tells a story”–and tells it with a masterful handling of language, situation, and insight.But what is so special about this volume is that it mirrors our age, our concerns, and our lives. Whether it’s the end of a marriage, as in Bobbie Ann Manson’s “Shiloh,” or the struggle with self-esteem and weight in Andre Dubus’s “The Fat Girl,” the 36 works included her probe issues that give us that “shock of recognition” that is the hallmark of great art—wonderful, absorbing fiction that will be read and reread for decades to come.

    The Hugo-winning short story about diners, bored teenagers, and parallel worlds.

    Collected by Francis E. Skipp, these fifty-eight stories span the breadth of Thomas Wolfe’s career, from the uninhibited young writer meticulously describing the enchanting birth of springtime in “The Train and the City” to his mature, sober account of a terrible lynching in “The Child by Tiger.” Thirty-five of these stories have never before been collected, and “The Spanish Letter” is published here for the first time. Vital, compassionate, remarkably attuned to character, scene, and social context, The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe represents the last work we have from the author of Look Homeward, Angel, who was considered the most promising writer of his generation (The New York Times).

    And it is just this ordinariness that makes them special.In The H Street Sledding Record, a man throws horse manure on his roof every Christmas Eve to keep the myth of Santa alive. Bigfoot Stole My Wife is the claim of another man whose wife has disappeared without a trace, the only clue is that the kitchen smells funny: hairy. A third man finds that The Uses of Videotape are many: he uses a VCR to explain some mysterious goings-on in his bedroom while he and his wife are sleeping.While these wonderful stories seem to concern the people we see on the street or in the supermarket, they are quietly proving that nothing is normal, but all is well.

    This sumptuous volume celebrates the 80th birthday of one of the best-known and most-loved storytellers in the English language today, Daphne du Maurier.Here are six masterpieces of the imagination, illustrated in glowing color by prize-winning artist, Michael Foreman.Don't Look Now, a classic story of the macabre, opens the collection, followed by The Apple Tree, The Blue Lenses, The Birds, The Alibi and Not After Midnight.

    Thirty Seven Short Stories Plus a Complete NovelIncludes The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

    Many of the 25 stories in this first volume of "The Complete Stories of Robert Bloch" have been unavailable for decades. The stories are in his classic style of gripping suspense, science fiction and fantasy. As Bloch writes, "These stories in this collection have a common theme; they deal with monsters. Some of the monsters are human, some are not-- but all of them embody, in one way or another, the fears common to us in our dreams. We call these monsters by many names-- ghosts, vampires, extraterrestrials, changelings. But we recognize them for what they are; manifestations of the secret dreads and desires which lurk beneath the surface of consciousness." "Bloch has become a virtual fixture on the popular culture landscape." --Publishers Weekly "If you're not familiar with Bloch's short fiction, find someone to borrow this from; if you already are familiar, you know that you want to own these volumes." --Locus

    sword bearers called to a greater war...these are just some of the elements brought together in this latest sorcerous brew of spellbinding excitement and adventure, specially concocted under the direction of the Wise Woman of Darkover herself, Marion Zimmer Bradley.So heed this latest call to arms, and prepare to march to magical wars with such powerful spell casters and sword swingers as Jennifer Roberson, Charles de Lint, Diana Paxson, Richard Corwin, and their comrades in creation of wonderful worlds replete with myth and menace, where courageous women test their talents against the deadliest and most diabolical of foes.Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress series has always featured the best in contemporary women's fantasy, and this outstanding new volume carries on the tradition! These original stories of brave, talented, and heroic women will take readers through enchanted realms of the imagination into danger both physical and mystical, where the only way to survive is through the power of sword and spell. Introduction · Marion Zimmer BradleyA Tale of Heroes [Vows and Honor] · Mercedes LackeyThe Woodland of Zarad-Thra · Robin Wayne BaileyThe Weeping Oak [Angharad] · Charles de LintGullrider · Dave SmedsBlood Dancer · Diana L. PaxsonKayli's Fire · Paula Helm MurrayThe Ring of Lifari · Josepha ShermanRite of Passage · Jennifer RobersonThe Eyes of the Gods · Richard CorwinFate and the Dreamer · Millea KeninThe Noonday Witch [Cynthia] · Dorothy J. HeydtRedeemer's Riddle · Stephen L. BurnsThe Tree-Wife of Arketh · Syn FergusonSpell of Binding · Richard CornellStorm God · Deborah WheelerDie Like a Man · L.D. WoeltjenDeath and the Ugly Woman · Bruce D. ArthursBloodstones · Deborah M. Vogel

    Emerging from the harsh realities of difficult lives, the stories are full of the violence of love and the love of violence. The author won the 1995 Steinbeck Award for "Dogs of God".

    In the title story, the young widow Higbee teaches the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Faceville a hilarious lesson about tithing. Young Mamie Kate learns about "Fulfillment" when she sits on Miss Addie's front porch and pretends not to listen to the adult conversation. In "Porphyria's Lover," a scheming bisexual's double life brings catastrophe and death. And the "Big Star Woman" plans to sue her friend Dr. Glass after the operation she requested to improve her sex life has an unexpectedly tragic effect on her marriage.Through these tales of everyday life and death in the South, Ferrol Sams, one of America's most beloved storytellers, illuminates the human mind and the human spirit.

    Its ceilings need plastering and some of the toilets leak appallingly, but its residents are far from desperate, though sometimes contentious and unforgiving. In these witty, poignant stories, Mistry charts the intersecting lives of Firozsha Baag, yielding a delightful collective portrait of a middle-class Indian community poised between the old ways and the new.

    In addition to nineteen superb stories of dark fantasy and horror, The Color of Evil includes a long, insightful introduction, which delineates the evolution of horror fiction, and, for each writer, notes which say something about the literature and the author's place in it.

    

    Brief dreamlike sketches deal with a safari in the suburbs, a mother struck by lightning, a cow wearing lingerie, and a visit from dead parents.

    Master storyteller, William Trevor's tender and moving story is about a mysterious emigrant couple who have come to Ireland during the Second World War, and the sensitive boy who comes under their gentle spell.

    Contents:- Introduction (December 1986) by James Tiptree, Jr.- Autofac (1955)- Service Call (1955)- Captive Market (1955)- The Mold of Yancy (1955)- The Minority Report (1956)- Recall Mechanism (1959)- The Unreconstructed M (1957)- Explorers We (1959)- War Game (1959)- If There Were No Benny Cemoli (1963)- Novelty Act (1964)- Waterspider (1964)- What the Dead Men Say (1964)- Orpheus with Clay Feet (1987)- The Days of Perky Pat (1963)- Stand-By (1963, variant of Top Stand-By Job)- What'll We Do with Ragland Park? (1963)- Oh, to Be a Blobel! (1964)- NotesFront cover illustration by Chris Moore

    Contents:Water's EdgeThe Real Bad FriendMan With a HobbyWelcome, StrangerTerror Over HollywoodLuck Is No LadyCrime in RhymeThe CureSock FinishBroomstick RideDaybrokeBetsy Blake Will Live ForeverTerror in Cut-Throat CoveWord of HonorThat Old Black MagicThe Deadliest ArtThe Screaming PeopleThe Hungry EyeShow BizThe Gloating PlaceThe Man Who Knew WomenThe Big KickNight SchoolSabbaticalThe Funnel of God'Til Death Do Us PartThe Show Must Go OnA Matter of LifePin-Up GirlThe Baldheaded MirageThe Masterpiece

    Sometimes when she looks at her gnarled brown fingers, they seem alien, wrong, out of place. She remembers having small, pale, delicate hands with painted fingernails. Memories lie upon memories, layers upon layers, like the sedimentary rocks of the desert buttes.Aaron Jacobs, the man Rachel calls father, was a neurologist who discovered how to capture the electrical pattern of a living brain’s thoughts and memories. When his daughter died unexpectedly, the grieving father imposed the electrical pattern of the girl’s brain on a young chimp, creating Rachel, a chimp he recognizes as his daughter.Rachel knows that she is a real girl – but when Aaron Jacobs dies, she must make her way in a world that treats her as nothing but an animal.

    This award-winning collection moves from the dark and technically astonishing title essay—on growing up within the confines of a huge Army arsenal in Ohio—to reflections on mountain hikes, limestone quarries, and fathers teaching their sons.

    The story was collected in his anthology Welcome To The Monkey House. The story centers on a character named Harry Nash, who is an extremely shy & characterless small-town man. However, whenever he takes a part in the local, amateur theater production he becomes the character to an overwhelming extent. Soon Helene Shaw, a recent addition to the town, falls in love with Nash--or with his character in the play.

    Each introduced by a short paragraph addressing the perennial question "Where do you get your ideas?".The Porcelain Man Come Again In The SpringThe Parrot and the ThiefThe Wreck of the Linda DearThe Blue StoneThe Leprechaun's StoryThe Contests at CowlickSong of the HorseThe Rise and Fall of Ben GizzardThe Dark PrincessCrazy in LoveThe Lost Kingdom of KarnicaOliver Hyde's Dishcloth ConcertThe Mouse GodInside My Feet: the story of a giant.

    The people are like you and me.But when you are alone there, you see strange sights: phantom hands, dogs that will not die, vampire moths, and the vengeful ghosts of children.This book contains your worst fears . . . or your darkest fantasies.Dark Feasts presents the best of Ramsey Campbell's collected and uncollected stories. It includes 'The Chimney' (winner of the World Fantasy Award, 1978), 'In the Bag' (winner of the British Fantasy Award for best short story, 1978), 'Mackintosh Willy' (joint winner of the World Fantasy Award, 1980) and 'The Companion', of which Stephen King wrote ' . . . maybe the best horror tale to be written in English in the last thirty years'.

    

    Editor Alan Ryan includes a wide range of talents here, from Bram Stoker to Robert Bloch to Tanith Lee.Contents:"Fragment of a Novel" by George Gordon, Lord Byron "The Vampyre" by John Polidori "Varney the Vampyre, or, the Feast of Blood" [excerpt] by James Malcolm Rymer "The Mysterious Stranger" by Anonymous"Carmilla" by Sheridan Le Fanu"Good Lady Ducayne" by Mary Elizabeth Braddon "Dracula's Guest" by Bram Stoker "Luella Miller" by Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman "For the Blood is The Life" by F. Marion Crawford "The Transfer" by Algernon Blackwood "The Room in the Tower" by E.F. Benson "An Episode of Cathedral History" by M.R. James "A Rendevous in Averoigne" by Clark Ashton Smith "Shambleau" by C.L. Moore "Revelations in Black" by Carl Jacobi "School for the Unspeakable" by Manly Wade Wellman "Drifting Snow" by August Derleth "Over the River" by P. Schuyler Miller "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" by Fritz Leiber "The Mindworm" by C.M. Kornbluth "Drink My Blood" by Richard Matheson "Place of Meeting" by Charles Beaumont "The Living Dead" by Robert Bloch "Pages from a Young Girl's Journal" by Robert Aikman "The Werewolf and the Vampire" by R. Chetwynd-Hayes "Love-Starved" by Charles L. Grant "Cabin 33" by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro "Unicorn Tapestry" by Suzy McKee Charnas "Following the Way" by Alan Ryan "The Sunshine Club" by Ramsey Campbell "The Men & Women of Rivendale" by Steve Rasnic Tem "Bite-Me-Not, or, Fleur de Feu" by Tanith Lee Also includes short appendices of vampire novels and movies.

    of Missouri Press, this is a collection of 15 short stories on the black urban experience, by one of the premier writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

    The individual copyright date for each story ranges from 1925 to 1987."The Queen of Sheba’s Nightmare" by Bertrand Russell "The Brazen Locked Room" by Isaac Asimov "Sir Dominick’s Bargain" by Sheridan LeFanu "Tapestry" by C. H. Sherman "Seven Come Heaven?" by Diane Wnorowska "The Temptation of Harringay" by H.G. Wells "The Tenancy of Mr. Eex" by Paula Volsky "The Demon Lover" by Anonymous "The Imitation Demon" by Robert Kuttner "Just a Little Thing" by Joan Vander Putten "The Devil’s Wager" by William Makepeace Thackeray "Rachaela" by Poul Anderson"Hell-Bent" by Ford McCormack "Damned Funny" by Marvin Kaye "Me, Tree" by Morgan Llywelyn "Enoch" by Robert Bloch "Catmagic" by M. Lucie Chin "The Hound" by H. P. Lovecraft "The Princess and Her Future" by Tanith Lee "Novel of the White Powder" by Arthur Machen "The Celery Stalk in the Cellar" by Saralee Terry "The Vampire Cat of Nabeshima" by Bernhardt J. Hurwood "Caliban’s Revenge" by Darrell Schweitzer "The Trilling Princess" by Jessica Amanda Salmonson "The Graveyard Rats" by Henry Kuttner "Daddy" by Earl Godwin "The Well-Meaning Mayor" by Leslie Charteris "A Madman" by Maurice Level "The Devilish Rat" by Edward Page Mitchell "Rokuro-Kubi" by Lafcadio Hearn "The Burial of the Rats" by Bram Stoker "High-Tech Insolence" by Russell Baker "Ulalume" by Edgar Allan Poe "Boogie Man" by Tappan King "The Maze and the Monster" by Edward D. Hoch "Father Meuron’s Tale" by Robert Hugh Benson "The Philosophy of Sebastian Trump or, the Art of Outrage" by William E. Kotzwinkle and Robert Shiarella "Don Juan’s Final Night" by Edmond Rostand "A Friend in Need" by W. Somerset Maugham "Armageddon" by Fredric Brown"Secret Worship" by Algernon Blackwood"Devil in the Drain" by Daniel Manus Pinkwater"I Am Returning" by Ray Russell"The Shadow Watchers" by Dick Baldwin"The Demons" by Robert Sheckley"A Ballad of Hell" by John Davidson"The Generous Gambler" by Charles Pierre Baudelaire"A Midnight Visitor" by John Kendrick Bangs"Markheim" by Robert Louis Stevenson"Lost Soul" by Jay Sheckley"The Last Demon" by Isaac Bashevis Singer"Influencing The Hell Out Of Time And Teresa Golowitz" by Parke Godwin

    Whether critiquing the politics of socialist realist art in “We Often Think of Lenin at the Clothespin Factory,” revisiting biblical tales in “Jonah,” or depicting an ancient Greek philosopher in “The Meadow,” Davenport demonstrates his talent for blending high-minded ideas with literary wit.   Davenport’s writing is at its most confident when the author weaves between time periods and ideas, such as when he revisits Descartes through the eyes of an ancient Greek skeptic in “Pyrrhon of Elis,” wherein a doubting philosopher declares, “I may not be, I think”; or in “The Bicycle Rider,” in which a doctoral student studying imagery of demons in the Gospels is visited by angelic spirits and attempts to save the life of a nihilistic prostitute. In these stories and the others collected in The Jules Verne Steam Balloon, Davenport’s signature approach to culture and humanity is on bold display.

    Passionate, provocative, flamboyant, controversial, he was lionized by Maxim Gorki and hailed alongside Leo Tolstoy. Master of the dramatic, Andreyev's dark, horrifying, sensual visions prefigured absurdist theater and existentialist fiction. Almost a century later, they still strike to the heart.In this splendid volume, Andreyev's granddaughter, Olga Andreyev Carlisle--an accomplished writer herself--offers vibrant new translations of eight of his best stories. Here is Andreyev's famous "The Seven Who Were Hanged." Here, too, are the richly crafted tales "Abyss" and "Darkness." "The Red Laugh," his powerful delineation of apocalypse, is all the more remarkable for its prophecy of the threat of nuclear war. When first conceived, these stories rocked the political and literary camps of all Europe. Reading them today is haunting: the themes have grown in significance.Accompanied by Olga Carlisle's intimate introduction and complemented with Andreyev's own extraordinarily beautiful self portrait photography, this is truly a work of visions.

    Read together they make up an elaborate and unforgettable pattern of dreams and reality.'Landscape with Landscape is a work of extraordinary power and vision, one which will surely be an outstanding novel of the decade.' Helen Daniel, Age

    A series of linked stories about a girl growing up in a small town.

    Not since the Communist revolution had readers found as stark and compelling a view of their world as The General Retires offered them. Written in spare, succinct prose, it captures the despair of an old general who, after many years of devoted service to his country, is alienated by the emptiness of the society into which he retires and ultimately flees. Nguyen probes similar themes in the stories that follow, from Cun, the moving tale of a crippled beggar, to A Drop of Blood, a dark history of a family set against decades of war and revolution. With eight powerfully written stories—all available in English for the first time—and including an introduction by Greg Lockhart that traces the varied traditions of Vietnamese literature to the present day, this collection offers unprecedented insight into a society trying to overcome and understand years of pain and civil strife.

    Presents selections by nine leading women writers from Japan, spanning twenty-five years of change and emerging feminist consciousness in that country.

    But it was neither the first nor the last. This anthology presents 23 rare vampire stories written between 1867 & 1940. B&W illus.

    Robert Olmstead's stories transport readers into the raw, uncompromising landscape of rural New Hampshire, where simple survival is always complicated by desperate acts or murderous accidents: boys drowning a bagful of puppies, men buried alive under a mountain of corn silage, suicide on a foreclosed farm.

    Walker plays with our foreknowledge of these ancient tales—her surpassingly rich description and fantastic, eccentric plottings create some of the most original stories of our time.

    Updated version of Willis' chapbook (pre-Dogs in Lingerie) includes short prose in addition to the poems published in previous editions.

    Richard Bausch "has created an enduring work of art".--Washington Post.

    Whether describing a town of one-legged miners, a bizarre brother/sister relationship, or salty seamen telling their favourite real-life horror stories, McCormack disturbs and enchants.

    When the old man searches for it to apologize, he is given great treasure. But when his wife decides that she too wants presents, she gets just what she deserves. Full-color illustrations.

    

    Note: "Strange Monsters of the Recent Past" contains the contents of "All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past" and adds an introduction and the novella "A Dozen Tough Jobs".

    Included are such writers as E.L. Doctorow, Frederick Forsyth, William Faulkner, Nadine Gordimer, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, and many others whose obsessed, diabolic characters commit mischief, mayhem, and murder against real - or imagined - injustices.CONTENTS"The Squaw" by Bram Stoker"There Are No Snakes In Ireland" by Frederick Forsyth"The Great Electrical Revolution" by Ken Mitchell"Letter From His Father" by Nadine Gordimer"The Isle of Voices" by Robert Louis Stevenson"A Bear Hunt" by William Faulkner"Sredni Vashtar" by H.H. Munro"The Foundling" by Heinrich von Kleist"Uncle Facundo" by Isidoro Blaisten"Permission For Death Is Granted" by Edmundo Valades"Emma Zunz" by Jorge Luis Borges"Miss Esperson" by August Derleth"Hop Frog" by Edgar Allan Poe"A Women's Vengeance" by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly"The Pirate of the Round Pond" by Lord Dunsany"Willi" by E.L. Doctorow"Torridge" by William Trevor"Dayspring Mishandled" by Rudyard Kipling

    

    

    Short anecdotes for oral or written retelling.

    Thirteen stories by the first woman in years to rank among Russia's most important writers celebrate courage and the will to endure among the people who live on the periphery of society but who dream with a redeeming passion.

    

    The author is a Merchant Navy-trained master mariner. He was the first person to sail non stop round the world singlehanded in "Suhaili" (1968-9), winning "Sunday Times" Golden Globe. He has also won the Round Britain transatlantic sailing record, New York to Lizard in 10 days.

    

    

    P. Somtow [as by Somtow Sucharitkul ]155 • Into Gold • (1986) • novelette by Tanith Lee181 • Sea Change • (1986) • shortstory by Scott Baker198 • Covenant of Souls • (1986) • novelette by Michael Swanwick229 • The Pure Product • (1986) • novelette by John Kessel247 • Grave Angels • (1986) • novelette by Richard Kearns274 • Tangents • (1986) • shortstory by Greg Bear289 • The Beautiful and the Sublime • (1986) • novelette by Bruce Sterling314 • Tattoos • (1986) • novelette by Jack Dann333 • Night Moves • (1986) • novelette by Tim Powers352 • The Prisoner of Chillon • (1986) • novelette by James Patrick Kelly384 • Chance • (1986) • novelette by Connie Willis411 • And so to Bed • (1986) • shortstory by Harry Turtledove425 • Fair Game • (1986) • novelette by Howard Waldrop439 • Video Star • (1986) • novelette by Walter Jon Williams469 • Sallie C. • (1986) • shortstory by Neal Barrett, Jr.490 • Jeff Beck • (1986) • shortstory by Lewis Shiner499 • Surviving • (1986) • novelette by Judith Moffett529 • Down and Out in the Year 2000 • (1986) • shortstory by Kim Stanley Robinson544 • Snake-Eyes • (1986) • shortstory by Tom Maddox562 • The Gate of Ghosts • (1986) • novelette by Karen Joy Fowler581 • The Winter Market • (1985) • novelette by William Gibson599 • Honorable Mentions: 1986 • essay by Gardner Dozois

    Dick; The Long Watch by Robert A. Heinlein; The Miracle Workers by Jack Vance; Committee of the Whole by Frank Herbert; Superiority by Arthur C. Clarke; Single Combat by Joe Green; Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card; Hero by Joe W. Haldeman; The Survivor by Walter F. Moudy; The Last Objective by Paul Carter; What Do You Want Me to Do to Prove Im Human Stop by Fred Saberhagen; Hangman by David Drake; The Night of the Trolls by Keith Laumer; The Nuptial Flight of Warbirds by Algis Budrys; Mirror Mirror by Alan E. Nourse; Memorial by Theodore Sturgeon; Shark by Edward Bryant; Not a Prison Make by Joseph P. Martino; Hawk Among the Sparrows by Dean McLaughlin; No War or Battle's Sound by Harry Harrison; In the Name of the Father by Edward P. Hughes; On the Shadow of a Phosphor Screen by William F. Wu; The Specter General by Theodore R. Cogswell; Fixed Price War by Charles Sheffield; and The Machine that Won the War by Isaac Asimov.

    Reprints/Collects:Journey Into Unknown Worlds (1950) #7Marvel Tales (1949) #102Mystic (1951) #4Weird Tales Of The Future (1952) #3

    Through her stories, Becky Birtha creates a sense of continuity by weaving strength, passion, pain, and ingenuity into each character. Ms. Moses makes clear that the government doesn't really help the poor: "Ain't no reason for you to be gaping at me. I pay my taxes, just like everyone else." Sahara "never wanted a man...Sometimes it seems she has spent her whole life finding ways to get close to other people's children." Camped out under the stars, she thinks back over those children and opens her heart to yet another one. Maurie questions her taste in women:"White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The Bourgeoisie. What the hell was she doing in love with someone...like that?" And Johnnieruth, who can ride her bike as fast as the boys and resents her mother trying to rein her in because she's a girl, watches in a park as two women greet each other with a kiss on the lips. For the first time, she sees herself mirrored.

    Turnbuckle may or may not know whodunit but he’s always confident that there will soon be another murder.

    Powerful, well-crafted tales, The cruel realities, dream fantasies, and bitter escapes of Black women.

    Ignatius of Antioch, St. Prisca, Pope St. Stephen, St. Vitus and companions, St. Marinus, St. Martina, etc. Tells the heroism of the martyrs, the cruelty of the Roman mob, and the incredible miracles God worked on behalf of His saints. Exciting and vivid even today. Impr. 466 pgs, PB

    A writer whose special talent is the complex geometry between men and women, gives the reader four stories, from a five-year-old girl troubled by the birth of a sibling to a teenaged girl accepting a gift from her married boyfriend.

    Le Guin explores the magic of animals. Her animal characters -- from the irreverent trickster Coyote to the wise matriarch Grandmother Spider -- seem like people to us, just as they do to the little girl who finds herself living among them. We learn, with the girl, that these "Old People" once lived freely on the earth but now must maintain their lifeways carefully alongside the "New People" -- humans.Susan Seddon Boulet chose this tale to illustrate, completing twenty works for its publication. They are extremely effective in bringing Le Guin's characters to life, imbuing them, of course, with Boulet's singular vision of the otherworldly realms occupied by animal spirits. This book is a must for any serious collector of Boulet art.

    

    

    A twist of fate. An error in judgment. Reality or just . . . imagination? Here are 18 stories designed to disturb, a collection of the best of the cult-classic television series by masters of this macabre art.

    

    Her stories are a window into another time, offering a special view of the thousands of years of her ancestors' culture.

    It was nominated for the Hugo Award for best novella.From the Author's Commentary: I had wanted to write a “parallel Pennsylvania” story ever since reading H. Beam Piper’s “Gunpowder God” in high school. Growing up in Easton, Pennsylvania, the historical themes were all Revolutionary, so it was only natural that when I thought alternate history, I thought of that era. Sometimes we forget how revolutionary our Revolution was. How many other revolutions have slipped from republicanism to bonapartism and wound up with a Napoleon, a Lenin, or a Khomeini? After all, when you overthrow a System, those who must build something new afterward have only ever known the System. The acorn then does not fall far from the tree.Alone among constitutional states, ours does not grant rights to the people. The people told the government what it was allowed to do? Read the Bill of Rights, especially Amendments Nine and Ten. People possess rights under the Natural Law, and the government is forbidden to interfere with them. If you think that that is only a semantic quibble, think again: The “right to privacy” is mentioned nowhere in the Constitution.But what if this Union had never happened and North America had filled with squabbling petty states—“as many Nations in North America as there are in Europe,” as John Adams once feared? Prior to telegraph and radio, new ideas spread with traveling people, such as merchant-traders. Tariff and custom barriers would dampen trade and commerce, and with it, the spread of new ideas. Until the Constitution eliminated tariff barriers among the states, little England was the largest free trade zone in the world. So I imagined a pre-World War I milieu, full of what Winston Churchill called “pumpernickel principalities.”Speaking of pumpernickel, could Pennsylvania really have become German-speaking? Wer kennt? In Revolutionary times fully half the colony spoke German and even today it hosts Pennsylvaanisch, a Swabian dialect. Towns in my heimatland, the Lehigh Valley, bear names like Schenkweilersville, and hills are called Swoveberg and Hexenkopf. In June 1858, 14% of the students in the Northampton County schools spoke English only while 50% spoke German only. (The rest were bilingual, deutsch und englisch.) My Irish grandfather bore the unlikely sobriquet of “Dutch” Flynn because of his accent. (His mother was an Ochenfuss.) In the 1930s, German was still a required course at my mother’s elementary school, and our parish church had native-born German pastors until after I went off to college. I was raised on “German Hill,” where you could toss a rock and hit five Deutschers before you hit an Italian or a Gael. So, decouple the Commonwealth from the other English-speaking colonies, throw in some anti-Yankee enmity, and … what do you think could have happened?But all this is background. The story is not about an alternate Pennsylvania. That is only the setting. My one halfway original notion was that the departure and arrival of a cross-time traveler were themselves events which spawned new parallel worlds, and which therefore changed the “para-time” distances between them. One little slip in the quantum foam and—hey, presto!—you would be lost amid an infinity of worlds. The story was born of the single image of a man unable to find his way home and slowly losing hope because of it.Like the blind men touching the elephant, Vonderberge and the Hexmajor, General Schneider and Rudi Knecht, each found something different in Kelly. Dour, dutiful Rudi remains one of my favorite characters.

    Fiction. This anthology of fiction and poetry is a good introductory survey of Hawai'i literature. Selected from issues of the first eight years of BAMBOO RIDGE, The Hawaii Writers' Quarterly, it features the work of more than 50 writers and includes an introduction by the editors as well as an essay on Asian american literature in Hawai'i by Stephen Sumida.

    

    The topics range from politics to nature, from religion to education; the tone from lighthearted humor to mordant wit, to spiritual meditation. For all these contrasts, however, the essays share many of the underlying themes of the mature Lawrence: Be thyself could be the volume's motto. As far as possible, this edition restores what Lawrence wrote before typists, editors, and compositors made the extensive alterations that have been followed in all previous editions of the texts--on occasion entire passages removed by mistake or for reasons of censorship have been recovered. The introduction describes the genesis, textual history, and reception of the essays; notes offer help with allusions and other difficult points. Several incomplete and unpublished essays are reproduced in an appendix.

    Silva • 5 • I Scream Man • (1985) • shortstory by Robert R. McCammon • 10 • The Well That Whispered Darkness • (1984) • shortstory by Ardath Mayhar • 14 • Site B • (1985) • shortstory by Colleen Drippé • 19 • The Visitor • (1983) • shortstory by Paul F. Olson • 27 • The Gap Nearly Closed Today • (1985) • shortstory by J. N. Williamson • 30 • On a Dark October • (1984) • shortstory by Joe R. Lansdale • 33 • Passing Phase • (1985) • shortstory by Ramsey Campbell • 40 • Making Friends • (1985) • shortfiction by Gary L. Raisor • 42 • Witch Woman • (1985) • shortstory by Bentley Little • 49 • Optional Music for Voice and Piano • (1986) • shortstory by Poppy Z. Brite • 56 • A Chinese Lullaby • (1986) • shortstory by Kiel Stuart • 59 • Immortality and Mrs. Mundy • (1984) • shortstory by Janet Fox • 66 • I'll Show You Mine • (1985) • shortfiction by Paul Dale Anderson • 68 • Wolf Is Waiting • (1983) • shortstory by Mark A. Parks • 71 • Piano Moon • (1985) • shortstory by Steve Rasnic Tem • 75 • Oasis • (1984) • shortstory by Brian Hodge • 81 • Thundersylum • (1985) • shortstory by Elizabeth Massie • 86 • Feeder • (1985) • shortstory by Mark-Christopher Mitera • 93 • Death Train • (1986) • shortstory by G. Wayne Miller • 97 • Reaping • (1986) • shortstory by Peter Heyrman • 103 • The Magazine Lady • (1985) • shortstory by A. R. Morlan • 107 • They Came from the Suburbs • (1986) • shortstory by Paul F. Olson • 115 • Appendix (Best of the Horror Show, An Adventure in Terror) • (1987) • essay by uncredited

    

    Caliban, it is the chill voice of the narrator that quickens the pulse. In "Third Time Lucky," Lily, whose first two husbands were killed in Vietnam, listlessly rejects all suitors, lavishing her energy on her passion for ancient Egypt. When Don persists in courting her and promises a honeymoon there, she masters her distaste and marries him, presaging another tragedy. The logic of murder is relentlessly upheld in "People to People," as one man kills his four closest friends in order to escape detection for a murder the five had witlessly committed years before. Differing in mood yet maintaining the same distance, the title story deals in live ghosts, the aged, rich great-aunts of Carla, who listens helplessly to tales of their titled cousins, plunderers of the family treasure, and of "pearlkillers," people whose deadly skin causes pearls to shrivel and turn brown. Finally, "Captain Hendrik's Story" unites all the forces doomed journey, women-laced household, deception and murder in Anders Hendrik's recounting of what happened during a voyage to the New World and the record as corrected by a man who was part of the crew. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of these chilling tales is the doom that pervades them from the first sentence.

    

    Set in Vietnam, in the South China Sea, and in the cities and mountains of Japan, the stories introduce a variety of fascinating, obsessive characters strangely different yet immediately familiar. Kaiko is a sensual writer, capturing the smell, taste, sound, and touch of all he describes.

    These wry and sassy tales illustrate the vulnerable heartbeat beneath the brash style of the eighties. Behind their professional self-assurance, Elinor Lipman's characters question and fear, search and yearn for that most elusive of commodities--love.