Macabre, unsettling and deliciously enjoyable, these stories make the perfect bedtime read – but be warned, once you've started reading you won't be able to stop . .

    Here is a collection of his short fiction, with dozens of tales spanning his career and ranging from the moving to the macabre, the humorous to the haunting. From the penetrating 'Memories of Youghal' to the bittersweet 'Bodily Secrets' and the elegiac 'Two More Gallants', here are masterpieces of insight, depth, drama and humanity, acutely rendered by a modern master.'A textbook for anyone who ever wanted to write a story, and a treasure for anyone who loves to read them' Madison Smartt Bell'Extraordinary... Mr. Trevor's sheer intensity of entry into the lives of his people...proceeds to uncover new layers of yearning and pain, new angles of vision and credible thought' The New York Times Book Review

    These are among the people that Joseph Mitchell immortalized in his reportage for The New Yorker and in four books—McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr. Flood, The Bottom of the Harbor, and Joe Gould's Secret—that are still renowned for their precise, respectful observation, their graveyard humor, and their offhand perfection of style.These masterpieces (along with several previously uncollected stories) are available in one volume, which presents an indelible collective portrait of an unsuspected New York and its odder citizens—as depicted by one of the great writers of this or any other time.

    . . . His sentences are exquisitely constructed, suggesting the cyclic rhythms of his agrarian world."--New York Times Book Review.

    In their intensity of perception, their neon-lit evocation of a strange world brought uncomfortably close to our own, the stories in Jesus' Son offer a disturbing yet eerily beautiful portrayal of American loneliness and hope.Contains:Car Crash While HitchhikingTwo MenOut on BailDundunWorkEmergencyDirty WeddingThe Other ManHappy HourSteady Hands at Seattle GeneralBeverly Home'

    the short, timeless classics of Jack London, Rudyard Kipling, Ray Bradbury, and others are celebrated in these handsome volumes.

    This collection contains lyrical tales, bloody tales and hilariously funny and ripely bawdy stories from countries all around the world - from the Arctic to Asia - and no dippy princesses or soppy fairies. Instead, we have pretty maids and old crones; crafty women and bad girls; enchantresses and midwives; rascal aunts and odd sisters.

    Read by the author.

    As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, time is circular, so that people are fated to repeat triumphs and failures over and over. In another, there is a place where time stands still, visited by lovers and parents clinging to their children. In another, time is a nightingale, sometimes trapped by a bell jar.Now translated into thirty languages, Einstein’s Dreams has inspired playwrights, dancers, musicians, and painters all over the world. In poetic vignettes, it explores the connections between science and art, the process of creativity, and ultimately the fragility of human existence.

    Named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, nominated for the 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award, and given the Lambda Award.

    Tolkien, it was also reprinted in My Favorite Fantasy Story, in The Oxford Book of Fantasy Stories, in The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy and was finally released as free online fiction.

    In Vienna, a woman parlays her gift for seeing the future into a fortunetelling position with a wealthy family. In Geneva, an ambulance driver and his wife take in the lonely, apparently dying ex-President of a Caribbean country, only to discover that his political ambition is very much intact. In these twelve masterful short stories about the lives of Latin Americans in Europe, García Márquez conveys the peculiar amalgam of melancholy, tenacity, sorrow, and aspiration that is the émigré experience.

    The readings are recorded live at Peter Norton Symphony Space in New York City. The Selected Shorts radio series is a co-production of Symphony Space and WNYC, New York Public Radio, and is heard on public radio stations nationwide."

    “But a real cowboy is hard to find these days, even in the West.”In Pam Houston’s “bright, edgy, and ruefully self- aware” (Boston Globe) collection of stories, we meet smart women who are looking for the love of a good man, and men who are wild and hard to pin down. Our heroines are part daredevil, part philosopher, all acute observers of the nuances of modern romance.“[Houston] takes women into grand spaces, both emotional and physical, and isolates them until there’s nothing left to do but sit down and take a hard look at one’s soul” (Los Angeles Times). Cowboys Are My Weakness is an “exhilarating” (Washington Post) and realistic look at men and women— together and apart.

    Each story contains the common elements of the gothic tale--a warped sense of time, a claustrophobic setting, a link to archaic modes of thought, and the impression of a descent into disintegration. Yet taken together, they reveal the progression of the genre from stories of feudal villains amid crumbling ruins to a greater level of sophistication in which writers brought the gothic tale out of its medieval setting, and placed it in the contemporary world. Bringing together the work of such writers as Eudora Welty, Thomas Hardy, Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, Arthur Conan Doyle, Joyce Carol Oates, and Jorge Luis Borges, The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales presents a wide array of the sinister and unsettling for all lovers of ghost stories, fantasy, and horror.

    It was a "big country needing big men and women to live in it". This volume presents eight of L'Amour's ever-popular short stories - history that lives forever.©2014 Louis L'Amour and Jon Tuska (P)2014 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

    Jones to national attention. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and numerous other honors for his novel The Known World, Jones made his literary debut with these powerful tales of ordinary people who live in the shadows in this metropolis of great monuments and rich history. Lost in the City received the Pen/Hemingway Award for Best First Fiction and was a National Book Award Finalist. This beautiful 20th Anniversary Edition features a new introduction by the author, and is a wonderful companion piece to Jones’s masterful novel and his second acclaimed collection of stories, All Aunt Hagar’s Children.

    With a particular focus on obsession and the abnormal, We So Seldom Look On Love explores life at its quirky extremes, pushing past limits of convention into lives that are fantastic and heartbreakingly real. Whether writing about the dilemma of a two-headed man who attempts to expunge his own pain, the shock of a woman who discovers she has married a transsexual, the erotic delusions of a woman who repeatedly exposes her body to an unknown voyeur, or the bizarre predilections of a female necrophile (a story made into the acclaimed motion picture, "Kissed"), Gowdy convinces us with incisive detail, only to disarm us with black humor.

    Why, she asks, when writers such as Samuel Clemens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Saul Bellow, and John Updike have among them written hundreds of short stories, do anthologists settle on the same two or three titles by each author again and again? Isn't the implicit promise of an anthology that it will, or aspires to, present something different, unexpected? In The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, Joyce Carol Oates offers a sweeping survey of American short fiction, in a collection of fifty-six tales that combines classic works with many different, unexpected gems, and that invites readers to explore a wealth of important pieces by women and minority writers. Some selections simply can't be improved on, Oates admits, and she happily includes such time-honored works as Irving's Rip Van Winkle, Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart, and Hemingway's A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. But alongside these classics, Oates introduces such little-known stories as Mark Twain's Cannibalism in the Cars, a story that reveals a darker side to his humor (That morning we had Morgan of Alabama for breakfast. He was one of the finest men I ever sat down to...a perfect gentleman, and singularly juicy). From Melville come the juxtaposed tales The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids, of which Oates says, Only Melville could have fashioned out of 'real' events...such harrowing and dreamlike allegorical fiction. From Flannery O'Connor we find A Late Encounter With the Enemy, and from John Cheever, The Death of Justina, one of Cheever's own favorites, though rarely anthologized. The reader will also delight in the range of authors found here, from Charles W. Chesnutt, Jean Toomer, and Sarah Orne Jewett, to William Carlos Williams, Kate Chopin, and Zora Neale Hurston. Contemporary artists abound, including Bharati Mukherjee and Amy Tan, Alice Adams and David Leavitt, Bobbie Ann Mason and Tim O'Brien, Louise Erdrich and John Edgar Wideman. Oates provides fascinating introductions to each writer, blending biographical information with her own trenchant observations about their work, plus a long introductory essay, in which she offers the fruit of years of reflection on a genre in which she herself is a master. This then is a book of surprises, a fascinating portrait of American short fiction, as filtered through the sensibility of a major modern writer.

    Beaumont's talents also helped bring to life such cinematic terrors as 'The Premature Burial' and 'The Masque of the Red Death'. As a writer of short stories, his contribution to the landscape of our nightmares is unequalled. The Howling Man is the definitive collection of Beaumont's most haunting work. Here are the classics - "The Hunger," "Miss Gentilbelle," "Free Dirt," along with five never-before-published stories. The Howling Man features introductions by Robert Bloch, Dennis Etchison, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Roger Corman, Richard Matheson and many other masters of horror and dark fantasy. They offer illuminating tributes to Beaumont - as a friend, a colleague, and a man whose dark magic left an indelible stamp on modern horror fiction, and on their own imaginations.

    An American cult figure, Bowles has fascinated such disparate talents as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, and Jay McInerney.

    On struggling farms, in Dublin's rain-drenched streets, or in parched exile in Franco's Spain, McGahern's characters wage a confused but touching war against the facts of life.

    Semezdin Mehmedinovic remained a citizen of Sarajevo throughout the Serbian nationalists' siege and was active throughout the war in the city's resistance movement, as one of the editor's of the magazine Phantom of Liberty. Semezdin Mehmedinovic says that "writing is, finally, quite a personal thing that doesn't make much sense unless you are practicing for the last word." For those Bosnians emerging from the siege or still in exile, these "last words" remain intimate possessions, one of the last bastions left against the commodification of tragedy.

    . .It's got its fingers on the fear-loving pulse of the nation like no magazine around. Already winner of the American Horror Award and nominated for a Hugo, Midnight Graffiti has re-created the genre in just the first few years of its existence -- defying taboos, exalting the subnormal, mining our richest, most sinister fantasies, bringing you the best new works by the most acclaimed masters and hottest writers on the dark side of fiction.STEPHEN KING brings a plague of terror down from the peaceful skies of Maine . . . you may want to close your shutters. DAVID J. SCHOW cruises the L.A. streets with a martyred punk whose distinctive tag burns through the void of the voids. JOE R. LANSDALE finds a plastic, inflatable friend you can take almost . . . anywhere. NANCY COLLINS demystifies the messiah reborn, an avenging angel of the suburbs with a strange and savage appetite. And HARLAN ELLISON, DAN SIMMONS, NEIL GAIMAN, REX MILLER, STEVEN R. BOYETT, K.W. JETER, and JOHN SHIRLEY all bring you original tales from the farthest corners of the imagination that until now could only be found in the horror-haunted pages of . . . MIDNIGHT GRAFFITI.

    The tales are organized chronologically to give readers a sense of how the genre's range, vitality, and literary quality have evolved over time. Each tale offers a unique vision, an altered reality, a universe all its own. Readers can sample H.G. Well's 1903 story The Land Ironclads (which predicted the stalemate of trench warfare and the invention of the tank), Jack Williamson's The Metal Man, a rarely anthologized gem written in 1928, Clifford D. Simak's 1940s classic, Desertion, set on "the howling maelstrom that was Jupiter", Frederik Pohl's 1955 The Tunnel Under the World (with its gripping first line, "On the morning of June 15th, Guy Burckhardt woke up screaming out of a dream"), right up to the current crop of writers, such as cyberpunk's Bruce Sterling and William Gibson, whose 1982 story Burning Chrome foreshadows the idea of virtual reality, and David Brin's Piecework, written in 1990. In addition, Shippey provides an informative introduction, examining the history of the genre, its major themes, and its literary techniques.

    Gods disguised as beggars and beasts, animals enacting Machiavellian intrigues, sagacious jesters and magical storytellers, wise counselors and foolish kings--all inhabit a fabular world, yet one that is also firmly grounded in everyday life. Here is an indispensable guide to India's ageless folklore tradition.With black-and-white illustrations throughoutPart of the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library

    These stories are set in a nameless community too small to be called a town, a place where wanting an education is a mark of ungodly arrogance and dowsing for water a legitimate occupation. Offutt has received a James Michener Grant and a Kentucky Arts Council Award.

    While he has garnered acclaim as a novelist, Bellow's shorter works prove equally strong. Primarily set in a sepia-toned Chicago, characters (mostly men) deal with family issues, desires, memories, and failings--often arriving at humorous if not comic situations. In the process, these quirky and wholly real characters examine human nature. The narrative is straightforward, with deftly handled shifts in time, and the prose is concise, sometimes pithy, with equal parts humor and grace. In "Looking for Mr. Green," Bellow describes a relief worker sized up by tenants: "They must have realized that he was not a college boy employed afternoons by a bill collector, trying foxily to pass for a relief clerk, recognized that he was an older man who knew himself what need was, who had more than an average seasoning in hardship. It was evident enough if you looked at the marks under his eyes and at the sides of his mouth." This collection should appeal both to those familiar with Bellow's work and to those seeking an introduction. --Michael Ferch

    Now Grove Press is proud to reissue this contemporary classic by one of America's most important living writers, in a new edition of 'A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain' that includes two subsequently published stories -- "Salem" and "Missing" -- that brilliantly complete the collection's narrative journey, returning to the jungles of Vietnam.

    Not many survived, but some of those who did emerged twenty years later, to a world where mutant whales heaved themselves across the blackened, dry seabed of the Pacific, and the roses… oh God, the roses.“Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back” is a chilling post-nuclear short story by Joe R. Lansdale.

    Carlson uncannily captures the complexity of his characters' inner lives.

    In all of fantasy's far-flung realms, women of power - whether trained in the ways of the warrior or in the deepest secrets of sorcery - rally against those who seek to conquer and enslave.Join today's most visionary fantasy writers - Mercedes Lackey, Diana Paxson, Josepha Sherman, and their comrades in words - as they lead you on quests for:shape-changers who prowl the night in search of unsuspecting prey;a sword whose cost could prove far greater than gold;a dragon whose magic may seem more of a curse than a blessing - and countless other adventures where one miscast spell or off-target arrow could see the forces of darkness invading all the magic's lands...Introduction (Sword And Sorceress IX) • (1992) • essay by Marion Zimmer BradleySlave to the Sword • (1992) • short story by Tanya BeatyShadows Do Not Bleed • (1992) • short story by Bruce D. ArthursBeastly! • (1992) • short story by Lynne Armstrong-JonesPiper • (1992) • short story by Susan Hanniford CrowleyStopthrust • (1992) • short story by Diana L. PaxsonElynne Dragonchild • (1992) • short story by Phil BrucatoFreeing Souls • (1992) • short story by Lisa DeasonBlademistress • (1992) • short story by Jessie D. EakerSorcerers' Gate • (1992) • short story by Patricia Duffy NovakThe Birthday Gift • (1992) • short story by Elisabeth WatersTangled Webs • (1992) • short story by Laura J. UnderwoodWinterwood • (1992) • short story by Stephanie D. ShaverRed Wings • (1992) • short story by Josepha ShermanAbove the Ground • (1992) • short story by Eric HainesOn a Night Like Any Other • (1992) • short story by Mark TompkinsA Woman's Weapon • (1992) • short story by Mercedes LackeyBehind the Waterfall • (1992) • short story by Mary FreyHoard • (1992) • short story by Steven PiziksQueen of the Dead • (1992) • short story by Dorothy J. HeydtThe Flower that Does Not Wither • (1992) • short story by Dave SmedsTo Have and to Hold • (1992) • short story by Linda GordonThe Catalyst • (1992) • short story by Lee Ann MartinsBreaking Walls • (1992) • short story by Leslie Ann MillerThe Enchanted Frog • (1992) • novelette by Cynthia L. WardThe Price of the Gods • (1992) • short story by Roxana PiersonTiger's Eye • (1992) • short fiction by Syne Mitchell

    This is truly Canada—a vast stretch of land and a bounty of small towns. In Welcome Home, Stuart McLean takes us on a heartwarming journey from one coast to the other to visit these small yet vibrant places and meet their remarkable citizens.We visit Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, an old-fashioned "cow town"; Dresden, Ontario, once a destination for escaped slaves using the Underground Railroad; St-Jean-de-Matha, Quebec, where the worldÕs strongest man is buried; and Foxwarren, Manitoba, a quintessential hockey town. We wander along Main Street in Sackville, New Brunswick; explore Nakusp, B.C., which may have been the home of an illegitimate child of royalty; and watch the icebergs float by in Ferryland, Newfoundland.Each town Stuart visits tells us a little about Canada's rich and often forgotten history and a lot about who Canadians are today. With a storyteller's eye for detail and an effervescent sense of humour, Stuart McLean introduces us to seven truly wonderful places and dozens of extraordinary people.

    A small-town girl flees her domineering mother and falls into an obsessive love affair with an older woman in New York City. A sixteen-year-old envies her cousin's sex appeal while avoiding the attentions of her middle-aged uncle. A brother tries to protect his sister by convincing her never to leave their apartment, but his control is threatened when he takes a new job. And there is more, in this stunning debut by a masterful new voice in American literature.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    . . touched by that spark of lunacy which makes it worth turning the page to see what happens next.

    S. Merwin vividly conveys his intimate knowledge of the people and the countryside in this ancient part of France (home of the Lascaux caves). In three narratives of small-town life, Merwin shows with matchless poetic and narrative power how the past is still palpably present.On its original publication in 1992 Jane Kramer wrote, "These stories are a gift from one of the great poets of the English language, a chronicle of the heartstopping seasons of one small corner of La France Profonde and of its stubborn and illusive characters. Merwin’s French peasants are a force of nature, like the blackberry brambles that used to choke his garden, and he cultivates them both with that attentive, exacting, and relentlessly patient genius that great poets and great gardeners share. This is, simply, the most beautiful writing about France I know."

    Nothing in an Engstrom story is what it first appears to be, yet at its core each tale has the ring of truth.Nightmare Flower is Engstrom's first major collection, containing eighteen short works plus a novelette, "Fogarty & Fogarty," and a short novel, "Project Stone." The stories span a wide range of styles and genres, varying from the almost fable-like simplicity of "The Pan Man" to the spine-chilling horror of "The Jeweler's Thumb is Turning Green."Love - what people will do to get it and keep it, the devastations of the loss or betrayal of love, the transformation of love to obsession - Love in all its different forms - lies at the heart of several of Engstrom's eloquent and quietly unnerving tales, including "Fogarty & Fogarty" and the collection's title story, "Nightmare Flower."In "Rivering" a woman confronts grief; in "Genetically Predisposed" a man, a woman, and a snake form a new version of the old, eternal triangle. "Quiet Meditation" reveals the little lies that make life bearable; "The Old Woman Upstairs" studies the complex relationship between mother and daughter.Each of these stories is a sideways glimpse of the world, a slant on life both moving and thought-provoking.

    

    This book by the Irish writer Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde includes five short stories: The Selfish Giant The Happy Prince The Nightingale and the Rose The Devoted Friend The Remarkable Rocket

    In this first complete edition of Leonora Carrington’s short stories, written throughout her life from her early years in Surrealist Paris to her late period in Dirty War-era Mexico City, the world is by turns subversive, funny, sly, wise and disarming.

    

    Geiss is the most dedicated fourth-grade teacher imaginable. She goes to extraordinary lengths to make sure her students are presented with every opportunity—showing them slides from her summer vacations during Geography, reading to them from the classics of children’s literature after lunch, and providing them with the kinds of learning rewards that they will truly respond to—bite-sized nuggets of human flesh. Because Ms. Geiss’ students are pint-sized zombies, and the main tool of her peculiar version of the teaching trade is her trusty Remington .30-06 rifle. Ms. Geiss is firm but fair, and keeps a disciplined classroom. She has far more trouble from the adults shambling through what’s left of town than she does from her students, though a well-bulldozed killing field and the gasoline-filled moat encircling the school usually keeps the worst of the undead marauders at bay. But even the hardest working educators let their guard down sometimes, and after the Tribulations, just one mistake can mean school’s out forever. Bestselling, acclaimed author Dan Simmons’ story “This Year’s Class Picture” is a zombie tale that could itself be described as best in class, honored by the Stoker, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards.

    The stories of My Horse range from otherworldly, opaque portraits to claustrophobic domestic studies. In the title story, the narrator has a small pet horse, whose loose skin gradually develops scabby rings and sores. With painful psycho-logic the story recounts the narrator's various and changing attitudes toward the pet, as the physical deterioration of the animal is reflected in the owner's shift from love to abuse. In "The Hump," a woman finds a small growth on her body, which, while she waits for a doctor's appointment, quickly grows into a large hump that affects her entire system and her perceptions of reality. In "Cakes," the narrator buys several cakes with the intention of eating them to become very "Full." But the sudden appearance of a dog and cat at the window so terribly upsets her that she cannot eat the cakes; as the animals remain at her window for days, she postpones her enjoyment, becoming in the end "quite ill." In story after story Levine returns to the impermeability of experience, of not knowing even our own bodies with any certainty. A blackened tooth or a Siamese twin become haunting metaphors for the unreasonable, unfathomable burden of existence that she conveys in wickedly enthralling prose.

    Soldiers, mercenaries, free-booters. Europeans all, braving the heat and dust of India. They fought for wealth, for glory, and for sheer fun. Their glorious and inglorious exploits are full of thrill, romance, and violence. Ruskin Bond has recreated the turbulent and colourful India of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the soldiers of fortune strutting across the subcontinent. The saga of their lives and loves in Delhi, Jaipur, Aligarh, Sardhana, and Lucknow reads stranger than fiction.

    Each fiction has a terse analytical agenda, surgically dissecting the mundane, forcing quotidian life off the canvas, out of the museum dioramas and into our laps.

    Jack Driscoll writes about ordinary working-class people struggling to get along as best they can. With remarkable control, he portrays the uncertainty and impulsiveness of boys on the edge of manhood, the loneliness of women cut off from their families, and the ambivalence and anger of men who have come to see that love is neither simple nor secure. In the title story, three boys in the dead of winter test their theory that it should be possible to swim underwater from one ice-fishing hole to the next. In "Pig and Lobsters" a son watches his father plan a fancy dinner for a date who never arrives, the father's anticipation turning to rage as the evening unfolds. "August Sales" tells the story of a census worker with a chronic sleepwalking disorder who is haunted by his wife's decision to leave him. The protagonist of "Devotion," a woman recovering from dental surgery, finds herself holding a gun on a young intruder who has broken into her house. In each story, Driscoll masterfully conveys the fragility of human contact and the complex topography of the heart.

    Best known for his novel The Sheltering Sky, he has for over forty-five years worked in a variety of genres, writing novels, stories, travel accounts, essays, poetry, journals, and autobiography, each distinctively shaped by his arresting vision and style. Since 1947 he has lived as an American expatriate in Tangier, Morocco, and his groundbreaking work has formed an important departure point for an international array of writers - most notably the Beats, whose literature and lifestyle he influenced greatly. Long heralded as a writer's writer and once considered primarily a literary cult figure, Bowles has in recent years been recognized as an original - an enduring visionary whose stark, often violent tales and dispassionate objectivity prefigured and shaped much of our current literary landscape. This striking and comprehensive collection documents the range of his influence and highlights his remarkable virtuosity, what Joyce Carol Oates calls "the rich and unexpectedly variegated achievement of a major American writer." First published in 1949 and included here in its entirety, The Sheltering Sky established Bowles as one of the most singular and promising of an extraordinary post-war generation of writers. His first collection of stories, The Delicate Prey, published in 1950, solidified that reputation. Too Far from Home: The Selected Writing of Paul Bowles is a testament to how forcefully and brilliantly he delivered on that early promise. Taking its title from a new novella published here for the first time, this volume also brings together a dozen of Bowles's best stories; excerpts from his three othernovels, Let It Come Down, The Spider's House, and Up Above the World; excerpts from Points in Time, Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue, Days, and Without Stopping; as well as a group of poems, a selection of previously unpublished letters, and an interview conducted by

    With a unique combination of foresight and perspective, Dozois continues to collect outstanding work by newcomers and established authors alike, reflecting the present state of the genre while suggesting its future directions. With the editor's annual summary of the year in the field, and his appendix of recommended reading, this book is indispensable for anyone interested in contemporary science fiction.Contents: *Summation: 1991 (1992) • essay by Gardner Dozois *Beggars in Spain [Sleepless] (1991) / novella by Nancy Kress *Living Will (1991) / novelette by Alexander Jablokov *A Just and Lasting Peace (1991) / short story by Lois Tilton *Skinner's Room [Bridge Trilogy] (1990) / short story by William Gibson *Prayers on the Wind (1991) / novella by Walter Jon Williams *Blood Sisters (1991) / short story by Greg Egan *The Dark (1991) / short story by Karen Joy Fowler *Marnie (1991) / novelette by Ian R. MacLeod *A Tip on a Turtle (1991) / novelette by Robert Silverberg *Ubermensch! (1991) / short story by Kim Newman *Dispatches from the Revolution (1991) / novelette by Pat Cadigan *Pipes (1991) / short story by Robert Reed *Matter's End (1991) / novelette by Gregory Benford *A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations (1991) / novelette by Kim Stanley Robinson *Gene Wars (1991) / short story by Paul J. McAuley *The Gallery of His Dreams (1991) / novella by Kristine Kathryn Rusch *A Walk in the Sun (1991) / short story by Geoffrey A. Landis *Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1991) / novelette by Ian McDonald *Angels in Love (1991) / short story by Kathe Koja *Eyewall (1991) / novelette by Rick Shelley *Pogrom [Home Front] (1991) / short story by James Patrick Kelly *The Moat (1991) / short story by Greg Egan *Voices (1991) / short story by Jack Dann *FOAM (1991) / novelette by Brian W. Aldiss *Jack (1991) / novella by Connie Willis *La Macchina [The Holy Machine] (1991) / short story by Chris Beckett *One Perfect Morning, with Jackals [Kirinyaga • 1] (1991) / short story by Mike Resnick *Desert Rain (1991) / novella by Pat Murphy, Mark L. Van Name *Honorable Mentions: 1991 (1992) • essay by Gardner DozoisAlso published titled: The Year's Best Science Fiction: Ninth Annual CollectionAlso published titled: The Giant Book of Fantastic SF.

    The pure pleasure of Carver's writing is everywhere in his work, here no less than in those stories that have already entered the canon of modern American literature.

    Presented here are translations of poems, stories, and excerpts from novels, as well as works by Palestinian poets who write in English. Also included are personal narratives by Palestinian writers depicting the varied aspects of Palestinian life from the turn of the century to the present. These images capture life in Arab Palestine before 1948 and during the wars of 1948 and 1967, and vivify the ensuing calamities experienced by Palestinians in the diaspora and under occupation.Many generations of Palestinian writers are represented -those still living in their own land, either in Israel proper or on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and those who write as exiles from the perspective of the Palestinian diaspora.Biographical sketches introduce the authors, and a comprehensive chronology of modern Palestinian history provides background for some of the events and places referred to in the selections. The introduction provides a concise but thorough critical history of Palestinian literature during the twentieth century.

    In the foreground, brought wholly alive, are relatives, neighbors, and family friends eccentric and otherwise.

    Only when she is twenty-seven is she discovered, working in the basement of a Siberian library by artist Robert Victorvich who, already internationally renowned, returned to Russia in the early 1930's only to be exiled to the labour camps. When in Robert's old age a new romance invades their marriage, Sonechka reveals unexpected reserves of womanly strength.Sonechka is a novel whose unconventional and understated heroine will delight the English-speaking world. Sonechka was short-listed for the Booker Russian Novel Prize and has been enthusiastically received in French, German, and Italian translations. It has been awarded the Medici Prize for foreign fiction in France and the Penne Prize in Italy.

    Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, J.S. LeFanu, and a host of others pioneered a genre of fiction that remains among the most popular today. Now, in Victorian Tales of Mystery and Detection, Michael Cox provides a sampling of the finest detective stories written from the 1840s to the early twentieth century. Here readers will find a vast array of detectives and villains, and a multitude of murder methods and motives. In Edgar Allen Poe's "The Purloined Letter," the identity of the robber is known from the start--it is the surreptitious retrieval of the letter that is the mystery. In M. McDonnell Bodkin's "Murder By Proxy," a gentleman is shot in the head at close range, by a murderer who was not even in the same room. Charles Dickens's "Hunted Down" portrays a murderer who was slowly poisoning his very own nieces for their insurance money. And in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost Special," a train and its passengers vanish in thin air. In addition, Cox (who is rapidly becoming one of the foremost experts on Victorian popular fiction) arranges the stories in chronological order so that readers can follow the genre as it develops over time. For instance, in Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" we see an example of the many Sherlock Holmes escapades that popularized and came to typify the detective story for the Victorian public. And in the progression of the stories, we witness the evolution of the investigator from Poe's brilliant and eccentric Chevalier C. August Dupin, to Doyle's scientific Sherlock Holmes, into Robert Barr's cavalier Valmont (a possible model for Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot). Including well-known stories by famous authors, as well as little known gems reprinted for the first time, Victorian Tales of Mystery and Detection not only offers hours of enjoyment and escape for all lovers of crime fiction, but also brings alive the society, language, the sights, and sounds of the Victorian age.Contents:The purloined letter by Edgar Allan PoeThe murdered cousin by J.S. Le FanuHunted down by Charles DickensLevison's victim by Mary Elizabeth BraddonThe mystery at number seven by Mrs Henry WoodThe going out of Alessandro Pozzone by Richard DowlingWho killed Zebedee? by Wilkie CollinsA circumstantial puzzle by R.E. FrancillonThe mystery of Essex stairs by Sir Gilbert CampbellThe adventure of the blue carbuncle by Sir Arthur Conan DoyleThe great ruby robbery by Grant AllenThe sapient monkey by Headon HillCheating the gallows by Israel ZangwillDrawn daggers by C.L. PirkisThe greenstone god and the stockbroker by Fergus HumeThe arrest of Captain Vandaleur by L.T. Meade and Robert EustaceThe accusing shadow by Harry BlythThe ivy cottage mystery by Arthur MorrisonThe Azteck opal by Rodrigues OttolenguiThe long arm by Mary E. WilkinsThe case of Euphemia Raphash by M.P. ShielThe tin box by Herbert KeenMurder by proxy by M. McDonnell BodkinThe duchess of Wiltshire's diamonds by Guy BoothbyThe story of the Spaniards, Hammersmith by E. and H. HeronThe lost special by Sir Arthur Conan DoyleThe banknote forger by C.J. Cutcliffe HyneA warning in red by Victor L. Whitechurch and E. ConwayThe Fenchurch Street mystery by Baroness OrczyThe green spider by Sax RohmerThe clue of the silver spoons by Robert Barr

    Here we meet Roxanne, the tomboy who consistently chooses men who are not her equal; the loving Marta, whose husband keeps a separate house where he retreats when married life overwhelms him; and Bebe, a married mother of two teenagers who leaves it all behind when her lover comes on a motorcycle to claim her. With painfully keen perception, Nelson creates stories that linger in the mind long after they are read, and which create a unique view of relations between the sexes in the small towns and big cities of America.

    This new collection includes the story Jamie, a brilliant mainstream story about a mother's love for her newborn son.

    His reading pace is neither slow nor fast and he conjures up many vivid, picturesque images for his listening audience. . . Strongly recommended.”' - Roslyn NewsThis historic recording contains the first readings by William Faulkner of his work. One hearing is hardly enough. As in his books, penetration deepens with each new experience of the work. Yield to Faulkner's serenity, the deep-south way with words, the unaffected ease with which he drifts into Yoknapatawpha dialect. A recording more important than this is not likely to be made soon.Includes: The Nobel Prize acceptance speech, As I Lay Dying (Tull-Darl-Vardaman-Vardaman), A Fable (excerpt), The Old Man (excerpt). William Faulkner (1897-1962) is widely regarded as one of the greatest of all American novelists and short-story writers. His other works include the novels The Sound and the Fury, The Reivers, and Sanctuary. He twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and in 1949 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. This audio reproduces the full sound spectrum of the historic recordings; it has been re-mastered using contemporary digital equipment.

    This selection of stories from Clara, Strange Things Happen Here, and Open Door, which delves into the personal and political realities under authoritarian rule, gives a rich representation of her literary talent.

    Certain Things Last is the first one-volume edition of Anderson's stories. But what makes this book truly remarkable is that five of Anderson's very best stories appear in print here for the first time. They are: "Certain Things Last," "Fred," "The Red Dog," "Mrs. Wife," and "The Masterpiece." The discovery of these new stories makes Certain Things Last an unprecedented publishing event. The short story, not the novel or autobiography, was the form in which Sherwood Anderson excelled. And the American short story probably owes more to Sherwood Anderson than to any other American writer. It was Anderson who wrested short fiction from the upbeat conventionality of the popular magazines of the 1920s and '30s and molded it to express the isolation of individual people. Certain Things Last contains 30 stories in all, chosen from previously unpublished manuscripts and from Anderson's three story volumes, The Triumph of the Egg, Horses and Men, and Death in the Woods. Numerous stories have been meticulously restored to Anderson's original version by Professor Modlin.

    Chekhov's miraculous stories not only changed the face of the short story form, but have provided for the innumerable readers who have cherished his work and access to the quiet dramas of the soul, and a degree of human fellow-feeling never before offered by literature.

    Fatima Lim, Jessica Hagedorn, Marra Lanot, Ruth Elynia Mabanglo, and Benilda Santos.In these stories and poems—tender, sad, passionate, wry, distrubing and joyful—women give new voice to their perceptions of the erotic and reveal their delights and desires. An outstanding collection that will provoke and give pleasure to the reader.

    After years of being nagged about lumpy gravy, abused wife Lois pulls out a shotgun to wrap up breakfast her way. In a tender moment, an old man speaks from beyond the grave about his wife’s final goodbye at his funeral. Experience, memory, and town-consciousness bind this collection of ten stories spanning twenty-five years in fictitious Cedar, Oklahoma. From the fears and discoveries of childhood, through the revelations of adolescence, into the troubled years of adulthood and decline into old age and death, Rilla Askew uncannily makes each of her characters’ experiences our own.

    StocktonStar Food Ethan CaninWinter (from The Winter Room) Gary PaulsenHigh School Graduation (from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings) Maya AngelouAdventures of Huckleberry Finn (selection) Mark Twain

    Outrageously inventive, disarmingly comic, and urgently disturbing, this collection brings a disparate cast of characters face to face with fault lines of identity and the limbo of living between cultures.The Kind of Light That Shines on Texas was first published by Little, Brown and Company in 1992. This edition is published in cooperation with the Living Writers course at Colgate University.

    

    A collection of short stories by the author of The Closing Sea features the story of two cousins discovering sex and love as they plan the murder of their uncle, a young waitress swept off her feet by an aging film director, and others.

    The sun and the wind test their strength by seeing which of them can force a man to remove his cloak.

    

    P. Lovecraft first introduced his macabre universe in the pages of Weird Tales magazine, the response was electrifying. Gifted writers—among them his closest peers—added sinister new elements to the fear-drenched landscape. Here are some of the most famous original stories from the pulp era that played a pivotal role in reflecting the master’s dark vision.  FANE OF THE BLACK PHARAOH by Robert Bloch: A man obsessed with unearthing dark secrets succumbs to the lure of the forbidden.BELLS OF HORROR by Henry Kuttner: Infernal chimes ring the promise of dementia and mutilation.THE FIRE OF ASSHURBANIPAL by Robert E. Howard: In the burning Afghan desert, a young American unleashes an ancient curse.THE ABYSS by Robert A. W. Lowndes: A hypnotized man finds himself in an alternate universe, trapped on a high wire between life and death.  AND SIXTEEN MORE TALES OF ICY TERROR . . .  THE THING ON THE ROOF by Robert E. Howard THE SEVEN GEASES by Clark Ashton Smith THE INVADERS by Henry Kuttner THE THING THAT WALKED ON THE WIND by August Derleth ITHAQUA by August Derleth THE LAIR OF THE STAR-SPAWN by August Derleth & Mark Schorer THE LORD OF ILLUSION by E. Hoffmann Price THE WARDER OF KNOWLEDGE by Richard F. Searight THE SCOURGE OF B’MOTH by Bertram Russell THE HOUSE OF THE WORM by Mearle Prout SPAWN OF THE GREEN ABYSS by C. Hall Thompson THE GUARDIAN OF THE BOOK by Henry Hasse MUSIC OF THE STARS by Duane W. Rimel THE AQUARIUM by Carl Jacobi THE HORROR OUT OF LOVECRAFT by Donald A. Wollheim TO ARKHAM AND THE STARS by Fritz Leiber

    Unique in content, this anthology of 113 short stories encompasses a larger geographical range (both Western and non-western) and greater gender balance than is typical of most short-story anthologies, and includes a diverse representation of ethnic voices from within the United States as well as less-frequently-anthologized stories by well-known writers. It includes both classic and contemporary stories that reflect thematic, aesthetic, and cultural variety: diversity of styles, subjects and points of view as well as diversity of cultural, historical, and gender perspectives. Headnotes and questions for each story provide contextual enhancement and guidelines for critical thinking and reflection.

    From Anne Thackeray Ritchie's adaptations of "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" to Christina Rossetti's unsettling antifantasies in Speaking Likenesses, these are breathtaking acts of imaginative freedom, by turns amusing, charming, and disturbing. Besides their social and historical implications, they are extraordinary stories, full of strange delights for readers of any age."Forbidden Journeys is not only a darkly entertaining book to read for the fantasies and anti-fantasies told, but also is a significant contribution to nineteenth-century cultural history, and especially feminist studies."—United Press International"A service to feminists, to Victorian Studies, to children's literature and to children."—Beverly Lyon Clark, Women's Review of Books"These are stories to laugh over, cheer at, celebrate, and wince at. . . . Forbidden Journeys is a welcome reminder that rebellion was still possible, and the editors' intelligent and fascinating commentary reveals ways in which these stories defied the Victorian patriarchy."—Allyson F. McGill, Belles Lettres

    The publication of this revised third edition of Ritual and Other Stories reflects the continued interest in Machen's work, and collects together his more elusive short fiction. Through the publication of Ritual and its companion 'best of' volume Tales of Horror and the Supernatural, Tartarus has now reissued all Machen's short stories in accessible form.As R.B. Russell writes in his new Introduction, 'the great strength of Ritual is that it spans Machen's career and thus reveals his development as a writer'. As well as two early pieces from the 1880s, Ritual contains from the 1890s stories that compare well with Machen's better-known decadent work, such as The Great God Pan. These include the exquisite prose-poem 'Rus in Urbe' (1890), and the stories from the Ornaments in Jade collection, written in the 1890s but not published until 1924. Machen's much underrated later work is represented by, amongst others, 'The Tree of Life' (1936), 'one of the most sympathetic stories Machen ever wrote', and the title story 'Ritual', which although written in 1937 'could have been penned at any time in his career, and is undeniably Machen at his best'.Ritual & Other Stories contains:The Priest and the Barber, The Spagyric Quest of Beroaldus Cosmopolita, The Town of Long Ago, Candletime, Cidermas, Over the Gate, Of the Isle of Shadows, A Further Account of the Academy of Lagado, Tales from Barataria, Sir John's Chef, Rus in Urbe, By the Brook, The Autophone, The Brook Farm, A Remarkable Coincidence, A Double Return, A Wonderful Woman, The Lost Club, An Underground Adventure, Jocelyn's Escape, The Red Hand, The Rose Garden, The Turanians, The Idealist, Witchcraft, The Ceremony, Psychology, Torture, Midsummer, Nature, Holy Things, The Young Man in the Blue Suit, The Soldiers' Rest, The Monstrance, The Dazzling Light, The Little Nations, The Men from Troy, The Light That Can Never Be Put Out, Drake's Drum, A New Christmas Carol, 7B Coney Court, Munitions of War, The Gift of Tongues, The Islington Mystery, Johnny Double, The Cosy Room, Awaking, Opening the Door, The Compliments of the Season, The Dover Road, The Exalted Omega, The Tree of Life, Out of the Picture, Change, Ritual.

    This is a collection of stories, a libretto, essays and sketches about knife-fights, a stone sphinx in Paris, a painter in Venice, an opera libretto which re-invents Miranda and Caliban and essays that discuss, among other things, fairy tales and Russell Hoban's own childhood in America.

    Seventeen seminal texts by legendary European authors, covering the whole of that delirious period from Gothic and Romantic, through Symbolism and Decadence to proto-Surrealism and beyond, in a single volume charged with sex, blood and horror.

    A collection of 31 short stories written in a span of more than five decades (1939-1992), by an eminent Filipino fictionist.

    A collection of nine stories in which characters encounter talking plants, a pine-tree man, a merry-go-round with flying horses, mystical midnight birds, and a cake-eating tree.

    And his stories are dark masterpieces of gut-wrenching horror….Have you ever thought about being buried alive, trapped beneath the ground, covered with wet dirt, clawing your coffin, screaming? He did. Have you ever thought about being tortured, tied, in the dark, with rats and agony on all sides, knowing your enemies can watch you shriek? Have you ever thought the thing that most hates you is waiting inside the walls, under the floor? Have you ever thought about death and madness taking human form and coming after you? Have you ever thought about…He did. All this and more…and more…and more. Which is why the name of sheer, stark horror is…EDGAR ALLAN POE

    Following the death of his domineering father, a middle-aged man tries to uncover a truth about their sometimes difficult relationship. When a grade-six teacher tyrannizes a student without apparent reason, the boy learns an unexpected lesson and his young life is changed irrevocably. An elderly widow falls prey to a con artist, revealing what we are capable of sacrificing to appease what we dread the most. A twelve-year-old boy is shunted off to his grandmother's farm and becomes part of an adult world he scarcely understands. A group of high-school students play on a classmate's self-delusions and set up what promises to be the most loaded boxing match ever staged. Whether writing from the point of view of a child, an adolescent, or a man in his seventies, Guy Vanderhaeghe takes us into the lives of his characters with razor-sharp insights laced with gentle humour.

    Morlan, Robert Silverberg, Michael Swanwick, Jane Yolen and many others. Supplementing the stories are the editors' invaluable overviews of the year in fantastic fiction, Edward Bryant's witty roundup of the year's fantasy films, and a long list of Honorable Mentions —all of which adds up to an invaluable reference source, and a font of fabulous reading.Table of ContentsThe beautiful uncut hair of graves -- David Morrell In carnation -- Nancy Springer The somewhere doors -- Fred Chappell Poe at the end -- (poem) / -- R.H.W. Dillard Angels in love -- Kathe Koja Vivian -- Midori Snyder True love -- K.W. Jeter The second most beautiful woman in the world -- A.R. Morlan The swordsman whose name was not death -- Ellen Kushner The ragthorn -- Robert Holdstock and Garry Kilworth The smell -- Patrick McGrath The tenth scholar -- Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem Fisher death -- (poem) / -- Jessica Amanda Salmonson Walk in sable -- (poem) / -- Jessica Amanda Salmonson The cut man -- Norman Partridge The kind men like -- Karl Edward Wagner The coon suit -- Terry Bisson Queen Christina and the windsurfer -- Alison Fell Chui Chai -- S.P. Somtow Mama gone -- Jane Yolen Peter -- Pat Murphy Our lady of the harbour -- Charles de Lint The visitor's book -- Stephen Gallagher At the end of the day -- Steve Rasnic Tem The monster -- Nina Katerli Hummers -- Lisa Mason Santa's way -- James Powell Call home -- Dennis Etchison The Braille Encyclopedia -- Grant Morrison The poisoned story -- Rosario Ferre Blood -- Janice Galloway Dogstar man -- Nancy Willard Persistence of memory -- Joanne Greenberg You'll never eat lunch on this continent again -- Adam Gopnik The glamour -- Thomas Ligotti The peony lantern -- Kara Dalkey To be a hero -- (poem) / -- Nancy Springer The same in any language -- Ramsey Campbell Teratisms -- Kathe Koja The life of a poet -- Kobo Abe The witch of Wilton Falls -- Gloria Ericson Home by the sea -- Pat Cadigan Pish, posh, said hieronymus bosch -- (poem) / -- Nancy Willard The ash of memory, the dust of desire -- Poppy Z. Brite The pavilion of frozen women -- S.P. Somtow Moon songs --Carol Emshwiller The afternoon of June 8, 1991 -- Ian Frazier Gwydion and the dragon -- C.J. Cherryh A story must be held -- (poem) / -- Jane Yolen The Ogre's wife -- Pierrette Fleutiaux.

    Intensely lyrical and rageful, his stories concern African-Americans caught in the vortex of history and haunted by their own demons.

    what Jack means to Davis himself, his heritage, and his development as a storyteller. Jack is truly alive and well, and living in the incarnation of Donald Davis". -- Territorial Tattler

    Contains the following short stories:Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.I Just Kept On Smiling by Simon BurtAt Her Father's and Her Mother's Place by Natalya BaranskayaThe White Circle by John Bell ClaytonThe Zodiacs by Jay NeugeborenEnd of the Game by Julio CortázarThe Cat and the Coffee Drinkers by Max SteeleAnne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (selection)The Secret Lion by Alberto Alvaro RiosDay of the Butterfly by Alice MunroA Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

    The Washington Post has called Gene Wolfe "the finest writer the science fiction world has yet produced." This volume joins together two of his rarest and most sought after works--Gene Wolfe's Book of Days and The Castle of the Otter--and add thirty-nine short essays collected here for the first time, to fashion a rich and engrossing architecture of wonder.

    - Endorsement from Joni Eareckson Tada- Postcards are written as if God were speaking directly to you- Each postcard is displayed alongside the Bible passages that inspired it- The postcards offer messages of hope, healing, comfort, encouragement, and affirmation- Makes a wonderful gift for yourself and someone else who needs to hear God's voice

    Pivotal stories from post-slavery days through the Harlem Renaissance and into the nineties.

    

    Seventeen stories by Alison Baker, Larry Brown, Mary Ward Brown, James Lee Burke, Robert Olen Butler, Nanci Kincaid, Patricia Lear, Dan Leone, Reginald McKnight, Karen Minton, Elizabeth Seydel Morgan, Robert Morgan, Susan Perabo, Padgett Powell, Lee Smith, Peter Taylor, Abraham Verghese.

    

    In THE MYSTERY OF SURVIVAL AND OTHER STORIES, Gaspar de Alba considers the boundaries between sexes, lovers, cultures, generations, and beliefs and presents a body of work that allows her characters to both defy and celebrate these borders. This collection is peopled by those tenaciously exploring their places in the world: an ambitious young Mexican American reporter who quietly comes to understand the profound impermeability of this boundary as his Anglo editor refuses to see him as anything but an underling; a young woman haunted by the memories of her childhood along the United States/Mexico border; a boy who crosses the brittle line his parents have drawn between each other and chooses to show his allegiance to his mother. Gaspar de Alba reveals characters who, by exploring these boundaries, learn to define themselves and, ultimately, discover not just how to survive, but to flourish.

    This collection of stories is from the author of "Theft", "The Man Who Was Left Behind", "Mrs Caliban", "Three of a Kind", "The Pearkillers" and "The End of Tragedy".

    Be forewarned that its ghost will come back to haunt you. Schwartz presents a baker's dozen of perennially popular cat tales from folklore around the world. 26 illustrations.Brave and noble cats. Rosie and Arthur If you were a cat The nest The green chicken The big ratThe fastest cat on earth The make-believe cats There once were two cats of Kilkenny The ship's cat The cat came back Deep in the swamp The kings of the cats Once there was a cat A tail of grass.

    Scott Momaday. A glorious testament to our Native American past, this collection of thirty years of work from 1961 through 1991 is a concentration of riches and proof of the persistence of the human spirit. This volume features over seventy poems, sixteen newstories about the great tribal shields that delve into the deeper meaning of legend, love, and loss, as well as a striking section devoted to Billy the Kid. The words, poems, and stories are enhanced by Momaday's own line drawings and paintings.Momaday's voice is ancestral and contemporary, profoundly American and genuinely universal. Here, at his best, is a truly distinguished poet, storyteller, and artist.

    Its companion collection is Foundations of Fear, of which Visions of Fear is the third and final volume released in mass market paperback. Features stories by Clive Barker, Philip K. Dick, and many others.

    Take a trip to the cutting edge of terror and discover:- Why an obsession with sixties British comedy stars can make you a murderer ...- The mother who dreads the sound of hymns - with good reason.- How schooldays can be the weirdest days of your life.- A couple who regularly visit the supermarket from Hell...- And why people who collect table-mats are dangerous - only when they're dead...

    In "The Pure Product" an amoral time-traveler embarks upon a harrowing joyride through the Midwest; "The Big Dream" is a 1920s hardboiled detective thriller in the Los Angeles of Raymond Chandler; while Faustfeathers" involves a head-on collision between Christopher Marlowe and the Marx Brothers. Dark visions both satiric and tragic, from the author of Good News from Outer Space: "The Pure Product, " "Mrs Schummel Exits A Winner, " "The Big Dream, " "The Lecturer, " "Hearts Do Not in Eyes Shine, " "Faustfeathers, " "A Clean Escape, " "Not Responsible! Park and Lock It!, " "Man, " "Invaders, " "Judgment Call, " "Buddha Nostril Bird, " "Another Orphan, " and "Buffalo."

    Austin and Ben Bova• Biolog: A.J. Austin by Jay Kay Klein• Secret Names by Harry Turtledove• The Universal Robot by Hans Moravec• City of Dreams by Daniel Hatch• An Empty Wheelhouse by Sean McMullen• Taboos by Mary Caraker• TTCB by William Walling• Killer Asteroids and You by John G. Cramer• An Evening at Dempke's by Janet Lorimer• Contact in the Classroom by Greg Barr• Tranquillity Rose by Stephen L. Burns• The Reference Library by Thomas A. Easton•   Review: Harmony by Marjorie B. Kellogg by Thomas A. Easton•   Review: Lens of the World by R. A. MacAvoy by Thomas A. Easton•   Review: Slow Freight by F. M. Busby by Thomas A. Easton•   Review: Stranger Suns by George Zebrowski by Thomas A. Easton•   Review: Heads by Greg Bear by Thomas A. Easton•   Review: Inside the Funhouse by Mike Resnick by Thomas A. Easton•   Review: Alternate Presidents by Mike Resnick by Thomas A. Easton• Review of the software program "Rudy Rucker's Cellular Automata Laboratory" from Autodesk by Thomas A. Easton• Review of the software program "James Gleick's CHAOS, the Software" from Autodesk by Thomas A. Easton• Analog: A Calendar of Upcoming Events by Anthony R. Lewis

    Here is Denisov, who fears his greatest accomplishment in life will be the treatise he wrote and tore up. He is betrothed to Lora, an incessant talker who dreams of having a fluffy tail. We also read of Natasha, who searches Leningrad and her memory for her lost love; of Dmitry Ilich's elaborate seduction of Olga Mikhailovna; and more. In the tradition of such writers as Gogol and Chekhov, Tatyana Tolstaya transforms ordinary lives into something magical and strange.Translated from the Russian by Jamey GambrellFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

    Traversing a broad range of subjects--cultural imperialism, sexuality, politics, the visionary power of language--Jones explores the often painful intersections between these issues and the personal lives of her characters.

    For centuries, writers have struggled to achieve the sublime through these tales, at times creating works of enduring interest. Horror novels have become one of the major bestselling forms of fiction in recent years, and Hollywood has given us a huge and varied supply of popular films, which has created an audience in the millions for horror. But throughout history, many of the finest achievements in horror have been in short fiction. From these masterpieces have been selected the contents of Foundations of Fear. This anthology presents an international selection of the strongest work by writers such as Clive Barker, H.P. Lovecraft, and Arthur Machen, who have been identified as category horror writers, and by writers such as Carlos Fuentes, Gerald Durrell, and Daphne Du Maurier, whose literary reputations transcend category. For horror in literature cuts across all category boundaries. Thus the reader will find in this volume domestic horror stories by Thomas Hardy, Violet Hunt and Mary Wilkins Freeman; and stories by Robert A. Heinlein and Philip K. Dick, masters of science fiction. The Introduction to Foundations of Fear takes particular note of women writers, who have made important contributions to the development of the horrific in literature; in addition to those already mentioned the collection includes works by Madeline Yale Wynne, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Gertrude Atherton, and others. Foundations of Fear challenges the notion that the supernatural in fiction has in modern times been supplanted by the psychological, the idea that horror is dead. Horror is one of the dominant literary modes of our time, a vigorous and living body of literature that continues to thrill us with the mystery and wonder of the unknown. Contents 1 • Introduction (Foundations of Fear) • (1992) • essay by David G. Hartwell 12 • Don't Look Now • (1966) • novella by Daphne du Maurier 41 • They • (1941) • shortstory by Robert A. Heinlein 52 • At the Mountains of Madness • [Cthulhu Mythos] • (1936) • novel by H. P. Lovecraft 115 • The Little Room • (1895) • shortstory by Madeline Yale Wynne 124 • The Shadowy Street • (1965) • novelette by Jean Ray (aka La ruelle ténébreuse 1932 ) 145 • Passengers • (1968) • shortstory by Robert Silverberg 154 • The Moonstone Mass • (1868) • shortstory by Harriet Prescott Spofford 163 • The Blue Rose • [Blue Rose] • (1985) • novella by Peter Straub (aka Blue Rose) 197 • Sandkings • (1979) • novelette by George R. R. Martin 223 • The Great God Pan • (1894) • novella by Arthur Machen 256 • Aura • (1965) • novelette by Carlos Fuentes 276 • Barbara, of the House of Grebe • (1890) • novelette by Thomas Hardy 295 • Torturing Mr. Amberwell • (1985) • novelette by Thomas M. Disch 317 • The Prayer • (1895) • novelette by Violet Hunt 334 • Who Goes There? • (1938) • novella by John W. Campbell, Jr. [as by John W. Campbell ] 370 • . . . and my fear is great • (1953) • novella by Theodore Sturgeon (aka . . . And My Fear Is Great . . .) 409 • When Darkness Loves Us • (1985) • novelette by Elizabeth Engstrom 439 • We Purchased People • (1974) • shortstory by Frederik Pohl 449 • The Striding Place • (1896) • shortstory by Gertrude Atherton 454 • In the Hills, the Cities • (1984) • novelette by Clive Barker 474 • Faith of Our Fathers • (1967) • novelette by Philip K. Dick 495 • The Bell in the Fog • (1905) • novelette by Gertrude Atherton 509 • The Sand-Man • (1816) • novelette by E. T. A. Hoffmann (aka Der Sandmann) 530 • Bloodchild • (1984) • novelette by Octavia E. Butler [as by Octavia Butler ] 543 • Duel • (1971) • novelette by Richard Matheson 558 • Longtooth • (1970) • novelette by Edgar Pangborn 580 • Luella Miller • (1902) • shortstory by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman [as by Mary Wilkins Freeman ] 589 • The Entrance • (1979) • novelette by Gerald Durrell 619 • The Lurking Duck • (1992) • shortfiction by Scott Baker 649 • Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story • (1985) • novelette by Thomas Ligotti

    Divided into three sections, the volume includes fiction, cultural and political works, and philosophical essays. The writings reflect the thought of some of Czechoslovakia's best-known minds--Klima, Vaculik, and Havel--as well as others yet unknown in the West. Taken together, they capture the artistic and intellectual mood of a country situated at a focal point between East and West at a fascinating point in history.

    Heighton also examines subtly related themes, like death, age, marriage, war and poetry, while hinting at autobiography throughout. Sophisticated, passionate and elegantly told, this collection, first published in 1992, was nominated for the 1992 Ontario Trillium Book Award and brought Steven Heighton much national acclaim.