Klinger's brilliant new annotations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic Holmes short stories in 2004 created a Holmes sensation. Inside, readers will find all the short stories from The Return of Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, with a cornucopia of insights: beginners will benefit from Klinger's insightful biographies of Holmes, Watson, and Conan Doyle; history lovers will revel in the wealth of Victorian literary and cultural details; Sherlockian fanatics will puzzle over tantalizing new theories; art lovers will thrill to the 450-plus illustrations, which make this the most lavishly illustrated edition of the Holmes tales ever produced. The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes illuminates the timeless genius of Arthur Conan Doyle for an entirely new generation of readers.

    "The Dreams in the Witch House," gathered together here with more than twenty tales of terror, exemplifies H.P. Lovecraft's primacy among twentieth-century American horror writers.A companion volume to The Call of Cthulhu and The Thing on the Doorstep, this original Penguin Classics collection presents the definitive texts of the work, including a newly restored text of "The Shadow out of Time", along with S.T. Joshi's invaluable Introduction and Notes."Lovecraft's fiction is one of the cornerstones of modern horror . . . A unique and visionary world of wonder, terror, and delirium."- Clive Barker

    Absolutely not a romance.A short story about a child with a gift for seeing past the world.

    This collection includes:The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish: An unforgettable story that will take readers on a journey into the murky mind of a young boy and the perils of striking a bargain.The Wolves in the Walls: Lucy is sure there are wolves living in the walls of their house -- and, as everybody says, if the wolves come out of the walls, it's all over. Her family doesn't believe her. Then one day, the wolves come out.Cinnamon: This charming fable of an exotic princess who refuses to speak currently exists only on Neil's official website and has never been published in print or any other format.Crazy Hair: Bonnie tries to comb the narrator's crazy hair -- where gorillas leap and tigers stalk -- and is in for a surprise in this delightful rhyming tale.

    Sudha Murthy has even picked out anecdotes from her own life to present to the readers a book that shows them the forgotten values of life.How I Taught My Grandmother to Read and Other Stories is filled with heart touching tales varying from one about how her grandmother asked the then twelve-year-old author to teach her the alphabet. Sudha talks about her encounter with J.R.D Tata. Each of the twenty-five stories in the book provides some inspiration to its readers.The stories are presented in an effortless and humorous fashion. Sudha Murthy recounts tales from her life in a simple yet engrossing manner. The stories range from her childhood to her life as a teacher and a mother. The book shows readers how her mother's constant advice on saving money actually helped Sudha when she had to start a company with her husband. It also features a story where the protagonist takes a train ride with the President. About Sudha MurthySudha Murthy, also known as Sudha Kulkarni, is a social worker and author.Other popular books written by Sudha are The Magic Drum And Other Favorite Stories, Dolla Bahu, The Old Man And His God, and Wise & Otherwise (an audiobook).Sudha Murthy has tried her hand at both fiction and non-fiction. She writes in English and Kannada and so far, she has written a compilation of short stories, two books for children, nine novels, three separate non-fiction collections, three travelogues, and four technical books. She has been awarded the R. K. Narayan's Award for Literature (2006) and has also been the recipient of the Padma Shri award (2006).She was born in Shiggaon, North Karnataka in the year 1950. She is the wife of N. R. Narayana Murthy, the founder of Infosys Technologies limited and is at present, the Chairperson of Infosys. She is actively involved in social service and is a part of the Gate

    Flake.There is "The Ugly One," whose only solace comes when she is locked inside her own head. In "Wanted: A Thug," a teenager seeks advice on how to steal her best friend's bad-guy boyfriend. And then there's Erika, who only likes white boys.​Sharon Flake takes readers through the minds of girls trying to define themselves while struggling to remain relevant to the boys in their lives. This is a complex, often humorous, always on-point exposition of black youth resolving to find self-worth . . . any way they know how.

    These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity by delineating the office politics surrounding a magazine profile of an artist who produces miniature sculptures in an anatomically inconceivable way ("The Suffering Channel"). Or capture the ache of love's breakdown in the painfully polite apologies of a man who believes his wife is hallucinating the sound of his snoring ("Oblivion"). Each of these stories is a complete world, as fully imagined as most entire novels, at once preposterously surreal and painfully immediate. Oblivion is an arresting and hilarious creation from a writer "whose best work challenges and reinvents the art of fiction" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).Mister squishy --The soul is not a smithy --Incarnations of burned children --Another pioneer --Good old neon --Philosophy and the mirror of nature --Oblivion --The suffering channel

    They are many heroines of SWORD AND SORCERESS - brave women who have adopted the daring roles so often deemed to be the exclusive province of men.Join Diana L Paxson, Esther M Friesner, Rosemary Edghill, Leslie Fish, Dorothy j Heydt and their fellow spell-weavers as they carry on Marion Zimmer Bradley's proud, feminist tradition in the twenty-three original, swashbuckling and magical stories of SWORD AND SORCERESS XXI, where:A family of thieves is sorely disappointed by their daughter's wizarding ambitions...A warrior with amnesia is taught a lesson she could never have learned if she remembered her past...A girl is turned down by a school of magic because of her sex, only to become the disciple of a far more powerful mentor...An arrogant mage is taught that even the most powerful of sorcerers sometimes needs the help of material weapons...The best-selling "Sword & The Sorceress series continues with this thrilling 21st edition of all-original stories of action-packed adventure, ultimate magic, and fearsome, sword-wielding women by some of the best names in fantasy today.

    His stories won every award the science fiction field had to offer, many times over. His first collection, The Persistence of Vision, published in 1978, was the most important collection of the decade, and changed what fans would come to expect from science fiction. Now, The John Varley Reader gathers his best stories, many out of print for years. This is the volume no Varley fan - or science fiction reader - can do without. 1 • Picnic on Nearside • [Eight Worlds] • (1974) • novelette by John Varley 24 • Overdrawn at the Memory Bank • [Eight Worlds] • (1976) • novelette by John Varley 53 • In the Hall of the Martian Kings • (1976) • novella by John Varley 91 • Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance • [Eight Worlds] • (1976) • novelette by John Varley 119 • The Barbie Murders • [Anna-Louise Bach] • (1978) • novelette by John Varley 146 • The Phantom of Kansas • [Eight Worlds] • (1976) • novelette by John Varley 180 • Beatnik Bayou • [Eight Worlds] • (1980) • novelette by John Varley 212 • Air Raid • (1977) • shortstory by John Varley 228 • The Persistence of Vision • (1978) • novella by John Varley 271 • Press Enter [] • (1984) • novella by John Varley 327 • The Pusher • (1981) • shortstory by John Varley 343 • Tango Charlie and Foxtrot Romeo • [Eight Worlds] • (1986) • novella by John Varley 409 • Options • [Eight Worlds] • (1979) • novelette by John Varley 437 • Just Another Perfect Day • (1989) • shortstory by John Varley 449 • In Fading Suns and Dying Moons • (2003) • novelette by John Varley 467 • The Flying Dutchman • (1998) • shortstory by John Varley 486 • Good Intentions • (1992) • shortstory by John Varley 502 • The Bellman • [Anna-Louise Bach] • (2003) • novelette by John Varley

    While his popularity as a playwright has sometimes overshadowed his achievements in prose, the importance of Chekhov's stories is now recognized by readers as well as by fellow authors. Their themes - alienation, the absurdity and tragedy of human existence - have as much relevance today as when they were written, and these superb new translations capture their modernist spirit. Elusive and subtle, spare and unadorned, the stories in this selection are among Chekhov's most poignant and lyrical. The book includes well-known pieces such as The Lady with the Little Dog, as well as less familiar work like Gusev inspired by Chekhov's travels in the Far East, and Rothschild's Violin, a haunting and darkly humorous tale about death and loss. The stories are arranged chronologically to show the evolution of Chekhov's art.About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

    Soon he was one of the family. From the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, a staggeringly beautiful and precise story about a Bengali family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the impossibilities of love, and the unanticipated pleasures and complications of life in America.  “Hell-Heaven” is Jhumpa Lahiri’s ode to the intimate secrets of closest kin, from the acclaimed collection Unaccustomed Earth.  An eBook short.

    A collection of Terry Pratchett's short works, fiction and non-fiction, with annotations by Pratchett and by the editors.

    A British paratrooper jumps into occupied territory; the 1958 New York Yankees gain an unexpected teammate in a puny, teenaged Hasidic Jew; a September 11th widow receives an astonishing gift from the contractor working on her new apartment--these and other stories exhibit the constantly changing variety of the ocean itself, the peaks and troughs of life. Lighthearted, glittering fables are met with starker tales that sound the depths of sacrifice and duty. The Pacific and Other Stories is a resplendent, powerful collection of lasting substance and emotional import.

     Brothers cease speaking to each other, husbands abandon wives and children, grown men are haunted by childhood fears. People struggle against the weight of their own history and try to reconcile themselves to their place in the world. With extraordinary insight and tenderness, Winton explores the demons and frailties of ordinary people whose lives are not what they had hoped.

    His literary achievement is a lasting legacy about what it means to be American.Vintage Baldwin includes the short story “Sonny’s Blues”; the galvanizing civil rights examination “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation”; the essays “Fifth Avenue, Uptown: A Letter from Harlem,” “The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American,” and “Nobody Knows My Name: A Letter from the South”; and excerpts from the novel Another Country and the play The Amen Corner.

    Now readers can enjoy all three of Carol Shields’s short story collections – Various Miracles, The Orange Fish and Dressing Up for the Carnival – in one volume, along with the previously unpublished story, “Segue,” her last.With an eye for the smallest of telling details – a woman applying her lipstick so “the shape of pale raspberry fits perfectly the face she knows by heart” – and a willingness to explore the most fundamental relationships and the wildest of coincidences, Shields illuminates the absurdities and miracles that grace all our lives. From a couple who experiences a world without weather, to the gentle humor of an elderly widow mowing her lawn while looking back on a life of passion, to a young woman abandoned by love and clinging to a “slender handrail of hope,” Shields’s enormous sympathy for her characters permeates her fiction.Playful, charming, acutely observed and generous of spirit, this collection of stories will delight and enchant Carol Shields fans everywhere.Excerpt from The Collected Stories of Carol ShieldsLet me say it: I am an aging woman of despairing good cheer — just look into the imaginary camera lens and watch me as I make the Sunday morning transaction over the bread, then the flowers, my straw tote from our recent holiday in Jamaica, my smile, my upturned sixty-seven-year-old voice, a voice so crying-out and clad with familiarity that, in fact, I can’t hear it anymore myself, thank God; my ears are blocked. Lately everything to do with my essence has become transparent, neutral: Good morning, Jane Sexton smiles to one and all (such a friendly, down-to-earth woman). “What a perfect fall day.” “What glorious blooms!” “Why Mr. Henning, this bread is still warm! Can this be true?”From the Hardcover edition.

    This exuberant manifesto includes lives of the writers, on-the-scene testimony, seminal underground articles never before collected, photographs, cartoons, drawings, interviews, and, above all, the writings. Beat, Punk, Noir, Prison, Porn, Cyber, Queer, Anarchist, Blue Collar, Pulp, Sci-Fi, Utopian, Mobster, Political—all are represented. The Bible includes fiction, essays, letters, memoirs, journalism, lyrics, diaries, manifestoes, and selections from seminal film scripts, including Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, and Taxi Driver. The editors have brought together an extravagant, eclectic, searing, and unforgettable body of work, showcasing Hustlers, Mavericks, Contrarians, Rockers, Barbarians, Gangsters, Hedonists, Provocateurs, Hipsters, and Revolutionaries—all in one raucous cauldron of rebellion and otherness. This prose companion to the best-selling award-winning Outlaw Bible of American Poetry features selections from Hunter S. Thompson, Exene Cervenka, Patti Smith, Dennis Cooper, Malcolm X, Sonny Barger, Maggie Estep, Lenny Bruce, Henry Miller, R. Crumb, Philip K. Dick, Iceberg Slim, Gil Scott-Heron, Kathy Acker, Jim Carroll, Charles Mingus, Norman Mailer, and many others.

    “In Munro’s hands, as in Chekhov’s, a short story is more than big enough to hold the world—and to astonish us again and again.” —Chicago TribuneIn an unbroken procession of brilliant, revelatory short stories, Alice Munro has unfolded the wordless secrets that lie at the heart of all human experience. She has won three Governor General’s Literary Awards in her native Canada, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award. Vintage Munro includes stories from throughout her career: The title stories from her collections The Moons of Jupiter; The Progress of Love; Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage; “Differently,” from Selected Stories, and “Carried Away,” from Open Secrets.

    Can Jeff convince his parents there's a live mummy in the basement?Is Matt's summer camp being taken over by an evil patch of poison ivy?Will Eric escape from his tank, now that he's been turned into a fish?From an evil baby sister, to a remote control that can control more than just the television set, to a boarding school that's turning kids into robots, here are 30 creepy, spooky stories guaranteed to give you Goosebumps all night long!Combines the stories from Tales to Give You Goosebumps, More Tales to Give You Goosebumps, and Even More Tales to Give You Goosebumps.

    Moving effortlessly between the war-torn homeland and Orange County's "Little Saigon," Phan chronicles the journeys of four such orphans. Passionate and beautifully written, We Should Never Meet is an utterly fresh reconsideration of the Vietnam War for a new generation and heralds the arrival of one of "the very best of the new wave of Asian-American authors" (David Wong Louie).

    You won't read about it in any of the history books, because there's nothing - save for the circumstantial evidence in Central Park - to prove that it was there at all. Which makes its existence very easy to dismiss. Especially in a time like this one, when the world is so unpredictable, and it takes all of one's resources just to get by in the present tense. But even though most people will say they have no time or reason to believe in the Sixth Borough, and don't believe in the Sixth Borough, they will still use the word "believe.''

    Replete with the brutality, primordial waste, and savage blankness familiar to readers of his earlier works, Evenson's Kafkaesque allegories entice the mind while stubbornly disordering it. In the title story an obsessive consciousness folds back on itself, creating a vertiginous mélange of Poe and Borges, both horrific and metaphysical. Here, as in "Moran's Mexico," and "Greenhouse," the solitary nature of reading and writing leads characters beyond human limits, making the act of putting words to paper a monstrous violation opening onto madness. In "White Square" the representation of humans by dimly colored shapes confirms our feeling that something lies behind these words, while seeming to mock us with the futility of seeking it. Evenson's enigmatic names-Thurm, Bein, Hatcher, Burlun-placeable landscapes, and barren rooms all combine to create a semblance of conceptual abstraction, as though the material universe had come to exist inside someone's head.Small wonder that Evenson's work has attracted so much attention among philosophers, literary critics, and other speculative intelligences, for it continuously projects a tantalizing absence, as though there were some key or code that, if only we knew it, would illuminate everything. However, the blade of discernment wavers, and we are left to our own groping interpretations.

    A short story of the Dresden Files which introduced Harry Dresden and his world for the very first time.(Also included in Side Jobs)

    His genre- busting novels, short stones, and repodage, which have been translated into thirty-four languages, meld the surreal and the hard-boiled, deadpan comedy and delicate introspection.Vintage Murakami includes the opening cnapter of the international bestseller Norwegian Wood; •'Lieueenant Mamiya's Long Story: Parts I and II" from his monumental novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; "Shizuko Akashi" from: Underground, his nonfiction book on the Toyko subway attack 1995; and the shod stories "Barn Burning," and "honey pie."Also included, for the first time in book form, the shod story "Ice Man."--back coverTable of Contents"Barn burning" from The Elephant vanished -- "Shizuko Akashi" from Underground -- "Honeypie" from After the Quake -- "Lieutenant Mamiya's long stories: Part I" from the Wind-up bird chronicle -- "Lieutenant Mamiya's long stories: Part II" from the Wind-up bird chronicle -- "Ice man."

    Among the things I do pretty well at this point I’d have to list darts, re-closing Stay-Fresh boxes, and staying out of the way. This is the self-eulogy offered early on by the unwilling hero of the opening story in this collection, a dazzling array of work in short fiction from a master of the form. The stories in Love and Hydrogen—familiar to readers from publications ranging from McSweeney’s to The New Yorker to Harper’s to Tin House—encompass in theme and compassion what an ordinary writer would seem to need several lifetimes to imagine.A frustrated wife makes use of an enterprising illegal-gun salesman to hold her husband hostage; two hapless adult-education students botch their attempts at rudimentary piano but succeed in a halting, awkward romance; a fascinated and murderous Creature welcomes the first human visitors to his Black Lagoon; and in the title story, the stupefyingly huge airship Hindenburg flies to its doom, representing in 1937 mankind's greatest yearning as well as its titanic failure. Generous in scope and astonishing in ambition, Shepard’s voice never falters; the virtuosity of Love and Hydrogen cements his reputation as, in the words of Rick Bass, “a passionate writer with a razor-sharp wit and an elephantine heart”—in short, one of the most powerful talents at work today.

    The first volume was featured in the "New York Times," which named it a Notable Book of the Year.ContentsFiction. Ibo landing / ihsan bracy --The quality of sand / Cherene Sherrard --Yahimba's choice / Charles R. Saunders --The glass bottle trick / Nalo Hopkinson --Desire / Kiini Ibura Salaam --Recovery from a fall / David Findlay --Anansi meets Peter Parker at the Taco Bell on Lexington / Douglas Kearney --The magical Negro / Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu --Jesus Christ in Texas / W.E.B. DuBois --Will the circle be unbroken? / Henry Dumas --'Cause Harlem needs heroes / Kevin Brockenbrough --Whipping boy / Pam Noles --Old flesh song / Ibi Aanu Zoboi --Whispers in the dark / Walter Mosley --Aftermoon / Tananarive Due --Voodoo Vincent and the astrostoriograms / Tyehimba Jess --The binary / John Cooley --BLACKout / Jill Robinson --Sweet dreams / Charles Johnson --Buying primo time / Wanda Coleman --Corona / Samuel R. Delaney --Maggies / Nisi Shawl --Excerpt from Mindscape / Andrea Hairston --Trance / Kalamu ya Salaam --Essays. The second law of thermodynamics: transcription of a panel at the 1997 Black speculative fiction writer's conference held at Clark Atlanta University / Jewelle Gomez --Her pen could fly: remembering Virginia Hamilton / Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu --Celebrating the alien: the politics of race and species in the juveniles of Andre Norton / Carol Cooper.

    

    Grouped in sections that follow the cycle of life, these stories explore the varied aspects of human existence and, cumulatively, form the satisfying dramatic arc of a novel. The authors range from the acknowledged masters of short fiction - Anton Chekhov, Dorothy Parker, John Cheever, Raymond Carver, T.C. Boyle, Jhumpa Lahiri - to the very best of today's emerging writers. As a bonus, the anthology includes interviews with T.C. Boyle and Jhumpa Lahiri, in which they illuminate the process of creating a short story. Aspiring writers who enjoyed Gotham Writers' Workshop previous book, Writing Fiction, will also find this anthology an invaluable source of inspiration and instruction. Praise for Writing Fiction: "The writing is fresh and full of concrete advice."-Publishers' Weekly " It's an incredible book, not just for the aspiring writer but for the ardent reader as well." - Michael Ray, Senior Editor, Zoetrope: All-Story "This book has a vividness that somehow captures the excitement and fellowship in good writers' workshops. I've clearly found a new book to use in my own writing classes. A fine guide."-Chuck Kinder, Writing Program Director, University of Pittsburgh "The strength of this book is its accessibility: It explains all the basics of writing fiction in a simple, easy-to-understand manner that doesn't intimidate."-The Writer Magazine Gotham Writers' Workshop is America's leading private creative writing school, offering classes in New York City and on the web at www.WritingClasses.com. The school's interactive online classes, selected "Best of the Web" by Forbes, have attracted thousands of aspiring writers from across the United States and more than sixty countries. Also available:

    Moreover, his spirit of adventure soared higher that the planes he so skilfully piloted.

    In the tradition of Defoe, Stevenson, Hawthorne, Coleridge, Poe, and other master writers, these frightful stories conjure the creaks and shadows of the very places where they came to life: haunted St. Andrews, the Isle of Eigg, Kellie Castle, Balcarres House, Durie House ("which has the most persistent of all country-house spectres"), and Kirk's own ancestral spooky house in Mecosta, Michigan.

    Besides the acclaimed, Hugo-winning title piece and its influential prequels, the 36 stories include the British SF Association Award winner "Cube Root", and eight "Year's Best" and "Best Of" anthology choices. SF, fantasy, horror, and unclassifiable Langford weirdness ranging from 1975 to 2003.Contents: *Introduction (Different Kinds of Darkness) (2004) • essay by David Langford *Heatwave (1975) / short story by David Langford *Accretion (1977) / short story by David Langford *Connections (1978) / short story by David Langford *Training (1979) / short story by David Langford *The Final Days (1981) / short story by David Langford *Answering Machine (1982) / short story by David Langford * Hearing Aid (1982) / short story by David Langford * Wetware (1984) / short story by David Langford * Cube Root (1985) / short story by David Langford * Notes for a Newer Testament (1985) / short story by David Langford *In a Land of Sand and Ruin and Gold (1987) / short story by David Langford *Ellipses (1990) / short story by David Langford *A Surprisingly Common Omission (1990) / short fiction by David Langford *A Snapshot Album (1991) / short story by David Langford *Leaks (1991) / short story by David Langford *Waiting for the Iron Age (1991) / short story by David Langford *Blossoms That Coil and Decay (1992) / short story by David Langford *A Game of Consequences (1998) / short story by David Langford *Logrolling Ephesus (2003) / short fiction by David Langford *Too Good to Be (1983) / short story by David Langford *In the Place of Power (1984) / short story by David Langford *The Arts of the Enemy (1992) / short story by David Langford *As Strange a Maze as E'er Men Trod (1998) / short story by David Langford *Cold Spell (1980) / short story by David Langford *3.47 AM (1983) / short story by David Langford *The Facts in the Case of Micky Valdon (1989) / short story by David Langford *The Motivation (1989) / short story by David Langford *Encounter of Another Kind (1991) / short story by David Langford *The Lions in the Desert (1993) / short story by David Langford *Deepnet (1994) / short story by David Langford *Serpent Eggs (1994) / short story by David Langford *Blood and Silence (1995) / short story by David Langford *Blit [Blit] (1988) / short story by David Langford * What Happened at Cambridge IV [Blit] (1990) / short story by David Langford * comp.basilisk FAQ [Blit] (1999) / short fiction by David Langford (variant of Comp.Basilisk FAQ) *Different Kinds of Darkness [Blit] (2000) / short story by David Langford *Original Appearances (Different Kinds of Darkness) (2004) • essay by uncredited.

    Storylines both conventional and outlandish reveal humdrum routines as menacing, or imaginary worlds as perfectly familiar. Allusions to authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne reinforce the fantasy tradition in these tales, while understated humor and moments of sadness add a quirky unpredictability. Also included is the previously unpublished novella, "Botch Town," a coming-of-age story about a boy on Long Island whose family and friends live ordinary lives under threats both real and imagined. Each story is followed by a brief afterword that details its genesis.ContentsIntroduction by Jonathan CarrollThe Annals of Eelin-Ok + Story NotesJupiter's Skull + Story NotesA Night in the Tropics + Story NotesThe Empire of Ice Cream + Story NotesThe Beautiful Gelreesh + Story NotesBoatman's Holiday + Story NotesBotch Town + Story NotesA Man of Light + Story NotesThe Green Word + Story NotesGiant Land + Story NotesCoffins on the River + Story NotesSummer Afternoon + Story NotesThe Weight of Words + Story NotesThe Trentino Kid + Story Notes

    From Sarah Orne Jewett's portraits of rural Maine to F. Scott Fitzgerald's brilliant tales from the Jazz Age, these stories span the breadth of the American experience. In addition to acknowledged masters of the short story form, such as O. Henry, Jack London, and Ernest Hemingway, this volume features stories by Charles W. Chesnutt, the first important African-American novelist, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a leading theorist of the early women's movement.

    Desperate for human connection, they listen through walls and engage in such obsessions as collecting hairs left behind by lovers. These 24 passionately and intricately rendered stories secure Lutz's place at the forefront of the contemporary fiction of disaffection.

    In Corpus Christi, Texas—a town often hit by hurricanes— parents, children, and lovers come together and fall apart, bonded and battered by memories of loss that they feel as acutely as physical pain. A car accident joins strangers linked by an intimate knowledge of madness. A teenage boy remembers his father’s act of sudden and self-righteous violence. A “hurricane party” reunites a couple whom tragedy parted. And, in an unforgettable three-story cycle, an illness sets in profound relief a man’s relationship with his mother and the odd, shifting fidelity of truth to love.Told in fresh, lyrical voices and taut, inventive styles, these narratives explore the complex volatility of love and intimacy, sorrow and renewal—and expose how often these experiences feel like the opposite of themselves. From the woman whose young son’s uncanny rapport with snakes illuminates her own missed opportunities to the man confronting his wife and her lover in a house full of illegal exotic birds, all the characters here face moments of profound decision and recognition in which no choice is clearly or completely right.Writing with tough humor, deep humanity, and a keen eye for the natural environment, Bret Anthony Johnston creates a world where where cataclysmic events cut people loose from their “regular lives, floating and spiraling away from where we had been the day before.” Corpus Christi is a extraordinarily ambitious debut. It marks the arrival of an important, exquisitely talented voice to American fiction.From the Hardcover edition.

    Writer and editor Nalo Hopkinson notes that the science fiction/fantasy genre “speaks so much about the experience of being alienated but contains so little writing by alienated people themselves.” It’s an oversight that Hopkinson and Mehan aim to correct with this anthology.The book depicts imagined futures from the perspectives of writers associated with what might loosely be termed the “third world.” It includes stories that are bold, imaginative, edgy; stories that are centered in the worlds of the “developing” nations; stories that dare to dream what we might develop into.The wealth of postcolonial literature has included many who have written insightfully about their pasts and presents. With So Long Been Dreaming they creatively address their futures.Contributors include: Opal Palmer Adisa, Tobias Buckell, Wayde Compton, Hiromi Goto, Andrea Hairston, Tamai Kobayashi, Karin Lowachee, devorah major, Carole McDonnell, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Eden Robinson, Nisi Shawl, Vandana Singh, Sheree Renee Thomas and Greg Van Eekhout.Nalo Hopkinson is the internationally-acclaimed author of Brown Girl in the Ring, Skin Folk, and Salt Roads. Her books have been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Tiptree, and Philip K. Dick Awards; Skin Folk won a World Fantasy Award and the Sunburst Award. Born in Jamaica, Nalo moved to Canada when she was sixteen. She lives in Toronto.Uppinder Mehan is a scholar of science fiction and postcolonial literature. A South Asian Canadian, he currently lives in Boston and teaches at Emerson College.

    Offering 3 stories by 33 authors, 3 X 33 combines both a breadth and depth not seen in other contemporary or modern short fiction anthologies.

    As an adult he remembers the way things were back home on the farm on the west coast of Cape Breton. The time was the 1940s, but the hens and the cows and the pigs and the sheep and the horse made it seem ancient. The family of six children excitedly waits for Christmas and two-year-old Kenneth, who liked Halloween a lot, asks, “Who are you going to dress up as at Christmas? I think I’ll be a snowman.” They wait especially for their oldest brother, Neil, working on “the Lake boats” in Ontario, who sends intriguing packages of “clothes” back for Christmas. On Christmas Eve he arrives, to the delight of his young siblings, and shoes the horse before taking them by sleigh through the woods to the nearby church. The adults, including the narrator for the first time, sit up late to play the gift-wrapping role of Santa Claus.The story is simple, short and sweet, but with a foretaste of sorrow. Not a word is out of place. Matching and enhancingthe text are black and white illustrations by Peter Rankin, making this book a perfect little gift.For readers from nine to ninety-nine, our classic Christmas story by one of our greatest writers.

    Included are the works of masters of the form and the bright new talents of tomorrow. This book is a valuable resource in addition to serving as the single best place in the universe to find stories that stir the imagination and the heart.

    The present volume includes 13 of the best of Mrs. Windham's stories, representing mysterious and supernatural doings from Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Most of the stories are related to historical places and sometimes to historical people.

    True stories that give voice to the thoughts we all have but dare not mention. It begins with a Tang Instant Breakfast Drink television commercial when Augusten was seven. Then there is the contest of wills with the deranged cleaning lady. The execution of a rodent carried out with military precision and utter horror. Telemarketing revenge. Dating an undertaker and much more. A collection of true stories that are universal in their appeal yet unabashedly intimate and very funny.

    From a tale of Viking raiders to a story set during the Oka crisis, the authors tackle a wide range of issues and events, taking us into the unknown, while also bringing the familiar into sharper focus.Our Story brings together an impressive array of voices — Inuk, Cherokee, Ojibway, Cree, and Salish to name just a few — from across the country and across the spectrum of First Nations. These are the novelists, playwrights, journalists, activists, and artists whose work is both Aboriginal and uniquely Canadian.Brought together to explore and articulate their peoples’ experience of our country’s shared history, these authors’ grace, insight, and humour help all Canadians understand the forces and experiences that have made us who we are.Maria Campbell • Tantoo Cardinal • Tomson Highway • Drew Hayden Taylor • Basil Johnston • Thomas King • Brian Maracle • Lee Maracle • Jovette Marchessault • Rachel Qitsualik

    This collection brings together all of his tales of the paranormal, opening with the unforgettable, ‘A Face in the Dark’ and ending with the shockingly macabre, ‘Night of the Millennium’. Featuring thrilling situations and strange beings, a Face in the Dark and Other Hauntings is the perfect collection to have by your bedside when the moon is up.

    A masseuse breaks her rich client's wrist bone, a friend visits at the hospital long after she is welcome, and a woman surrenders her husband to a creepily adoring student. From one of our most acclaimed writers, Honored Guest is a rich examination of our capacity for transformation and salvation.

    The book remained on the New York Times Best-Seller List for over a year.In the Arms of Angels is Anderson’s newest collection of mysterious and heart-stirring stories of heavenly guardians. From the harrowing account of a World Trade Center survivor to a miraculous rescue during the first Gulf War, these powerful stories invite us to take another look at the “coincidences” in our lives—to open our eyes to the angels who walk beside us. “In times of uncertainty, we long to be reminded that, as Joan Wester Anderson writes, ‘We are not alone.’”—Rev. Timothy Jones, author, The Art of Prayer, Workday Prayers, and Celebration of Angels “In the Arms of Angels is a true gem, a book to be treasured.”—Jessie Frees, radio host, WMTR/WWTR New Jersey

    300 copies. (Out of print).Contents: 'Foreword''The Mermaid''Far-Off Things''Cousin X''A Lake''The Two-Timer''The Tattooist''Ageless''Autumn Colours'.In these eight immaculately realised strange stories, Quentin S. Crisp delves deep into the decadence of contemporary life. The fresh originality of the tales and their settings: an English country garden in ‘Cousin X’; contemporary Japan in ‘A Lake’: is matched by the elegance of the writing. They are unified, perhaps, by a yearning for the achingly perfect, ecstatic moment. As Mark Samuels points out in his Foreword, Crisp’s fiction is ‘. . . too multi-layered, too individual, to be labelled. One can spot influences here and there, a dash of this and a sprinkling of that, but the end result is much greater than the sum of its parts.’

    From Ursula K. Le Guin to Bruce Sterling, this collection is, simply put, essential reading for any serious fan of the genre. Groundbreaking classics and author masterworks abound in this collection, which includes Harlan Ellison's "Jeffty Is Five," a nostalgic tale about a boy who remains five years old -- a conduit to the 1940s world of comic books, candy bars, and serial radio shows -- while society keeps rolling on; and John Varley's "The Persistence of Vision," an unforgettable story about one man's experience in an isolated colony of deaf and blind people. George R. R. Martin's "The Way of Cross and Dragon" takes an unyielding look at the future of religion, and Octavia E. Butler's "Bloodchild" examines the symbiotic relationship between humans on a planet inhabited by sentient insectlike aliens. The Locus Awards, presented to winners of Locus magazine's annual readers' poll, are arguably as prestigious as the Hugo and Nebula because they are chosen by the people who really matter -- the readers. The 18 multi-award-winning stories included in this collection, all in chronological order, take the reader on a retrospective tour of the genre and its many evolutions. From Gene Wolfe's "The Death of Doctor Island" (1973) to Neil Gaiman's homage to Ray Bradbury in "October in the Chair" (2003), this is an absolutely monumental collection worth its weight in gold. Paul Goat Allen

    Lansdale compiles and introduces 26 of his own favorite and most violent dark horror tales in this review of his work. "God of the Razor" introduces the dark god behind serial killers. A martial arts fight to the death between a reluctant champion and a sadistic alpha male is featured in "Master of Misery." Human sacrifice to ensure prosperity and as a coming-of-age ritual, are themes of "On a Dark October" and "Duck Hunt." In "The Fat Man," young boys learn the hard way that some mysteries should not be investigated. Many of the tales are truly weird, such as "Chompers," a story of false teeth with an appetite. All of the stories are individually introduced by Lansdale, who explains the humorous, weird, and sometimes sad genesis for each.

    It includes the famous novella Uta andon (A story by lantern light), the bizarre, antipsychological story Mayu kakushi no rei (A quiet obsession), and Ky�ka's hauntingly erotic final work, Ruk�shins� (The heartvine), as well as critical discussions of each of these three tales. Translator Charles Inouye places Ky�ka's literature of shadows (kage no bungaku) within a worldwide gothic tradition even as he refines its Japanese context. Underscoring Ky�ka's relevance for a contemporary international audience, Inouye adjusts Tanizaki Jun'ichir�'s evaluation of Ky�ka as the most Japanese of authors by demonstrating how the writer's paradigm of the suffering heroine can be linked to his exposure to Christianity, to a beautiful American woman, and to the aesthetic of blood sacrifice.In Light of Shadows masterfully conveys the magical allusiveness and elliptical style of this extraordinary writer, who Mishima Yukio called the only genius of modern Japanese letters.

    The perfect introduction to the incredible world of Zoran Zivković.Impossible Stories might be approached as if one were inspecting a handsome piece of furniture, a cabinet in which each of any number of regularly sized and shaped drawers is built precisely to contain and to somehow exemplify its own metaphysical freight or uncanny puzzle, and it is in the rhythm and variety of the whole, too, that the nature of Zivković's craft can be apprehended and enjoyed. --Tony White, Wasafiri ...even though they own and use computers, Zivković's characters seem decidedly nineteenth century. They are as intelligent and as neurotic as Poe's personae, and admirers of that master of the outre-or of Borges, Gogol, Capek, and Lem-will be enthralled by them. --Ray Olson, Booklist ...well worth reading for the ingenuity of Zivković's stories. He is extraordinarily clever and has a particular talent for devising awkward moral dilemmas for his characters. His writing is also ... quite unlike that of anyone else. --Cheryl Morgan, Emerald City

    Here, at last, is that long lost short story, which appears chronologically between the books Reunion and Darkest Hour. Enjoy!

    Dinh's gift is for constructing, in the manner of Italo Calvino, simple narratives that quickly frame larger questions; with a poet's timing, the author builds his stories to the one or few climactic sentences that brand them with unforgettable meaning. In one tale, a Vietnamese boy's self-guided, haphazard study of English gives way to a meditation on the universality of language: Everything seems chaotic at first, but nothing is chaotic. One can read anything: ants crawling on the ground; pimples on a face; trees in a forest. In another story, a man opens a newspaper and sees the photograph of a man he may have murdered, which he impulsively clips, only to feel that in doing so he unwittingly has sealed his crime: As soon as I finished, I realized what I had done: by cutting my father's likeness out of the newspaper, I had removed him from the world. The collection crescendoes in displays of raw creative power, as in Eight Plots, a rapid-fire of three- and four-sentence summaries, and the brilliant, impressionistic !Blood and Soap is an arresting collection from one of a small number of writers on the vanguard of American fiction.

    These are late-night stories, told after midnight, a femme fatale whispering sad and unraveled and lusty tales into your ear. That femme fatale is Sherrie Flick, and she’s a wickedly good writer."– John McNally, author of The Book of RalphTo order:Casey Huff, editorFlume Press at CSU, Chico400 W. First St.Chico, CA 95929-0830flumepress@csuchico.edu

    Beginning with Gimpel the Fool, whose title story brought Singer to sudden prominence in America when translated by Saul Bellow in 1953, and concluding with The Death of Methuselah, the collection published three years before his death in 1991, this three-volume edition brings together for the first time all the story collections Singer published in English in the versions he called his "second originals"--translations he supervised and collaborated on, revising as he worked. In addition, Collected Stories includes previously uncollected or unpublished stories from his manuscripts in the Ransom Center collections, providing a rare glimpse into the workshop of a literary genius. Here are nearly 200 stories--the full range of Singer's vision--encompassing Old World shtetl and New World exile. Born in Poland in 1904 into a family of rabbis, Singer was raised in a traditional culture that perished at the hands of the Nazis during the Second World War, and his haunting stories testify to the richness of that vanished world. Singer's Old World tales reveal a wild, mischievous, often disturbing supernaturalism evocative of local storytelling traditions. After his immigration to America, Singer's stories increasingly explore the daily lived reality and imaginative boundaries of Jewish culture as it was transplanted to the United States, revealing him to be the emblematic immigrant American writer, a writer whose vision and insights enlarged our idea of what it is to be an American.

    Jura finds that the favourite rooms in his house, each designed to reflect an aspect of his personality, are disappearing one by one. He remembers perfectly well playing the piano in `The Grand Piano Room'. However, the other members of his family deny the room ever existed. In `The Last Day' a family discovers an app that tells them on which day one of them will die. A man receives letters from God giving him choices which throw him into a moral dilemma. In this award-winning collection of stories, `Melnikas questions the taboos that limit human freedom.' Lire Jaroslavas Melnikas is one of the most inventive and interesting Ukrainian and Lithuanian writers today. La Croix wrote of him, `He meditates, like Dostoyevsky, on the relationship between sin and freedom.'

    Beginning with Gimpel the Fool, whose title story brought Singer to sudden prominence in America when translated by Saul Bellow in 1953, and concluding with The Death of Methuselah, the collection published three years before his death in 1991, this three-volume edition brings together for the first time all the story collections Singer published in English in the versions he called his "second originals"--translations he supervised and collaborated on, revising as he worked. In addition, Collected Stories includes previously uncollected or unpublished stories from his manuscripts in the Ransom Center collections, providing a rare glimpse into the workshop of a literary genius. Here are nearly 200 stories--the full range of Singer's vision--encompassing Old World shtetl and New World exile. Born in Poland in 1904 into a family of rabbis, Singer was raised in a traditional culture that perished at the hands of the Nazis during the Second World War, and his haunting stories testify to the richness of that vanished world. Singer's Old World tales reveal a wild, mischievous, often disturbing supernaturalism evocative of local storytelling traditions. After his immigration to America, Singer's stories increasingly explore the daily lived reality and imaginative boundaries of Jewish culture as it was transplanted to the United States, revealing him to be the emblematic immigrant American writer, a writer whose vision and insights enlarged our idea of what it is to be an American.

    Cherryh's short fiction in trade paperback Featuring the short stories, novellas, and novelettes-including the award-winning story, Cassandra, and a new novella written specifically for this book-of the multiple award-winning author, this volume is a must-have for fans and newcomers alike.

    Intense stories about hope, joy, the body, mainly joy and the body--feeling the world on our skin, the place where Us and Not-Us meet. Nicola Griffith writes about being as well as doing--about life and love and the fears that keep us from having what we want.The women in these stories live in a world not quite like ours, where the jungle is alive with more than animals, music can be made with the body, and civilization can only end if we all give up...

    They strive to become an emotional or intellectual cargo that might accompany us wherever, or however, we go. . . . If we are made by what we read, if language truly builds people into what they are, how they think, the depth with which they feel, then these stories are, to me, premium material for that construction project. You could build a civilization with them.” —Ben Marcus, from the IntroductionAward-winning author of Notable American Women Ben Marcus brings us this engaging and comprehensive collection of short stories that explore the stylistic variety of the medium in America today.Sea Oak by George SaundersEverything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells TowerDo Not Disturb by A.M. HomesThe Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee BenderThe Caretaker by Anthony DoerrThe Old Dictionary by Lydia DavisThe Father’s Blessing by Mary CaponegroThe Life and Work of Alphonse Kauders by Aleksandar HemonPeople Shouldn’t Have to be the Ones to Tell You by Gary LutzHistories of the Undead by Kate BravermanWhen Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine by Jhumpa LahiriDown the Road by Stephen DixonX Number of Possibilities by Joanna ScottTiny, Smiling Daddy by Mary GaitskillBrief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster WallaceThe Sound Gun by Matthew DerbyShort Talks by Anne CarsonField Events by Rick BassScarliotti and the Sinkhole by Padgett Powell

    "PINK STEAM is not kitschy, it is a culturally astute document of the real written by a master at the height of her powers"--Jennifer Moxley. The intimate secrets of Dodie Bellamy's life--sex, shoplifting, voyeurism, and writing are illuminated in Bellamy's incredibly tailored latest work where true confession bleeds into high theory into trash cinema. PINK STEAM barges beyond the cliches of gendered experience; unafraid of the personal, unabashed by politics and sex, Bellamy makes confusion her OK Corral. Dodie Bellamy is the author of CUNT-UPS and FEMININE HIJINX, both available at SPD.

    Collins. Dead Man's Hand collects the novellas "Walking Wolf" and "Lynch," the short stories "Calaverada" and "The Tortuga Hill Gang's Last Ride," and completes the five-card draw with the all-new vampire Western novella "Hell Come Sundown." The West has never been better or weirder. About the Author Nancy A. Collins is the author of Sunglasses After Dark , Darkest Heart and Dead Roses for a Blue Lady . She is a past recipient of the Bram Stoker and British Fantasy Iecarus Awards, and a nominee for the 2003 Stoker and International Horror Guild Awards.

    A brand new short story collection from Kage Baker, including an original novella set in her ongoing series of The Company, "Mother Aegypt." The Company novels are being released by Tor, and include The Graveyard Game and The Life of the World to Come.

    M. Dent edition of 1997.Aiming in his translation for "an English haunted and affected by the strangeness of the original," David Constantine offers a wealth of Heinrich von Kleist's key writings in this collection, the most ambitious of its kind.

    Y. Abramovitsh open this collection of the best short works by three influential nineteenth-century Jewish authors. Abra- movitsh's alter ego--Mendele the Book Peddler--introduces himself and narrates both The Little Man and Fishke the Lame. His cast of characters includes Isaac Abraham as tailor's apprentice, choirboy, and corrupt businessman; Mendele's friend Wine 'n' Candles Alter; and Fishke, who travels through the Ukraine with a caravan of beggars.Sholem Aleichem's lively stories reintroduce us to Tevye, the gregarious dairyman, as he describes the pleasures of raising his independent-minded daughters. These are followed by short monologues in which Aleichem gives voice to unforgettable characters from Eastern Europe to the Lower East Side. Finally, I. L. Peretz's neo-hasidic tales draw on hasidic traditions in the service of modern literature.These stories provide an unsentimental look back at Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Although nostalgia occasionally colors their prose, the writers were social critics who understood the shortcomings of shtetl life. For the general reader, these translations breathe new life into the extraordinary worlds of Yiddish literature. The introduction, glossary, and biographical essays contemporaneous to each author put those worlds into context, making the book indispensable to students and scholars of Yiddish culture.

    When is the best time to do each thing? Who are the most important people to work with? What is the most important thing to do at all times? (Excerpt from Wikipedia)

    Kinsella, there’s no place quite like the Ermineskin Reserve in Hobbema, Alberta, where Silas Ermineskin and his friend Frank Fencepost live out their absurd, touching and hilarious adventures. Thousands of readers have travelled with Silas and Frank as they cause a riot on a nude beach in Vancouver, chit-chat with the Queen in her bedroom, spar with a beauty-pageant manager and turn the Alberta Supreme Court into a bunch of legal loonies.  Kinsella’s three Hobbema collections have generated a mountain of terrific reviews, more than a few columns of controversy and an immeasurable amount of reader enjoyment, not to mention a Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour (for The Fencepost Chronicles). A popular seller when it was first published in 1998, this reissued W.P. Kinsella Omnibus will delight Kinsella’s devoted readers as well as attract new fans to his unique brand of funny, fantastical fiction.PREVIOUS EDITION: The Silas Stories • 0-00-648195-7

    Thus they span a range of times and tempers, celebrating the many kinds of love, and delineating the many ways of falling in and out of it.

    Parents, confused by their five-year-old’s refusal to sit up in her chair, lift her blouse to find she’s been beaten. A woman returns from a shopping trip just in time to see her husband kissing a young co-worker. A young husband constructs an elaborate and romanticized version of his new marriage and then ruins it in one gesture. These singular moments propel each person on a journey beyond the realm of everyday existence.Vividly portraying the possible horrors and detours that can mark anyone’s life, Desaulniers beautifully captures the vast and often conflicting emotions that humans endure at times of loss and sorrow—loneliness, pain, desperation, desire. Yet this balletic push and pull of emotions will challenge, wound, and ultimately enlighten her characters, transporting them to a place beyond individual sorrow.At times unbearably heartbreaking, What You’ve Been Missing is not just another set of stories about bad things happening to good people. At its heart, this award-winning collection is about people continuing to talk—rather than shutting down—as bad things happen to them. As the recently divorced Liza thinks in “The Good Fight”: “Words do ease us. They comfort us. Maybe they protect us in a way, rescue us from the agony of what our bodies feel.”

    

    “It was Nabokov’s gift to bring paradise wherever he alighted.” —John Updike, The New York Review of BooksNovelist, poet, critic, translator, and, above all, a peerless imaginer, Vladimir Nabokov was arguably the most dazzling prose stylist of the twentieth century. In novels like Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, or Ardor, he turned language into an instrument of ecstasy.Vintage Nabokov includes sections 1-10 of his most famous and controversial novel, Lolita; the stories “The Return of Chorb,” “The Aurelian,” “A Forgotten Poet,” “Time and Ebb,” “Signs and Symbols,” “The Vane Sisters,” and “Lance”; and chapter 12 from his memoir Speak, Memory.

    It is due to Keith Morris’ remarkable gift to give such eloquent voices to his characters that we cherish them and believe completely in the bewildering complexities that lie just beneath the placid surface of their yearning, workday lives. In these stories, a failed high-school athlete watches as his gifted son falls under the spell of his charismatic grandfather, and a young man in the process of losing his sight struggles to accept his developing blindness while clinging to his diminishing independence. Morris explores the painful tensions of parental love and “old-fashioned” virtues like respect, thoughtfulness, empathy, and understanding. Morris is a writer of enormous skill, and these stories of small-town men groping for a perspective on themselves and the lives they’ve come to live are among the most powerful in contemporary fiction.

    Henry like The gift of magi,an unfinished story,the ethics of pig,let me feel your pulse,'girl', etc.

    “One of the country’s best writers. . . . No one looks harder at contemporary American life, sees more, or expresses it with such hushed, deliberate care.” —San Francisco ChronicleAn accomplished practitioner of the short story and the "Babe Ruth of novelists," (Washington Post Book World) Richard Ford is the first writer to receive both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for a single book, his 1995 novel Independence Day.Vintage Ford includes an excerpt from that novel, along with the stories “Communist,” and “Rock Springs” from his collection Rock Springs; “Reunion,” and “Calling,” from A Multitude of Sins, which won him the 2001 PEN/Malamud Award; “The Womanizer,” from Women with Men. Also included, for the first time in book form, the memoir, “My Mother, in Memory.”

    Her latest book, Outrageous Love, invites readers to look at the bold choices that God has made to draw us to Him and the lavish ways that He cares for us each day. As we acknowledge and respond to His outrageous love, we enter into a joy that surpasses any trouble the world might present.

    Forrest, Radclyffe, Karin Kallmaker, Cameron Abbott, Ellen Hart, Lori L. Lake, Caro Clarke, J.M. Redmann, Jennifer Fulton, Gabrielle Goldsby, Lois Hart, Carrie Carr, SX Meagher, Jean Stewart, Cate Swannell, Therese Szymanski, Kelly Zarembski, Georgia Beers, Talaran, Julia Watts, Marie Sheppard Williams, Meghan Brunner, and Marcia Tyson Kolb.Don't miss this unforgettable collection!

    It explores the issue of fertility and the female body; suppression and oppression, in the guise of love and the assurance of security; so also the attempt to understand the complexities of male-female relationships, striving to look at life not only from the perspective of what one knows, but also from that of what one does not know or has not attempted to know.

    But the daring young elf's job wasn't always so exiting. Like call Recon officers, she began her career in Traffic. This is the story of her initiation as a Recon captain, and how she became the first female officer to serve under Commander Julius Root.Originally published in The Artemis Fowl Files.

    Stretching back to “The Jew from Babylon,” a story first published in Yiddish in 1932, and gathering tales such as “Brother Beetle” and “There Are No Coincidences” from the 1960s, the works in Collected Stories: One Night in Brazil to The Death of Methuselah serve as a retrospective view of Singer’s achievement as a storyteller.Collected Stories: One Night in Brazil to The Death of Methuselah also contains ten stories published in English translation for the first time, selected from the extensive collection of Singer’s papers at the University of Texas. Ranging from “Between Shadows,” an evocative, naturalistic sketch set in Warsaw, to the bittersweet melodrama “Morris and Timna,” to the beguiling fable “Hershele and Hanele, or The Power of a Dream,” these stories enrich our understanding of Singer as a writer. The volume also includes “The Bird,” “My Adventures as an Idealist,” and “Exes,” stories published in magazines that were not included in any of Singer’s collections. Complementing the 78 stories gathered here is the introduction to Gifts (1985), a version of a lecture Singer had delivered since the early 1960s sometimes called “Why I Write as I Do,” which illuminates his biography, philosophical outlook, and literary aims.

    With stunning translucence, Meacham dissects emotional terrain that is intimate and familiar in characters marked more by loss than good fortune. Estelle, in the title story, used to be "the kind of girl who looked forward to things." Years later, jettisoned by her husband after the death of their infant son, she wonders how she arrived at a point in her life where there are no longer beginnings, just endings. While the women in Let's Do are hard on themselves, they're also without self-pity. They weather life's quotidian tragedies with grit and determination. But it's not just Meacham's women who are wounded. Bill, in "Good Fences," newly retired and vaguely unhappy, ponders where a line has been crossed after meeting his new neighbor, a young single mother. For other men, like Carter in "The Assignment," such reflection turns malevolent when his girlfriend, frightened by a near-assault, demands that he attack her so that next time she'll be better prepared.

    SouthFragments of a Primordial GnosisThe LodgeBerenice’s JournalView from a Ghost ShipThe Tides that BindParting the VeilsHeirloomsPorcelain & Pretty LaceThe Physics of Unseen PuppeteersThe FollyForewarning: The Good Doctor’s Eternal ReturnFlowers of DeliriumThe Master’s Posthumous SermonLeavings of Shroud House: An InventoryAcolytes of the ReapingThe Churchyard ChrysalidsSoiled Throats, or, The Litany of the MaggotThe Whimper of Those Long LostFruit from the Barbarous GardenTexts

    Compassionate, lyrical, spellbinding, the work he has created unfolds with mystery and eloquence and enlarges our literature.Included in Vintage Ondaatje are portions of the novels Anil’s Ghost, In the Skin of the Lion, Coming Through Slaughter, and The English Patient; the memoir Running in the Family; sections from The Collected Works of Billy the Kid; and a selection of the poetry.Vintage Readers are a perfect introduction to some of the great modern writers, presented in attractive, affordable paperback editions.

    Read a complete short story at BookBrowse.Sightseeing is a masterful new work of fiction, a collection of stories set in contemporary Thailand and written with a grace and sophistication that belie the age of its young author. These are generous, tender tales of family bonds, youthful romance, generational conflicts, and cultural shiftings beneath the glossy surface of a warm, Edenic setting. Rattawut Lapcharoensap offers a diverse, humorous, and deeply affectionate view of life in a small Southeast Asian country that is inevitably absorbing the waves of encroaching Westernization.In the prizewinning opening story, "Farangs," the young son of a modest beachside motel owner commits the cardinal sin of falling for a pretty tourist, and the confrontation that ensues between the native boy and the girl's pompous American boyfriend culminates wondrously amid flying mangoes and Clint Eastwood—a pet pig—swimming out to sea. In "Sightseeing," the much-anticipated holiday of a young man about to leave for college and his loving and fiercely independent mother becomes a different kind of pilgrimage altogether when they are forced to confront the mother's impending blindness. The concluding novella, "Cockfighter," is a triumph of storytelling in which a young girl witnesses her proud father's valiant but foolhardy and drawn-out battle against the local delinquent and violent hoodlum whose family's vicious stranglehold on the villagers has passed down unchecked through generations.Through his vivid assemblage of parents and children, natives and transients, ardent lovers and sworn enemies, Lapcharoensap dares us to look with new eyes at the circumstances that shape our views and the prejudices that form our blind spots. Gorgeous and lush, painful and candid, Sightseeing is an extraordinary reading experience, one that powerfully reveals that when it comes to how we respond to pain, anger, hurt, and love, no place is too far from home.

    

    As a boy growing up in the tiny backwater town of Forty-Five, South Carolina (where everybody is pretty much one beer short of a six-pack), all Mendal Dawes wants is out. It's not just his hometown that's hopeless. Mendal's father is just as bad. Embarrassing his son to death nearly every day, Mr. Dawes is a parenting guide's bad example. He buries stuff in the backyard—fake toxic barrels, imitation Burma Shave signs (BIRD ON A WIRE, BIRD ON A PERCH, FLY TOWARD HEAVEN, FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH), yardstick collections. He calls Mendal "Fuzznuts" and makes him recite Marx and Durkheim daily and befriend a classmate rumored to have head lice. Mendal Dawes is a boy itching to get out of town, to take the high road and leave the South and his dingbat dad far behind—just like those car-chasing dogs. But bottom line, this funky, sometimes outrageous, and always very human tale is really about how Mendal discovers that neither he nor the dogs actually want to catch a ride, that the hand that has fed them has a lot more to offer. On the way to watching that light dawn, we also get to watch the Dawes's precarious relationship with a place whose "gene pool [is] so shallow that it wouldn't take a Dr. Scholl's insert to keep one's soles dry." To be consistently funny is a great gift. To be funny and cynical and empathetic all at the same time is George Singleton's special gift, put brilliantly into play in this new collection.

    For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind. Lorrie Moore brings her keen eye for wit and surprise to the volume, and The Best American Short Stories 2004 is an eclectic and enthralling gathering of well-known voices and talented up-and-comers. Here are stories that probe the biggest issues: ambition, gender, romance, war. Here are funny and touching and striking tales of a Spokane Indian, the estranged wife of an Iranian immigrant, an American tutor in Bombay. In her introduction Lorrie Moore writes, "The stories collected here impressed me with their depth of knowledge and feeling of character, setting, and situation . . . They spoke with amused intelligence, compassion, and dispassion."

    G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) charmed generations of readers with such whimsical characters as the Honourable Bertie Wooster — a deliciously dim aristocrat — and Jeeves, his imperturbable manservant. This entertaining collection presents six entertaining tales featuring the unflappable valet, among them "Leave It to Jeeves," "Jeeves Takes Charge," and "Jeeves in the Springtime." Sure to seduce longtime Wodehouse fans, these clever send-ups of the idle rich in Edwardian England will also tickle the funny bones of new readers. Large print edition.

    Winner of the prestigious Bollingen prize and the Poetry Society of America's Shelley Memorial Award, he was hailed by John Ashbery as one of the major twentieth-century poets. Schwartz's stories were also widely read and loved, admired by James Atlas for their unique style that enabled Schwartz to depict his characters with a sort of childlike verisimilitude. Graced with an introduction by Cynthia Ozick, this New Directions Bibelot, Screeno: Stories and Poems, gathers many of Schwartz's most popular stories and poems, including: Screeno, In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, America, America! and The Heavy Bear who Goes with Me. Also included is a newly discovered story, The Heights of Joy, which appeared in the magazine Boulevard in 2002. Delmore Schwartz's life is legendary; yet it is his work that endures: What complicates and enriches Schwartz's comedy, says Irving Howe, is, I think, a reaching out toward nobility, a shy aspiring spirituality, a moment or two of achieved purity of feeling.

    The 1950s: The Road to Nightfall, The Macauley Circuit, Sunrise on Mercury, Warm Man. The 1960s: To See the Invisible Man, Flies, Passengers, Nightwings, Sundance. The 1970s: Good News from the Vatican, Capricorn Games, Born with the Dead, Schwartz Between the Galaxies. The 1980s: The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve, The Pope of the Chimps, Needle in a Timestack, Sailing to Byzantium, Enter a Soldier. Later, Enter Another. The 1990s: Hunters in the Forest, Death Do Us Part, Beauty in the Night. The 2000s: The Millennium Express, With Caesar in the Underworld.

    The anthology s core logic is the inclusion of stories most frequently and successfully taught to undergraduates in university courses, in North America and beyond. This selection of twenty-six stories (from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries) illustrates diverse narrative styles and techniques as well as a broad spectrum of human experiences. The collection comprises useful classroom examples, recognized classics of the genre, and some very interesting, less often anthologized works. Stories are organized chronologically, are lightly annotated for the undergraduate reader, and are prefaced by engaging short introductions. Also included is a glossary of basic critical terms, with examples in many cases from the stories themselves.

    When the shocking fact of her birthright forces her onto the streets at fourteen years of age, she must flee with only the clothes on her back. Amid the tempestuous turmoil of the Mistwraith's incursion through South Gate, these are the lawless times, with clan survivors being hunted down for bounty. Alone, without kin, she has nowhere to turn, driven as she is by a blood-gifted heritage too overpowering to deny.This story is a suitable start for new readers of the Wars of Light and Shadow series."Child of Prophecy precedes Mistwraith by about 5 centuries and shows the antecedent action that feeds into the political deadlocks that exist as Mistwraith opens, and that are, actually deep rooted and quite complex. It will set your footing for entering that world with a deeper understanding of the divisions in society." -- Janny WurtsOriginally printed in Masters of Fantasy anthology, also available as standalone in both Kindle and ebook formats on the Author's website.

    At its core, the Mahabharat relives the ancient battle between good and evil through the Pandavas and the Kauravas. It is an authoritative book of law, morality and philosophy that has sustained and nurtured the soul of India for generations. From the apocalyptic battlefield of Kurukshetra to the divine fragrance of the Bhagavad Gita, this ancient tale of love and despair is a majestic edifice of Hindu religion, ethics, thought, culture and literature. Here, Sadhu Vivekjivandas teams up with legendary Indian artist and winner of the prestigious Grand Draper Award, Vasudeo Kamath, to masterfully recreate this stunning tale for a contemporary audience. Through 41 captivating watercolor paintings and simple yet profound exposition, this version of the Mahabharat acts as an elegant introduction for children, teenagers, and adults alike.

    This collection of twenty-four modern tales by eighteen authors offers up a mix of previously published and new works, creating a literary road map to Arab American literature today. Here authors of Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, Egyptian, and Libyan descent, some with established reputations, others new young writers, tell tales about Muslims and Christians, recent immigrants and fully assimilated Americans, teenagers and grandmothers, guerillas and peaceniks, professors, housewives, grocers, bookies, those who long for their homeland, and those who refuse to speak Arabic. A number of the stories center on conflicts between immigrants and their American-born children. Others wrestle openly with topics such as in-group stereotyping, domestic violence, familial discord, and other difficult issues. But what sets this literature apart from other ethnic literatures is its tendency to keep an eye on the overseas political situation. By turns sassy or lyrical, biting or humorous, always moving, the stories in this collection are good reading and an important contribution to the body of ethnic American literature.Contents:How we are bound by Patricia Sarrafian WardThe new world by Susan Muaddi DarrajA frame for the sky ; Lost in freakin' yonkers by Randa JarrarOh, Lebanon by Evelyn ShakirFire and sand by Laila HalabyNews from Phoenix ; And what else? by Joseph GehaThe salad lady by Rawi HageThe coal bin by D.H. MelhemManar of Hama ; The spiced chicken queen of Mickaweaquah, Iowa by Mohja KahfStage directions for an extended conversation by Yussef El GuindiIt's not about that by Samia SerageldinAirport ; Bluebird by Pauline KaldasEdge of rock by May Mansoor MunnShakespeare in the Gaza Strip by Sahar KayyalArabic lessons by David Williams

    From comedy to tragedy to historical to contemporary; from "Priscilla and the Wimps," Peck’s first short story, to "Shotgun Cheatham’s Last Night Above Ground," which inspired both A Long Way from Chicago and A Year Down Yonder, to "The Electric Summer," Peck’s jumping-off point for Fair Weather, readers will thrill at Peck’s engaging short fiction. Complete with the author’s own notes on the stories as well as tips and hints for aspiring writers and two new stories, this vibrant and varied collection offers something for everyone.

    She was having such a good time that she hated to take such a definite step. Meanwhile, their secret engagement had got so long that it seemed as if any day it might break off of its own weight. A little man named Warburton, who knew it all, persuaded Perry to superman her, to get a marriage license and go up to the Medill house and tell her she'd have to marry him at once or call it off forever. This is some stunt--but Perry tried it on December the twenty-ninth.

    It remains Takako Takahashi's most sustained and multifaceted fictional realization of her concept of "loneliness." Her fiction typically features a woman for whom dreams and fantasies, crime, madness, sexual deviance, or occult pursuits serve as a temporary release from her society's definitions of female identity. The combination of surrealist, feminist, and religious themes in Takahashi's work makes it unique among that of modern Japanese women writers.The five individually titled short stories that constitute "Lonely Woman" are linked by certain characters, themes, and plot elements. In the first story, "Lonely Woman," a series of arson incidents in her neighborhood causes a nihilistic young woman to become fascinated with the psychology of the person who perpetrated the crimes. Her fantasies of the euphoric pleasure of setting a fire heighten her awareness of her own violent tendencies. "The Oracle" portrays a young widow who becomes convinced, through several disturbing dreams, that her late husband was unfaithful to her. She devises a cruel, ritualistic act as a strategy for defusing her sense of helpless rage. In "Foxfire," a store clerk has a series of encounters with sly, seductive youngsters and is revitalized by her discovery of the criminal and sexual impulses that lurk beneath their innocent fa?ades. In "The Suspended Bridge," a bored housewife's passion is rekindled when a man with whom she once had a sadomasochistic relationship reenters her life. "Strange Affinities" recasts crime, madness, and "amour fou" as catalysts of a process of spiritual enlightenment: an old woman searches for an elusive man who seems to embody the bliss of self-renunciation.

    This selection of 32 pre-1914 stories of Prague life--most were translated into English for the first time in this collection--revels in the twisted logic of politics and bureaucracy in the Czech capital which was also an Austrian provincial city.

    An old man ends up in a high-speed car chase with the cops after stealing the car that blocks the garbage bin at his apartment building. A stranger gets a job at a sandwich shop and fixes everything in sight: a manual mustard dispenser, a mouthful of crooked teeth, thirty-two parking tickets, and a sexual-identity problem.Percival Everett is a master storyteller who ingeniously addresses issues of race and prejudice by simultaneously satirizing and celebrating the human condition.

    A weary gunfighter in need of a few days rest for himself and his overworked horse, he happened upon the little town of Stillwell and reckoned he'd pass a few unevenetful days there.He hadn't counted on any trouble, and when he found himself faced with the threat of Tom Stroud, the marshal hired by the townspeople to keep Stillwell "clean," Lance got more than he bargained for. In no time at all Lance's status changed from outlaw to deputy marshal, and he learned a valuable lesson – that it's a lot easier to be sworn in as a deputy marshal than to act like one.Monument RockIt had been many years since Lona Markham's father sent her from the rigors of ranch life to a convent school. Now she's returned to a wary, careworn man who hardly seems like the father she remembers. The ranch she's set to inherit someday is shadowed by brutish Frank Mailer, the man Lona's promised to marry--and haunted by the mysterious Black Rider, who watches the Blue Hill Ranch from a distance. Some say the Rider is a ghost, but all Lona knows is his presence makes both Poke Markham and Frank Mailer uneasy. Then one day the enigmatic stranger reveals himself to Lona. Lance Kilkenny has ridden to this rugged country to repay an old debt to Lona's father. When he exposes a cold and daring scheme to cheat her of the Blue Hill Ranch, Lona Markham is plunged into terrible danger. But Kilkenny has a cool head and a fast gun hand...

    Twenty-nine films were based on her novels and short stories. Her fiction was not only beloved by readers, but also acclaimed by reviewers and regularly included in Best American Short Stories. And yet not one of her books remains in print.The publication of this selection of Fannie Hurst’s best short stories is sure to propel a long-overdue revival and reassessment of Hurst’s work. No reader of these thirty stories, spanning the years 1912 to 1935, can fail to recognize Hurst’s depth, intelligence, and artistry as a writer. Hurst was the one of the premier literary chroniclers of poor and working-class urban life in early 20th-century America, especially the vibrant life of Jewish immigrant communities. She was also a pioneer in writing about the lives of working women, from maids to secretaries to garment workers, from prostitutes to artists. And she wove these threads into captivating, deeply human stories that capture her characters’ struggles, triumphs, conflicts, and loves.

    After all, this book is named after a strip club slogan (and Motley Crue song). Claire Zulkey wants you to know that literary humor from and about women doesn't have to involve menstrual issues, floods of tears, retail therapy, over-consumption of tequila-based drinks, bonbon binging, or even the phrase "You go, girl!" In fact, even men enjoy her humor. Girls! Girls! Girls!, Zulkey's first book for So New Media, features sixteen short pieces that explore a variety of hard-hitting issues, such as Playboy Bunnies, spam email, women in Major League Baseball, shower caddies, and of course, the startling expose "Fat: The New Thin." Girls! Girls! Girls! encompasses genres from short story, interview, letter, and list, all in one fell, and very witty, swoop.