Dimanche and Other Stories


Irène Némirovsky - 1941
    Moving from the drawing rooms of pre-war Paris to the lives of men and women in wartime France, here we find the beautiful work of a writer at the height of her tragically short career.Contents:Dimanche = Sunday --Les rivages heureux = Those happy shores --Liens du sang = Flesh and blood --Fraternité = Brotherhood --La femme de don Juan = Don Juan's wife --Le sortilège = The spell --Le spectateur = The spectator --Monsieur Rose = Mr. Rose --La confidente = The confidante --L'inconnu = The unknown soldier.

Oh the Moon: Stories from the Tortured Mind of Charlyne Yi


Charlyne Yi - 2015
    Along the way she meets Cassady, an Elvis impersonator with his own, mysterious gripe with the Dark Lord.Short, one-page anecdotes, poems, reflections, and imagery are also included.Strange, heartfelt, and wonderful, Oh the Moon shows you love in the way that only Charlyne Yi’s brilliant, witty mind can.

When Things of the Spirit Come First


Simone de Beauvoir - 1979
    Each tale concerns a young woman struggling with the effects of a Catholic upbringing, and with the stifling social demands of the French bourgeoisie.

Man V. Nature


Diane Cook - 2014
    In “Girl on Girl,” a high school freshman goes to disturbing lengths to help an old friend. An insatiable temptress pursues the one man she can’t have in “Meteorologist Dave Santana.” And in the title story, a long fraught friendship comes undone when three buddies get impossibly lost on a lake it is impossible to get lost on. In Diane Cook’s perilous worlds, the quotidian surface conceals an unexpected surreality that illuminates different facets of our curious, troubling, and bewildering behavior.Other stories explore situations pulled directly from the wild, imposing on human lives the danger, tension, and precariousness of the natural world: a pack of not-needed boys take refuge in a murky forest and compete against each other for their next meal; an alpha male is pursued through city streets by murderous rivals and desirous women; helpless newborns are snatched by a man who stalks them from their suburban yards. Through these characters Cook asks: What is at the root of our most heartless, selfish impulses? Why are people drawn together in such messy, complicated, needful ways? When the unexpected intrudes upon the routine, what do we discover about ourselves? As entertaining as it is dangerous, this accomplished collection explores the boundary between the wild and the civilized, where nature acts as a catalyst for human drama and lays bare our vulnerabilities, fears, and desires.

A Million Versions of Right


Matthew Revert - 2009
    Step into a world that defies all logic. One of Masturbatory headphones, diabolically toppled comb-jars, moustache-filled ejaculations, malfunctioning bookmarks, bricolage scrotums, wank fairies and a poorly conceived theory regarding wall stability. A world where ball popping is the only solution to the scrotum's poor aesthetic qualities and true love can lead a man to transpose menstruation across gender lines. Not to mention a blink so immensely powerful that mild abrasion can ensue. There s also a lime. Truly some of the strangest stories ever told. In his debut collection Matthew Revert has concocted a bizarre vortex of fiction by turns hilarious, disturbing, thought-provoking and just plain odd. A Million Versions of Right will force you to find logic in the illogic and shun anything resembling common sense. Like the faecal scrawl of a madman without the unpleasant smell

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories


H.P. Lovecraft - 1937
    This Penguin Classics edition brings together a dozen of the master's tales-from his early short stories "Under the Pyramids" (originally ghostwritten for Harry Houdini) and "The Music of Erich Zann" (which Lovecraft ranked second among his own favorites) through his more fully developed works, "The Dunwich Horror," The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and At the Mountains of Madness. The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories presents the definitive corrected texts of these works, along with Lovecraft critic and biographer S. T. Joshi's illuminating introduction and notes to each story.Contains the following tales:- The Tomb- Beyond the Wall of Sleep- The White Ship- The Temple- The Quest of Iranon- The Music of Erich Zann- Imprisoned with the Pharaohs aka Under the Pyramids- Pickman's Model- The Case of Charles Dexter Ward- The Dunwich Horror- At the Mountains of Madness- The Thing on the Doorstep

Ajax Penumbra 1969


Robin Sloan - 2012
    Ajax Penumbra seeks a book--the single surviving copy of the Techne Tycheon, a mysterious volume that has brought and lost great fortune for anyone who has owned it. Late one night, after another day of dispiriting dead ends, he stumbles across a 24-hour bookstore, and the possibilities before him expand exponentially.

Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology


Bruce SterlingJames Patrick Kelly - 1986
    Fans and critics call their world cyberpunk. Here is the definitive "cyberpunk" short fiction collection.Contents:The Gernsback Continuum (1981) by William GibsonSnake-Eyes (1986) by Tom MaddoxRock On (1984) by Pat CadiganTales of Houdini (1981) by Rudy Rucker400 Boys (1983) by Marc LaidlawSolstice (1985) by James Patrick KellyPetra (1982) by Greg BearTill Human Voices Wake Us (1984) by Lewis ShinerFreezone (1985) by John ShirleyStone Lives (1985) by Paul Di FilippoRed Star, Winter Orbit (1983) by William Gibson and Bruce SterlingMozart in Mirrorshades (1984) by Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner

'Art'


Yasmina Reza - 1994
    The Tony Award-winning play that focuses on the meaning of art (in the form of a solid white painting) as well as the meaning of friendship, to both the man who bought the painting and the two friends who come to see it."

The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain


Mark Twain - 1957
    This sparkling anthology covers the entire span of Twain’s inimitable yarn-spinning, from his early broad comedy to the biting satire of his later years.Every one of his sixty stories is here: ranging from the frontier humor of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” to the bitter vision of humankind in “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” to the delightful hilarity of “Is He Living or Is He Dead?” Surging with Twain’s ebullient wit and penetrating insight into the follies of human nature, this volume is a vibrant summation of the career of–in the words of H. L. Mencken–“the father of our national literature.”