The five weird and wonderful tales collected here each unlock the many-tongued language of desire, whether it takes the form of hunger, lust, sudden infatuation or the secret longings of the heart.Selected from Haruki’s Murakami’s short story collections The Elephant Vanishes, Blind Willow Sleeping Woman and Men Without Women.

    

    At first he and his wife cannot decide what they should do with him. They are unable to put the man back into the sea although they realize he is an enemy and that for fear of the authorities they should do just that. Against the advice of his wife, and at great risk to his honor, career, position and life, Dr. Hoki hides the wounded American, operates on him, and saves his life. The surgery is successful, and the couple settle into a period of hope and fear as they await the patient’s recovery. As the days and nights pass, Dr. Hoki finds his traditional attitude transformed by the encounter with the American.

    Early in his career, he came up against the Soviet Union's deadliest agent three times, finally killing the man in a flooded tunnel beneath the ruins of a castle in Portugal.Years have passed. The Russian's brother, Kurshin, a Spetsnaz operator twenty-five years younger than McGarvey, vows revenge. He and McGarvey are both shadowmen--living between the real world, and the world of the deep cover spy and assassin. To get McGarvey's attention, Kurshin desecrates the grave of the American's wife. McGarvey pits himself against the Russian--the man of vast experience versus the bold young man who believes he is invincible. The mano a mano begins at Arlington Cemetery and moves across Europe, from the baccarat tables of Monte Carlo to the same the Portuguese castle where the Russian's brother was killed so many years ago. Only one shadowman will be left standing.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    The short stories included in this selection are representative not only of Tagore's range, but they also enable us to revise the conventional view of Tagore as a short story writer. Writing them at a time when the form was not yet popular, Tagore eschewed the romantic strain prevalent in his day. His stories are fables of modern man, where fairy tale meets hard ground, where myths are reworked, and the religion of man triumphs over the religion of rituals and convention, where the love of a woman infuses the universe with humanity. He writes with concern about such issues as the Hindu revivalism in the late nineteenth century and the bondage of women. The rhythms of daily life, his rural encounters and childhood reminiscences, unfold in his tales, as does a sense of history, the reality of the political situation and its impact on individual lives. Tagore wishes to see the world of humanity not only reflected in his own life but also actualized in Bengali literature. His profound sensibility led him beyond the merely regional, his humanity stretching across east and west, fulfilling the purpose of his Jibandebata, his life's deity, Edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri, a well-known scholar and translator, this is an authoritative and readable translation of Tagore's short stories. An essential Tagore for the collector, it is one that will find its place on every discerning reader's shelf.

    But these are not the only scars that have resolutely refused to heal. Shortly afterwards, Colonel Mitchell Havilland sacrificed himself on a Falklands hillside in an act of characteristic - but baffling - heroism. When Julia comes home from China fifteen years later, it is to a place of ghosts. Whilst she awaits the outcome of the enquiry that seems destined to end her short but spectacular career in military intelligence, Julia is drawn back across the landscape of the past, to find that it is not just the tortured image of her much-loved father that returns to haunt her. Everything she has ever believed in and lived for has suddenly been called into question, and unless she confronts her demons, she will not survive. For there have been other deaths, and the dead will not sleep... At once a race-against-the-clock thriller and a complex psychological drama where the memories of the past conflict with knowledge of the present, The Sleep of the Dead is a stunning read on any level and more than confirms Tom Bradby as one of this country's foremost thriller writers. Praise for Shadow Dancer: 'Quite exceptional...Tom Bradby succeeds in creating real characters. Far too many novels take refuge in cliché and caricature - Bradby refuses to. The language, the tension, the fear - all are portrayed vividly and correctly...A taut, compelling story of love and torn loyalties'Daily Telegraph 'A remarkable first novel...Bradby handles the tension with skill to produce a gripping tale'The Times 'The best book on the northern conflict since Harry's Game...An excellent read on any level. It scores heavily as a thriller and as an accurate unblinking look at what is happening right now'Irish Independent

    Margaret Johnson and her beautiful, twenty-six-year-old daughter, Clara, are touring the Tuscan countryside. While sightseeing, Clara meets a good-looking young Italian man, Fabrizio, and quickly embarks on a whirlwind romance with him, despite her mother’s stern disapproval.Margaret, extremely protective of her daughter, attempts to keep Clara and Fabrizio apart, not only because of the cultural differences between the young lovers but also because of a family secret that would be revealed: Clara is not quite all that she appears. Considering whether to inform Fabrizio and his family of the truth about Clara, Margaret realizes that it could possibly spoil her daughter’s one true chance for happiness.This is the book on which is based the popular new musical playing at Lincoln Center that has been nominated for eleven Tony Awards and eleven Drama Desk Awards.

    OBSESSION. REVENGE. Years after she fell out with her best friend, Laura remains terrified of the past coming back to haunt her… Laura, the only child of doting parents, is at the centre of what seems a perfect family. Daughter of a well-known television personality, she spends her time between their idyllic Northumberland farmhouse and summers on the Amalfi coast. New girl, Evelyn, arrives at Laura’s prestigious boarding school desperate to escape her miserable home life. The two quickly become friends, inseparable, and Evelyn relishes the chance to become close to Laura’s family. But when Laura discovers her friend has betrayed her and her family she calls an immediate end to their friendship with devastating consequences. Decades later, Laura is forging a successful career as a journalist, happily married and keen to leave the past firmly behind her. Evelyn, however, filled with resentment and blighted by their estrangement, believes she paid a price that should have been shared… It’s time to settle the score.

    ABOUT JULIA GLASS Julia Glass is the author of the novels Three Junes, winner of the 2002 National Book Award in Fiction; The Whole World Over; and The Widower's Tale. Her third book, I See You Everywhere , a collection of linked stories, won the 2009 SUNY John Gardner Fiction Award. Her latest novel, And the Dark Sacred Night , will be published by Pantheon Books in April 2014. Her essays have been widely anthologized, most recently in Bound to Last: 30 Writers on Their Most Cherished Book , edited by Sean Manning, and in the forthcoming Labor Day , a collection of essays on childbirth edited by Eleanor Henderson and Anna Solomon. Also a teacher of creative writing workshops at programs ranging from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown to the M.F.A. program at Brooklyn College, Julia lives with her two sons and their father on the North Shore of Massachusetts.

    A sociopath crosses every moral boundary to become a published author. An ex-mercenary obsessively defends his “perimeter” from a dangerous interloper. A man for hire grudgingly accepts help from a teenage girl to track an online predator. In a dystopian future, young people struggle for survival underground, forming themselves into vicious gangs with only the graffiti of the “last journalists” accepted as truth. Andrew Vachss collects twenty tight, powerful stories—all from the past decade of his career, including some now published for the first time—along with an original screenplay. Together, they form Mortal Lock, a searing portrait of the criminal underworld, with both its depravity and humanity on display.

    . . this duet is worth contemplating." (Philadelphia Inquirer)In the first novella, A Married Woman, Caroline Betts keeps a careful vigil over her husband's deathbed. For 40 years, she had been a devoted wife. But during one awful moment in their otherwise good marriage, her husband William was in love with someone else. At the end of William's life, Caroline confronts her sorrow, anger, and odd flashes of relief and feelings of rebirth.In the second novella, A Married Man, David -- husband, father, businessman -- finds his sense of well-being and achievement undermined by the betrayal of his wife, who's had a brief affair. The novella takes readers inside the couple's heartbreaking efforts to reclaim their marriage. Elegantly written, profoundly affecting, and subtly illuminating, Fleming's fiction debut is a revelation.

     Things haven't come easy for brilliant young astrophysicist Ainsley Grace. Her mother, an equally talented astrophysicist, died when Ainsley was just a child. A "brainiac" who started college at age sixteen and earned her Ph.D. before most people her age had even settled on a major, Ainsley struggled to fit in. But the pieces of her life seem to fall together when Ainsley teams up with her mother's former colleague at MIT to finish Project Cosmic Company, which her mother had been working on when she died. Then the dream unravels.

    They are superficially a study in contrasts yet share equally haunting sexual burdens carried since youth. With common secrets, they are drawn into a remarkable friendship.

     As usual, Maupin’s tone is both bittersweet and achingly funny in this tale of a post-catastrophic San Francisco and a young man’s resilient love for his mother. Cover Design by Darryl Vance

    Padma Nadir Majhi ( Bengali:,English title: Boatman of the River Padma or The Padma Boatman ) (1993) is an award-winning Indian Bengali feature film directed by Goutom Ghosh from novel,the same name Manik Banerjees Padma Nadir Majhi.Hossian Miya (Utpal Dutta),Bengali Muslim, a trader who offers to take this community to with an idealistic vision: he wants to establish a little utopia on an island (Moynadeep) in the Padma delta . and offer them a better life there. It is apparent that Hossian Miya has a flourishing business there, because he has recently purchased a huge boat because of expanding business.