"Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery:" with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range--from the hilarious to the truly horrible--and power as a storyteller.

    His work ranges from the deceptively simple and lyrical Songs of Innocence and their counterpoint Experience - which juxtapose poems such as 'The Lamb' and 'The Tyger', and 'The Blossom' and 'The Sick Rose' - to highly elaborate, apocalyptic works, such as The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem. Throughout his life Blake drew on a rich heritage of philosophy, religion and myth, to create a poetic worlds illuminated by his spiritual and revolutionary beliefs that have fascinated, intrigued and enchanted readers for generations.

    . . Hilarious and poignant."--Entertainment Weekly Bream Gives Me Hiccups: And Other Stories is the whip-smart fiction debut of Academy Award-nominated actor Jesse Eisenberg. Known for his iconic film roles but also for his regular pieces in the New Yorker and his two critically acclaimed plays, Eisenberg is an emerging literary voice.Taking its title from a group of stories that begin the book, Bream Gives Me Hiccups moves from contemporary L.A. to the dorm rooms of an American college to ancient Pompeii, throwing the reader into a universe of social misfits, reimagined scenes from history, and ridiculous overreactions. In one piece, a tense email exchange between a young man and his girlfriend is taken over by his sister, who is obsessed with the Bosnian genocide (The situation reminds me of a little historical blip called the Karadordevo agreement); in another, a college freshman forced to live with a roommate is stunned when one of her ramen packets goes missing (she didn't have "one" of my ramens. She had a chicken ramen); in another piece, Alexander Graham Bell has teething problems with his invention (I've been calling Mabel all day, she doesn't pick up! Yes, of course I dialed the right number - 2!).United by Eisenberg's gift for humor and character, and grouped into chapters that open with illustrations by award-winning cartoonist Jean Jullien, the witty pieces collected in Bream Gives Me Hiccups explore the various insanities of the modern world, and mark the arrival of a fantastically funny, self-ironic, and original voice.

    Each volume’s series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected — and most popular — of its kind.The Best American Short Stories 2012 includesThe last speaker of the language / Carol Anshaw --Pilgrim life / Taylor Antrim --What we talk about when we talk about Anne Frank / Nathan Englander --The other place / Mary Gaitskill --North Country / Roxane Gay --Paramour / Jennifer Haigh --Navigators / Mike Meginnis --Miracle polish / Steven Millhauser --Axis / Alice Munro --Volcano / Lawrence Osborne --Diem Perdidi / Julie Otsuka --Honeydew / Edith Pearlman --Occupational hazard / Angela Pneuman --Beautiful monsters / Eric Puchner --Tenth of December / George Saunders --The sex lives of African girls / Taiye Selasi --Alive / Sharon Solwitz --M&M world / Kate Walbert --Anything helps / Jess Walter --What's important is feeling / Adam Wilson

    Even when you probably should.

    Whatever the reason, summer is the perfect time for love to bloom. Summer Days & Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories, written by twelve bestselling young adult writers and edited by the international bestselling author Stephanie Perkins, will have you dreaming of sunset strolls by the lake. So set out your beach chair and grab your sunglasses. You have twelve reasons this summer to soak up the sun and fall in love.Head, scales, tongue, tail / Leigh Bardugo --The end of love / Nina LaCour --Last stand at the Cinegore / Libba Bray --Sick pleasure / Francesca Lia Block --In ninety minutes, turn north / Stephanie Perkins --Souvenirs / Tim Federle --Inertia / Veronica Roth --Love is the last resort / Jon Skovron --Good luck and farewell / Brandy Colbert --Brand new attraction / Cassandra Clare --A thousand ways this could all go wrong / Jennifer E. Smith --The map of tiny perfect things / Lev Grossman

    Divided into four chapters, the book deals with the struggles of pain and healing of wounds of all sorts, finding sweetness in all the bitterness along the way. Sugar, honey, ice & tea takes readers on a journey deep into the dark corners where struggle becomes strength and pushes through all the emptiness until it reaches the light.

    The Confabulist weaves together the life, loves and murder of the world's greatest magician, Harry Houdini, with the story of the man who killed him (twice): Martin Strauss, an everyday man whose fate was tied to the magician's in unforeseen ways. A cast of memorable characters spins around Houdini's celebrity-driven life, as they did in his time: from the Romanov family soon to be assassinated, to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the powerful heads of Scotland Yard, and the Spiritualists who would use whoever they could to establish their religion. A brilliant novel about fame and ambition, reality and illusion, and the ways that love, grief and imagination can alter what we perceive and believe.

    Le Guin—selected with an introduction by the author, and combined in one volume for the first time.The Unreal and the Real is a collection of some of Ursula K. Le Guin’s best short stories. She has won multiple prizes and accolades from the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to the Newbery Honor, the Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and PEN/Malamud Awards. She has had her work collected over the years, but this is the first short story volume combining a full range of her work. Stories include: -Brothers and Sisters -A Week in the Country -Unlocking the Air -Imaginary Countries -The Diary of the Rose -Direction of the Road -The White Donkey -Gwilan’s Harp -May’s Lion -Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight -Horse Camp -The Water Is Wide -The Lost Children -Texts -Sleepwalkers -Hand, Cup, Shell -Ether, Or -Half Past Four -The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas -Semely’s Necklace -Nine Lives -Mazes -The First Contact with the Gorgonids -The Shobies’ Story -Betrayals -The Matter of Seggri -Solitude -The Wild Girls -The Flyers of Gy -The Silence of the Asonu -The Ascent of the North Face -The Author of the Acacia Seeds -The Wife’s Story -The Rule of Names -Small Change -The Poacher -Sur -She Unnames Them -The Jar of Water

    Trout Fishing in America is by turns a hilarious, playful, and melancholy novel that wanders from San Francisco through America's rural waterways; In Watermelon Sugar expresses the mood of a new generation, revealing death as a place where people travel the length of their dreams, rejecting violence and hate; and The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster is a collection of nearly 100 poems, first published in 1968.

    . . A bored London housewife discovers a secret erotic club . . . A shy, bookish girl develops an unlikely friendship with the schoolyard bully and her wild, horsey family . . . After fighting with her boyfriend, a woman goes for a night walk on a remote tropical beach with dark, unexpected consequences.Sarah Hall has been hailed as "one of the most significant and exciting of Britain's young novelists" (The Guardian). Now, in this collection of seven pieces of short fiction, published in England to phenomenal praise, she is at her best: seven pieces of uniquely talented prose telling stories as wholly absorbing as they are ambitious and accessible.

    

    They are gold miners and counterfeiters, attorneys and slaves. They cross other borders too: those of race, law, sex, and sanity. They travel for love or money, incognito or under duress.With rich historical detail, the celebrated author of Room takes us from puritan Massachusetts to revolutionary New Jersey, antebellum Louisiana to the Toronto highway, lighting up four centuries of wanderings that have profound echoes in the present. Astray offers us a surprising and moving history for restless times."The Hunt" was short-listed for the 2012 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award.

    Bringing the Shovel Down is a re-imagination of the violent mythologies of state and power.

    What results is a whimsical anthology that brings to mind the challenges of just being human and fitting into a world that sometimes feels like a tight squeeze.