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The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington


Leonora Carrington - 2017
    Nowhere are these qualities more ingeniously brought together than in the works of short fiction she wrote throughout her life.Published to coincide with the centennial of her birth, The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington collects for the first time all of her stories, including several never before seen in print. With a startling range of styles, subjects, and even languages (several of the stories are translated from French or Spanish), The Complete Stories captures the genius and irrepressible spirit of an amazing artist’s life.

Thus Were Their Faces


Silvina Ocampo - 1988
    Italo Calvino once said about her, “I don’t know another writer who better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don’t show us.” Thus Were Their Faces collects a wide range of Ocampo’s best short fiction and novella-length stories from her whole writing life. Stories about creepy doubles, a marble statue of a winged horse that speaks to a girl, a house of sugar that is the site of an eerie possession, children who lock their perverse mothers in a room and burn it, a lapdog who records the dreams of an old woman.Jorge Luis Borges wrote that the cruelty of Ocampo’s stories was the result of her nobility of soul, a judgment as paradoxical as much of her own writing. For her whole life Ocampo avoided the public eye, though since her death in 1993 her reputation has only continued to grow, like a magical forest. Dark, gothic, fantastic, and grotesque, these haunting stories are among the world’s finest.

Three Exemplary Novels


Miguel de Unamuno - 1921
    'No Spanish voice was heard during the fifty years of his active intellectual life which could compare with his in the strength of his passion nor in the profound seriousness with which he challenged every complacency...The central idea in all his fiction is the struggle to create faith from doubt and ethics from inner strife.'

Stories: Collected Stories


Susan Sontag - 2017
    Yet all throughout her life, she also wrote short stories: fictions which wrestled with those ideas and preoccupations she couldn't address in essay form. These short fictions are allegories, parables, autobiographical vignettes, each capturing an authentic fragment of life, dramatizing Sontag's private griefs and fears.Stories collects all of Sontag's short fiction for the first time. This astonishingly versatile collection showcases its peerless writer at the height of her powers. For any Sontag fan, it is an unmissable testament to her creative achievements

Great Short Short Stories: Quick Reads by Great Writers


Paul NegriRudyard Kipling - 2005
    Great Short Short Stories: Quick Reads by Great Writers offers that opportunity. An outstanding collection of 30 brilliant short stories, each just six or fewer pages in length, it provides the chance to absorb an entire story (or two or three) in just one sitting.Well-known tales from masters of the short-story genre include: Mark Twain, "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"; Franz Kafka, "A Country Doctor"; Edgar Allan Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado"; Guy de Maupassant, "A Piece of String"; Stephen Crane, "The Veteran"; Kate Chopin, "A Pair of Silk Stockings"; plus works by Dickens, O. Henry, Chekhov, Wilde, and many others. Includes 2 selections from the Common Core State Standards Initiative: "A White Heron" and "Cask of Amontillado."The egg / Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941, American)An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge / Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?, American)The enchanted bluff / Willa Cather (1873-1947, American)A malefactor / Anton Chekhov (1860-1904, Russian)A pair of silk stockings / Kate Chopin (1851-1904, American)The veteran / Stephen Crane (1871-1900, American)The apparition of Mrs. Veal / Daniel Defoe (1660-1731, English)Nobody's story / Charles Dickens (1812-1870, English)If I were a man / Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935, American)Squire Petrick's lady / Thomas Hardy (1840-1928, English)The luck of Roaring Camp / Bret Harte (1836-1902, American)Dr. Heidegger's experiment / Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864, American)A ghost story / Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927, English)A white heron / Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909, American)A country doctor / Franz Kafka (1883-1924, Czech)Wee Willie Winkie / Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936, English)Sanctuary / Nella Larsen (1891-1964, American)Second best / D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930, English)The white silence / Jack London (1876-1916, American)Germans at meat / Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923, English)A piece of string / Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893, French)The open window / H.H. Munro, or Saki (1870-1916, English)The furnished room / O. Henry (1962-1910, American)With other eyes / Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936, Italian)The cask of Amontillado / Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849, American)The coffin-maker / Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837, Russian)The three hermits / Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910, Russian)The notorious jumping frog of Calaveras County / Mark Twain (1835-1910, American)The remarkable case of Davidson's eyes / H.G. Wells (1866-1946, English)The sphinx without a secret / Oscar Wilde (1854-1900, Irish)

The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories


Horacio Quiroga - 1909
    They span many fiction genres; jungle tale, Gothic horror story, psychological study, and morality tale- and possess a universality that has made him a classic Latin American writer.Horacio Quiroga was a master storyteller and author of over two hundred pieces of Latin American fiction that have been compared to the works of Poe, Kipling, and London. Like his stories, his own life from his birth in Uruguay to his suicide in Argentina was filled with adventure, tragedy, and violence.

My Name is Legion


David Morrell - 2011
    On a blistering desert landscape in World War II, two armies face each other. One belongs to the legendary French Foreign Legion, but the other belongs to the French Foreign Legion also, one side working for the Allies, the other for the Germans. In this vivid historical recreation of one of the strangest battles in modern warfare, a terrible twist of Fate compels comrades-in-arms, who trained together, ate together, and slept in the same barracks, to become mortal enemies.David Morrell is the prize-winning author of First Blood, the novel in which Rambo was created. His numerous New York Times bestsellers include the classic espionage novel, The Brotherhood of the Rose, the basis for the only television miniseries to be broadcast after a Super Bowl. An Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity nominee, Morrell is a recipient of the International Thriller Writers’ prestigious Thriller Master award.“Nobody does this kind of thing better than David Morrell.”—Lee Child, New York Times bestselling author of The Affair“A titan among thriller writers.”—Joseph Finder, New York Times bestselling author of Buried Secrets

Galatea


Madeline Miller - 2013
    Now his wife, Galatea is expected to be obedience and humility personified, but it is not long before she learns to use her beauty as a form of manipulation. In a desperate bid by her obsessive husband to keep her under control, she is locked away under the constant supervision of doctors and nurses. But with a daughter to rescue, she is determined to break free, whatever the cost...

Chroma


Frederick Barthelme - 1987
    Frederick Barthelme creates an unforgettably wistful cast of characters, ordinary people moving carefully and curiously through a gently painful world.

The Land of Strong Men


A.M. Chisholm - 1919
    Excerpt and one of them, Gavin, was reputed to be the strongest man in the neighborhood. The daughter, a long-limbed slip of a girl who rode like a cow-puncher, was about the boy's age. Though Godfrey French had a ranch it was worked scarcely at all. The boys did not like work, and apparently did not have to. Godfrey French was reputed to have money. His ranch was a hang-out for what were known as "remittance men," young Englishmen who received more or less regular allowances from home--or perhaps to keep away from home. There were rumors of gambling and hard drinking at French's ranch. "Well, I'll take you home," the boy said. "You can ride my pony. He's on a rope a mile from here. But I'll have to hang up this buck, or the coyotes will chew him." He found two small saplings close together, bent them down, trimmed them and lashed their tops. Over these he placed the tied legs of the buck. With a little search he found a long dry pole. With this he had a tripod. As he hoisted with the pole the spring

Krik? Krak!


Edwidge Danticat - 1996
    She is an artist who evokes the wonder, terror, and heartache of her native Haiti--and the enduring strength of Haiti's women--with a vibrant imagery and narrative grace that bear witness to her people's suffering and courage.When Haitians tell a story, they say "Krik?" and the eager listeners answer "Krak!" In Krik? Krak! Danticat establishes herself as the latest heir to that narrative tradition with nine stories that encompass both the cruelties and the high ideals of Haitian life. They tell of women who continue loving behind prison walls and in the face of unfathomable loss; of a people who resist the brutality of their rulers through the powers of imagination. The result is a collection that outrages, saddens, and transports the reader with its sheer beauty.

The Musical Brain: And Other Stories


César Aira - 2005
    Aira, with his fuga hacia adelante or "flight forward" into the unknown, gives us imponderables to ponder and bizarre and seemingly out-of-context plot lines, as well as thoughtful and passionate takes on everyday reality. The title story, first published in the New Yorker, is the creme de la creme of this exhilarating collection.

Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories


Thomas Mann - 1936
    From the high art of the famous title novella ("A story," Mann said, "of death...of the voluptuousness of doom"), to the irony of "Felix Krull," the early story on which he later based his comic novel The Confessions of Felix Krull, they are stunning testimony to the mastery and virtuosity of a literary giant.Translated from the German by H.T. Lowe-Porter.

Moral Disorder and Other Stories


Margaret Atwood - 2006
    In Moral Disorder she has created a series of interconnected stories that trace the course of a life and also the lives intertwined with it--those of parents, of siblings, of children, of friends, of enemies, of teachers, and even of animals. As in a photograph album, time is measured in sharp, clearly observed moments. The '30s, the '40s, the '50s, the '60s, the '70s, the '80s, the '90s, and the present --all are here. The settings vary: large cities, suburbs, farms, northern forests. The first story, "The Bad News," is set in the present, as a couple no longer young situate themselves in a larger world no longer safe. The narrative then switches time as the central character moves through childhood and adolescence in "The Art of Cooking and Serving," "The Headless Horseman," and "My Last Duchess." We follow her into young adulthood in "The Other Place" and then through a complex relationship, traced in four of the stories: "Monopoly," "Moral Disorder," "White Horse," and "The Entities." The last two stories, "The Labrador Fiasco" and "The Boys at the Lab," deal with the heartbreaking old age of parents but circle back again to childhood, to complete the cycle. By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, tragic, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal, Moral Disorder displays Atwood's celebrated storytelling gifts and unmistakable style to their best advantage. As the New York Times has said: "The reader has the sense that Atwood has complete access to her people's emotional histories, complete understanding of their hearts and imaginations."

Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version


Philip Pullman - 2012
    Now, at a veritable fairy-tale moment—witness the popular television shows Grimm and Once Upon a Time and this year’s two movie adaptations of “Snow White”—Philip Pullman, one of the most popular authors of our time, makes us fall in love all over again with the immortal tales of the Brothers Grimm.From much-loved stories like “Cinderella” and “Rumpelstiltskin,” “Rapunzel” and “Hansel and Gretel” to lesser-known treasures like “Briar-Rose,” “Thousandfurs,” and “The Girl with No Hands,” Pullman retells his fifty favorites, paying homage to the tales that inspired his unique creative vision—and that continue to cast their spell on the Western imagination.