Offers a selecttion of the master of human comedy's short stories from the 1930s and 1940s.

    Now living happily in Berkeley, married and the mother of twins, Nora Jane is back in college, pregnant again, launching a new career, and facing circumstances that imperil her domestic bliss.The nine stories that follow explore the hazards of recapturing and reviving old affairs. Featuring both new and familiar Gilchrist characters, all of these stories shed brilliant new light on the oldest emotion.

    Megan Mayhew Bergman's twelve stories capture the surprising moments when the pull of our biology becomes evident, when love or fear collide with good sense, or when our attachment to an animal or wild place can't be denied. In "Housewifely Arts," a single mother and her son drive hours to track down an African Gray Parrot that can mimic her deceased mother's voice. A population control activist faces the ultimate conflict between her loyalty to the environment and her maternal desire in "Yesterday's Whales." And in the title story, a lonely naturalist allows an attractive stranger to lead her and her aging father on a hunt for an elusive woodpecker. As intelligent as they are moving, the stories in Birds of a Lesser Paradise are alive with emotion, wit, and insight into the impressive power that nature has over all of us.

    Her apocalyptic vision of life is expressed through grotesque, often comic situations in which the principal character faces a problem of salvation: the grandmother, in the title story, confronting the murderous Misfit; a neglected four-year-old boy looking for the Kingdom of Christ in the fast-flowing waters of the river; General Sash, about to meet the final enemy. Stories include:"A Good Man Is Hard to Find""The River""The Life You Save May Be Your Own""A Stroke of Good Fortune""A Temple of the Holy Ghost""The Artificial Nigger""A Circle in the Fire""A Late Encounter with the Enemy""Good Country People""The Displaced Person"©1955 Flannery O'Connor; 1954, 1953, 1948 by Flannery O'Connor; renewed 1983, 1981 by Regina O'Connor; renewed 1976 by Mrs. Edward F. O'Connor; (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

    From the author of Bad Behavior comes a new compilation of clever and cutting-edge stories propelling readers into a world of men and women where the ways of desire are sometimes distasteful and complex.Tiny, smiling daddy --Because they wanted to --Orchid --The blanket --Comfort --The girl on the plane --The dentist --Kiss and tell --The wrong thing Turgor --Respect --Processing --Stuff

    In “Long Distance,” a man finds himself relieved of the obligation to continue an affair that is no longer compelling to him, only to be waylaid by the guilt he feels at his easy escape. And in the incandescently wise and moving title novella, a dentist, aware that his wife has fallen in love with someone else, must comfort her when she is spurned, while maintaining the secret of his own complicated sorrow. Beautifully written, with a wry intelligence and a lively comic touch, The Age of Grief captures moments of great intimacy with grace, clarity, and indelible emotional power.

    These short works display Wharton's talent as a satirist "skilled at dissecting the elements of emotional subtleties, moral ambiguities, and the implications of social constrictions" (Cythina Griffin Wolfe, from the Introduction).Roman fever (1934)Xingu (1911)The other two (1904)Souls belated (1899)The angel at the grave (1901)The last asset (1904)After Holbein (1928)Autres temps (1911)

    And it is just this ordinariness that makes them special.In The H Street Sledding Record, a man throws horse manure on his roof every Christmas Eve to keep the myth of Santa alive. Bigfoot Stole My Wife is the claim of another man whose wife has disappeared without a trace, the only clue is that the kitchen smells funny: hairy. A third man finds that The Uses of Videotape are many: he uses a VCR to explain some mysterious goings-on in his bedroom while he and his wife are sleeping.While these wonderful stories seem to concern the people we see on the street or in the supermarket, they are quietly proving that nothing is normal, but all is well.

    Among other fine works, the collection also includes “Wunderkind,” McCullers’s first published story written when she was only seventeen about a musical prodigy who suddenly realizes she will not go on to become a great pianist. Newly reset and available for the first time in a handsome trade paperback edition, The Ballad of the Sad Café is a brilliant study of love and longing from one of the South’s finest writers.

    A retired public school teacher, Miss Budge embarks on a series of slice-of-life adventures that take readers into the intriguing and authentic lives of Southern church women. "What our readers love about Miss Budge is that they all know her personally. In fact, they all are her in one way or another. Daphne's stories are instantly recognizable to those in a church community, and that's where the real humour and real pathos comes from. Daphne is a keen observer of the strange and wonderful subculture of 'the church lady.'" Brett Alan Dewing The Christian Courier (Canada) "Mildred Budge is a forthright, almost larger than life, woman who challenges every reader's faith walk by being transparent about her own. She reminds us that Jesus loves us the way we are but He loves us too much to leave us as we are." Julie Innes Evangel

    Her arrival coincides with an explosion of activity in the art world—artists have colonized a deserted and industrial SoHo, are staging actions in the East Village, and are blurring the line between life and art. Reno meets a group of dreamers and raconteurs who submit her to a sentimental education of sorts. Ardent, vulnerable, and bold, she begins an affair with an artist named Sandro Valera, the semi-estranged scion of an Italian tire and motorcycle empire. When they visit Sandro’s family home in Italy, Reno falls in with members of the radical movement that overtook Italy in the seventies. Betrayal sends her reeling into a clandestine undertow. The Flamethrowers is an intensely engaging exploration of the mystique of the feminine, the fake, the terrorist. At its center is Kushner’s brilliantly realized protagonist, a young woman on the verge. Thrilling and fearless, this is a major American novel from a writer of spectacular talent and imagination.

    With this brilliantly inventive collection, Ali Smith joins the campaign to save our public libraries and celebrate their true place in our culture and history.

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    A student plagiarizes a paper and holds fast to her alibi until she finds herself complicit in the resurrection of one professor's shadowy past. A dinner party becomes the occasion for the dissolution of more than one marriage. A woman is hired to find a wife for the one true soulmate she's ever found. In all, Rebecca Lee traverses the terrain of infidelity, obligation, sacrifice, jealousy, and yet finally, optimism. Showing people at their most vulnerable, Lee creates characters so wonderfully flawed, so driven by their desire, so compelled to make sense of their human condition, that it's impossible not to feel for them when their fragile belief in romantic love, domestic bliss, or academic seclusion fails to provide them with the sort of force field they'd expected.

    Broken bowls, belligerent cows, swanky aubergines, trembling moonrises and horrifying sunsets, the physical world depicted in these stories is unsettling yet intimately familiar and soon takes on a life of its own. Captivated by the stellar charms of seclusion but restless with desire, the woman’s relationship with her surroundings becomes boundless and increasingly bewildering. Claire-Louise Bennett’s startlingly original first collection slips effortlessly between worlds and is by turns darkly funny and deeply moving.