Combining mysticism, history, and humor, the stories in this collection span more than two decades, illuminating the development of Marquez's prose and exhibiting the themes of family, poverty, and death that resound throughout his fiction.

    This collection of short stories is our gift to bring you something positive and joyful with which to end the year.Soldiers stumbling upon mercy and miracles; children sharing gifts of friendship and love; romance finding its way into lonely, war-weary hearts; resistance fighters; spies; families on the home front—all bringing their own ray of hope in the darkest of times.For this holiday season, we offer you this collection of short stories to lift your spirit, and to remember a time when love and the strength of human spirit prevailed.We hope you will enjoy stepping back into the wartime Christmases in these stories with us.

     Arthur, Duke of Wellington, and Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte were adversaries on an epic scale. Across Europe and beyond, the armies of Great Britain and France clashed, from the Iberian Peninsula to India, from Austerlitz to the final confrontation at Waterloo. What drove the two clever, ambitious, determined men who masterminded these military campaigns? How did the underdog from Corsica develop the strategic military skills and the political cunning that gave him power over swathes of Europe? And how did Wellington, born to be a leader, hone his talents and drive an army to victory after victory?From an outstanding historian and novelist come four epic novels, now available in one volume for the first time, which tell the full story of both these men, from their very early days till the momentous battle at Waterloo which decided the future of Europe.INCLUDES MAPS

    Defending this system is idealistic security officer Leo Demidov, a war hero who believes in the iron fist of the law. But when a murderer kills at will and Leo dares to investigate, the State's obedient servant finds himself demoted and exiled. Now, with only his wife at his side, Leo must fight to uncover shocking truths about a killer--and a country where "crime" doesn't exist.THE SECRET SPEECH:Soviet Union, 1956. It is a period of wrenching change. Stalin is dead, and a regime once held together by fear is beginning to fracture, creating a lawless society where the police have become the criminals and the criminals take vengeance against them. A series of murders now has all of Moscow on edge, and no one--no matter how powerful or connected--seems safe. With his new and secretive homicide department, Leo Demidov investigates--only to find that he, his wife, and his two adopted daughters may be in grave danger. For Leo is a former state security officer who arrested and condemned many of his fellow citizens, and despite all his efforts to atone for his past, he cannot escape the long shadow of his former career. To save his family, Leo must make a desperate choice and face an impossible journey that may bring his redemption...or shatter their fragile future.

    Including stories by Calvino, Benni, Sciascia and Levi, this volume gives a fascinating insight into Italian culture and literature as well as providing an invaluable educational tool.1. The Long Crossing / Il lungo viaggio - Leonardo Sciascia2. Italy / Italia - Goffredo Parise3. The Girl with the Plait / La ragazza con la treccia - Dacia Marini4. The Last Channel / L'ultimo canale - Italo Calvino5. Lilith / Lilít - Primo Levi6. The Island of Komodo / L'isola di Komodo - Susanna Tamaro7. Women by the Pool / Donne in piscina - Sandra Petrignani8. A Naughty Schoolboy / Un cattivo scolaro - Stefano Benni9. Saturday Afternoons / I pomeriggi del sabato - Antonio Tabucchi

    In the title story, a fraught friendship between an exchange student and her host sister follows them from adolescence to adulthood. In A Song from Afar, a young woman grapples with the death of her lover, traveling to Russia to search for information about the deceased. In Secret, the parents of a teacher killed in the Sewol ferry sinking hide the news of her death from her grandmother. In the tradition of Sally Rooney, Banana Yoshimoto, and Marilynne Robinson--writers from different cultures who all take an unvarnished look at human relationships and the female experience--Choi Eunyoung is a writer to watch.

    Tales of shadows and voices in the dark from the likes of H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Nathaniel Hawthorne and William Hope Hodgson are cast with previously unpublished stories by some of the best writers of horror today.A dazzling collection of the most gripping tales of horror, vividly told."Ecdysis", by Rebecca J. Alfred"The Damned Thing", by Ambrose Bierce"Beyond the Wall", by Ambrose Bierce"Mirror's Keeper", by Michael Bondies"The Watcher by the Threshold", by John Buchan"The Dying Art", by Glen Damien Campbell"The Yellow Sign", by Robert W. Chambers"Breach", by Justin Coates"The Dead Smile", by F. Marion Crawford"The Screaming Skull", by F. Marion Crawford"The Child's Story", by Charles Dickens"The Leather Funnel", by Arthur Conan Doyle"In Search of a New Wilhelm", by John H. Dromey"Leonora", by Elise Forier Edie"A Game of Conquest", by David A. Elsensohn"Thing in the Bucket", by Eric Esser"The Murdered Cousin", by Sheridan Le Fanu"The Grey Woman", by Elizabeth Gaskell"Worth the Having", by Michael Paul Gonzalez"Extraneus Invokat", by Ed Grabianowski"The Three Strangers", by Thomas Hardy"Young Goodman Brown", by Nathaniel Hawthorne"The Gateway of the Monster", by William Hope Hodgson"The Challenge From Beyond", by Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, H. P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, and C. L. Moore"The Man in the Ambry", by Gwendolyn Kiste"Start With Color", by Bill Kte'pi"The Rocking-Horse Winner", by D. H. Lawrence"The Magnificat of Devils", by James Lecky"The Dunwich Horror", by H. P. Lovecraft"The Call of Cthulu", by H. P. Lovecraft"The Horia", by Guy de Maupassant"The Woman of the Wood", by A. Merritt"The Vampire", Jan Neruda"The Masque of the Red Death", by Edgar Allan Poe"The Premature Burial", by Edgar Allan Poe"Trial and Error", by Frank Roger"The Mortal Immortal", by Mary Shelley"The Body Snatcher", by Robert Louis Stevenson"Dracula's Guest", by Bram Stoker"Blessed Be the Bound", by Lucy Taylor"Dead End", by Kristopher Triana"Justified", by DJ Tyrer"Afterward", by Edith Wharton"Deep-sixed Without a Depth Gauge", by Andrew J. Wilson"The Dew of Heaven, Like Ashes", by William R. D. Wood

    These stories, taken from the whole of her career, show the full range of her gifts. Extremely funny-a wry, scathing observer of society-she is also capable, as capable even as Chekhov, of miraculous subtlety and depth of character.There are stories here from her own life (as a child, going to meet Tolstoy to plead for the life of War and Peace's Prince Bolkonsky, or, much later, her strange, charged meetings with the already-legendary Rasputin). There are stories of émigré society, its members held together by mutual repulsion. There are stories of people misunderstanding each other or misrepresenting themselves. And throughout there is a sly, sardonic wit and a deep, compelling intelligence.Pushkin Collection editions feature a spare, elegant series style and superior, durable components. The Collection is typeset in Monotype Baskerville, litho-printed on Munken Premium White Paper and notch-bound by the independently owned printer TJ International in Padstow. The covers, with French flaps, are printed on Colorplan Pristine White Paper. Both paper and cover board are acid-free and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified.

    Now banned in Iran, this small masterpiece was eventually translated into several languages and introduces U.S. readers to the work of a brilliant Persian writer. With a tone that is stark, and bold, Women Without Men creates an evocative allegory of life for contemporary Iranian women. In the interwoven destinies of five women, simple situations such as walking down a road or leaving the house become, in the tumult of post-WWII Iran, horrific and defiant as women escape the narrow confines of family and society only to face daunting new challenges.Now in political exile, Shahrnush Parsipur lives in the Bay Area. She is the author of several short story collections including Touba and the Meaning of Night.

    Gustave von Aschenbach is a successful but aging writer who travels to Venice for a holiday. One day, at dinner, Aschenbach notices an exceptionally beautiful young boy who is staying with his family in the same hotel. Soon his days begin to revolve around seeing this boy and he is too distracted to pay attention to the ominous rumors that have begun to circulate about disease spreading through the city. Available exclusively from Vintage Classics.

    Sevastopol contains three distinct narratives, each burrowing into a crucial turning point in a person’s life: a young woman gives a melancholy account of her obsession with climbing Mount Everest; a Peruvian-Brazilian vanishes into the forest after staying in a musty, semiabandoned inn in the haunted depths of the Brazilian countryside; a young playwright embarks on the production of a play about the city of Sevastopol and a Russian painter portraying Crimean War soldiers.      Inspired by Tolstoy’s The Sevastopol Sketches, Emilio Fraia masterfully weaves together these stories of yearning and loss, obsession and madness, failure and the desire to persist, in a restrained manner reminiscent of the prose of Chekhov, Roberto Bolano, and Rachel Cusk.

    But it was neither the first nor the last. This anthology presents 23 rare vampire stories written between 1867 & 1940. B&W illus.

    They focus on the complexity of close relationships: between lovers, as in the poignant fantasy 'A Parisian Affair' or the touchingly ironical 'The Jewels'; between siblings, as in 'At Sea'; and between former partners, as in 'Encounter.' They reveal two sides of human nature: its grace and generosity, and also, as in 'Boule de Suif,' its greed and hypocrisy. Piquant and varied, Maupassant's stories lay humanity bare with deft wit and devastating honesty.Boule de suif --A Parisian affair --A woman's confession --Cock crow --Moonlight --At sea --Amillion --Femme fatale --Monsieur Jocaste --Two friends --Awakening --The jewels --Train story --Regret --Minor tragedy --The christening --Coward --Rose --Idyll --Mother Sauvage --Madame Husson's rose king --Encounter --Happiness --A bit of the other --Love --Hautot & son --New year's gift --The Horla --Duchoux --The lull-a-bye --Mother of invention --Who knows? --Laid to rest --The necklace.

    If I sit still and don't do anything, the world goes on beating like a slack drum, without meaning. We must be moving, working, making dreams to run toward; the poverty of life without dreams is too horrible to imagine."-- Sylvia Plath, from "Notebooks, February 1956"Renowned for her poetry, Sylvia Plath was also a brilliant writer of prose. This collection of short stories, essays, and diary excerpts highlights her fierce concentration on craft, the vitality of her intelligence, and the yearnings of her imaginaton. Featuring an introduction by Plath's husband, the late British poet Ted Hughes, these writings also reflect themes and images she would fully realize in her poetry. "Jonny Panic and the Bible of Dreams" truly showcases the talent and genius of Sylvia Plath.