"We must not aggravate, but ease the last moments of our son," resolved the colonel firmly, and he carefully weighed every possible phase of the conversation, every act and movement that might take place on the following day. But somehow he became confused, forgetting what he had prepared, and he wept bitterly in the corner of the oilcloth-covered couch. In the morning he explained to his wife how she should behave at the meeting.

    In these stories, four writers—all exiles from revolutionary Russia—explore four deaths in a world in which old certainties have crumbled.

    

    This is to keep you on the edge with each turn in the alleys of the Labyrinth.Labyrinth: Short Stories is an array of fifteen tales that cover genres like adventure, romance, paranormal, fantasy, history, and many more.Summary Of The BookLabyrinth: Short Stories, published in 2012, is a collection of fifteen short stories written by various Indian authors. Each tale belongs to a different genre and era, thereby giving this book a unique and refreshing feel. Labyrinth: Short Stories starts off with The Martyr, which has been written by Mainak Dhar. It revolves around young Kemal who finds himself in the middle of a war in Afghanistan. Puppet Show, by Aditi Chincholi, explains how a doctor cannot find a way to break a spell that has been cast over the natives of a valley.Bagheera Log Huts takes readers into the heart of an Indian jungle, where the search for a wild cat turns into an unexpected adventure. Shawn Pereira’s I'll Be Back describes an out-of-body experience, which shows how things can take a downward spiral when one is caught in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Aditi Chincholi’s second story, Sym World, is set in a fantasy land which the protagonist Kyoto has willingly entered, but cannot find a way out. In Mortified, written by Jeevan Varma, readers will find themselves in a small Indian township where a mortified Sharmaji is going to be attacked. This is followed by Crashing Impacts, a tale of love and sacrifice that spans almost ten years.Rishabh Chaturvedi’s The Night Of The Wokambee describes how Revant is in a quandary when a strange creature visits his house every night. Both Mists of Time by Niharika Puri, and Russkaya Rulyetka by Shawn Pereira, illustrate how a person makes impulsive decisions when he is overcome with rage and jealousy. Candies shows readers that the pursuit of love is filled with ups and downs. Travel Through The Night, authored by Rishabh Chaturvedi, follows the protagonist into dense sugarcane plantations, where he encounters strange spirits who block his path. A Day of Battle is set during the great epic battle of the Mahabharata, and the author Abhishek Dwivedi shares stories of the bravery of some of the best warriors that this world has ever seen. The next story, Farming On Facebook by Sushant Dharwadkar, takes a huge time leap, and shows how the present generation is unaware of the real world, as their focus lies only on the screens in front of them. About The AuthorsLabyrinth: Short Stories has been written by Mainak Dhar, Richard Fernandes, Jeevan Verma, Rishabh Chaturvedi, Niharika Puri, Aditi Chincholi, Abhishek Dwivedi, Sushant Dharwadkar, Rohit Das, and Shawn Pereira. They are a part of the initiative by Litizen.com. Professionally they are accountants, chefs, media professionals, doctors, and students.

    These stories all display the elegance and clarity of Turgenev's finest writing.

    Comprised of a surprising mix of newly minted professionals, ex-prisoners, intellectuals, musicians, and faithful Party workers, the community is vibrant and resilient and life in Magadan thrives even under the cover of near-perpetual snow. By blending history and fable, each of Melnik's stories transports us somewhere completely new: a married Magadan woman considers a proposition from an Italian footballer in '70s Moscow; an ailing young girl visits a witch doctor’s house where nothing is as it seems; a middle-aged dance teacher is entranced by a new student’s raw talent; a former Soviet boss tells his granddaughter the story of a thorny friendship; and a woman in 1958 jumps into a marriage with an army officer far too soon.Weaving in and out of the last half of the twentieth century, Snow in May is an inventive, gorgeously rendered, and touching portrait of lives lived on the periphery where, despite their isolation—and perhaps because of it—the most seemingly insignificant moments can be beautiful, haunting, and effervescent.

    Long dead serial killers are appearing before adoring fans, but it doesn't take them long to realise that Nightingale is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Wrong Turn is a fast-paced supernatural story of 14,000 words. Jack Nightingale appears in the full-length novels Nightfall, Midnight, Nightmare, Nightshade, Lastnight, San Francisco Night and New York Night. He also appears in several short stories including Blood Bath, Cursed, Still Bleeding, Tracks, My Name Is Lydia, The Creeper, The Undead, The Asylum and The Mansion. The Jack Nightingale time line is complex, this story is set after Lastnight. Jack Nightingale has his own website at www.jacknightingale.com

    Past winners and shortlisted authors have included the Pulitzer winners Junot Díaz, Anthony Doerr and Adam Johnson, plus Hilary Mantel, Ali Smith, Yiyun Li, CK Stead and Elizabeth Strout.Six Shorts 2017 brings together the six stories shortlisted for this year's award: ‘Reputation Management’ by Kathleen Alcott; ‘Half of What Atlee Rouse Knows about Horses’ by Bret Anthony Johnston; ‘The Hazel Twig and the Olive Tree’ by Richard Lambert; ‘The Tenant’ by Victor Lodato; ‘Every Little Thing’ by Celeste Ng; and ‘Mr Salary’ by Sally Rooney.Chosen by a hugely experienced and prestigious judging panel that included Booker-winner Anne Enright, Orange- and Whitbread-winner Rose Tremain, Booker-shortlistee Neel Mukherjee and critic and novelist Mark Lawson, the six stories represent the very best in contemporary English-language short fiction.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    This translation originally published under title: Stories and Prose Poems London: Bodley Head, 1971.

    Among the seventeen bold and inventive comic writers represented here are the brilliant Mikhail Bulgakov, author of The Master and Margarita, Ilf and Petrov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Valentin Katayev, and Yuri Kazakov. "Amusing and excellent reading. The stories in this collection tell the reader more about Soviet life than a dozen sociological or political tracts." - Isaac Bashevis Singer; "An altogether admirable collection . . . by the highly talented translator Mirra Ginsburg . . . Many of these stories and sketches are delicious, even-a miracle!-funny, and full of subtlety and intelligence." - The New Leader; "Hilarious entertainment. Beyond this it illuminates with the cruel light of satire the reality behind the pretentious façade of the Soviet state." - The Sunday Sun (Baltimore).

    On the way he bestows upon angels, fellow passengers, and the world at large a magnificent monologue on alcohol, politics, society, alcohol, philosophy, the pains of love, and, of course, alcohol.

    Published individually in magazines throughout 1923 and 1924 and collected into a book in 1931, they deal primarily with a group of Jewish thugs that live in the Moldavanka, a ghetto of Odessa.

    His stories give expression to the bewildered experience of the ordinary Soviet citizen struggling to survive in the 1920's and `30s, beset by an acute housing shortage, ubiquitous theft and corruption, and the impenetrable new ideological language of the Soviet state. Written in the semi-educated talk of the man or woman on the street, these stories enshrine one of the greatest achievements of the people of the Soviet Union—their gallows humor. Housing block tenants who reject electricity because it illuminates their squalor too harshly, a young couple who live in a bathroom, a railway-line manager making a speech against bribery who accidentally mentions his own affinity for kickbacks—in all of Zoschenko's characters, petty materialism is balanced with a poignant faith in the revolutionary project. Zoschenko, the self-described "temporary substitute for the proletarian writer," combines wicked satire and an earthy empathy with a brilliance that places him squarely in the classic Russian comic tradition. Jeremy Hick's translation of The Galosh brings together sixty five of Zoschenko's finest short stories—bringing the choice writings of perhaps Soviet Russia's most humorous and moving writer to American readers for the first time.

    Illustrator and writer's Carolyn Marie Castagna's first shared short story.A small icicle hanging from a roof peers inside a window at a small reading room, and learns about magical human qualities, and the importance of the one most special human feeling.