Brimming with humor, irony, and insights about the unpredictable nature of life, the unbearable beauty of fate, and the power that one moment, or one decision, can have to transform us, I Knew You'd Be Lovely delivers that rare thing—stories with both an edge and a heart.

    The stories in this collection tackle great events and figures of history, myth, and literature in unexpected ways, questioning views on such basic concepts as justice, progress, wisdom, belief, and patriotism.

    So, with great resourcefulness, she advertised for a companion and eventually staked out a corner of her own—one with a view. Mildred Walker's skill as a storyteller never falters in this portrayal of an elderly woman who won't give up.

    (also contained in "The Last With" collection). It is notable for being the only edition of Sapkowski's Witcher stories to have all expletive words censored.

    A Louisiana farmer sees the image of Christ appear on the freezer door and questions the meaning of faith. In a Maine resort town, Miss Langevin, a spinster who could write a book on disappointment, now gets a chance to help another woman escape it. And in the title story, a science teacher's modest dreams and painful memories erode his existence like water entering stone.

    His only link to the outside world is a telephone that will not dial out. During the occasional calls he receives, usually wrong numbers, the narrator remembers his former life growing up in Injury, Alaska with his Mother, an often unemployed single parent, and his older brother, Charlie, a sometime boxer, sometime actor. Throughout the course of this extraordinary novel, the unwilling captive draws his life-story in stickfigures on the walls. From the difficulty of his birth, to his sickly childhood, to adventures with his brother, the narrator depicts his crazy life, which is at once fascinating and heartbreaking. The one memory that haunts him is that of watching a movie about slaves on television and how that one slave, the one for whom Kamby Bolongo Mean River meant freedom, would never relinquish the idea of returning home.

    Until one December dawn, when the ducks and the little duck girl, not so little any more, return to the village after several years of absence and light up Maash's life again.The year is 2019, the Indian Parliament has passed the Citizenship Amendment Act and the question of identity-- especially religious identity--is at the forefront of everything. Suddenly, everyone wants to know: who is this duck girl, where does she come from, who does she pray to? In a matter of days, Maash finds himself in the middle of a conflict he couldn't have foreseen.Set in Kaikurussi - the near idyllic village which Anita Nair introduced to readers worldwide in her first novel The Better Man, The Little Duck Girl is a state-of-the-nation story that sensitively but unflinchingly explores the idea of who we are as a people.

    These stories are explorations of the extreme in human behaviour, where the bizarre chills the spine, and few authors can match Grabinski's depiction of seething sexual frenzy. The Dark Domain will introduce to English readers one of Europe's most important authors of literary fantasy.

    

    Then, just when he's convinced his life has passed him by, Sonny, by a stroke of fate, is given a second chance at living. Can he get it right?  Will he be able to evade the grinding loneliness that stalks him? Will he find a way to overcome the unbearable regret that haunts him? Will he ever risk loving again, to find someone with no good-byes in her heart? And, most of all, will he become the man he always could have been?

    In his fourteenth collection of poems, Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn reveals his concerns, ranging from meditations on salvation and time to the difficulties and pleasures of loving in this "already brutal century." In language that Gerald Stern has called "unbearably fearless and beautiful," Dunn continues to probe the elusive in the lives we live.

    Combining the traditional and the contemporary, Stone Boy and Other Stories contains ten works of short fiction that illuminate Buddhist themes and Vietnamese culture.

    

    Contained in this volume are the short stories "White Nights," "A Disgraceful Affair," and "The Dream of the Ridiculous Man," three of Dostoevsky's most troubling, moving, and poignant works.Alongside A DISGRACEFUL AFFAIR, Harper Perennial will publish the short fiction of Stephen Crane, Herman Melville, Willa Cather, Leo Tolstoy, and Oscar Wilde to be packaged in a beautifully designed, boldly colorful boxset in the aim to attract contemporary fans of short fiction to these revered masters of the form. Also, in each of these selections will appear a story from one of the new collections being published in 2009. A story from Barb Johnson's forthcoming collection will be printed at the back of this volume.

     Meet Margaret, whose adventures in a new quilting group help her reconnect with her daughter as they grieve the slow loss of a loved one to Alzheimer’s. Then there’s Liz, a quilter seeking her own tribe in a neighborhood of perfect moms. But maybe she has more in common with her neighbors than she thinks. Sisters Amanda and Lucy, one dreamy, the other practical as the day is long, have financial woes that may force them to sell their beloved home. Can a quilt made with fabric from a mysterious aunt save the day? Lisa is still reckoning with the loss of her best friend. Diving headfirst into a new quilt project, she learns that sometimes a gift can be a first step toward healing. Melissa Bennett is sensible, smart and skeptical of marriage. A husband sounds nice, but with all the books and quilts in her life, where would she put him?