The first story in this collection has been adapted to film (Dark Water, Walter Salles), and another, "Adrift" is currently in production with Dimension Films.

    In Hardboiled, the unnamed narrator, hiking in the mountains on the anniversary of her ex-lover's death, is haunted by her past and learns to make peace with her loss. Hard Luck is about another young woman whose sister lies in a coma. As she prepares to say good-bye to her loved one, a new friendship promises hope. Yoshimoto’s voice is clear, assured, and deeply moving, displaying again why she is one of Japan’s, and the world’s, most beloved writers.

    Daneel Olivaw] • (1972) • short story by Isaac Asimov 231 • The Tercentenary Incident • (1976) • short story by Isaac Asimov 253 • First Law • [Mike Donovan] • (1956) • short story by Isaac Asimov 257 • Runaround • [Mike Donovan] • (1942) • novelette by Isaac Asimov 280 • Reason • [Mike Donovan] • (1941) • short story by Isaac Asimov 302 • Catch That Rabbit • [Mike Donovan] • (1944) • short story by Isaac Asimov 329 • Liar! • [Susan Calvin] • (1941) • short story by Isaac Asimov 350 • Satisfaction Guaranteed • [Susan Calvin] • (1951) • short story by Isaac Asimov 368 • Lenny • [Susan Calvin] • (1958) • short story by Isaac Asimov 385 • Galley Slave • [Susan Calvin] • (1957) • novelette by Isaac Asimov 427 • Little Lost Robot • [Susan Calvin] • (1947) • novelette by Isaac Asimov 459 • Risk • [Susan Calvin] • (1955) • novelette by Isaac Asimov 490 • Escape! • [Susan Calvin] • (1945) • short story by Isaac Asimov 518 • Evidence • [Susan Calvin] • (1946) • novelette by Isaac Asimov 546 • The Evitable Conflict • [Susan Calvin] • (1950) • novelette by Isaac Asimov 575 • Feminine Intuition • [Susan Calvin] • (1969) • novelette by Isaac Asimov 605 • ... That Thou Art Mindful of Him • (1974) • novelette by Isaac Asimov (variant of —That Thou Art Mindful of Him!) 635 • The Bicentennial Man • (1976) • novelette by Isaac Asimov 683 • A Last Word • (1982) • essay by Isaac Asimov THE COMPLETE ROBOT is the ultimate collection of timeless, amazing and amusing robot stories from the greatest science fiction writer of all time, offering golden insights into robot thought processes. Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics were programmed into real computers thirty years ago at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - with surprising results. Readers of today still have many surprises in store...

    Can Superman make a baby with Lois Lane, or is he doomed to be the last of his kind? This article discusses the scientific and medical issues involved in copulating with a Kryptonian.27 minutes

    Along the way, Karel Capek satirizes science, runaway capitalism, fascism, journalism, militarism, even Hollywood.

    Weekly, these short stories include a man who finds equal pleasure in his beautiful girlfriend and the fat, soccer-loving lout she turns into after dark; shrinking parents; a case of impotence cured by a pet terrier; and a pessimistic Middle Eastern talking fish. A bestseller in Israel, The Nimrod Flipout is an extraordinary collection from the preeminent Israeli writer of his generation.

    But when Sylvie is involved in a fatal car accident, Fabien is stunned to discover she had a lover who died with her. Harbouring thoughts of revenge, he tracks down the lover's widow, Martine, and begins stalking her. Fabien is desperate to get Martine on her own. But that won't happen until he deals with her protective best friend, Madeleine...

    Characters observe their fellow citizens from afar, hesitant to stray from their daily routines to engage with them. But Tokyo being the city it is, random encounters inevitably take place – a naïve book collector, mistaken for a French speaker, is drawn into a world he never knew existed; a woman seeking psychiatric help finds herself in a taxi with an older man wanting to share his own peculiar revelations; a depressed divorcee accepts an unexpected lunch invitation to try Thai food for the very first time… The result in each story is a small but crucial change in perspective, a sampling of the unexpected yet simple pleasure of other people’s company. As one character puts it, ‘The world is full of delicious things, you know.’

    No one, for that matter, has written with such pristine clarity about the radiating canals of Amsterdam and the cloud-swept landscape of the Netherlands. Who was Nescio? Nescio—Latin for “I don’t know”—was the pen name of J.H.F. Groenloh, the highly successful director of the Holland-Bombay Trading Company and a father of four—someone who knew more than enough about respectable maturity. Only in his spare time and under the cover of a pseudonym, as if commemorating a lost self, did he let himself go, producing over the course of his lifetime a handful of utterly original stories that contain some of the most luminous pages in modern literature. This is the first English translation of Nescio’s stories.Contents:The freeloaderWhen we were titansThe writing on the wallOut along the IJLittle poetFrom an unfinished novelThe valley of obligationsThe endInsula dei

    Replete with potent symbolism and terrifying surrealistic imagery, Sadegh Hedayat's masterpice details a young man's despair after losing a mysterious lover. And as the author gradually drifts into frenzy and madness, the reader becomes caught in the sandstorm of Hedayat's bleak vision of the human condition. The Blind Owl, which has been translated into many foreign languages, has often been compared to the writing of Edgar Allan Poe.

    The cycle of narratives that includes the title work of this collection, for instance, introduces readers to a freakish community of artists who encounter demonic perils that ultimately engulf their lives. These are selected examples of the forbidding array of persons and places that compose the mesmerizing fiction of Thomas Ligotti.

    Comprising:Nanny (1955)The Turning Wheel (1953)The Defenders (1953)Adjustment Team (1954)Psi-Man (Psi-Man Heal My Child!) (1955)The Commuter (1953)A Present for Pat (1954)Breakfast at Twilight (1954)Shell Game (1954)

    These are some of the inhabitants of People From My Neighborhood. In their lives, details of the local and everyday—the lunch menu at a tiny drinking place called the Love, the color and shape of the roof of the tax office—slip into accounts of duels, prophetic dreams, revolutions, and visitations from ghosts and gods. In twenty-six “palm of the hand” stories—fictions small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand—Hiromi Kawakami creates a universe ruled by mystery and transformation.

    

    The Queen of Spades has long been acknowledged as one of the world's greatest short stories, in which Pushkin explores the nature of obsession. The Tales of Belkin are witty parodies of sentimentalism, while Peter the Great's Blackamoor is an early experiment with recreating the past. The Captain's Daughter is a novel-length masterpiece which combines historical fiction in the manner of Sir Walter Scott with the devices of the Russian fairy-tale. The Introduction provides close readings of the stories and places them in their European literary context.