'If she concealed so much and knew so much one must prize her open with the first tool that came to hand - the imagination'. Virginia Woolf's writing tested the boundaries of modern fiction, exploring the depths of human consciousness and creating a new language of sensation and thought. Sometimes impressionistic, sometimes experimental, sometimes brutally cruel, sometimes surprisingly warm and funny, these five stories describe love lost, friendships formed and lives questioned. This book includes "The Lady in the Looking Glass", "A Society", "The Mark on the Wall", "Solid Objects" and "Lappin and Lapinova".

    In these two stories of lives colliding, a mother buying a birthday gift has her dreams destroyed, and a honeymoon leads to an unexpected epiphany.

    When he arrives to New York, finds that everything in his life have been sinking and losses, like his own band and his companion, Ruth. His pilgrimage by the taverns of the city port culminates in a psychiatric hospital, in fact a hell, or a stranded boat, depending on how you look, a prison, where hell share his time and fortune with sailors, drunken, poor and solemnity characters like the old Kalowsky evicted, the young Garry or Battle, the black guy. While watching the boats passing by the East River Bill understands that Dr. Claggart, the psychiatrist who is in care of him, will never heal his sick soul.

    but all of a sudden there are newer and better gadgets in the shops.More up-to-date models."William Trevor has been acclaimed as the greatest contemporary writer of short stories in the English language, likened to Chekhov for his insights into human nature. These three tales of obsession, heartbreak, silent sorrow and the small tragedies of ordinary lives are profound, immaculate and beautiful.This book includes The Mark-2 Wife, The Time of Year and Cheating at Canasta.

    In these five stories there is danger on the high seas, an ungracious teacher of etiquette and an encyclopedia of an unknown planet - and Borges's unique imagination and intellect play throughout.

    Includes such stories as: 'The Sexes', 'The Lovely Leave', 'The Little Hours', 'Glory in the Daytime' and 'Lolita'.

    This collection also includes The Star, A Dream of Armageddon, The Cone, A Moonlight Fable, The DiamondMaker, The Lord of the Dynamos, and The Country of the Blind. Newly designed and typeset in a modern 5.5-by-8.5-inch format by Waking Lion Press.

    These four masterly stories of eccentrics, failed prodigies, injustice and hope, written when she was in her twenties, explore the human condition with humour and pathos. This book includes "Wunderkind", "The Jockey", "Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland", "A Tree, A Rock and A Cloud".

    Ludmilla Petrushevskaya has been acclaimed as one of Russia's greatest living writers. These five dreamlike and blackly comic stories, two of which are here in English for the first time, tell of lost children, midnight forests, strange transformations, cruel curses, grief and resilience, in the darkest of modern fairy tales. This book contains "Through the Wall" and "Anna and Maria".

    &'grave;Dat sort,'' she wailed -- &'grave;dey're just as much to us dat has 'em as if dey was lawful born. Just as much -- just as much! An' God he'd be just as pleased if you saved 'un, Doctor. Don't take it from me. Miss Florence will tell ye de very same. Don't leave 'im, Doctor!''

    His eyes. Twinkling with cunning ENJOYMENT. Have glanced the at every Moment towards HIS companion's face vs' ' When he was quite sure that the narrative had ended he laughed noiselessly for fully half a minute. Then he said: Well ...! That takes the biscuit! 'James Joyce's naturalistic. unflinching portrayal of ordinary working people in his Dubliners stories was a literary landmark. These four stories from that collection offer glimpses of defeated lives - an unremarkable death. a theft. a desperate plan. a failed writer's dream - yet each creates a compelling and ultimately redemptive vision of a city and of human experience. This book includes: Two Gallants. The Sisters. The Boarding House. and A Little Cloud.

    They stand out as one of the pinnacles in the critically neglected but perennially popular tradition of weird writing that includes E.T.A. Hoffmann and Charles Dickens as well as more recent masters like Jorge Luis Borges and Roald Dahl. With a cast of characters that ranges from man-eating flora to disgruntled devils and suburban salarymen (not that it's always easy to tell one from another), Collier's dazzling stories explore the implacable logic of lunacy, revealing a surreal landscape whose unstable surface is depth-charged with surprise.

    In these nine stories and essays, he considers holidaymakers and stone monuments, tales of war and blackbirds, and the great pathos of a tiny death: a fly's impossible fight against the grip of flypaper.

    In these two stories, the pains of companionship, and of loneliness and of the human body are starkly explored.

    The writer Henry Bech travels to Europe on a hapless cultural exchange, first to Russia, where he struggles to spend his money when everything – from his meals to his bugged hotel room – is already paid for, and then to RumaniaThis book includes Rich In Russia, Foreword, Bech in Rumania, Appendix A and Appendix B.