The Complete Christmas Stories


L.M. Montgomery - 2010
    By clicking on one of those titles you will be redirected to the beginning of that work, where you'll find a new TOC that lists all the chapters and sub-chapters of that specific work.Here you will find all the Christmas stories written by Lucy Maud Montgomery.- The Red Room- A Christmas Mistake- A Christmas Inspiration- The Josephs' Christmas- Aunt Cyrilla's Christmas Basket- The Osbornes' Christmas- Bertie's New Year- Ida's New Year Cake- The Christmas Surprise at Enderly Road- Clorinda's Gifts- The Falsoms' Christmas Dinner- The Unforgotten One- Christmas at Red Butte- Uncle Richard's New Year's Dinner

The Boys of My Youth


Jo Ann Beard - 1998
    The excitement began the moment "The Fourth State of Matter," one of the fourteen extraordinary personal narratives in this book, appeared in the pages of The New Yorker. It increased when the author received a prestigious Whiting Foundation Award in November 1997, & it continued as the hardcover edition of The Boys of My Youth sold out its first printing even before publication. The author writes with perfect pitch as she takes us through one woman's life -- from childhood to marriage & beyond -- & memorably captures the collision of youthful longing & the hard intransigences of time & fate.

The Gonzo Tapes: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson


Hunter S. Thompson - 2008
    Hunter S. Thompson, filmmaker Alex Gibney and archivist Don Fleming were given permission by Thompson's widow to explore boxes of tapes stored in the basement of his Owl Farm home in Woody Creek, Colorado. Recorded by Thompson between 1965 and 1975, these audio notes capture his thoughts and descriptions both as they're happening and during the writing process, from his travels with Terry the Tramp and the rest of the Hell's Angels, through the infamous Las Vegas trips, to Thompson's trek across Southeast Asia during the fall of South Vietnam. Fleming—former front man of the band Velvet Monkeys and now a music producer for the likes of Sonic Youth and Alice Cooper—transferred the tapes and cassettes to digital files for use in the film, but also realized their tremendous value as a direct window into Thompson's thoughts and methods. Here Fleming presents these recordings in a 5-CD set, boxed in a 6 x 12-inch coffee-table format with a booklet full of never-before published images from Thompson's estate, as well as photos and an introduction from Gibney, and an essay by Thompson's fellow correspondent Loren Jenkins.- Daedalus Books Online

A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories


Flannery O'Connor - 1955
    Her apocalyptic vision of life is expressed through grotesque, often comic situations in which the principal character faces a problem of salvation: the grandmother, in the title story, confronting the murderous Misfit; a neglected four-year-old boy looking for the Kingdom of Christ in the fast-flowing waters of the river; General Sash, about to meet the final enemy. Stories include:"A Good Man Is Hard to Find""The River""The Life You Save May Be Your Own""A Stroke of Good Fortune""A Temple of the Holy Ghost""The Artificial Nigger""A Circle in the Fire""A Late Encounter with the Enemy""Good Country People""The Displaced Person"©1955 Flannery O'Connor; 1954, 1953, 1948 by Flannery O'Connor; renewed 1983, 1981 by Regina O'Connor; renewed 1976 by Mrs. Edward F. O'Connor; (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

The False Sun


R. Scott Bakker - 2012
    A story set in the far antiquity of Bakker's fictional world world of Eärwa, the setting for his Prince of Nothing and Aspect Emperor series.

The Christmas Bus


Melody Carlson - 2006
    The mayor plays Santa, every business is holiday themed, and there's a nativity for the kids each Christmas Eve. This town knows Christmas. But this year nothing goes according to plan.

I Thought My Father Was God and Other True Tales from NPR's National Story Project


Paul Auster - 2001
    One hundred and eighty voices - male and female, young and old, from all walks of life and all over the country - talk intimately to the reader. Combining great humor and pathos this remarkable selection of stories from the thousands submitted to NPR's Weekend All Things Considered National Story Project gives the reader a glimpse of America's soul in all its diversity.

Once a Runner


John L. Parker Jr. - 1978
    It has become one of the most beloved sports novels ever written. Originally self-published in 1978 and sold at road races out of the trunk of the author’s car, reading the book became a rite of passage for many runners, and tattered copies were handed down like sacred texts from generation to generation.Once a Runner is the story of Quenton Cassidy, a collegiate runner at fictional Southeastern University whose lifelong dream is to run a four-minute mile. He is less than a second away when the political and cultural turmoil of the Vietnam War era intrudes into the staid recesses of his school’s athletic department. After he becomes involved in an athletes’ protest, Cassidy is suspended from his track team.Under the tutelage of his friend and mentor, Bruce Denton, a graduate student and former Olympic gold medalist, Cassidy gives up his scholarship, his girlfriend, and possibly his future to withdraw to a monastic retreat in the countryside and begin training for the race of his life: a head-to-head match with the greatest miler in history.This audiobook is a rare insider’s account of the incredibly intense lives of elite distance runners; an inspiring, funny, and spot-on tale of one man’s quest to become a champion.

I'll Fly Away: Further Testimonies from the Women of York Prison


Wally Lamb - 2007
    Writing, Lamb discovered, was a way for these women to confront painful memories, face their fears and their failures, and begin to imagine better lives. The New York Times described the book as "Gut-tearing tales . . . the unvarnished truth." The Los Angeles Times said of it, "Lying next to and rising out of despair, hope permeates this book."Now Lamb returns with I'll Fly Away, a new volume of intimate, searching pieces from the York workshop. Here, twenty women—eighteen inmates and two of Lamb's cofacilitators—share the experiences that shaped them from childhood and that haunt and inspire them to this day. These portraits, vignettes, and stories depict with soul-baring honesty how and why women land in prison—and what happens once they get there. The stories are as varied as the individuals who wrote them, but each testifies to the same core truth: the universal value of knowing oneself and changing one's life through the power of the written word.

My Life in Heavy Metal: Stories


Steve Almond - 2002
    In the past year, Almond has won a Pushcart Prize and been a finalist for the National Magazine Award.

Birds of America


Lorrie Moore - 1998
    Stories remarkable in their range, emotional force, and dark laughter, and in the sheer beauty and power of their language.From the opening story, "Willing", about a second-rate movie actress in her thirties who has moved back to Chicago, where she makes a seedy motel room her home and becomes involved with a mechanic who has not the least idea of who she is as a human being, Birds of America unfolds a startlingly brilliant series of portraits of the unhinged, the lost, the unsettled of our America. In the story "Which Is More Than I Can Say About Some People" ("There is nothing as complex in the world--no flower or stone--as a single hello from a human being"), a woman newly separated from her husband is on a long-planned trip through Ireland with her mother. When they set out on an expedition to kiss the Blarney Stone, the image of wisdom and success that her mother has always put forth slips away to reveal the panicky woman she really is. In "Charades," a family game at Christmas is transformed into a hilarious and insightful (and fundamentally upsetting) revelation of crumbling family ties. In "Community Life,"a shy, almost reclusive, librarian, Transylvania-born and Vermont-bred, moves in with her boyfriend, the local anarchist in a small university town, and all hell breaks loose. And in "Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens," a woman who goes through the stages of grief as she mourns the death of her cat (Anger, Denial, Bargaining, Haagen Dazs, Rage) is seen by her friends as really mourning other issues: the impending death of her parents, the son she never had, Bosnia.In what may be her most stunning book yet, Lorrie Moore explores the personal and the universal, the idiosyncratic and the mundane, with all the wit, brio, and verve that have made her one of the best storytellers of our time.

The Complete Saki


Saki - 1976
    The good wit of bad manners, elegantly spiced with irony and deftly controlled malice, has made Saki stories small, perfect gems of the English language. Here for the first time, are the collected writings of Saki--including all of his short stories ("Reginald", "Reginald in Russia", "The Chronicles of Clovis", "Beasts and Super-Beasts" "The Toys of Peace", and "The Square Egg"), his three novels (THE UNBEARABLE BASSINGTON, WHEN WILLIAM CAME and THE WESTMINSTER ALICE), and three plays (THE DEATHTRAP, KARL-LUDWIG'S WINDOW and THE WATCHED POT. You are invited to meet once again Clovis, Reginald, the Unbearable Bassington, and the other memorable characters etched so superbly by the pen of H.H. Munro. "In all literature, he was the first to employ successfully a wildly outrageous premise in order to make a serious point. I love that. And today the best of his stories are still better than the best of just about every other writer around."--Roald Dahl. Introduction by Noel Coward.(less)

Wild Ducks Flying Backward


Tom Robbins - 2005
    Collected here for the first time in paperback, the essays, articles, observations—and even some untypical country-music lyrics—offer a rare overview of the eclectic sensibility of an American original. Whether rocking with the Doors, depoliticizing Picasso’s Guernica, lamenting the angst-ridden state of contemporary literature, or drooling over tomato sandwiches and a species of womanhood he calls “the genius waitress,” Tom Robbins’s briefer writings exhibit the five traits that perhaps best characterize his novels: an imaginative wit, a cheerfully brash disregard for convention, a sweetly nasty eroticism, a mystical but keenly observant eye, and an irrepressible love of language. Embedded in this primarily journalistic compilation are brand-new short stories, a sheaf of largely unpublished poems, and an offbeat assessment of our divided nation. Wherever you open Wild Ducks Flying Backward, you’ll encounter the serious playfulness that percolates from the mind of a self-described “romantic Zen hedonist” and “stray dog in the banquet halls of culture.”

Drown


Junot Díaz - 1995
    Diaz's work is unflinching and strong, and these stories crackle with an electric sense of discovery. Diaz evokes a world in which fathers are gone, mothers fight with grim determination for their families and themselves, and the next generation inherits the casual cruelty, devastating ambivalence, and knowing humor of lives circumscribed by poverty and uncertainty. In Drown, Diaz has harnessed the rhythms of anger and release, frustration and joy, to indelible effect.

Snowdrift and Other Stories


Georgette Heyer - 1960
    A treat for all fans of Georgette Heyer, and for those who love stories full of romance and intrigue.Affairs of honour between bucks and blades, rakes and rascals; affairs of the heart between heirs and orphans, beauties and bachelors; romance, intrigue, escapades and duels at dawn. All the gallantry, villainy and elegance of the age that Georgette Heyer has so triumphantly made her own are exquisitely revived in these wonderfully romantic stories of the Regency period.Contents:SnowdriftFull MoonPistols for TwoA Clandestine AffairBath MissA Husband for FannyTo Have the HonourNight at the InnThe DuelHazardPursuitRunaway MatchIncident on the Bath Road