Presence is a posthumous gathering of Miller’s last published fiction, a group of stories that appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, and elsewhere. “Bulldog” describes a young teenager’s surprising first sexual experience while “Presence” relates a man’s encounter with a woman he has just seen making love on a beach. “Beavers” tells a haunting tale of nature, creation, and destruction. In “The Performance,” a Jewish tap dancer enthralls Hitler. “The Bare Manuscript” reveals a writer’s unusual methods to revive his muse, and, finally, “The Turpentine Still” presents a portrait of a man examining his legacy. Displaying the sureness of an artist in his autumnal prime, Presence is a gift that all fans of Miller’s work, as well as readers of contemporary fiction, will welcome.

    In 'The Life and Times of Estelle Walks Above', an intellectual feminist Spokane Indian woman saves the lives of dozens of white women all around her, to the bewilderment of her only child. In 'Do You Know Where I Am?' two college sweethearts rescue a lost cat - a simple act that has profound moral consequences for the rest of their lives together. In 'What You Pawn I Will Redeem', a homeless Indian man must raise $1,000 in twenty-four hours to buy back the fancy dance outfit stolen from his grandmother fifty years earlier.Even as they often make us laugh, Sherman Alexie's stories are driven by a haunting lyricism and naked candour that cut to the heart of the human experience.

    Introduction by Richard Bach. Translated by Lewis Galantière and Stuart Gilbert.

    He is a writer, observes the "Chicago Tribune," who can "convincingly squeeze whole lives into a mere twenty pages or so." Now Chaon marshals his notable talents in his much-anticipated debut novel. "You Remind Me of Me" begins with a series of separate incidents: In 1977, a little boy is savagely attacked by his mother's pet Doberman; in 1997 another little boy disappears from his grandmother's backyard on a sunny summer morning; in 1966, a pregnant teenager admits herself to a maternity home, with the intention of giving her child up for adoption; in 1991, a young man drifts toward a career as a drug dealer, even as he hopes for something better. With penetrating insight and a deep devotion to his characters, Dan Chaon" "explores the secret connections that irrevocably link them. In the process he examines questions of identity, fate, and circumstance: Why do we become the people that we become? How do we end up stuck in lives that we never wanted? And can we change the course of what seems inevitable? In language that is both unflinching and exquisite, Chaon moves deftly between the past and the present in the small-town prairie Midwest and shows us the extraordinary lives of "ordinary" people.

    Insel , the only novel by the surrealist master Mina Loy, is a book like no other--about an impossible friendship amid the glamorous artistic bohemia of 1930s Paris.

    The result: "The most creative, generous, and democratic of any of the annual volumes" (Rick Moody).Among its numerous awards, the Pushcart Prize has been chosen for the Poets Writers / Barnes Noble "Writers for Writers" Award and the National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement recognition.

    All that has happened to you during the day. Every word of it. She will want to know what you are thinking about, why you smile suddenly, why you are looking sad...A tale of desire, manipulation and obsession...

    Ranging from humor to profound maturity, the works in this volume offer the full spectrum of Soseki's genius. They are among Soseki's best, and brilliantly display his temperament and thought, the richness of his humor, and the sureness of his satirical touch. Ten Nights of Dream comprises a collection of ten short stories of dreams. Couched in a surrealistic atmosphere, they reveal the attitudes of a major writer at a turning point in his career.

    In classic Russo fashion, however, he packs along their foibles and frailties. His latest foray into the messy beauty of the human heart, "Nate in Venice" is written with the same wry humor and ready generosity for which he’s been so richly praised.After a tragic incident with a student, Nate, a professor at a small New England college, retires from teaching and from life. He ends his self-imposed exile with a tour-group trip to Venice in the company of his overbearing, mostly estranged brother. Nate is unsure he’s equipped for the challenges of human contact, especially the fraternal kind. He tries to play along, keep up, mixing his antidepressants with expensive Chianti, but while navigating the labyrinthine streets of the ancient, sinking city, the past greets him around every corner, even in his dreams: There’s the stricken face of the young woman whose life he may have ruined, and there’s Julian, the older brother who has always derided and discounted him. Is Nate sunk? Is the trip, the chance to fall in love—in fact, his whole existence—merely water under the ponte? Maybe or maybe not. In Russo’s world, the distance between disaster and salvation is razor thin, and a mensch can be a fool (and vice versa). Nate’s Venetian high-wire act proves as surprising as a potboiler and as full of reversals as a romantic comedy. It’s an emphatic tribute to all the pleasures and possibilities of the novella.

    His wife, the Countess, is beautiful and pure, and loves her husband more than anything in the world. But from the moment the d'Orgels meet and befriend the clever young François de Séryeuse backstage at the circus, all three of these supremely civilized and witty people are caught up in an ever more intricate and seductive dance of deception and self-deception. At Count d'Orgel's masquerade ball, the real disguises are those of the human heart.Completed just before Raymond Radiguet's death at the age of twenty, Count d'Orgel's Ball is a love story that is as disturbing as it is delicious.

    The unreal becomes real and the good gets a taste for the great.

    It is one of the great love stories, and also one of the most enigmatic: how reliable a witness is Des Grieux, Manon's lover, whose tale he narrates? Is Manon a thief and a whore, the image of love itself, or a thoroughly modern woman? Prevost is careful to leave the ambiguities unresolved, and to lay bare the disorders of passion." This new translation includes the vignette and eight illustrations that were approved by Prevost and first published in the edition of 1753.

    

    Often considered his masterpiece, it follows the desertion of everyday life of an army conscript who escapes his intolerable existence through dreams, hallucinations, drug orgies, a pursuit of his double and finally madness.

    Born in the village of Skhvitori (Imereti region of western Georgia) on June 9, 1840, to a prominent Georgian aristocratic family; his father was Prince Rostom Tsereteli. Following an old family tradition, Akaki Tsereteli spent his childhood years living with a peasant’s family in the village of Savane. He was brought up by peasant nannies, all of which made him feel empathy for the peasants’ life in Georgia. He graduated from the Kutaisi Gymnasium in 1852 and the University of Saint Petersburg Faculty of Oriental Languages in 1863. The young adult generation of Georgians during the 1860s, led by Chavchavdze and Tsereteli, protested against the Tsarist regime and campaigned for cultural revival and self-determination of the Georgians. He is an author of hundreds of patriotic, historical, lyrical and satiric poems, also humoristic stories and autobiographic novel. Akaki Tsereteli was also active in educational, journalistic and theatrical activities.