Now, in search of some new pets to satisfy his cruel pursuit of amusement, Simon finds a new shop in the city where he is intrigued by a new lifeform he has never heard of before... a collection of multi-colored sandkings. The curator explains that the insect-like animals, no larger than Simon's fingernails, are not insects, but animals with a highly-evolved hive intelligence capable of staging wars between the different colors, and even religion - in the form of worship of their owner. The curator's warning to Simon about the regularity of their feeding, unfortunately, was not taken seriously...Contents:- The Way of Cross and Dragon (1979)- Bitterblooms (1977)- In the House of the Worm (1976)- Fast-Friend (1976)- The Stone City (1977)- Starlady (1976)- Sandkings (1979)Cover illustration by Michael Whelan

    

    In each of her stories, Danielle Evans explores the non-white American experience with honesty, wisdom, and humor. They are striking in their emotional immediacy, based in a world where inequality is a reality, but the insecurities of young adulthood and tensions within family are often the more complicating factors. One of the most lauded debuts of the year, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self announces a major new talent in Danielle Evans.

    Howard (1906-36) is best known for his stories about Conan the Barbarian. However, Howard was a prolific writer of fantasy, horror, historical adventure, Westerns, detective, sports stories, true confessions and other genre fiction. During his short career, he created a number of memorable characters in the pages of Weird Tales and other pulp magazines, including the the vengeful Puritan swashbuckler Solomon Kane, King Kull of Valusia, and the Pictish chieftain Bran Mak Morn.This companion volume to The Complete Chronicles of Conan contains stories featuring Conan's brothers-in-arms, from Howard's very first professionally published story, through the exploits of Kane, Kull, and the Picts, to a number of Oriental adventures, an early draft of a Conan story, and a posthumously published space opera in the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs.Compiled and with a historical afterword by Stephen Jones, and lavishly illustrated by Les Edwards, this is a volume that no Robert E. Howard fan will want to miss.

    With full-cloth binding and a silk ribbon marker. EVERYMAN'S POCKET CLASSICS.In an interview, Updike once said, "If I had to give anybody one book of me, it would be the Olinger Stories." These stories were originally published in The New Yorker and then in various collections before Vintage first put them together in one volume in 1964, as a paperback original. They follow the life of one character from the age of ten through manhood, in the small Pennsylvania town of Olinger (pronounced, according to Updike, with a long O and a hard G), which was loosely based on Updike's own hometown. "All the stories draw from the same autobiographical well," Updike explained, "the only child, the small town, the grandparental home, the move in adolescence to a farm." The selection was made and arranged by Updike himself, and was prefaced by a lovely 1,400-word essay by the author that has never been reprinted in full elsewhere until now.

    Wodehouse brings together some of his oldest friends for a party. Jeeves and Wooster are there, so is Mr Mulliner and the Oldest Member.

    Five years later, Josef rescues a young girl, Mila, after her parents are killed while running to meet the Rebbe they hoped would save them. Josef helps Mila reach Zalman Stern, a leader in the Satmar community, in whose home Mila is raised as a sister to Zalman’s daughter, Atara. As the two girls mature, Mila’s faith intensifies, while her beloved sister Atara discovers a world of books and learning that she cannot ignore. With the rise of communism in central Europe, the family moves to Paris, to the Marais, where Zalman tries to raise his children apart from the city in which they live.      When the two  girls come of age, Mila marries within the faith, while Atara continues to question fundamentalist doctrine. The different choices the two sisters makes force them apart until a dangerous secret threatens to banish them from the only community they’ve ever known.      A beautifully crafted, emotionally gripping story of what happens when unwavering love, unyielding law, and centuries of tradition collide, I Am Forbidden announces the arrival of an extraordinarily gifted new voice and opens a startling window on a world long closed to most of us, until now.

    The essays were written during a difficult time in Twain's life; he was deep in debt and had lost his wife and one of his daughters. The book consists of a series of short stories, many of which deal with God and Christianity. Twain penned a series of letters from the point-of-view of a dejected angel on Earth. This title story consists of letters written by the archangel Satan to archangels, Gabriel and Michael, about his observations on the curious proceedings of earthly life and the nature of man's religions. By analyzing the idea of heaven and God that is widely accepted by those who believe in both, Twain is able to take the silliness that is present and study it with the common sense that is absent. Not so much an attack as much as a cold dissection. Other short stories in the book include a bedtime story about a family of cats Twain wrote for his daughters, and an essay explaining why an anaconda is morally superior to Man. Twain's writings in Letters From the Earth find him at perhaps his most quizzical and questioning state ever.

    . . called up the flavors of an elaborate and bold cuisine, bent on making the flavors’ highest notes vibrate, juxtaposing them in modulations, in chords, and especially in dissonances that would assert themselves as an incomparable experience.” — From Under the Jaguar Sun   These intoxicating stories delve down to the core of our senses. Taste, hearing, and smell. Amid the flavors of Mexico’s fiery chilies and spices, a couple on holiday discovers dark truths about the maturing of desire in the title story, “Under the Jaguar Sun.” In “A King Listens,” a gripping portrait of a frenzied mind, the menacing echoes in a huge palace spur a tyrant’s thoughts to the heights of paranoid intensity. “The Name, the Nose” drives to a startling conclusion as men across time and space pursue the women whose aromas have enchanted them. Mordant and deliciously offbeat, this trio of tales is a treat from a master of short fiction. “[Calvino is] a learned, daring, ingeniously gifted magus . . . Under the Jaguar Sun . . . fuses fable with neuron . . . The reader is likely to salivate.” — Cynthia Ozick, New York Times Book Review

    When Itsik's poems get him into trouble in czarist Russia, he begins an odyssey -- with a picture of his beloved Sasha in his coat. Her image stays with him as he labors at a small print shop in Odessa and through a long, hazardous passage to America. And it keeps him company until he settles in New York's garment district. In fact, Sasha stays with Itsik until the eve of his first public appearance as a poet, when she appears in person, as if by magic. But their happiness together is short-lived -- Sasha leaves him before the birth of their first child.Years later, a young man in Boston who toils at preserving Yiddish books responds to an urgent call from New York, where he meets the elderly Malpesh, in need of a translator for his life story. In weaving together Itsik's tale of colorful characters, the two stumble upon an unlikely connection neither could have foreseen. A tale of love -- of homeland, a new country, a girl, and a culture -- Songs for the Butcher's Daughter is a novel about the way history is captured for the ages through the lives and words of seemingly "average" men.(Holiday 2008 Selection)

    In this gripping novel, based on a true story, he reveals the extraordinary lives of the Russian, Polish and Jewish partisans trapped behind enemy lines during the Second World War. Wracked by fear, hunger and fierce rivalries, they link up, fall apart, struggle to stay alive, and to sabotage the efforts of the all-powerful German army. A compelling tale of action, resistance and epic adventure, it also reveals Levi's characteristic compassion and deep insight into the moral dilemmas of total war. It ranks alongside THE PERIOD TABLE and IF THIS IS A MAN as one of the rare authentic masterpieces of the 20th century.

    Among other fine works, the collection also includes “Wunderkind,” McCullers’s first published story written when she was only seventeen about a musical prodigy who suddenly realizes she will not go on to become a great pianist. Newly reset and available for the first time in a handsome trade paperback edition, The Ballad of the Sad Café is a brilliant study of love and longing from one of the South’s finest writers.

    There have been hardcovers and paperbacks, an issue with two spines, an issue with a magnetic binding, an issue that looked like a bundle of junk mail, and an issue that looked like a sweaty human head. McSweeney’s has won multiple literary awards, including two National Magazine Awards for fiction, and has had numerous stories appear in The Best American Magazine Writing, the O. Henry Awards anthologies, and The Best American Short Stories. Design awards given to the quarterly include the AIGA 50 Books Award, the AIGA 365 Illustration Award, and the Print Design Regional Award.Issue 47 brings with it a gale of bracing fiction from writers new and old—two never-before-seen stories from “Lottery” author Shirley Jackson, a portrait of a celebrity interview gone terribly wrong from Thomas McGuane, dark reflections from Lynn Coady and Mona Simpson, an excerpt from Bill Cotter’s latest novel, new work from Bob Odenkirk, and much, much more. From father-daughter surfing duels to sinister substitute teachers to a parlor drama called “Hitler Dinner Party” (thank you, Mr. Odenkirk), this one may well have it all. And its packaging, in ten separate booklets bedecked with one panoramic mega-illustration, ensures that you’ll always be able to carry at least part of it around.

    Outpost - A prelude to Blood on the Snow with Jack Hallam. The Emerald Graves - Lorn Mullone at the Battle of Vinegar Hill. Pipe and Drum - A tale of the Battle of Assaye seen through the eyes of a Highlander of the 78th Foot. Plains Wolf - Rifleman Arthur Cadoc impresses a certain Spanish Guerrillero. Summer is Coming - There is nothing more horrific than the horrors of the French retreat in icy Russia, 1812. The Diabolical Circumstance of Captain Bartholomew Chivers - A funny story in the vein of Harry Flashman. Flowers of Toulouse - A chilling story. Lamentation - A redcoat looks back on his life after the Battle of New Orleans. Enemy at the Gates - The bloody defence of Hougoumont. The Bravest of the Brave - Ney's final moments at Waterloo.

    In "Near-Extinct Birds of the Central Cordillera," an ornithologist being held hostage in the Colombian rain forest finds that he respects his captors for their commitment to a cause, until he realizes that the Revolution looks a lot like big business. In "The Good Ones Are Already Taken," the wife of a Special Forces officer battles a Haitian voodoo goddess with whom her husband is carrying on a not-entirely-spiritual relationship. And in "The Lion's Mouth," a disillusioned aid worker makes a Faustian bargain to become a diamond smuggler for the greater good. With masterful pacing and a robust sense of the absurd, each story in Brief Encounters with Che Guevara is a self-contained adventure, steeped in the heady mix of tragedy and danger, excitement and hope, that characterizes countries in transition.