Collected in this remarkable volume are twenty renowned writers of the modern age who brilliantly mastered the distinctive power and beauty of the form--each bringing his or her own unique vision to the page. This powerful collection includes the work of: Sherwood Anderson, Anton Chekov, Joseph Conrad, Shirley Jackson, D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Lionel Trilling, and many more.

    His literary achievement is a lasting legacy about what it means to be American.Vintage Baldwin includes the short story “Sonny’s Blues”; the galvanizing civil rights examination “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation”; the essays “Fifth Avenue, Uptown: A Letter from Harlem,” “The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American,” and “Nobody Knows My Name: A Letter from the South”; and excerpts from the novel Another Country and the play The Amen Corner.

    The poems negotiate the colossal movement of hearts figuring and being figured by history. This is a voice that knows the intelligence of passion, that moves through and inside the questioning of who we are in the structures of things we give the power to name us until a song sends us out to question the territory. The poet moves with the exactness of math or physics, with the fearful knowledge of careful imbalances that would have us believe in equilibrium, and with the assuredness of art that knows all is change, that the semblance of order is creation, something we are given the gift of imitating in some small way. The poems in this collection summon the largeness, the volume of a voice that disembodies itself in order to search for the love that made it whole.

    "Eight Men" presents eight stories of black men living at violent odds with the white world around them. As they do in his classic novels, the themes here reflect Wright's views on racism and his fascination with what he called "the struggle of the individual in America.

    Bambara's characteristic vigor, sensibility and winning irony. The stories range from the timid and bumbling confusion of a novice community worker in "The Apprentice" to the love-versus-politics crisis of an organizers wife, to the dark and bright notes of the title story about the passengers on a refugee ship from a war-torn Asian nation.Young girls, weary men, lovers, frauds and revolutionaries -- Toni Cade Bambara handles them all the expertise, passion and huge talent. As the Chicago Daily News said, "Ms. Bambara grabs you by the throat...she dazzles, she charms."

    These stories span characters and emotional states with canny details that touch the depths of your soul. Picturing the complexities of love, misery and mystery, the stories try to gnaw your heart like never before.• What does a flower teach us we often fail to see?• “The belly is an ungrateful wretch.” Is it true?• Ever wondered about the sparseness and illusions in life?• Does death put an end to true love?• Have all the ascetics won over their emotions?With the power of simple language, this book transports the readers to a world scarcely thought of in our bustling lives. The allegories maintain an intense rhythm of life prompting the readers to perceive things from a unique angle.“A whole bookful to make you think, cry, think again and move on.”

    

    A perfume made from some very unusual ingredients becomes more effective than expected. A remarkable change in a woman's life leaves her family to make a decision. The secret and danger of high intelligence are revealed to a university student. A teacher discovers a way of making time stand still. And a book tells a young manager more than he wants to know.

    You’ll see. Draw me just one more time.”No one knows if his mother will come out of her coma, so fourteen-year-old Jordie memorializes her in the only way he knows how: by drawing her. His older brother doesn’t approve of these sketches, but Jordie’s determined to capture the person she used to be. Unfortunately, Jordie must draw her from memory because his mom didn’t keep pictures, and her body in the hospital no longer looks like her. But the images of her are quickly fading, and if he doesn’t get a drawing right soon, the mother he remembers may slip away forever. No matter how close Jordie gets to completing a drawing, his mom’s most vital feature always evades him.Will Jordie capture his mother’s eyes? Or are they and his mother gone forever?Content Warning:SuicideDeathAnimal Death​Reader discretion advised

    Beha, this volume provides an important overview of the contemporary short story and a selection of the very best that American short fiction has to offer.Contents:The toughest Indian in the world by Sherman AlexieLobster night by Russell BanksThe hermit's story by Rick Bass1-900 by Richard BauschPoor devil by Charles BaxterLavande by Ann BeattieO. by Aimee BenderMercy by Pinckney BenedictThe love of my life by T.C. BoyleThe identity club by Richard BurginThe son of the wolfman by Michael ChabonNight women by Edwidge DanticatTelevision by Lydia DavisAurora by Junot DíazA house on the Plains by E.L. DoctorowDeath of the right fielder by Stuart DybekThe girl who left her sock on the floor by Deborah EisenbergDisaster stamps of Pluto by Louise ErdrichReunion by Richard FordRêve haitien by Ben FountainThe girl on the plane by Mary GaitskillThe paperhanger by William GayCity visit by Adam HaslettTo those of you who missed your connecting flights out of O'Hare by Amy HempelEmergency by Denis JohnsonDouble exposure by Greg JohnsonOld boys, old girls by Edward P. JonesAdina, Astrid, Chipewee, Jasmine by Matthew KlamBaboons by Sheila KohlerOnce in a lifetime by Jhumpa LahiriSome terpsichore by Elizabeth McCrackenCowboy by Thomas McGuaneSault Ste. Marie by David MeansRanch girl by Maile MeloyThe new automaton theater by Steven MillhauserPaper losses by Lorrie MooreStitches by Antonya NelsonLand. ll by Joyce Carol OatesOn the rainy river by Tim O'BrienThe escort by Chuck PalahniukPeople in hell just want a drink of water by Annie ProulxThe red bow by George SaundersLeslie and Sam by Douglas UngerThe brown chest by John UpdikeIncarnations of burned children by David Foster WallaceCinnamon skin by Edmund WhiteWho invented the jump shot by John Edgar WidemanBullet in the brain by Tobias Wol

    Back in print after more than five years, this is the extraordinary first short story collection by the author of Family.

    Thirteen stories by the first woman in years to rank among Russia's most important writers celebrate courage and the will to endure among the people who live on the periphery of society but who dream with a redeeming passion.

    She portrays the MacLains, the Starks, the Moodys, and other families of the fictitious town of Morgana. “I doubt that a better book about ‘the South’-one that more completely gets the feel of the particular texture of Southern life and its special tone and pattern-has ever been written” (New Yorker).

    The walking wounded. These are the stories of ordinary people.

    Winner of six Emmys (he was nominated nine times), two Sylvania Awards, on Peabody Award, and one Christopher Award for his teleplays, Serling came as close as anyone to dominating an era that abounded with talented men. His plays "Requiem for a Heavyweight" and "Patterns" are usually the first items on the lips of television aficionados reminiscing about the good old days. Yet as television changed, Rod Serling kept pace. He became producer and chief writer for the famous "Twilight Zone" series. These bizarre and fantastic adventures into the occult and demonic were without doubt one of the most creative, imaginative and successful enterprises in the history of television.Now Rod Serling has applied his prodigious writing talents to a new medium: one in which he is perhaps destined to make his greatest mark. The three novellas that compromise THE SEASON TO BE WARY betray the skillful hand of a master storyteller and prose stylist. Fired with a savage yet disciplined irony, paced with deliberate cadence that rises to a starting denouement, each story explores the theme of a terrible vengeance delivered for terrible deeds performed.In "The Escape Route," ex-Gruppenfuehrer Joseph Strobe - ex-deputy assistant commander of Auschwitz, ex-confidant of Heinrich Himmler - putters about his little rathole in Buenos Aires chewing over the good times he had breaking Jews. Yet his snug little world is turned upside down b the capture of Adolf Eichmann, and Strobe soon finds himself on the wrong end of a terrifying hunt."Color Scheme" recounts the life and times of the great King Connacher, racist and rabble-rouser, who makes his living on the stump, preaching the lynching gospel, only to find himself one summer evening the victim of an extraordinary case of mistaken identity.In "Eyes," Miss Claudia Menlo, who in her fifty lifeless years has been denied nothing that she wanted - except her sight - manipulates people with the same purposeful indifference with which she fondles the expensive bric-a-brac in her lavishly cluttered dwelling. Yet her insistant will is brutally thwarted by the one set of circumstances she cannot control.Serling has infused these simple, forceful tales with an extraordinary richness of character and detail. There is, for example, the Prussian officer Gruber, who cannot stomach the pigs like Strobe he helped create and with whom he is forced to share his guilt. And there is Indian Charlie Hatcher, the most memorable portrait of a burned-out prizefighter since Serling's own justly famous Mountain Rivera.The power, the drive, the complexity and subtlety of these novellas mark Rod Serling as one of the most important and graceful fiction writers. Mr. Serling is a graduate of Antioch College and lives in Southern California with his wife and two children.