The crew, thinking that their attempts at terraforming and breeding for Martian adaptability have finally payed off, rejoice at the prospect of a brighter future. But Nina's about to unlock the mystery of the disaster that stranded them on Mars… and nothing will ever be the same.At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.

    Sofia is a Soviet Everywoman, a doctor's widow who works as a typist in a Leningrad publishing house. When her beloved son is caught up in the maelstrom of the purge, she joins the long lines of women outside the prosecutor's office, hoping against hope for any good news. Confronted with a world that makes no moral sense, Sofia goes mad, a madness which manifests itself in delusions little different from the lies those around her tell every day to protect themselves. Sofia Petrovna offers a rare and vital record of Stalin's Great Purges.

    Appearing in print for the first time, "Amnesty" is a story of a woman named Noah who works to negotiate the tense and co-dependent relationship between humans and a species of invaders. Also new to this collection is "The Book of Martha" which asks: What would you do if God granted you the ability—and responsibility—to save humanity from itself?Like all of Octavia Butler’s best writing, these works of the imagination are parables of the contemporary world. She proves constant in her vigil, an unblinking pessimist hoping to be proven wrong, and one of contemporary literature’s strongest voices.

    Set mainly amid Indian reservations and uranium mills, these twelve stories create a kaleidoscopic view of family, myth, love, landscape, and loss in a place where infinite skies and endless roads suggest a world of possibility, yet dreams are deceiving, like an oasis, just beyond reach. Whether it’s a young woman pushed quite literally to the edge on a desolate mountain pass, an orphaned brother and sister trying to patch together an existence one stitch at a time, a cop who suspects his kleptomaniac wife is stealing from other people — materially and emotionally — or a wily roadside hypnotist whose alleged power is both wonderful and strange, Ann Cummins’s characters want to transcend the circumstances of their lives, to believe in the eventuality of change. Again and again, Ann Cummins generates imagery of white-hot intensity and pushes the limits of both the human spirit and the short story form. Gritty, seductive, and always daring, this unforgettable collection puts forth a haunting new vision of hope and heartache in contemporary America and confirms the arrival of an important new voice.

    Blood and death attend. But when the war is won, and life stares, hungry, in the parents’ faces, where does that violence, anxiety, and shame go? The poems in Patter re-imagine miscarriages as minstrel shows, magic tricks, and comic strips; set Darth Vader against Oedipus’s dad in competition for “Father of the Year;” and interrogate the poet’s family’s stint on reality TV. In this, his third collection, award-winning poet Douglas Kearney doggedly worries the line between love and hate, showing how it bleeds itself into “fatherhood.”

    For more than four decades, Doris Lessing’s work has observed the passion and confusion of human relations, holding a mirror up to our selves in her unflinching dissection of the everyday.From the magnificent ‘To Room Nineteen’, a study of a dry, controlled middle-class marriage ‘grounded in intelligence’, to the shocking ‘A Woman on the Roof’, where a workman becomes obsessed with a pretty sunbather, this superb collection of stories written over four decades, from the 1950s to the 1990s, bears stunning witness to Doris Lessing’s perspective on the human condition.

    Maman is beautiful and adored. Dada, silent and small, mooches contendedly around the stables. Aunt Tossie, of the giant heart and bosom, is widowed but looks splendid in weeds. The butler, the groom, the landsteward, the maids, the men - each as a place and knows it. Then, astonishingly, the perfect surface is shattered; Maman does something too dreadful ever to be spoken of.'What next? Who to love?' asks Nicaranda. And through her growing up and marriage her answer is to swamp those around her with kindness - while gradually the great house crumbles under a weight of manners and misunderstanding.

    This collection is set in the vast Australian continent from the mysterious, glittering Valley of Lagoons to bohemian Balmain and the Centre at Uluru.

    The terrible, fluttering wings. He could feel the blood on his hands, his wrists, his neck. Each stab of a swooping beak tore his flesh. If only he could keep them from his eyes. Nothing else mattered."

    Walters's essays deftly explore the psyches of cities such as Chicago, Detroit, New York, Portsmouth, and Washington, D.C. In "Cleveland," she interviews an African-American playwright who draws great reviews, but can't muster an audience. An on-air telephone chat between a DJ and his listeners drives a discussion of race and nutrition in "Chicago Radio." In "Manhattanville" the author, out for a walk with her biracial son, is mistaken for his nanny. Each essay explores societal questions—how eras of immense growth can leave us unable to prosper from that growth, how places intended for safety become fraught with danger, and how race and gender bias threaten our communities. Walters's haunting utterances are beautifully precise estimations of a place and its people.

    Sudha Murthy has even picked out anecdotes from her own life to present to the readers a book that shows them the forgotten values of life.How I Taught My Grandmother to Read and Other Stories is filled with heart touching tales varying from one about how her grandmother asked the then twelve-year-old author to teach her the alphabet. Sudha talks about her encounter with J.R.D Tata. Each of the twenty-five stories in the book provides some inspiration to its readers.The stories are presented in an effortless and humorous fashion. Sudha Murthy recounts tales from her life in a simple yet engrossing manner. The stories range from her childhood to her life as a teacher and a mother. The book shows readers how her mother's constant advice on saving money actually helped Sudha when she had to start a company with her husband. It also features a story where the protagonist takes a train ride with the President. About Sudha MurthySudha Murthy, also known as Sudha Kulkarni, is a social worker and author.Other popular books written by Sudha are The Magic Drum And Other Favorite Stories, Dolla Bahu, The Old Man And His God, and Wise & Otherwise (an audiobook).Sudha Murthy has tried her hand at both fiction and non-fiction. She writes in English and Kannada and so far, she has written a compilation of short stories, two books for children, nine novels, three separate non-fiction collections, three travelogues, and four technical books. She has been awarded the R. K. Narayan's Award for Literature (2006) and has also been the recipient of the Padma Shri award (2006).She was born in Shiggaon, North Karnataka in the year 1950. She is the wife of N. R. Narayana Murthy, the founder of Infosys Technologies limited and is at present, the Chairperson of Infosys. She is actively involved in social service and is a part of the Gate

    "PINK STEAM is not kitschy, it is a culturally astute document of the real written by a master at the height of her powers"--Jennifer Moxley. The intimate secrets of Dodie Bellamy's life--sex, shoplifting, voyeurism, and writing are illuminated in Bellamy's incredibly tailored latest work where true confession bleeds into high theory into trash cinema. PINK STEAM barges beyond the cliches of gendered experience; unafraid of the personal, unabashed by politics and sex, Bellamy makes confusion her OK Corral. Dodie Bellamy is the author of CUNT-UPS and FEMININE HIJINX, both available at SPD.

    Filled with admiration for his characters and the hope they bring to their day to day dilemmas, Night Swimming has affirmed Pete Fromm's reputation as one of the nation's best writers.

    First published in 1759, it was an instant bestseller and has come to be regarded as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment. What Candide does for chivalric romance, the other tales in this selection--Micromegas, Zadig, The Ingenu, and The White Bull--do for science fiction, the Oriental tale, the sentimental novel, and the Old Testament. The most extensive one-volume selection currently available, this new edition includes a new verse translation of the story Voltaire based on Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale: What Pleases the Ladies and opens with a revised introduction that reflects recent critical debates, including a new section on Candide.

    The Goon Squad 2014 Summer Special contains an introduction to the Squad, and four short stories: "Red Wolf, Red Wolf, Does Whatever a Red Wolf Can," "Changes," "No-No Dojo," and "Tale of Terror." Join Puppet Girl, the Revenant, Red Wolf, and Talos as they protect the fairly innocent, are sharply critical about modern newspapers, talk to a door in Salford, and recount the day the city nearly blew up.