Credited with influencing the likes of Chekhov, Maugham, Babel, and O. Henry, Maupassant had, at the time of his death at the age of forty-two, written six novels and some three hundred short stories. Yet in English, Maupassant has, curiously, remained unappreciated by modern readers due to outdated translations that render his prose in an archaic, literal style.In this bold new translation, Sandra Smith—the celebrated translator of Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise—brings us twenty-eight of Maupassant's essential stories and two novellas in lyrical yet accessible language that brings Maupassant into vibrant English. In addition to her sparkling translation, Smith also imposes a structure that captures the full range of Maupassant's work. Dividing the collection into three sections that reflect his predominant themes—nineteenth-century French society, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, and the supernatural—Smith creates "an arrangement suggesting a culture of relation, of structure, of completion" (Richard Howard).In "Tales of French Life," we see Maupassant explore the broad swath of French society, not just examining the lives of the affluent as was customary for writers in his day. In the title story of the collection, "The Necklace," Maupassant crafts a devastating portrait of misplaced ambition and ruin in the emerging middle class.The stories in "Tales of War" emerge from Maupassant’s own experiences in the devastating Franco-Prussian War and create a portrait of that disastrous conflict that few modern readers have ever encountered. This section features Maupassant's most famous novella, "Boule de Suif."The last section, "Tales of the Supernatural," delves into the occult and the bizarre. While certain critics may attribute some of these stories and morbid fascination as the product of the author's fevered mind and possible hallucinations induced by late-stage syphilis, they echo the gothic horror of Poe as well as anticipate the eerie fiction of H. P. Lovecraft.The result takes readers from marriage, family, and the quotidian details of life to the disasters of war and nationalism, then to the gothic and beyond, allowing us to appreciate Maupassant in an idiom that matches our own times. The Necklace and Other Stories enables us to appreciate Maupassant as the progenitor of the modern short story and as a writer vastly ahead of his time.

    One by one, over a hundred men and women are forced by the harsh feudal officialdom to take to the hills. They band together and defeat every attempt of the government troops to crush them. Within this framework we find intrigue, adventure, murder, warfare, romance ... in a connected series of fascinating individual tales, told in the suspenseful manner of the traditional storyteller.

    She kisses like a movie star and knows everything about every film ever made. She's also dead and waiting in the Rosebud Theater for Alec Sheldon one afternoon in 1945.... Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with big ideas and a gift for attracting abuse. It isn't easy to make friends when you're the only inflatable boy in town.... Francis is unhappy. Francis was human once, but that was then. Now he's an eight-foot-tall locust and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing....John Finney is locked in a basement that's stained with the blood of half a dozen other murdered children. In the cellar with him is an antique telephone, long since disconnected, but which rings at night with calls from the dead....The past isn't dead. It isn't even past...

    These short fictions set in the Indonesian everyday—in corporate boardrooms, in shanty towns, on dangdut stages—reveal a soupy otherworld stewing just beneath the surface. Sometimes wacky and always engrossing, this is subversive feminist horror at its best, where men and women alike are arbiters of fear, and where revenge is sometimes sweetest when delivered from the grave.Mara finds herself brainstorming an ad campaign for Free Maxi Pads, with a little help from the menstruation-eating hag of her childhood. Jamal falls in love with the rich and powerful Bambang, but it is the era of the smiling general and, if he’s not careful, he may find himself recruited to Bambang’s brutal cause. Solihin would give anything to make dangdut singer Salimah his wife – anything at all. In the globally connected and fast-developing Indonesia of Apple and Knife, taboos, inversions, sex and death all come together in a heady, intoxicating mix full of pointed critiques and bloody mutilations. Women carve a place for themselves in this world, finding ways to subvert norms or enacting brutalities on themselves and each other.

    Against the vivid, gritty backdrop of 1980s China, Lu Yao traces the proud and passionate Gao Jialin’s difficult path to professional, romantic, and personal fulfillment—or at least hard-won acceptance.With the emotional acuity and narrative mastery that secured his reputation as one of China’s great novelists, Lu Yao paints a vivid, emotional, and unsparing portrait of contemporary Chinese life, seen through the eyes of a working-class man who refuses to be broken.

    Grimm's Grimmest presents nineteen of the original, unsanitized, unholy tales as they were first collected by the Brothers Grimm -- all fiendishly illustrated in full color. Grimm's Grimmest has the irresistible look and feel of a creaky old leatherbound volume, perhaps discovered in a forgotten trunk or dusty attic. With aged paper and a leathery stamped case, this delightfully shocking collection harkens back to a time when travelers risked roasting or worse and bad manners could yield frightful consequences. From the true horror of Aschenputtel (the original Cinderella story) to Rapunzel's dark secret, here are the authentic stories born long ago in the land of the Black Forest, at a time when fairy tales were not necessarily for children.

    Most do not know, however, that its author, W.W. Jacobs, was an immensely popular writer from the 1890s through the Second World War, selling many tens of thousands of copies of his 13 short story collections. His craftsmanship was admired by such authors as G.K. Chesterton and Evelyn Waugh. Jacobs mostly wrote humorous short stories about humble seafaring folk, but "The Monkey's Paw" is by no means his only tale of the macabre. This collection contains 18 stories with subjects including haunted houses, vengeful ghosts, guilty murderers and people faking supernatural phenomena. "The Monkey's Paw" is, of course, a moral tale about how there's always a price to pay if you interfere with what's natural. It's not a mere object lesson, though: the powerful mood of mourning and despair is what makes it so memorable. Jacobs also emphasizes the dangers of mocking the supernatural. In the superb tale "The Toll House," for example, four men pull the familiar stunt of staying in a supposedly haunted house overnight. They tease each other while drinking whiskey and playing cards to while away the time, and one of them tugs on the servants' bell as a joke. Later on the man who pulled the bell is all alone in the dark, pursued by ominous footsteps, rushing about in a panicky search for the stairs. And in "Jerry Bundler," an actor tries to pull a prank on a man who is fearful of ghosts by dressing up as a renowned local spirit. He pays for his impudence in a way that is not supernatural, but the reader's left wondering what forces contrived the tragic chain of events. It's a delightful collection of stories, distinguished by Jacobs's ability to infuse horror into the simplest, most prosaic of situations, his excellent sense of pacing in the short story form, and his sardonic sense of humor. --Fiona Webster

    . .Featuring new and original tales from:Bridget CollinsSunday Times bestselling author of The BindingImogen Hermes GowarSunday Times bestselling author of The Mermaid and Mrs HancockKiran Millwood HargraveSunday Times bestselling author of The MerciesAndrew Michael HurleySunday Times bestselling author of The LoneyJess KiddInternational award-winning author of Things in JarsElizabeth MacnealSunday Times bestselling author of The Doll FactoryNatasha PulleySunday Times bestselling author of The Watchmaker of Filigree StreetLaura PurcellAward-winning author of The Silent Companions

    Like Ghelderode's plays, the stories are marked by a powerful imagination and a keen sense of the grotesque, but in these the author speaks to us still more directly. Written at a time of illness and isolation, and conceived as a fresh start, Spells was Ghelderode's last major creative work, and he claimed it as his most personal and deeply felt one: a set of written spells through which his fears, paranoia and nostalgia found concrete form.By turns mystical, macabre and whimsically humorous, and set in the unsettled atmosphere of Brussels, Ostend, Bruges and London, Spells conjures up an uncanny realm of angels, demons, masks, effigies and apparitions, a twilit, oppressed world of diseased gardens, dusty wax mannequins and sinister relics.Combining the full contents of both the 1941 and 1947 editions, this translation of Spells is the most comprehensive edition yet published.Michel de Ghelderode was born in Brussels in 1898. After nearly a decade of penning fiction, drama, literary journalism and puppet plays, in 1926 he began to write almost entirely for the theater and the following ten years saw the creation of most of his major plays. After 1936 he suffered from poor health and his involvement with the theater diminished. In the later 1940s, performances of his plays in Paris sparked a major awakening of interest in his work. Ghelderode died in 1962; the interior of his apartment, packed with books, pictures, puppets and masks, has been reassembled in Brussels as the Musee-Bibliotheque Michel de Ghelderode.

    Considered one of the English language's greatest writers, he was acclaimed for his rich storytelling and memorable characters, and achieved massive worldwide popularity in his lifetime. The popularity of his novels and short stories has meant that not one has ever gone out of print. Dickens wrote serialised novels, the usual format for fiction at the time, and each new part of his stories was eagerly anticipated by the reading public. Among his best-known works are Sketches by Boz (1836), The Pickwick Papers (1837), Oliver Twist (1838), Nicholas Nickleby (1839), Barnaby Rudge (1841), A Christmas Carol (1843), Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), David Copperfield (1850), Bleak House (1853), Little Dorrit (1857), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1861) and Our Mutual Friend (1865).

    It is a dramatic feat with profound connotations and heart-stirring artistry. The story unfolded around Zhou Puyuan, a male character who had been to Germany to study. Cold-blooded, selfish and hypocritical, he was like a dictator of a dark dynasty in his home. Zhou Puyuan is a well-portrayed character in Thunderstorm. All sinful acts were attributable to his domestic autocracy. The profound significance of Thunderstorm lies in its exposure of the close political and ideological bond between Chinese capitalists and the deep-rooted feudal traditions.

    Originally published in 1934 by author Shen Congwen, this beautifully written novel tells the story of Cuicui, a young country girl who is coming of age in rural China in the tumultuous time before the communist revolution.

    collection—features twelve of the World Fantasy and British Fantasy Award-winning Australian author’s finest, darkest fairy tales, and adds two new novellas to her marvelous cauldron of fiction. Stories peopled by women and girls—fearless, frightened, brave, bold, frail, and fantastical—who take the paths less traveled by, accept (and offer) poisoned apples, and embrace transformation in all its forms. Reminiscent of Angela Carter at her best, Slatter’s work is both timeless and fresh: fascinating new reflections from the enchanted mirrors of fairy tales and folklore.

    In these dozen stories of adventure and magic from the Orient, a maiden encounters an "oni" demon in the forest, a bride discovers her mother-in-law is a fox woman, a samurai must appease his sister's angry ghost, strange luck is found in a jade locket, and dark and light are two sides of harmony.A striking debut collection from Eugie Foster.

    Back in 1644, his great-uncle Dorgon broke through the Great Wall from Manchuria in the north-east and took the Imperial capital, Peking. Now twenty years later, the Manchus are quelling the last sparks of Chinese resistance, hounding down members of the underground movement known as the Triad Secret Society. But deep in the innermost recesses of the Forbidden City, with its maze of countless eunuchs, and the redoubtable troops of the Imperial Guard, a sinister conspiracy is brewing.Into this historical setting bursts a young teenage scamp by the name of Trinket. Born in a whorehouse in the southern Chinese city of Yangzhou, Trinket is an unlikely (and reluctant) kungfu practitioner, whose underhand tricks earn him many a harsh word from his masters. Foul-mouthed, lazy, opportunistic, but ultimately likeable and unforgettable, it is Trinket who holds together the picaresque episodes of this last (and many say best) Martial Arts novel by Hong Kong's master storyteller, Louis Cha.As the poet and critic Stephen Soong has said, this is 'a roller-coaster of a novel, packed with thrills, with fun, rage, humour, and abuse, written in a style that flows and flashes like quicksilver.'