Witchita Stories


Troy James Weaver - 2015
    Told through the eyes of a young man who yearns to find excitement, truth, and a deeper family bond in his life, Weaver's approachable and revealing stories, lists, fragments, and memories delve into the weird, funny, and sometimes unsettling world of a midwest kid finding his own path."Thank god you can come across a writer like Troy James Weaver. In the future people will just say these stories are like Troy James Weaver stories and you'll know exactly what they mean." --Scott McClanahan "There are moments, reading Witchita Stories, where everything dropped away, and I was speechless, or at least whatever the equivalent of speechless is when you're not talking in the first place. There is a deep sadness to these stories, and humor, but most importantly, honesty. This feels real and heavy and it's just about the best thing I've read in a long time." --J. David Osborne

The Beast in Me and Other Animals


James Thurber - 1948
    The book concludes with a sampling of articles Thurber wrote for the New Yorker’s “The Talk of the Town,” demonstrating his often overlooked skill as a reporter.Mainly men and women : My friend Domesticus --The glass of fashion --Am not I your Rosalind? --The princess and the tin box --How to name a dog --Thix --The waters of the moon --Exhibit X --The lady on the bookcase --The ordeal of Mr. Matthews --The dewey dewey fog --A guide to the literary pilgrimage --Prehistoric animals of the middle west --Here come the tigers --Look homeward, Jeannie --A call on Mrs. Forrester --The beast in the dingle. Less alarming creatures : A new natural history --Extinct animals of Bermuda --A gallery of real creatures. Soapland : O pioneers! --Ivorytown, Rinsoville, Anacinburg, and Crisco Corners --Sculptors in ivory --The invisible people --The listening women

There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories


Ludmilla Petrushevskaya - 2011
    Here are attempts at human connection, both depraved and sublime, by people in all stages of life: one-night stands in communal apartments, poignantly awkward couplings, office trysts, schoolgirl crushes, elopements, tentative courtships, and rampant infidelity, shot through with lurid violence, romantic illusion, and surprising tenderness.A murky fate --The fall --The goddess parka --Like Penelope --Ali-baba --Two deities --Father and mother --The impulse --Hallelujah, family! --Give her to me --Milgrom --Clarissa's story --Tamara's baby --Young berries --The adventures of Vera --Eros's way --A happy ending

Autobiography of a Corpse


Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky - 2013
    This new collection of eleven mind-bending and spellbinding tales includes some of Krzhizhanovsky's most dazzling conceits: a provincial journalist who moves to Moscow finds his existence consumed by the autobiography of his room's previous occupant; the fingers of a celebrated pianist's right hand run away to spend a night alone on the city streets; a man's lifelong quest to bite his own elbow inspires both a hugely popular circus act and a new refutation of Kant. Ordinary reality cracks open before our eyes in the pages of Autobiography of a Corpse, and the extraordinary spills out.An NYRB Classics Original

Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose and Diary Excerpts


Sylvia Plath - 1977
    If I sit still and don't do anything, the world goes on beating like a slack drum, without meaning. We must be moving, working, making dreams to run toward; the poverty of life without dreams is too horrible to imagine."-- Sylvia Plath, from "Notebooks, February 1956"Renowned for her poetry, Sylvia Plath was also a brilliant writer of prose. This collection of short stories, essays, and diary excerpts highlights her fierce concentration on craft, the vitality of her intelligence, and the yearnings of her imaginaton. Featuring an introduction by Plath's husband, the late British poet Ted Hughes, these writings also reflect themes and images she would fully realize in her poetry. "Jonny Panic and the Bible of Dreams" truly showcases the talent and genius of Sylvia Plath.

Edgar Allan Poe Novels


Edgar Allan Poe - 2012
    Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television.

how the poor die


George Orwell
    Orwell gives an anecdotal account of his experiences in a french public hospital which triggers a contemplation of hospital literature in the context of 19th-century medicine.

Great Short Works of Willa Cather


Willa Cather - 1989
    A luminous collection--with an introduction, notes, chronology, and bibliography--of ten of Willa Cather's short works written from 1900 to 1920.

Still Happy: Includes "The Book of Homer"


Elizabeth Berg - 2017
    Her first, "Make Someone Happy," did indeed make many people happy, and so, due to popular demand, she has put together a second volume, which includes “The Book of Homer,” a tribute to her beloved dog who recently died. "Still Happy," like "Make Someone Happy," exemplifies Berg’s gift, as the Boston Globe said, “in her ability to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, the remarkable in the everyday.”

Woe from Wit


Alexander Griboyedov - 1825
    

The Art of Dancing in the Rain


Jack Lehman - 2013
    Or read this book and find out how you have all the tools you need, but must make the one change to become the writer you have always wanted to be.

Great Russian Short Stories


Paul NegriLeo Tolstoy - 2003
    Twelve powerful works of fiction, including Pushkin's "The Queen of Spades," Gogol's "The Overcoat," Turgenev's "The District Doctor," Dostoyevsky's "White Nights," Tolstoy's "How Much Land Does a Man Need?," plus "The Clothes Mender" by Leskov, "The Lady with the Toy Dog" by Chekhov, "Twenty-Six Men and a Girl" by Gorky, "Lazarus" by Andreyev, and more.

Three Stories


Alan Bennett - 2003
    Over 60,000 sold in small format. The Clothes They Stood Up In, has sold over 200,000 copies as a small novella and was 14 weeks in the Bestseller lists. It is the painful story of what happens to an elderly couple when their flat is stripped completely bare. The Laying on of Hands, a memorial service for a masseur to the famous that goes horribly wrong. Over 100,000 copies sold as a novella. Like everything Alan Bennett does, these stories are playful, witty and painfully observant of ordinary people's foibles. And they all have a brilliant and surprising twist; are immensely funny and profoundly moral.

I am a home to butterflies


J. Alchem - 2018
    It will then be about them only. It will be all about the one they loved like thunder, about the one they struggled hard to keep, about the one who had left them in the middle of their 'forever', about their world shattering into pieces, about them gluing together every piece, and about them falling in love one more time.And if you still think it is about you and me, you haven't loved someone like thunder, yet.

The Nation's Favourite


Simon Garfield - 1999
    Matthew Bannister said he was going to reinvent the station, the most popular in Europe. But things didn't go exactly to plan. The station lost millions of listeners. Its most famous DJs left, and their replacements proved to be disasters. Radio 1's commercial rivals regarded the internal turmoil with glee. For a while a saviour arrived, in the shape of Chris Evans. But his behaviour caused further upheavals, and his eventual departure provoked another mass desertion by listeners. What was to be done? In the middle of this crisis, Radio 1 bravely (or foolishly) allowed the writer Simon Garfield to observe its workings from the inside. For a year he was allowed unprecedented access to management meetings and to DJs in their studios, to research briefings and playlist conferences. Everyone interviewed spoke in passionate detail about their struggle to make their station credible and successful once more. The result is a gripping and often hilarious portrait a much loved national institution as it battles back from the brink of calamity.