Through this restless innovation, he has constantly explored the gulf between appearance and truth, the way people enact mythologies to fulfil profound inner needs, then become trapped by their own creations. In the previously unpublished "A Fall of Angels", humanity has reached the stars, created "angels" from former humans, and is engaged in a fantastical quest to refuel the dying stars and so defeat entropy. Rich in ideas and beautifully characterised, "A Fall of Angels" is a fusion of hard science fiction and sense-of-wonder poetry. "Fan" questions the reality behind the virtual images of pop music, taking the concept of silicon-enhanced celebrity to its logical conclusion. The challenging "O Happy Day!" considers what happens when ideology replaces reason: in a death camp for heterosexual men the solution is infinitely worse than the problem. The collection ends with the novella "The Unconquered Country", Ryman's allegorical, phantasmagorical response to the horrors of recent Cambodian history. It is a staggering, breathtaking achievement, which rightly won many awards on original publication. Once read, it will never be forgotten. Each story in this book is the product of Geoff Ryman's remarkable imagination, taken together they make a compelling account of one of the finest writers around. --Gary S. DalkinContents:A Fall of Angels, or On the Possibility of Life under Extreme Conditions (1994)Fan (1994)O Happy Day! (1985)The Unconquered Country (1984)

    When the last train has pulled in, and she doesn't get off it, he makes a desperate overnight dash to find out why. His search for her takes over his life, costing him his job and, as he withdraws from home, family and friends, he finds himself alone, despairing of ever seeing her again.This is a gritty crime novel with some sexual content

    Ian: I call her cute. She says I’m more full of crap than an outhouse… She’s bold, fiercely honest And her curves make me feel all kinds of primal urges But when she walks into my office for an interview I know she wants me just as badly as I want her So, let’s see just how honest she can be Jennifer: That’s right I told him he’s full of crap Only I didn’t say crap… You can imagine the horror on my face when I see who’s interviewing me Cocky smirk. Smoldering brown eyes. Thousand-dollar suit. FML. Why does he have to be this gorgeous? I say I don’t want him But I’m good at lying to myself So why can’t I lie to him? His Curvy Assistant is a sweet and steamy, short romance. Standalone. No cliffhangers. And always a Happily Ever After! If that sounds like your kind of book Then get reading and download now.

    Included are such favorites as "My father moved through dooms of love" and "anyone lived in a pretty how town," along with the usual Cummings dazzle of satirical epigrams, love poems, and syntactical anagrams.This edition is published in a uniform format with Is 5, Tulips & Chimneys, ViVa, XAIPE, and No Thanks.

    A story set in the far antiquity of Bakker's fictional world world of Eärwa, the setting for his Prince of Nothing and Aspect Emperor series.

    They’ve relied on each other, laughed with each other, kept each other sane. But now Devin is dead, and Ginny is floundering to find a way to cope with the loss and continue living when the one person she’s always relied on is gone. So she does what she’s always done. She pours her frustrations into texts to Devin, or at least to Devin’s useless phone number. She sends her pain and anger out into the void of cellular data with no hope of response. Until the day when someone does respond. Ginny knows that this person—this Not-Devin—won’t ever replace her best friend, but maybe he can help her heal, or at least give her a reason to smile again.

    Lawrence, Chekhov and Hemingway, Bukowski's writing is passionate, extreme and has attracted a cult following, while his life was as weird and wild as the tales he wrote. This collection of short stories gives an insight into the dark, dangerous lowlife of Los Angeles that Bukowski inhabited.From prostitutes to classical music, Bukowski ingeniously mixes high and low culture in his 'tales of ordinary madness'. These are angry yet tender, humorous and haunting portrayals of life in the underbelly of Los Angeles.A .45 to pay the rent --Doing time with public enemy no. 1 --Scenes from the big time --Nut ward just east of Hollywood --Would you suggest writing as a career? --The great Zen wedding --Reunion --Cunt and Kant and a happy home --Goodbye Watson --Great poets die in steaming pots of shit --My stay in the poet's cottage --The stupid Christs --Too sensitive --Rape! Rape! --An evil town --Love it or leave it. A dollar and twenty cents --No stockings --A quiet conversation piece --Beer and poets and talk --I shot a man in Reno --A rain of women --Night streets of madness --Purple as an iris --Eyes like the sky --One for Walter Lowenfels --Notes of a potential suicide --Notes on the pest --A bad trip --Animal crackers in my soup --A popular man --Flower horse --The big pot game --The blanket

     Finding Elizabeth Abducted from her home just before her third birthday, Elizabeth is taken in by the Bennets. It is only with the arrival of a new tenant at Netherfield that her true identity is discovered. According to Mr Bennet, Elizabeth was found wandering in the gardens of Longbourn but will the truth of the matter ever be known? Her Grandmother’s Wisdom Elizabeth and Mary Bennet on holiday with their Aunt and Uncle Gardiner in Derbyshire. It is there that they first meet Fitzwilliam Darcy a year after his father’s passing. Four years later, Darcy is pleased to discover the young lady he had thought of often resides on the neighbouring estate to the one his friend Bingley has recently leased. Miss Bennet’s Adventure Following the marriage of Elizabeth and Darcy, Mary is invited to join her sister and new brother at Pemberley. There she meets again a certain colonel in His Majesty’s Army. Sequel to Her Grandmother’s Wisdom. Hurst Knows All What if Hurst was more aware of what was going on around him at Netherfield and shared his wife’s and sister’s liking for gossip. Storms over Hunsford The morning after the ill-fated proposal at Hunsford, Elizabeth is walking aimlessly in the grounds of Rosings Park as she reads Darcy’s letter. So caught up in reading and re-reading the missive, while chastising herself, she does not notice the approaching storm until it is too late.

    It tells the story of two young boxers out of Stockton, California: Ernie Munger and Billy Tully, one in his late teens, the other just turning thirty, whose seemingly parallel lives intersect for a time. Set in an ambiance of glittering dreams and drab realities, it tells of the two fighters' struggles to escape the confinements of their existence, and of the men and women in their world. Fat City is a novel about the sporting life like no other ever written: without melodrama or false heroics, written with a truthfulness that is at once painful and beautiful.Denis Johnson: "Between the ages of 19 and 25 I studied Leonard Gardner’s book so closely that I began to fear I’d never be able to write anything but imitations of it, so I swore it off(...)When I was about 34 (the same age Gardner was when he published his), my first novel came out. About a year later I borrowed Fat City from the library and read it. I could see immediately that ten years’ exile hadn’t saved me from the influence of its perfection — I’d taught myself to write in Gardner’s style, though not as well. And now, many years later, it’s still true: Leonard Gardner has something to say in every word I write."Joan Didion: "Leonard Gardner's Fat City affected me more than any new fiction I have read in a long while, and I do not think it affected me only because I come from Fat City, or somewhere near it. He has got it exactly right--the hanging around gas stations, the field dust, the relentless oppressiveness of the weather, the bleak liaisons sealed on the levees and Greyhound buses--but he has done more than just get it down, he has made it a metaphor for the joyless in heart."David Wagoner: "The people he writes about are alive and three-dimensional, and have that meaty, sweaty immediacy I admire in novels and find so seldom. It's an odd, interesting world he explores here--as tense and vivid as the prose."Ivan Gold: "Gardner writes with power, with an insider's knowledge, and with a vividness and love for his characters which redeem them even when they're lost and beaten."Harry Mark Petrakis: "A man of real talent. He makes the savage world he writes of come alive to the point where the reader can smell the sweat, and feel the anguish of unremitting failure."Ross Macdonald: "In his pity and art Gardner moves beyond race, beyond guilt and punishment, as Twain and Melville did, into a tragic forgiveness. I have seldom read a novel as beautiful and individual as this one."Originally published in 1969, Fat City is an American classic whose stature has increased over the years. Made into an acclaimed film by John Huston, the book is set in and around Stockton, California.

    Haircut, The Golden Honeymoon, Champion, Alibi Ike, Horseshoes and 20 other stories.

    And in this quiet moment, the conversation turns to past cases they can never forget…a short story in the Murphy and Rossi series

    The narrative offers hope even in difficult places, challenges our attitudes toward others and shows how God can work in the most unexpected ways through the most unlikely, unloved people.Denise George is an internationally popular writer and speaker best known for creative Biblical application. Denise is married to Dr. Timothy George, executive editor of Christianity Today and founding Dean of Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama."A tale of pathos and need, of joy and pain, of poverty and glorious abundance."Dr Calvin Miller ~ author, poet, artist."The deep things in this simple story tug hard at the heart."J I Packer ~ Board of Governors' Professor of Theology, Regent College, Vancouver, Canada

    Where men stood tall and lived rough. But that West is no more. In its place Shann Ray finds washedup basketball players, businessmen hiding addictions, and women fighting the inexplicable violence that wells up in these men. A son struggles to accept his father’s apologies after surviving a childhood of beatings. Two men seek empty basketball hoops on a snowy night, hoping to relive past glory. A bull rider skips town and rides herd on an unruly mob of passengers as he searches for a thief on a train threading through Montana’s Rocky Mountains. In these stories, Ray grapples with the terrible hurt we inflict on those we love, and finds that reconciliation, if far off, is at least possible. The debut of a writer who is out to redefine the contours of the American West, American Masculine is a deeply felt and fiercely written ode to the country we left behind.

    In the pared-down style that has since become his hallmark, Carver showed us how humour and tragedy dwelt in the hearts of ordinary people, and won a readership that grew with every subsequent brilliant collection of stories, poems and essays that appeared in the last eleven years of his life.

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