Taking place in a small Midwestern town in America, it offers chilling insights into the mind of a killer and the obsession of the man bringing him to justice. Also in this volume are six short stories and seven ‘conversational portraits’ including a touching one of Marilyn Monroe, the ‘beautiful child’ and a hilarious one of a dope-smoking cleaning lady doing her rounds in New York.

    Set in the mid-19th century on New York City's Wall Street, it was also, perhaps, Herman Melville's most prescient story: what if a young man caught up in the rat race of commerce finally just said, "I would prefer not to"?The tale is one of the final works of fiction published by Melville before, slipping into despair over the continuing critical dismissal of his work after Moby-Dick, he abandoned publishing fiction. The work is presented here exactly as it was originally published in Putnam's magazine—to, sadly, critical disdain.

    In their intensity of perception, their neon-lit evocation of a strange world brought uncomfortably close to our own, the stories in Jesus' Son offer a disturbing yet eerily beautiful portrayal of American loneliness and hope.Contains:Car Crash While HitchhikingTwo MenOut on BailDundunWorkEmergencyDirty WeddingThe Other ManHappy HourSteady Hands at Seattle GeneralBeverly Home'

    She has been called “an American virtuoso of the short story form” (Salon) and “one of the quiet giants . . . of American fiction” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now, for the first time, Davis’s short stories will be collected in one volume, from the groundbreaking Break It Down (1986) to the 2007 National Book Award nominee Varieties of Disturbance. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis is an event in American letters.

    Brought together in this volume, these stories represent an unprecedented accomplishment in American literature. In their iconoclasm and needle-sharp irony, their formal and thematic ingenuity and element of surprise, they differ markedly from the fiction admired in Bierce's time. Readers familiar with the classic An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge will want to turn to Bierce's other Civil War stories. Also included here are his horror stories, among them The Death of Halpin Frayser and The Damned Thing, and such tall tales as Oil of Dog and A Cargo of Cat.

    They include supernatural tales, slices of life from Warsaw and the shtetls of Eastern Europe, and stories of the Jews displaced from that world to the New World, from the East Side of New York to California and Miami.

    Lovecraft and His Work · August Derleth · in 10 · In the Vault · ss The Tryout Nov ’25; Weird Tales Apr ’32 19 · Pickman’s Model · ss Weird Tales Oct ’27 33 · The Rats in the Walls · ss Weird Tales Mar ’24 53 · The Outsider · ss Weird Tales Apr ’26 60 · The Colour Out of Space · nv Amazing Sep ’27 89 · The Music of Erich Zann · ss The National Amateur Mar ’22; Weird Tales Nov ’34 98 · The Haunter of the Dark · nv Weird Tales Dec ’36 121 · The Picture in the House · ss The National Amateur Jul ’19; Weird Tales Mar ’37 130 · The Call of Cthulhu [Inspector Legrasse] · nv Weird Tales Feb ’28 160 · The Dunwich Horror · nv Weird Tales Apr ’29 203 · Cool Air · ss Tales of Magic and Mystery Mar ’28; Weird Tales Jul ’27 212 · The Whisperer in Darkness · na Weird Tales Aug ’31 278 · The Terrible Old Man · vi The Tryout Jul ’20; Weird Tales Aug ’26 281 · The Thing on the Door-step · nv Weird Tales Jan ’37 308 · The Shadow Over Innsmouth · na Visionary Press: Everett, PA, 1936; Weird Tales Jan ’42 370 · The Shadow Out of Time · na Astounding Jun ’36

    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

    --No particular night or morning --The city --The fire balloons --The last night of the world --The veldt --The long rain --The great fire --The wilderness --A sound of thunder --The murderer --The April witch --Invisible boy --The golden kite, the silver wind --The fog horn --The black black and white game --Embroidery --The golden apples of the sun --Powerhouse --Hail and farewell --The great wide world over there --The playground --Skeleton --The man upstairs --Touched with fire --The emissary --The jar --The small assasin --The next in line --Jack-in-the-box --The leave-taking --Exorcism --The happiness machine --Calling Mexico --The wonderful ice cream suit --Dark they were, and golden-eyed --The strawberry window --A scent of sarsaparilla --The Picasso summer --The day it rained forever --A medicine for melancholy --The shoreline at sunset --Fever dream --The town where no one got off --All summer in a day --Frost and fire --The anthem sprinters --And so died Riabouchinska --Boys! Raise giant mushrooms in your cellar! --The vacation --The illustrated woman --Some live like Lazarus --The best of all possible worlds --The one who waits --Tyrannosaurus Rex --The screaming woman --The terrible conflagration up at the place --Night call, collect --The tombling day --The haunting of the new --Tomorrow's child --I sing the body electric! --The women --The inspired chicken motel --Yes, we'll gather at the river --Have I got a chocolate bar for you! --A story of love --The parrot who met Papa --The October game --Punishment without crime --A piece of wood --The blue bottle --Long after midnight --The utterly perfect murder --The better part of wisdom --Interval in sunlight --The black ferris --Farewell summer --McGillahee's brat --The aqueduct --Gotcha! --The end of the beginning.

    Since its publication in 1895, The King in Yellow has inspired other horror-genre writers including H. P. Lovecraft, and the text is referenced by many works of fiction, in music, and by the hit television series True Detective, starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library_We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

    One hundred and eighty voices - male and female, young and old, from all walks of life and all over the country - talk intimately to the reader. Combining great humor and pathos this remarkable selection of stories from the thousands submitted to NPR's Weekend All Things Considered National Story Project gives the reader a glimpse of America's soul in all its diversity.

    He vows revenge using letters that promise a fortune to trap the most sanctimonious residents.

    Stories remarkable in their range, emotional force, and dark laughter, and in the sheer beauty and power of their language.From the opening story, "Willing", about a second-rate movie actress in her thirties who has moved back to Chicago, where she makes a seedy motel room her home and becomes involved with a mechanic who has not the least idea of who she is as a human being, Birds of America unfolds a startlingly brilliant series of portraits of the unhinged, the lost, the unsettled of our America. In the story "Which Is More Than I Can Say About Some People" ("There is nothing as complex in the world--no flower or stone--as a single hello from a human being"), a woman newly separated from her husband is on a long-planned trip through Ireland with her mother. When they set out on an expedition to kiss the Blarney Stone, the image of wisdom and success that her mother has always put forth slips away to reveal the panicky woman she really is. In "Charades," a family game at Christmas is transformed into a hilarious and insightful (and fundamentally upsetting) revelation of crumbling family ties. In "Community Life,"a shy, almost reclusive, librarian, Transylvania-born and Vermont-bred, moves in with her boyfriend, the local anarchist in a small university town, and all hell breaks loose. And in "Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens," a woman who goes through the stages of grief as she mourns the death of her cat (Anger, Denial, Bargaining, Haagen Dazs, Rage) is seen by her friends as really mourning other issues: the impending death of her parents, the son she never had, Bosnia.In what may be her most stunning book yet, Lorrie Moore explores the personal and the universal, the idiosyncratic and the mundane, with all the wit, brio, and verve that have made her one of the best storytellers of our time.

    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.

    For Hemingway fans The Complete Short Stories is an invaluable treasury.