These stories span characters and emotional states with canny details that touch the depths of your soul. Picturing the complexities of love, misery and mystery, the stories try to gnaw your heart like never before.• What does a flower teach us we often fail to see?• “The belly is an ungrateful wretch.” Is it true?• Ever wondered about the sparseness and illusions in life?• Does death put an end to true love?• Have all the ascetics won over their emotions?With the power of simple language, this book transports the readers to a world scarcely thought of in our bustling lives. The allegories maintain an intense rhythm of life prompting the readers to perceive things from a unique angle.“A whole bookful to make you think, cry, think again and move on.”

    

    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.

    A collection of humorous essays, accompanied by the author's own bizarre drawings, presenting Thurber's unremitting retort to the multitude of "self-help" books which were widespread in the 1930s and whose successors are still with us today.

    The fall of Malaya and Singapore and the bombing of Darwin—what looked like the invasion of Australia—ebb and crash over a man’s long search to find a home and a woman’s determination to keep hers, connected by old memories and new betrayals. It is a thriller and a romance, a story of earth and water, air and metal—an unforgettable ride through the most precarious time in our region's recent history. Garry Disher writes: ‘Past the Headlands came from the same World War 2 research as The Stencil Man. I was struck by the power of two documents. The first was a letter written by a woman alone on a cattle station near Broome in 1942, at the time the Japanese were overrunning Malaya and Singapore and bombing areas of northern Australia. One day she found herself giving shelter to Dutch colonial officers and their families, who were fleeing Sumatra and Java ahead of the Japanese advance (many people like them lost their lives when Japanese planes shot up their waiting seaplanes in Broome Harbour in March, 1942). This woman stuck in my head (the isolation, the danger, the efforts to communicate, her bravery, etc). The second document was a war diary written by an Australian army surgeon who escaped Singapore ahead of the Japanese and was stuck in Sumatra, trying to get out. Here he treated many of the civilians (and Australian Army deserters) fleeing from Singapore. He was captured by the Japanese, but survived the war. But his last few diary entries detail how he and a mate were waiting for a plane or a ship to take them out, then one day he wrote, “Davis [his mate] left last night without telling me”. So much for mateship. I spent years trying to find my way into their stories. At one stage I spent a year writing 40,000 words before realising it wouldn’t work. I put it aside, then realised one subplot didn’t belong, so extracted it and turned it into a separate novel The Divine Wind, which has sold 100,000 copies around the world, won a major award and been published as both a young adult and a general market novel. But cutting it out like that freed me up to write about the woman and the man betrayed by his mate, in Past the Headlands.’

    The collection includes the following titles: Almost by Elizabeth Benedict, Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum, The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss, The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell, and The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett.

    A right comedy of errors if ever there was one. If you're looking for her beauty secrets and fashion ideas you've come to the right place. Read of her intimate sex life, her secrets for staying young and how she keeps her man - just. A fly-on-the wall true account of the life of a romantic comedy novelist, written in her own words. It's all here, the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Publisher Note: We are not responsible for any of the advice given in this book. If you do not look like Lynda after reading this we cannot be held accountable. Warning: Tena Pads recommended while reading.

    edition. British publication by Hart-Davis, McGibbon Ltd ('76).-- A companion to The Best of Myles, Further Cuttings culls more scathing selections from "Cruiskeen Lawn", Flann O'Brien's column in the Irish Times written under the pseudonym Myles na Gopaleen.-- This volume covers the years 1947-1957 and finds O'Brien's alter ego clashing with the law on numerous charges, including larceny, using bad language, and marrying without the consent of his parents. It also includes several bizarre obituaries, witty criticisms of George Bernard Shaw, Sean O' Faolain, and other literary figures, the return of the preposterous "Brother", and the first article ever ascribed to Myles (published in 1940).

    Sometimes we tell these stories to make people laugh. Sometimes we tell them to make people think. Sometimes we tell them so we can increase the chances we'll see the other person naked.Paul Shirley's stories are about an adulthood spent all over the world: living in Spain, playing in the NBA, and having his heart (and spleen) broken. But they're also stories about growing up in small-town Kansas: triumphant spelling bees, catastrophic middle school dances, and a Sex Ed. class taught by his mother.They're funny stories. They're vulnerable stories. Most of all, they're universal stories, just as the stories we tell on dates should be.

    And wrong. This is not your average self-help book.There are no filters, no frittatas and no fake. In Help Self, Tanya gets real as she discusses food, love, friendship, careers and mental health, and (of course) she gets real hilarious too.From being mistaken for a pregnant woman when she'd just had too many Cheezels, to understanding whatever alien language your friend's child is speaking, to overcoming an unexpected breakup with your best friend, Tanya Hennessy has all the life-hack, pro-tips for getting through this chaos we call life.

    He lands an enviable gig writing about shopping and fashion for the city’s major newspaper, but an ill-fated promotional junket gets Albo into hot water. He becomes a gossip item and finds himself caught in an acrimonious war between Old and New Media. Here's a gimlet-eyed account of the back-biting media scene, a glimpse into the inner workings of the fashion crowd, and a candid portrait of what it takes to survive as a writer in today’s chattering and watchful New York City."I was perilously close to exposing a secret underground economy of promotion: favors and junkets and banquets and gifts that keeps the city in motion, and keeps underpaid writers at work. Basically, I became the Silkwood of Swag."

    Gary Handler has issues. His boss hates him, his mother hounds him, and his cat thinks he’s an idiot. But that’s okay because Gary’s got the perfect solution to all of life’s troubles: a porn site subscription and his right hand.Sadly, all habits grow old, even the fun ones. Gary soon finds himself at the doorstep of a creepy old pawn shop where he buys a used adult novelty toy to spice up his one-man sex life.Pity for him that it’s cursed by the angry spirits of all the “kids” he’s flushed down the toilet. Needless to say, hairy palms are about to become the least of his worries.----------Jack on, jack off ... with the Jacklight in book 2 of Shingles, the horror comedy series that’s not for those with faint hearts or weak bladders.

    Table of Contents: List of Works by Collection and TitleList of Works in Alphabetical OrderRobert Frost BiographyA Boy's Will :: North of Boston :: Mountain Interval :: Miscellaneous PoemsA Boy's Will (1913)Into My OwnGhost HouseMy November GuestLove and a QuestionA Late WalkStarsStorm FearWind and Window FlowerTo the Thawing WindA Prayer in SpringFlower-gatheringRose PogoniaAsking for RosesWaiting--Afield at DuskIn a ValeA Dream PangIn NeglectThe Vantage PointMowingGoing for WaterRevelationThe Trial by ExistenceIn Equal SacrificeThe Tuft of FlowersSpoils of the DeadPan with UsThe Demiurge's LaughNow Close the WindowsA Line-storm SongOctoberMy ButterflyReluctanceNorth of Boston (1914)The Pasture Mending WallThe Death of the Hired ManThe MountainA Hundred CollarsHome BurialThe Black CottageBlueberriesA Servant to ServantsAfter Apple-pickingThe CodeThe Generations of MenThe HousekeeperThe FearThe Self-seekerThe Wood-pileGood HoursMountain Interval (1916; revised 1920)The Road Not Taken Christmas Trees An Old Man's Winter Night The Exposed Nest A Patch of Old Snow In the Home Stretch The Telephone Meeting and Passing Hyla Brook The Oven Bird Bond and Free Birches Pea BrushPutting in the Seed A Time to Talk The Cow in Apple Time An Encounter Range-finding The Hill Wife The Bonfire A Girl's Garden Locked Out The Last Word of a Bluebird "Out, Out—" Brown's Descent, or the Willy-nilly Slide The Gum-gatherer The Line-gang The Vanishing Red Snow The Sound of the Trees Miscellaneous Poems to 1920 "The Ax-Helve" "Fire and Ice" "The Flower Boat" "For Once, Then, Something" "Fragmentary Blue""Good-by and Keep Cold" "The Lockless Door""The Need of Being Versed in Country Things" "Not to Keep""Place for a Third" "Plowmen""The Runaway""To E.T.""The Valley's Singing Day""Wild Grapes"

    *** Volume 1 plays a key role in the plot of the US movie Sex and the City. *** This Volume 2 includes love poems written by Matthew Arnold, Alfred Austin, Samuel Alfred Beadle, William Blake, Christopher Brennan, Lord Byron, Robert Burns, John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Constable, William Cowper, Michael Drayton, George Eliot, Thomas Ford, Stephen Foster, Robert Frost, Thomas Frost, Norman Rowland Gale, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Alfred P. Graves, Robert Herrick, Leigh Hunt, Benjamin Jonson, John Keats, Richard Lovelace, Pablo Neruda, Edgar Allen Poe, and William Shakespeare.

    -- Presents the most important 20th-century criticism on major works from The Odyssey through modern literature-- The critical essays reflect a variety of schools of criticism-- Contains critical biographies, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index