Rich In Russia


John Updike - 2011
    The writer Henry Bech travels to Europe on a hapless cultural exchange, first to Russia, where he struggles to spend his money when everything – from his meals to his bugged hotel room – is already paid for, and then to RumaniaThis book includes Rich In Russia, Foreword, Bech in Rumania, Appendix A and Appendix B.

Dear Illusion


Kingsley Amis - 1962
    But it was fun. And I felt like getting a bit of my own back on some of the people who'd conned and flattered me into wasting all those years.'

Filboid Studge, The Story of a Mouse That Helped


Saki - 1911
    Munro, better known by his pen name, Saki, wrote wickedly comic satires of upper-class Edwardian life. These seven short stories are macabre and extremely funny: they include a cat that is regrettably taught to speak, a vicious pet ferret worshipped as a god, a businessman triumphantly selling an unpalatable breakfast mush, and many dark twists and barbs.This book includes Filboid Studge, a Story of a Mouse That Helped, Todermory, Mrs Packletide's Tiger, Sredni Vashtar, The Music on the Hill, The Recessional and The Cobweb.

The Crime Wave at Blandings


P.G. Wodehouse - 1936
    Wodehouse's most gloriously funny stories, this is the tale of bumbling Lord Emsworth, whose quiet life reading "The Care Of The Pig" and pottering among the flowers at Blandings Castle is shattered by an outbreak of lawlessness involving his niece Jane (the third prettiest girl in Shropshire), an airgun - and the trouser seat of the abominable Baxter.

They


Rudyard Kipling - 1904
    &'grave;Dat sort,'' she wailed -- &'grave;dey're just as much to us dat has 'em as if dey was lawful born. Just as much -- just as much! An' God he'd be just as pleased if you saved 'un, Doctor. Don't take it from me. Miss Florence will tell ye de very same. Don't leave 'im, Doctor!''

Wunderkind


Carson McCullers - 2011
    These four masterly stories of eccentrics, failed prodigies, injustice and hope, written when she was in her twenties, explore the human condition with humour and pathos. This book includes "Wunderkind", "The Jockey", "Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland", "A Tree, A Rock and A Cloud".

Through the Wall


Ludmilla Petrushevskaya - 2009
    Ludmilla Petrushevskaya has been acclaimed as one of Russia's greatest living writers. These five dreamlike and blackly comic stories, two of which are here in English for the first time, tell of lost children, midnight forests, strange transformations, cruel curses, grief and resilience, in the darkest of modern fairy tales. This book contains "Through the Wall" and "Anna and Maria".

Flypaper


Robert Musil - 1936
    In these nine stories and essays, he considers holidaymakers and stone monuments, tales of war and blackbirds, and the great pathos of a tiny death: a fly's impossible fight against the grip of flypaper.

The Strange Crime Of John Boulnois


G.K. Chesterton - 2011
    K. Chesterton's Father Brown is both a diminuitive, genial clergyman and a master sleuth. In these two stories involving the ingenious, unobtrusive priest, a murdered man denounces his killer with his dying breaths, and a brilliant French inspector follows a trail of carnage across London.

The Expelled


Samuel Beckett - 2011
    In these two stories, the pains of companionship, and of loneliness and of the human body are starkly explored.

The Gifts of War


Margaret Drabble - 2011
    In these two stories of lives colliding, a mother buying a birthday gift has her dreams destroyed, and a honeymoon leads to an unexpected epiphany.

Two Gallants


James Joyce - 1914
    His eyes. Twinkling with cunning ENJOYMENT. Have glanced the at every Moment towards HIS companion's face vs' ' When he was quite sure that the narrative had ended he laughed noiselessly for fully half a minute. Then he said: Well ...! That takes the biscuit! 'James Joyce's naturalistic. unflinching portrayal of ordinary working people in his Dubliners stories was a literary landmark. These four stories from that collection offer glimpses of defeated lives - an unremarkable death. a theft. a desperate plan. a failed writer's dream - yet each creates a compelling and ultimately redemptive vision of a city and of human experience. This book includes: Two Gallants. The Sisters. The Boarding House. and A Little Cloud.

Lunar Caustic


Malcolm Lowry - 1963
    When he arrives to New York, finds that everything in his life have been sinking and losses, like his own band and his companion, Ruth. His pilgrimage by the taverns of the city port culminates in a psychiatric hospital, in fact a hell, or a stranded boat, depending on how you look, a prison, where hell share his time and fortune with sailors, drunken, poor and solemnity characters like the old Kalowsky evicted, the young Garry or Battle, the black guy. While watching the boats passing by the East River Bill understands that Dr. Claggart, the psychiatrist who is in care of him, will never heal his sick soul.

The Black Shrike


Alistair MacLean - 1961
    Eight jobs. Eight specialists in modern technology required. Eight scientists to fill them. Applicants to be married, with no children, and prepared to travel. Highly persuasive salaries. One criminal mastermind. Eight positions filled. Eight scientists - and their wives - disappear. Completely. One secret agent to stop him.Advertisment no.9. Sydney, Australia. Fuel specialist required. Looks like a job for John Bentall-

The Sexes


Dorothy Parker - 1944
    Includes such stories as: 'The Sexes', 'The Lovely Leave', 'The Little Hours', 'Glory in the Daytime' and 'Lolita'.