Among other fine works, the collection also includes “Wunderkind,” McCullers’s first published story written when she was only seventeen about a musical prodigy who suddenly realizes she will not go on to become a great pianist. Newly reset and available for the first time in a handsome trade paperback edition, The Ballad of the Sad Café is a brilliant study of love and longing from one of the South’s finest writers.

    Dupin he invented the detective story; and tales such as 'MS. Found in a Bottle' and 'Von Kempelen and His Discovery' pioneered modern science-fiction.As readers will discover, Poe possessed an unrivalled capacity to create atmosphere and suspense, and to probe the dark depths of the human psyche. All the stories in this volume push back the boundaries, making the improbable possible, the familiar terrifying and strange.Contents:9 • Introduction (Selected Tales) • essay by John Curtis19 • The Duc de L'Omelette • [Tales of the Folio Club] • (1832) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe (variant of The Duke de L'Omelette)23 • MS. Found in a Bottle • [Tales of the Folio Club] • (1833) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe35 • The Assignation • [Tales of the Folio Club] • (1834) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe (variant of The Visionary)48 • Ligeia • (1838) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe65 • How to Write a Blackwood Article • (1838) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe (variant of The Psyche Zenobia)76 • The Fall of the House of Usher • (1839) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe96 • William Wilson • (1839) • novelette by Edgar Allan Poe (variant of William Wilson: A Tale)118 • The Murders in the Rue Morgue • [Chevalier Dupin] • (1841) • novelette by Edgar Allan Poe154 • A Descent into the Maelström • (1841) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe172 • The Island of the Fay • (1841) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe178 • The Colloquy of Monos and Una • (1841) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe188 • The Oval Portrait • (1842) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe192 • The Masque of the Red Death • (1842) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe (variant of The Mask of the Red Death)199 • The Mystery of Marie Rogêt • [Chevalier Dupin] • (1842) • novella by Edgar Allan Poe251 • The Pit and the Pendulum • (1842) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe267 • The Tell-Tale Heart • (1843) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe273 • The Gold-Bug • (1843) • novelette by Edgar Allan Poe311 • The Black Cat • (1843) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe322 • The Premature Burial • (1844) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe337 • The Purloined Letter • [Chevalier Dupin] • (1844) • novelette by Edgar Allan Poe357 • The Imp of the Perverse • (1845) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe364 • The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar • (1845) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe374 • The Cask of Amontillado • [Fortunado] • (1846) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe382 • The Domain of Arnheim • (1842) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe (variant of The Landscape-Garden)399 • Von Kempelen and His Discovery • (1849) • shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe

    In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and funny portrait of life in post—World War II America–a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. Here are tales both cautionary and hopeful, each brimming with Vonnegut's trademark humor and profound humanism. A family learns the downside of confiding their deepest secrets into a magical invention. A man finds himself in a Kafkaesque world of trouble after he runs afoul of the shady underworld boss who calls the shots in an upstate New York town. A quack psychiatrist turned "murder counselor" concocts a novel new outlet for his paranoid patients. While these stories reflect the anxieties of the postwar era that Vonnegut was so adept at capturing– and provide insight into the development of his early style–collectively, they have a timeless quality that makes them just as relevant today as when they were written. It's impossible to imagine any of these pieces flowing from the pen of another writer; each in its own way is unmistakably, quintessentially Vonnegut.Featuring a Foreword by author and longtime Vonnegut confidant Sidney Offit and illustrated with Vonnegut's characteristically insouciant line drawings, Look at the Birdie is an unexpected gift for readers who thought his unique voice had been stilled forever–and serves as a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius. Contents: Letter from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., to Walter J. Miller, 1951. Confido F U B A R Shout About It from the Housetops Ed Luby's Key Club A Song for Selma Hall of Mirrors The Nice Little People Hello, Red Little Drops of Water The Petrified Ants The Honor of a Newsboy Look at the Birdie King and Queen of the Universe The Good Explainer

    In these collected stories of man against the wilderness, London lays claim to the title of greatest outdoor adventure writer of all time.Contents:- To build a fire- Love of life- Chinago- Told in the drooling ward- The Mexican- War- South of the slot- Water baby- All Gold Canyon- Koolau the leper- Apostate- Mauki- An Odyssey of the north- A piece of steak- Strength of the strong- Red one- Wit or Porportuk- God of his fathers- In a far country- To the man on trail- White silence- League of the old men- Wisdom of the trail- Batard

    This collection ranges over the verse, stories, essays, and journalism of one of the twentieth century's most quotable authors.

    Taking its place next to Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood on the Modern Library bookshelf is this new and original edition of Capote's most famous short stories: "A Christmas Memory, " "One Christmas, " and "The Thanksgiving Visitor." All three stories are distinguished by Capote's delicate interplay of childhood sensibility and recollective vision, evoking a strong sense of place.

    In Europe, however (particularly in Germany, Italy, and France where he is published by the great publishing houses), he is critically recognized as one of America's greatest realist writers.

    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.

    The sketches, poems, and stories of black rural and urban life that make up Cane are rich in imagery. Visions of smoke, sugarcane, dusk, and flame permeate the Southern landscape: the Northern world is pictured as a harsher reality of asphalt streets. Impressionistic, sometimes surrealistic, the pieces are redolent of nature and Africa, with sensuous appeals to eye and ear.

    They are marked by coincidence and surprise endings as well as the compassion and high humour that have made O Henry's stories popular for the last century.

    Here are "Birches," "Mending Wall," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "Two Tramps at Mudtime," "Choose Something Like a Star," and "The Gift Outright," which Frost read at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy." An essential addition to every home library, Robert Frost's Poems is a celebration of the New England countryside, Frost's appreciation of common folk, and his wonderful understanding of the human condition. These classic verses touch our hearts and leave behind a lasting impression.* Over 100 poems* All Frost's best known verses from throughout his life

    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.

    Early posthumously published collections-some of them featuring liberally “edited” versions of the poems-did not fully and accurately represent Dickinson’s bold experiments in prosody, her tragic vision, and the range of her intellectual and emotional explorations. Not until the 1955 publication of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, a three-volume critical edition compiled by Thomas H. Johnson, were readers able for the first time to assess, understand, and appreciate the whole of Dickinson’s extraordinary poetic genius.This book, a distillation of the three-volume Complete Poems, brings together the original texts of all 1,775 poems that Emily Dickinson wrote.

    11 stories: The AwakeningBeyond the BayouMa'ame PelagieDesiree's BabyA Respectable WomanThe KissA Pair of Silk StockingsThe LocketA ReflectionAt the 'Cadian BallThe Storm

    This was a war to make the world safe for democracy. And if democracy was made safe, then nothing else mattered - not the millions of dead bodies, nor the thousands of ruined lives... This is no ordinary novel. This is a novel that never takes the easy way out: it is shocking, violent, terrifying, horrible, uncompromising, brutal, remorseless and gruesome... but so is war. Winner of the National Book Award.