She mothers everyoneher social work clients, her husband, her twenty-something daughters, and her reclusive sister who lives in the attic. Elsie is committed to taking care of everyone--everyone but herself. So, when crazy Aunt Hildy writes to demand a bedroom in their Halifax home, Elsie cant help but say yes. When Hilda arrives, she enchants and enrages the family with her moxie. That and her proclamation that she has hidden treasure in the house and the kings ransom will go to whoever loved her most. When someone threatens Aunt Hildy, she responds with her trademark sass: Go ahead. Shoot me. I dare you. Whoever it is takes her up on it. Suddenly, the house is turned topsy-turvy as Elsies family searches for a treasure that Elsie doesnt believe even exists, and for a killer that could be any one of them. Shoot Me is a funny and sometimes heart-wrenching story about family, fortune, and figuring out who you are and who you love. In Elsie, Crewe has created a character who speaks with humour and honesty to conflicts that exist in the lives of so many women: between work and home, between loving one man and wanting others, and between feeling fulfilled not only as a wife and a mother, but as a woman.

    From the Kafka-esque "Scars" to a ballad like tale of erotic obsession in "The Crossing, " to the mother-daughter bond given a fatal twist in "Death Mother" the stories in The Collector of Hearts illuminate the mysteries of the human experience -- both intellectual and visceral. It is a stunning and richly diverse anthology of mood and menace -- haunting, elegiac, and compulsively readable.

    Or at least, it’s the name my clients call me. I work for the elite escort agency, Temptations, and for a price, I’ll be whatever you want and need me to be. I have the body, I have the looks, and I have a smile that makes any woman swoon. But It’s just a job. A necessary evil to help fund my dreams of becoming a doctor. I’m simply a robot, performing my required tasks. Until the night I’m hired to seduce Charlotte Harvey and remind her how good a man can make her feel. I didn’t expect her beauty to spark a desire in me long buried. I didn’t expect her smile to turn that spark into a flame. And I definitely didn’t expect her passion to ignite that flame into an inferno. I should have walked away without looking back, but she started a fire in me that I can’t seem to tame. Tempting Nights is the first book in the Tempted Nights Romance Series. Each book can be read as a stand-alone and features a happily ever after.

    In her struggle to cope with her unwelcome gift, she has frozen people out of her life. Her marriage is on the rocks, her career is in chaos and she urgently needs to get a grip. So she decides to start again, by joining her effervescent cousin Sylvia and partner Michael in their mission to restore and revitalise Llys y Garn, an old mansion in the wilds of North Pembrokeshire.It is certainly a new start, as she takes on Sylvia’s grandiose schemes, but it brings Kate to a place that is thick with the shadows of past deaths. The house and grounds are full of mysteries that only she can sense, but she is determined to face them down – so determined that she fails to notice that ancient energies are not the only shadows threatening the seemingly idyllic world of Llys y Garn. The happy equilibrium is disrupted by the arrival of Sylvia’s sadistic and manipulative son, Christian - but just how dangerous is he? Then, once more, Kate senses that a violent death has occurred… Set in the majestic and magical Welsh countryside, Shadows is a haunting exploration of the dark side of people and landscape.

    The poet Donald Davie writes: 'Vikram Seth's poems should have an impact far beyond much noisier pieces; for when did we last see a volume in which the poet's eye is on what is objectively before him, rather than on the intricacies of his own sensibility?'

    The beauty of these stories and poems lies in their readability: ideal for sharing aloud around the campfire or for a quick, thrilling dip . . . under the covers with a flashlight. The writing itself sends as many awe-inspired shivers down the spine as do the ghosts and goblins on these pages.Edgar Allan Poe, the master of the horror story and the chiming lyric poem, opens the volume with his best-loved stories: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Black Cat," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Premature Burial," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "Berenice," and "Ligeia." Every bit as chilling now as on the day they were written, these tales retain their power to stir the reader again and again. Poe, who was as well known for his poems as for his stories, is also represented by such verse standards as "The Raven," "Lenore," "To Helen," "Ulalume," and "Annabel Lee," among others.Numerous other practitioners of the supernatural story are included: Edith Wharton, with her gripping "Afterward"; Charles Dickens and his famed ghost story "The Signalman"; W. W. Jacobs, with this compilation's inspiration, "The Monkey's Paw." Also here are Saki's engrossing "Sredni Vashtar"; O. Henry's story of love lost and hopes dashed, "The Furnished Room"; Wilkie Collins's lively "A Terribly Strange Bed"; and "The Boarded Window," Ambrose Bierce's tale of the bizarre. A year-round collection for reading aloud--and frightening your friends--The Raven and the Monkey's Paw will gratify all manner of thrill-seekers.The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hardbound editions of important works of literature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torchbearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inaugurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.

    Mosby, whose prose Time called "rich and accomplished," evokes in Twilight a complex moment in history seen through the prism of a poignant love story.By breaking off her engagement to an emotionally remote fiancé, Lavinia Gibbs avoids a stifling marriage -- but outrages her socially prominent family, who fear she has consigned herself to spinsterhood. Instead she sails for Europe to begin the process of rebuilding her life. Ever practical, Lavinia makes a new home in Paris, where she determines she needs more than beautiful architecture and entrée with the expats to make a full life. Lavinia wisely adds into the mix a pug and employment, but it is not until she meets the charming, enigmatic, and long-married Gaston Lesseur that she begins an extraordinary journey of self-discovery and sacrifice that will change her irrevocably.With luminous prose, Mosby examines the emotional landscape of adultery while creating a powerful yet poignant depiction of a woman's unlikely blossoming. Unlike Flaubert's Madame Bovary, for whom adultery provided escape from an unfulfilling marriage, Lavinia Gibbs longs for the domestic and the luxury of the quotidian in an increasingly precarious world. Mosby creates in Twilight a story that will resonate with readers long after they have finished this book.

    It tells the story of Bram and Sally Palmer, a middle class couple trying to keep apace with Sally's wealthy relatives, the Landrys, who own most of Canaan Parish. One night in late July, a tropical storm hits the small town of Techeville. The Ira Meyer's jewelry shop is robbed and a stranger, Melee Mouton, arrives in town. The young Cajun girl goes to work as a maid for the Palmers, and quickly becomes a prisoner in the couple's bitter, covetous household. Soon an evil presence begins to haunt Melee, Bram and Sally, and the local sheriff gets involved to try to rid Canaan Parish of the devil that has taken up residence.

    There are seven in all, with subjects ranging from social revolt to insanity, disease and unrequited love. They are considered some of the finest works of German literary Expressionism and have been compared to the stories of Edgar Allan Poe and the prose pieces of Baudelaire.

    When his boss sticks him with a misdemeanour flasher case, Seegerman thinks, No problem. He’ll plead the case, caution his client to keep his trousers zipped, and rush back to rehearsal. No such luck. His client vanishes, a key witness winds up dead, and the case reveals corruption among his city's most prominent citizens, Seegerman finds himself having to act like a real lawyer for the first time in his life—and to his surprise, he’s good at it. Irresistible and irreverent, Misdemeanor Man will have you on the edge of your seat, rooting for the underdog and believing in the magic of Manilow.

    Collections of interviews with notable modern writers

    Harsh winds scour the rocky coastline. The villagers' lives are inseparable from nature and its enchantments.Verlyn Webbe, born with a wing for an arm, unfurls his feathers in defiance of past shame; Plum is snatched by a water bull and dragged to his lair; little Crab Skerry takes his first run through the gorse-maze; Madden sleepwalks through violent storms, haunted by horses and her father's wishes.As the tales of this island community interweave over the course of a generation, their earthy desires, resentments, idle gossip and painful losses create a staggeringly original world. Crackling with echoes of ancient folklore, but entirely, wonderfully, her own, Zoe Gilbert's Folk is a dark, beautiful and intoxicating debut.

    But Monk knows that danger -- like dirt -- lurks everywhere. Look at Helen Gruber, the rich tourist who took a fatal blow from a coconut. The police say it fell from a tree, but Monk suspects otherwise. His assistant, Natalie, isn't exactly thrilled about Monk's latest investigation. It was bad enough that Monk followed her on vacation, and now it looks as though the vacation is over....Smooth-talking TV psychic Dylan Swift is on the island and claims to have a message from beyond -- from Helen Gruber. Monk has his doubts about Swift's credibility. But finding the killer and proving Swift a fraud -- all while coping with geckos and the horror of unsynchronized ceiling fans -- may prove a tough coconut to crack....

    It creeps into our dreams and, if we allow it, can plague our ponderings of the future. The same ‘monsters’ that lived under our childhood beds can reappear, alive and toothsome, in our adult lives. And perhaps most frightening of all: without reason or apology, one person’s fancy is another person’s torment. Granta 117 takes a stab at understanding the phenomenon that is horror.With award-winning writing, Granta has illuminated the most complex issues of modern life. In 117, Stephen King writes of a retired judge who pays repeated visits to a patch of sand capable of predicting human mortality. Don DeLillo climbs into the head a moviegoer-turned-stalker. Joy Williams writes of a father with a grown son even stranger and less stable than he suspects. Rajesh Parameswaran presents us with a tiger who narrates its own escape from a zoo and its subsequent terrorizing of a neighborhood, while Daniel Alarcon explores the phenomenon of staged, high-camp blood baths. And Mark Doty ruminates on a close encounter between Walt Whitman and Bram Stoker. Also new work by Paul Auster, Will Self, and Julie Otsuka.Come along. Hold tight. Get scared…

    Unfortunately, due to an exercise allergy, and an eating obsession, it isn’t going to be as easy as he first thought. Throw in a battle of wits with his neighbour’s cat over toilet rights to his garden, a son who lives in the shed and dreams of being discovered on The X Factor, a stroppy teenage daughter with a Wayne Rooney fixation, a wife who doesn’t want to sleep with him anymore, and an amorous work colleague who does, and you have all the ingredients to Sex, Lies and Chocolate Cakes: The Secret Eater’s Diary.