Alberto Manguel has selected 72 fantastic tales from life on the edge of the twilight zone, with stories from Marguerite Yourcenar, Herman Hesse, Italo Calvino, Vladimir Nabokov, and many, many more. This is a collection of irresistible masterpieces, many of which have never before appeared in the English language.Fantastic literature Manguel writes in his introduction, makes use of our everyday world as a facade through which the undefinable appears, hinting at the half-forgotten dreams of our imagination. Unlike tales of fantasy, fantastic literature deals with what can be best defined as the impossible seeping into the possible, what Wallace Stevens calls black water breaking into reality. Fantastic literature never really explains everything, it thrives on surprise, on the unexpected logic that is born from its own rules.Contents:House taken over by Julio CortázarHow love came to Professor Guildea by Robert S. HichensClimax for a ghost story by I.A. IrelandThe mysteries of the Joy Rio by Tennessee WilliamsPomegranate seed by Edith WhartonVenetian masks by Adolfo Bioy CasaresThe wish house by Rudyard KiplingThe playground by Ray BradburyImportance by Manuel Mujica LáinezEnoch Soames by Max BeerbohmA visitor from down under by L.P. HartleyLaura by SakiAn injustice revealedA little place off the Edgware Road by Graham GreeneFrom "A School Story" by M.R. JamesThe signalman by Charles DickensThe tall woman by Pedro Antonio de AlarcónA scent of mimosa by Francis KingDeath and the gardener by Jean CocteauLord Mountdrago by W. Somerset MaughamThe sick gentleman's last visit by Giovanni PapiniInsomnia by Virgilio PiñeraThe storm by Jules VerneA dream (from The Arabian Nights Entertainments)The facts in the case of M. Valdemar by Edgar Allan PoeSplit second by Daphne du MaurierAugust 25, 1983 by Jorge Luis BorgesHow Wang-Fo was saved by Marguerite YourcenarFrom "Peter and Rosa" by Isak DinesenTattoo by Jun'ichirō TanizakiJohn Duffy's brother by Flann O'BrienLady into fox by David GarnettFather's last escape by Bruno SchulzA man by the name of Ziegler by Hermann HesseThe Argentine ant by Italo CalvinoThe lady on the grey by John CollierThe queen of spades by Alexander PushkinOf a promise kept by Lafcadio HearnThe wizard postponed by Juan ManuelThe monkey's paw by W.W. JacobsThe bottle imp by Robert Louis StevensonThe rocking-horse winner by D.H. LawrenceCertain distant suns by Joanne GreenburgThe third bank of the river by João Guimarães RosaHome by Hilaire BellocThe door in the wall by H.G. WellsThe friends by Silvina OcampoEt in sempiternum pereant by Charles WilliamsThe captives of Longjumeau by Léon BloyThe visit to the museum by Vladimir NabakovAutumn Mountain by Ryūnosuke AkutagawaThe sight by Brian MooreClorinda by André Pieyre de MandiarguesThe pagan rabbi by Cynthia OzickThe fisherman and his soul by Oscar WildeThe bureau d'echange de maux by Lord DunsanyThe ones who walk away from Omelas by Ursula K. LeGuinIn the penal colony by Franz KafkaA dog in Durer's etching "The Knight, Death and the Devil" by Marco DeneviThe large ant by Howard FastThe lemmings by Alex ComfortThe grey ones by J.B. PriestleyThe feather pillow by Horacio QuirogaSeaton's aunt by Walter de la MareThe friends of the friends by Henry JamesThe travelling companion by Hans Christian AndersenThe curfew tolls by Stephen Vincent BenetThe state of grace by Marcel AyméThe story of a panic by E.M. ForsterAn invitation to the hunt by George HitchcockFrom the "American Notebooks" by Nathaniel HawthorneThe dream by O. Henry

    Three cycles. Fists and possums and gunfighters and penises and hookers and short buses and dead babies and fireworks. The stories in this collection originally appeared in: HOBART, FICTION INTERNATIONAL, KITTY SNACKS, TEXAS OBSERVER, NEW BORDER and THE PURITAN.

    It's nearly identical to her mother's nearby-in the Copper Waters subdivision, they all are-but she likes it here, eating boiled eggs and watching TV, feeling out her freedom as heavy rains fall. And then a nearby dike fails. And the girl may be the only one left in Copper Waters.Eliza Robertson can handle the shocking turn, but she also has a knack for the slow surprise, the realization that settles around you like snow. Her stories are deftly constructed and their perspectives-often those of the loners and onlookers, distanced by their gifts of observation-are unexpected. In "We Walked on Water," winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, a brother and sister train together for a race that will ultimately separate them forever. In "L'Étranger," shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize, a girl abroad in Marseille reconsiders her unendearing roommate after an intimate confrontation. Robertson was raised on rugged Vancouver Island. She's traveled broadly since, and her stories travel, too, but the climate of her collection is influenced by her home. These carefully cultivated forms still flare with wildness, and each is still spacious enough for a reader to get lost in wonder.

    In each of her stories, Danielle Evans explores the non-white American experience with honesty, wisdom, and humor. They are striking in their emotional immediacy, based in a world where inequality is a reality, but the insecurities of young adulthood and tensions within family are often the more complicating factors. One of the most lauded debuts of the year, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self announces a major new talent in Danielle Evans.

    Past winners and shortlisted authors have included the Pulitzer winners Junot Díaz, Anthony Doerr and Adam Johnson, plus Hilary Mantel, Ali Smith, Yiyun Li, CK Stead and Elizabeth Strout.Six Shorts 2017 brings together the six stories shortlisted for this year's award: ‘Reputation Management’ by Kathleen Alcott; ‘Half of What Atlee Rouse Knows about Horses’ by Bret Anthony Johnston; ‘The Hazel Twig and the Olive Tree’ by Richard Lambert; ‘The Tenant’ by Victor Lodato; ‘Every Little Thing’ by Celeste Ng; and ‘Mr Salary’ by Sally Rooney.Chosen by a hugely experienced and prestigious judging panel that included Booker-winner Anne Enright, Orange- and Whitbread-winner Rose Tremain, Booker-shortlistee Neel Mukherjee and critic and novelist Mark Lawson, the six stories represent the very best in contemporary English-language short fiction.

    . . ." The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal. Stories is a groundbreaking anthology that reinvigorates, expands, and redefines the limits of imaginative fiction and affords some of the best writers in the world—from Peter Straub and Chuck Palahniuk to Roddy Doyle and Diana Wynne Jones, Stewart O'Nan and Joyce Carol Oates to Walter Mosley and Jodi Picoult—the opportunity to work together, defend their craft, and realign misconceptions. Gaiman, a literary magician whose acclaimed work defies easy categorization and transcends all boundaries, and "master anthologist" (Booklist) Sarrantonio personally invited, read, and selected all the stories in this collection, and their standard for this "new literature of the imagination" is high. "We wanted to read stories that used a lightning-flash of magic as a way of showing us something we have already seen a thousand times as if we have never seen it at all." Joe Hill boldly aligns theme and form in his disturbing tale of a man's descent into evil in "Devil on the Staircase." In "Catch and Release," Lawrence Block tells of a seasoned fisherman with a talent for catching a bite of another sort. Carolyn Parkhurst adds a dark twist to sibling rivalry in "Unwell." Joanne Harris weaves a tale of ancient gods in modern New York in "Wildfire in Manhattan." Vengeance is the heart of Richard Adams's "The Knife." Jeffery Deaver introduces a dedicated psychologist whose mission in life is to save people in "The Therapist." A chilling punishment befitting an unspeakable crime is at the dark heart of Neil Gaiman's novelette "The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains." As it transforms your view of the world, this brilliant and visionary volume—sure to become a classic—will ignite a new appreciation for the limitless realm of exceptional fiction.

    In a California of the ’60s and ’70s, characters examine the contents of deceased relatives’ freezers, tape-record high-school locker-room chatter, or collect a community’s gossip while cleaning the teeth of its inhabitants. Mr. Darcy is the captain of the football team, Mansfield Park materializes in a suburb of L.A., bake sales replace balls, and station wagons, not horse-drawn carriages, are the preferred mode of transit. The stories of traversing class, race, and gender leap into our modern world with wit and humor.

    For blacks and whites alike, the experience has left us with a conflicted and contradictory history. Now, famed novelist Charles Johnson, whose Middle Passage won the National Book Award, presents a dozen tales of the effects and experience of slavery, each based on historical fact, and each about those Africans who arrived on our shores in shackles. From Martha Washington's management of her slaves, bequeathed to her at the death of the first president, to a boy chained in the bowels of a ship plying the infamous passage from Africa to the South laden with human cargo, from a lynching in Indiana to a hunter of escaped slaves searching the Boston market for his quarry, from an early Quaker meeting exploring resettlement in Africa to the day after Emancipation-the voices, terrors, and savagery of slavery come vividly and unforgettably to life. These stories, told by a master storyteller, transcend history even as they present it, and retell the mythic proportions of a historical period with astounding realism and beauty, power, and emotion.

    From the lovesick tiger who narrates the unforgettable opener, “The Infamous Bengal Ming” (he mauls his zookeeper out of affection), to the ex-CompUSA employee who masquerades as a doctor; from a railroad manager in a turn-of-the-century Indian village, to an elephant writing her autobiography; from a woman whose Thanksgiving preparations put her husband to eternal rest, to the newlywed executioner of the title, these characters inhabit a marvelous region between desire and death, playfulness and violence. At once glittering and savage, daring and elegant, here are wholly unforgettable tales where reality loops in Borgesian twists and shines with cinematic exuberance, by an author who promises to dazzle the universe of American fiction.

    Iceland is a world darkened by superstition, poverty and cruelty. Men of science marvel over a unicorn’s horn, poor folk worship the Virgin in secret and both books and men are burnt. Jónas Pálmason, a poet and self-taught healer, has been condemned to exile for heretical conduct, having fallen foul of the local magistrate. Banished to a barren island, Jónas recalls his exorcism of a walking corpse on the remote Snjafjoll coast, the frenzied massacre of innocent Basque whalers at the hands of local villagers, and the deaths of three of his children.From the Mouth of the Whale is a magical evocation of an enlightened mind and a vanished age.

    Examining the borders between one nation and another, between one person and another, Urrea reveals his mastery of the short form. This collection includes the Edgar-award winning "Amapola" and his now-classic "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses," which had the honor of being chosen for NPR's "Selected Shorts" not once but twice. Suffused with wanderlust, compassion, and no small amount of rock and roll, The Water Museum is a collection that confirms Luis Alberto Urrea as an American master.

    

    With acute psychological insight, Dávila follows her characters to the limits of desire, paranoia, insomnia, and fear. She is a writer obsessed with obsession, who makes nightmares come to life through the everyday: loneliness sinks in easily like a razor-sharp knife, some sort of evil lurks in every shadow, delusion takes the form of strange and very real creatures. After reading The Houseguest—Dávila’s debut collection in English—you’ll wonder how this secret was kept for so long.

    . . Bradbury?You might see rockets to Mars. Or bizarre circuses where otherworldly acts whirl in the center ring. Perhaps you travel to a dystopian future, where books are set ablaze . . . or to an out-of-the-way sideshow, where animated illustrations crawl across human skin. Or maybe, suddenly, you're returned to a simpler time in small-town America, where summer perfumes the air and life is almost perfect . . . "almost."Ray Bradbury--peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America's most beloved authors--is a literary giant whose remarkable career has spanned seven decades. Now twenty-six of today's most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.TABLE OF CONTENTSSam Weller and Mort Castle - IntroductionRay Bradbury - Second HomecomingNeil Gaiman - The Man Who Forgot Ray BradburyMargaret Atwood - HeadlifeJay Bonansinga - HeavySam Weller - The Girl In The Funeral ParlorDavid Morrell - The CompanionsThomas F. Monteleone - The ExchangeLee Martin - Cat on a Bad CouchJoe Hill - By The Silver Water Of Lake ChamplainDan Chaon - Little AmericaJohn McNally - The Phone CallJoe Meno - Young PilgrimsRobert McCammon - Children Of The Bedtime MachineRamsey Campbell - The Page Mort Castle - LightAlice Hoffman - ConjureJohn Maclay - MaxJacqueline Mitchard - Two Of A KindGary Braunbeck - Fat Man And Little BoyBonnie Jo Campbell - The TattooAudrey Niffenegger - Backwards In SevilleCharles Yu - Earth: (A Gift Shop)Julia Keller - Hayleigh's DadDave Eggers - Who Knocks?Bayo Ojikutu - Reservation 2020Kelly Link - Two HousesHarlan Ellison - Weariness

    hard drinkers, passionate lovers, good haters, living on the edge, hurling fury at a complacent world."