Hopefully, the enticement of winning his house and the magic of the holidays will lure in just the right person! Holly Kirby was a bit shocked when she read the ad. The winner of the Christmas contest would receive a house! Knowing this might be some sort of scam, she still can’t help but imagine all the wonderful things she could do with a beautiful house on Nantucket. Holly decides to go ahead and enter, hoping that the Christmas angels will bring her a miracle. Jack Anderson immediately knew something was wrong with his grandfather after reading the ad for the Christmas contest. Maybe it was time to take a break from work and pay him a visit. Somebody has to talk some sense into him! Only, when he gets there, he realizes Grandpa’s plan is already in full swing. The clock is ticking but can Jack stop it in time, or will his family home be lost to him forever?

    Jerry’s Stahl’s perverse, yet often touching tales, many of which first appeared in publications ranging from Playboy to the Pushcart Prize to Best Erotic Fiction, plumb the depths of eccentric romance, sex-starved adolescence, mid-life crisis, and family dysfunction. From a teenager’s tryst with a recently widowed middle-aged woman on an airplane, to a dissatisfied dentist’s attempt to find freedom on the road with a much younger woman, all the way to an intensely erotic love affair between an ex-junkie and an ex-circus midget with a sexual obsession with vegetables, this collection never fails to arouse and surprise. With a disarmingly immediate prose style, Stahl finds great eroticism, humor, and humanity in the wildest of encounters.

    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.”

    

    That the Church uses artificial intelligences to power its never-ending prayer machines doesn't interest her at all: they're paying, and she needs enough money to survive in an increasingly crumbling world. Until a demonstration outside the Church's headquarters, and the appearance of Stéphane, an enigmatic man Lisa finds herself powerfully drawn to. What lies beneath his headscarf, why is he so interested in the Church--and how far will she be willing to go in order to earn his trust? Aliette de Bodard, winner of the Nebula, Locus and BSFA Awards, teams up with BSFA Award-winner Gareth L. Powell to present an uplifting short story of machines and humans, of intense emotions and cutting-age technology culled from tomorrow’s headlines. “Full of character and wit” - Zone SF "Wonderful and full of promise.” - SF Revu

    This short story is taken from one of Steinbeck's early works, "The Pastures of Heaven."

    A blind girl who is sent to stay with her grandfather stumbles upon a kidnapping in their small town.

    Gillett, Ph.D.• The Efficiency Expert by W. R. Thompson• Second Helpings by George R. R. Martin• Random Sample by Heidi Heyer• On Gaming by Dana Lombardy• Siblings by Larry Powell• Diabetes and Rockets by G. Harry Stine• Béisbol by Ben Bova• The Darkling Plain by P. M. Fergusson• Biolog: P. M. Fergusson by Jay Kay Klein• The Reference Library by Thomas A. Easton •   Review: Artifact by Gregory Benford by Thomas A. Easton •   Review: Cuckoo's Egg by C. J. Cherryh by Thomas A. Easton •   Review: Skinner by Richard S. McEnroe by Thomas A. Easton •   Review: Blood Music by Greg Bear by Thomas A. Easton •   Review: A Coming of Age by Timothy Zahn by Thomas A. Easton •   Review: Trumps of Doom by Roger Zelazny by Thomas A. Easton •   Review: The Fall of Winter by Jack C. Haldeman, II by Thomas A. Easton •   Review: The Time Travelers; A Science Fiction Quartet by Martin H. Greenberg and Robert Silverberg by Thomas A. Easton •   Review: The Hugo Winners, 1976-1979 by Isaac Asimov by Thomas A. Easton •   Review: Young Extraterrestrials by Isaac Asimov and Martin Greenberg and Charles Waugh by Thomas A. Easton •   Review: The Year's Best Science Fiction, Second Annual Collection by Gardner Dozois by Thomas A. Easton •   Review: The Future of Flight by Dean Ing and Leik Myrabo by Thomas A. Easton •   Review: Out of the Cradle: Exploring the Frontiers Beyond Earth by William K. Hartmann and Pamela Lee and Ron Miller by Thomas A. Easton • Brass Tacks by Stanley Schmidt• Analog: A Calendar of Upcoming Events by Anthony R. Lewis

    Includes A Watcher by the Dead by Ambrose Bierce; The Body Snatchers by Robert Louis Stevenson; The Adventure of the German Student by Washington Irving; Dickon the Devil by J. Sheridan Le Fanu; The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe; and The Open Window by Saki.

    Henry Prize stories collection has offered an exciting selection of the best stories published in hundreds of literary magazines every year. Such classic works of American literature as Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers (1927); William Faulkner’s Barn Burning (1939); Carson McCuller’s A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud (1943); Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery (1949); J.D. Salinger’s For Esme with Love and Squalor (1963); John Cheever’s The Country Husband (1956) ; and Flannery O’Conner’s Everything that Rises Must Converge (1963) all were O. Henry Prize stories. An accomplished new series editor--novelist and short story writer Laura Furman--has read more than a thousand stories to identify the 20 winners, each one a pleasure to read today, each one a potential classic. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003 also contains brief essays from each of the three distinguished judges on their favorite story, and comments from the prize-winning writers on what inspired their stories. There is nothing like the ever rich, surprising, and original O. Henry collection for enjoying the contemporary short story.The Thing in the Forest A. S. Byatt The Shell Collector Anthony Doerr Burn Your Maps Robyn Jay Leff Lush Bradford Morrow God’s Goodness Marjorie Kemper Bleed Blue in Indonesia Adam Desnoyers The Story Edith Pearlman Swept Away T. Coraghessan Boyle Meanwhile Ann Harleman Three Days. A Month. More. Douglas Light The High Road Joan Silber Election Eve Evan S. Connell Irish Girl Tim Johnston What Went Wrong Tim O’Brien The American Embassy Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Kissing William Kittredge Sacred Statues William Trevor Two Words Molly Giles Fathers Alice Munro Train Dreams Denis Johnson

    Forbidden by international accords to engage in combat, the "dog soldiers" lend their skills to the regular Army units, sniffing out IEDs and guarding the troops against things that go bump in the night. Sergeant Decker and his 300th comrade, Sergeant Sobieski, are assigned to a Forward Operating Base deep in the mountains of Afghanistan when they have to face a local threat far more dangerous than roadside bombs or insurgent ambushes.

    He's just arrived in the middle of nowhere—Hokie, Kansas—for the same purpose, but when he meets a waitress named Melanie, another sufferer, he's faced not only with his first real human contact in years, but perhaps someone who can save him.From the author of DESERT PLACES, ABANDON, and SERIAL UNCUT comes this 7,000-word short story. Additional material includes an interview with Blake, excerpts from all four of his novels, and two bonus excerpts.

    In its harrowing chronicle of the breakup of a relationship, Interiors confirmed Cash's remarkable talents as a lyricist, with songs that were intelligent and astonishingly frank, songs that with their stark empathy transcended the self-involvement that had come to confine the work of many "confessional" singer-songwriters. The Wheel (1993) was further evidence that she had few equals in her field. As one of our most literate lyricists, Cash naturally began to turn to longer prose pieces, and in her first collection, Bodies of Water, she reveals the full breadth and depth of her talent. These stories are a series of portraits of the inner lives of women seeking self-forgiveness, resolution, and freedom in the face of the familiar betrayals of everyday existence. A mother spends a comically forlorn New Year's Eve alone with her young children. Alone in Paris, a traveler faces her loneliness as middle age approaches. A dinner party becomes a battleground of concealed disappointment. It is at the margins of reality and dreams, the boundaries between art and insanity, that Cash's characters come to learn that their redemption is to be found in facing the past, and finally, in retrieving power from it.

    Originally published in the Strand, in September 1929.

    You passed her on the street with a surreptitious glance, though she was well worth looking at-in her furs and laces and plumes. She had the only full-length mink coat in our town, and Ganz's shoe store sent to Chicago for her shoes. Hers were the miraculously small feet you frequently see in stout women. Usually she walked alone; but on rare occasions, especially round Christmastime, she might have been seen accompanied by some silent, dull-eyed, stupid-looking girl, who would follow her dumbly in and out of stores, stopping now and then to admire a cheap comb or a chain set with flashy imitation stones-or, queerly enough, a doll with yellow hair and blue eyes and very pink cheeks. But, alone or in company, her appearance in the stores of our town was the signal for a sudden jump in the cost of living. The storekeepers mulcted her; and she knew it and paid in silence, for she was of the class that has no redress. She owned the House with the Closed Shutters, near the freight depot-did Blanche Devine.