. . Written in a seemingly unadorned style, with flashes of pitch-black humor, Askildsen’s devastating stories convey in few words a portrait of life and thought as they are actually experienced, balanced between despair and hope, memories and expectations. He is recognized as one of the greatest Norwegian writers of the twentieth century, and among the greatest short-story authors of all time.

    "Grand Stand-In" is narrated by an employee of a Nuclear Family Supplemental Provider—a company that supplies "stand-ins" for families with deceased, ill, or just plain mean grandparents. And in "Blowing Up On the Spot," a young woman works sorting tiles at a Scrabble factory after her parents have spontaneously combusted.Southern gothic at its best, laced with humor and pathos, these wonderfully inventive stories explore the relationship between loss and death and the many ways we try to cope with both.

    

    Here we encounter a blind piano tuner whose wonderful memories of his first wife are cruelly distorted by his second; a woman in a difficult marriage who must choose between her indignant husband and her closest friend; two children, survivors of divorce, who mimic their parents' melodramas; and a heartbroken woman traveling alone in Italy who experiences an epiphany while studying a forgotten artist's Annunciation. Trevor is, in his own words, 'a storyteller. My fiction may, now and again, illuminate aspects of the human condition, but I do not consciously set out to do so.' Conscious or not, he touches us in ways that few writers even dare to try.

    Collected in this chilling volume are some of the famous Japanese mystery writer Edogawa Rampo's best stories—bizarre and blood-curdling expeditions into the fantastic, the perverse, and the strange, in a marvelous homage to Rampo's literary 'mentor', Edgar Allan Poe.

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

    Andre Dubus treats his characters--a bereaved father stalking his son's killer; a woman crying alone by her television late at night; a devout teenager writing in the coils of faith and sexuality; a father's story of limitless love for his daughter--with respect and compassion. He turns fiction into an act of witness.

    H. Lawrence. The story describes a young middle-class Englishwoman who "had no luck." Though outwardly successful, she is haunted by a sense of failure; her husband is a ne'er-do-well and her work as a commercial artist doesn't earn as much as she'd like. The family's lifestyle exceeds its income and unspoken anxiety about money permeates the household. Her children, a son Paul and his two sisters, sense this anxiety; moreover, the kids even claim they can hear the house whispering "There must be more money." Paul tells his Uncle Oscar Cresswell about betting on horse races with Bassett, the gardener. He's been placing bets using his pocket money and has won and saved three hundred twenty pounds. Sometimes he says he is "sure" of a winner for an upcoming race, and the horses he names do in fact win, sometimes at remarkable odds. Uncle Oscar and Bassett both place large bets on the horses Paul names. After further winning, Paul and Oscar arrange to give the mother a gift of five thousand pounds, but the gift only lets her spend more. Disappointed, Paul tries harder than ever to be "lucky." As the Derby approaches, Paul is determined to learn the winner. Concerned about his health, his mother rushes home from a party and discovers his secret. He has been spending hours riding his rocking horse, sometimes all night long, until he "gets there," into a clairvoyant state where he can be sure of the winner's name. Paul remains ill through the day of the Derby. Informed by Cresswell, Bassett has placed Paul's bet on Malabar, at fourteen to one. When he is informed by Bassett that he now has 80,000 pounds, Paul says to his mother: "I never told you, mother, that if I can ride my horse, and get there, then I'm absolutely sure - oh absolutely! Mother, did I ever tell you? I am lucky!" "No, you never did," said his mother. The boy dies in the night and his mother hears her brother say, "My God, Hester, you're eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he's best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking horse to find a winner.

    These stories about love and death, truth and lies, myth and reality range across many epochs and settings. Brilliantly combining fact and fiction, epic and miniature, horror and comedy, this was Danilo Kiš final work, published in Serbo-Croatian in 1983.Kiš is one of the great European writers of the post-war period - GuardianCompulsively readable - Daily Telegraph Fantasy chases reality and reality chases fantasy. Pirandello and Borges are not far away. But these names are intended as approximate references. Kiš is a new, original writer - Times Literary Supplement Intense and exotic, his mysteries hint at unspeakable secrets that remain forever beyond the story-teller's grasp - Boyd TonkinDanilo Kiš was born in the then Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1935. After an unsettled childhood during the Second World War, in which several of his family members were killed, Kiš studied literature at the University of Belgrade where he lived for most of his adult life. He wrote novels, short stories and poetry and went on to receive the prestigious NIN Award for his novel Pešcanik. He died in Paris in 1989.

    Translated from the French by Justin O'Brien.The six works featured in this volume are: "The Adulterous Woman" ("La Femme adultère") "The Renegade or a Confused Spirit" ("Le Renégat ou un esprit confus") "The Silent Men" ("Les Muets") "The Guest" ("L'Hôte") "Jonas or the Artist at Work" ("Jonas ou l’artiste au travail") "The Growing Stone" ("La Pierre qui pousse")

    They stand out as one of the pinnacles in the critically neglected but perennially popular tradition of weird writing that includes E.T.A. Hoffmann and Charles Dickens as well as more recent masters like Jorge Luis Borges and Roald Dahl. With a cast of characters that ranges from man-eating flora to disgruntled devils and suburban salarymen (not that it's always easy to tell one from another), Collier's dazzling stories explore the implacable logic of lunacy, revealing a surreal landscape whose unstable surface is depth-charged with surprise.

    Writing about his native Sicily and its culture of secrecy and suspicion, Sciascia matched sympathy with skepticism, unflinching intellect with a street fighter's intransigent poise. Sciascia was particularly admired for his short stories, and The Wine-Dark Sea offers what he considered his best work in the genre: thirteen spare and trenchant miniatures that range in subject from village idiots to mafia dons, marital spats to American dreams. Here, in unforgettable form, Sciascia examines the contradictions—sometimes comic, sometimes deadly, and sometimes both—of Sicily's turbulent history and day-to-day life.

    The birthplace and graveyard of American myths and dreams, the city harbours a group of people trapped between the beauty of their surroundings and their own moral impoverishment. This novel is a chronicle of their voices.

    Fans and critics call their world cyberpunk. Here is the definitive "cyberpunk" short fiction collection.Contents:The Gernsback Continuum (1981) by William GibsonSnake-Eyes (1986) by Tom MaddoxRock On (1984) by Pat CadiganTales of Houdini (1981) by Rudy Rucker400 Boys (1983) by Marc LaidlawSolstice (1985) by James Patrick KellyPetra (1982) by Greg BearTill Human Voices Wake Us (1984) by Lewis ShinerFreezone (1985) by John ShirleyStone Lives (1985) by Paul Di FilippoRed Star, Winter Orbit (1983) by William Gibson and Bruce SterlingMozart in Mirrorshades (1984) by Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner

    In these stories Highsmith is at her most scathing as she draws out the mystery and menace of her once ordinary subject.