Some of her most acclaimed work is set there. Collected in this volume are "The Light in the Piazza, " which is her signature piece, and six other Italian tales in which her American characters encounter and respond to the mysteries of Italian mores. Her plots are so alluring and enigmantic that the great Boccaccio would have been charmed by their delightful ironies and their sinister contrasts of dark and light. Elizabeth's Spencer's exceptional artisty has merited renown for her as one of America's best writers of short stories.

    Have you heard the urban myth about Jesus's double-jointed elbows yet? 100% true. Or seen the latest reports on the 'groomgrabbing' trend - the benevolent kidnapping of badly-dressed children by their well-meaning (and more dapper) elders? Heard the one about the Amazon from the Isle of Man? Or perhaps you'd like a job in telesales, offering self-defence classes over the phone? Don't worry, as long as you meet the weekly quota, you won't be sent to the end of the hall...Wonderfully original, fresh and funny, 'Topics About Which I Know Nothing' is stuffed to the gills with dizzyingly inventive writing and warming, puzzling emotions - a fictional guide to how the world might have turned out.

    Finn's Hotel is a luminous and often funny work, and it reveals Joyce's creative process during the transition between Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.

    of the one hundred stories gathered here, thirty-one appear for the first time in English and another twenty-nine have been newly translated for this volume.

    George MacDonald Fraser is the author of the "Flashman" novels.

    Based loosely on the author's own life, the book follows a young bohemian woman, Margaret Sargent, through her experiences and lost loves in a time of coming war.