A Czech immigrant who finds a paradoxical contentment on the harsh expanse of the Nebraska prairie. A solitary young painter spying raptly and guiltily on his exquisite neighbor. These are some of the lives that Willa Cather renders, with a fine balance of compassion and detachment, in these nineteen stories. Here are the great themes that Cather staked out like tracts of land: the plight of people hungry for beauty in a country that has no room for it; the mysterious arc of human lives; the ways in which the American frontier transformed the strangers who came to it, turning them imperceptibly into Americans. In these fictions, Cather displays her vast moral vision, her unerring sense of place, and her ability to find the one detail or episode that makes a closed life open wide in a single exhilarating moment.

    The action-packed storylines retain all the impact of the authors' own words; photos and narrative illustrations help readers to absorb the full flavor of the original novels. Fact-filled boxes examine the books' themes, characters, and each author's life and times. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea includes a map of the journey and explores marine life and oceanography in Jules Verne's time. A specially researched map of Crusoe's exotic island gives facts on its flora and fauna.

    Each volume helps the reader to encounter the original more fully by placing it in historical context, focusing on the important aspects of the text and posing key questions.

    

    More than three hours of recordings in each collection capture the intimacy of live performance. Stories are alternately funny, sad, moving, and exciting and make a perfect accompaniment to daily activities such as driving, cooking, exercising, and relaxing. Lots of Laughs includes, among others, John Updike's "Farrell's Caddie," read by Charles Keating; Neil Gaiman's "Chivalry," read by Christina Pickles; Ron Carlson's "On the USS Fortitude," read by Laura Esterman; Etgar Keret's "Fatso," read by John Guare; and David Schickler's "Jamaica," read by Isaiah Sheffer.

    Men and films, and the dreams that films embody, form the background to the stories.

    Offers a selecttion of the master of human comedy's short stories from the 1930s and 1940s.

    Forever Island is widely recognized as the classic novel of the Everglades.Allapattah is the story of a young Seminole in despair in the white man's world.

    

    The perfect alternative to lengthy fiction anthologies, this brief, inexpensive, and diverse collection of 42 short stories provides a concise yet complete introduction to the study of fiction.

    Story of an Electrical Engineer, who finds rural environment more interesting than cities, finds his real interest in Farming and turns a rugged forest land into Farm with his own innovations and about his emotional journey.

    

    

    Or read this book and find out how you have all the tools you need, but must make the one change to become the writer you have always wanted to be.