Featuring a foreword from Kyle M. Scott, Sinister Scribblings brings together a unique blend of stories, some of which have been previously published, others that are original pieces and only available within this collection. In this collection we meet a whole host of broken, deranged characters in a sequence of horrific circumstances, including a mother who is determined to seek vengeance upon the school thugs that are bullying her only daughter; a woman who’s lifestyle has spiralled out of control after finding her boyfriend in a more than compromising position; a man who once spent his life in the public eye, has fallen from the heights of stardom and is slowly rebuilding himself; a teenage boy, a daydreamer who enjoys chocolate eggs for breakfast, who finds himself unravelling a unique Easter gift; a cave dwelling creature who has a taste for young flesh; a mischievous young boy who finds himself upon the naughty list at Christmas; a man, who after recently losing his job, makes a compelling agreement with a strange figure in a bar; two twin sisters who battle it out in brutal style after a major misunderstanding; a group of friends on their friends stag night, who get more than they bargained for upon entering an abandoned hospital for a prank; a man who awakens in a terrifying situation, in a strange location following a party with his friends; a woman abandoned in her friend’s cabin at a picturesque lake during a thunder storm; a man who crashes his car whilst driving home and spotting the figure of woman in amongst the trees beside the road; a serial killer enduring complications whilst receiving the lethal injection. Featuring bonus stories from Stuart Keane, Andrew Lennon, Michelle Garza & Melissa Lason, C.M. Saunders, Daryl Duncan, Mark Nye and Dale Robertson. Sit back, relax and immerse yourself in these Sinister Scribblings.

    40 Haiku in English inspired by the practice of Zen Buddhism and Zazen (seated meditation) in particular.I hope you enjoy!

    And while it's not OK for someone else to make yo-momma jokes about your momma, it is perfectly healthy — even downright hilarious — to find the humor in your own upbringing. In fact, these writers highly recommend it. So if you think your mom is nuts, pull up a chair. You're in good company.

    S. Byatt knows that fairy tales are for grownups. And in this ravishing collection she breathes new life into the form.Little Black Book of Stories offers shivers along with magical thrills. Leaves rustle underfoot in a dark wood: two middle-aged women, childhood friends reunited by chance, venture into a dark forest where once, many years before, they saw–or thought they saw–something unspeakable. Another woman, recently bereaved, finds herself slowly but surely turning into stone. A coolly rational ob-gyn has his world pushed off-axis by a waiflike art student with her own ideas about the uses of the body. Spellbinding, witty, lovely, terrifying, the Little Black Book of Stories is Byatt at the height of her craft.

    Funny, poignant and smart, full of unforgettable characters, these stories explore the violence of family, the constraints of small-town life and the elusive promise of escape.In "Ice Cream Man," an adolescent girl struggles to come to terms with her mother's death and her father's seeming indifference while conducting a secret affair with an older man from the local arena. Gerald, the young boy in "Big Dog Rage," goes to extreme and reckless measures to thwart the expectations of his parents, teachers, and the local priest, leaving his childhood friend to look longingly on. And in the title story, Bethany sees her gentle fiancé anew as she enters the raucous world of his hard-drinking family. Receiving a sharp shot to the mouth from her future sister-in-law Bethany finds her place in this clan secured.With her incisive, resonant prose, Lynn Coady elicits laughter, sadness, and compassion. Play the Monster Blind is a keenly observed, imaginative collection from one of the most distinctive talents to arrive on Canada's literary scene in years.

    This collection-- dazzling, diverse, sophisticated-- demonstrates the enormous range of her talent between two camps-- alongside such contemporary issues as mortgage debt and medical error.

    He and his mother endured the cold and humiliating attitude of their relatives who like most people were driven by greed.First published in Khawateen Digest, it is now available in Meri Zaat Zarra-e-Benishan.

    A once-popular singer, desperate to make a comeback, turning from the one certainty in his life . . . A man whose unerring taste in music is the only thing his closest friends value in him . . . A struggling singer-songwriter unwittingly involved in the failing marriage of a couple he’s only just met . . . A gifted, underappreciated jazz musician who lets himself believe that plastic surgery will help his career . . . A young cellist whose tutor promises to “unwrap” his talent . . . Passion or necessity—or the often uneasy combination of the two—determines the place of music in each of these lives. And, in one way or another, music delivers each of them to a moment of reckoning: sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, sometimes just eluding their grasp. An exploration of love, need, and the ineluctable force of the past, Nocturnes reveals these individuals to us with extraordinary precision and subtlety, and with the arresting psychological and emotional detail that has marked all of Kazuo Ishiguro’s acclaimed works of fiction.

    

    As Christmas comes around, Joe only wishes for one thing. Will his Christmas wish come true?

    Seeing the pilot is having a hard time keeping up, one of the Chinese mercenaries called Nungs, says to the team leader, "Let's kill the Dai Uy." Dai Uy is Vietnamese for captain.Read on to see what happened.

    Some move toward the future heartened by what they learn from those around them--a tattoo artist, an invented medicine man, zoo animals, strangers, fellow outsiders. Deftly rendered, these stories abound with oddness and grace.In “Tattooizm,” included in The Best American Short Stories 2006, a young woman struggles with a promise that her boyfriend is determined to make her keep. In the Nelson Algren Award–winning “Space,” a reluctantly undertaken errand forces a young man to finally confront the death of his mother. And in “The Medicine Man,” hailed by the Times (U.K.) as “perfectly pitched and perfectly written,” a man recounts his manic attachment to his sister.Moffett’s closely observed stories are candid and complex, funny and moving. The world of Permanent Visitors is an idiosyncratic and generous one, its inhabitants searching for constancy in a place crowded with contradiction.

    His friends look on, but they're dead, too, their bodies found in squats and sheds and alleyways across the city. Victims of heroin, they're ghosts in the shadows, a chorus keeping vigil as the hours pass, paying their own particular homage as their friend's body is taken away, examined, investigated, and cremated.All their stories are laid out piece by broken piece through a series of fractured narratives. We meet Robert, the deceased, the only alcoholic in a sprawling group of junkies; Danny, just back from uncomfortable holidays with family, who discovers the body; Laura, Robert's daughter, who stumbles into the drug addict's life when she moves in with her father after years apart; Heather, who has her own home for the first time since she was a teenager; Mike, the Falklands War vet; and all the others. Theirs are stories of lives fallen through the cracks, hopes flaring and dying, love overwhelmed by more immediate needs. These invisible people live in a parallel reality to most of us, out of reach of food and shelter. And in their sudden deaths, it becomes clear, they are treated with more respect than they ever were in their short lives.Intense, exhilarating, and shot through with hope and fury, Even the Dogs is an intimate exploration of life at the edges of society—a deeply humane book littered with love, loss, despair, and a half glimpse of redemption—now reissued with a new introduction by Yiyun Li.

    A Louisiana farmer sees the image of Christ appear on the freezer door and questions the meaning of faith. In a Maine resort town, Miss Langevin, a spinster who could write a book on disappointment, now gets a chance to help another woman escape it. And in the title story, a science teacher's modest dreams and painful memories erode his existence like water entering stone.

    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