It is the finest collection yet from a contemporary master of the form.Beginning with the sudden terror of a family caught up in shocking sectarian violence, and ending with the whiteout of an Iowa blizzard and the fear of losing your way very far from home, this collection is about bonds made and broken, secret and known. In the extraordinary story "Up the Coast," a landscape painter discovers a place that makes her, finally, feel whole, only to have that communion shattered by an arbitrary act of aggression that will resonate throughout her life.Written with effortless skill and empathy, these stories are hauntingly real. MacLaverty's perfect attention to every detail, every nuance of idiom and character, remakes the world for us here on the page.

    A mammoth balloon is inflated over the city with much talk by the natives after the artifact; Indians storm the city in spite of the excellent hand-sanded table (birch veneer on black wrought iron legs); two emphatic creatures named Edward and Pia exist in instant replays and talk in stereo static: a tiny President (forty-eight inches tall at the shoulder) may or may not cause intermittent and mass unconsciousness; and Kellerman, "gigantic with gin, runs through the park at noon with his naked father slung under one arm." Meaning may emerge, blur forth, but in this glittering clatterbang of existence no overview is possible ("The moon hates us").With elegance and wicked glee, the author has produced hitherto buried delights in the "Isle of Vernacular." Each fragment has its visual and verbal surprise. Baffling, brilliant, and very special, this is Bertie Wooster's "Guernica."

    This collection of horror stories, many previously unpublished, includes "The Medusa," "Conversations in a Dead Language," and "Mad Night of Atonement." By the author of Grimscribe.

    Greenberg selected their favorite SF stories from the "Golden Years" of Science Fiction (1939-1963) and published them in a 25 volume set (one book for each year), an anthology collection of the greatest science fiction stories of modern times. Starting with the time-tested classics of 1939, Asimov brings you, year by year, those stories which have stood the test of time, which have become the masterworks on which others have built, and which will always remain jewels in the cabinet of science fiction. And of course Isaac Asimov himself, who, with collaborator Greenberg, introduces each story and tells what it meant in the rise of modern science fiction.Contents: * Introduction (The Great SF Stories 1 (1939) (1979) • essay by Martin H. Greenberg * I, Robot [Adam Link] (1966) / short story by Otto Binder (variant of "I, Robot" 1939) [as by Eando Binder] * The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton (1939) / short story by Robert Bloch * Trouble with Water (1939) / short story by H. L. Gold * Cloak of Aesir [Sarn] (1939) / novella by John W. Campbell, Jr. [as by Don A. Stuart] * The Day Is Done (1939) / short story by Lester del Rey * The Ultimate Catalyst (1939) / novelette by John Taine * The Gnarly Man (1939) / novelette by L. Sprague de Camp * Black Destroyer [Space Beagle] (1939) / novelette by A. E. van Vogt * Greater Than Gods (1939) / novelette by C. L. Moore * Trends (1939) / short story by Isaac Asimov * The Blue Giraffe (1939) / novelette by L. Sprague de Camp * The Misguided Halo (1939) / short story by Henry Kuttner * Heavy Planet (1939) / short story by Milton A. Rothman * Life-Line [Future History] (1939) / short story by Robert A. Heinlein * Ether Breather [Ether Breather] (1939) / short story by Theodore Sturgeon * Pilgrimage [Meg • 4] (1939) / novelette by Nelson S. Bond [as by Nelson Bond] * Rust (1939) / short story by Joseph E. Kelleam * The Four-Sided Triangle (1939) / novelette by William F. Temple (variant of The 4-Sided Triangle) * Star Bright (1939) / novelette by Jack Williamson * Misfit [Future History] (1939) / novelette by Robert A. Heinlein .

    In Danielle McLaughlin’s stories, the world is both beautiful and alien. Men and women negotiate their surroundings as a tourist might navigate a distant country: watchfully, with a mixture of wonder and apprehension. Here are characters living lives in translation, ever at the mercy of distortions and misunderstandings, striving to make sense both of the spaces they inhabit and of the people they share them with.

    As a study of conspiracy and conspirators, of men caught in the desperate clash of ideologies, betrayal, expediency, and of free will, Andre Malraux's novel remains unequaled.Translated from the French by Haakon M. Chevalier

    Tabucchi has now written a thriller, but one with a subtle intellectual depth not usual in that genre. The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro intriguingly reflects on current social issues: crime, police corruption, yellow journalism, and the courts -- both of the law and of public opinion. Tabucchi hooks the reader on page one of this book and the story advances with electric and unflagging suspense. A gypsy discovers a headless body; Firmino, a young journalist who writes for a scandal-sheet, takes up the case; the headless corpse turns out to be that of one Damasceno Monteiro, an employee at an import-export company who, having stumbled upon a heroin smuggling ring at his work, had stolen a drug shipment; and, the police are supressing evidence -- all the stuff of familiar daily news, here made riveting in the hands of a rare and brilliant writer.

    Further north, Maria and Cecilia are also sisters, struggling to make a living in the linen mills of Belfast.

    As a healer, he travels the countryside dispensing traditional cures while soaking up stories and legends of bygone times–and witnessing the painful, often violent birth of land-reform measures destined to lead to Irish independence.At the age of forty, summoned to Paris to treat his dying countryman–the infamous Oscar Wilde–Charles experiences the fateful moment of his life. In a chance encounter with a beautiful and determined young Englishwoman, eighteen-year-old April Burke, he is instantly and passionately smitten–but callously rejected. Vowing to improve himself, Charles returns to Ireland, where he undertakes the preservation of the great and abandoned estate of Tipperary, in whose shadow he has lived his whole life–and which, he discovers, may belong to April and her father. As Charles pursues his obsession, he writes the “History” of his own life and country. While doing so, he meets the great figures of the day, including Charles Parnell, William Butler Yeats, and George Bernard Shaw. And he also falls victim to less well-known characters–who prove far more dangerous. Tipperary also features a second “historian:” a present-day commentator, a retired and obscure history teacher who suddenly discovers that he has much at stake in the telling of Charles’s story.In this gloriously absorbing and utterly satisfying novel, a man’s passion for the woman he loves is twinned with his country’s emergence as a nation. With storytelling as sweeping and dramatic as the land itself, myth, fact, and fiction are all woven together with the power of the great nineteenth-century novelists. Tipperary once again proves Frank Delaney’s unrivaled mastery at bringing Irish history to life. Praise for Frank Delaney’s TIPPERARY: “[T]he narrative moves swiftly and surely…A sort of Irish Gone With the Wind, marked by sly humor, historical awareness and plenty of staying power.” — Kirkus Reviews“[A]nother meticulously researched journey…Delaney’s careful scholarship and compelling storytelling bring it uniquely alive. Highly recommended.” — Library Journal (starred)“Sophisticated and creative.” — Booklist “Delaney’s confident storytelling and quirky characterizations enrich a fascinating and complex period of Irish history.” — Publishers Weekly“Read just a few sentences of Frank Delaney’s writing and you’ll see why National Public Radio called him ‘the world’s most eloquent man.’” — Kirkus Reviews, “Big Book Guide 2007”From the Hardcover edition.

    A couple drive out to the hills in a last-ditch effort to save their marriage. A horse crashes a house party. Set on an imagined island off the west coast of Ireland, John Patrick McHugh’s debut collection of stories draw a complete community of characters – misdirected, posturing and self-deceiving. But in his fidelity to and compassion for their faults, McHugh embeds us in the moments on which these lives twist and turn, probing unflinchingly what most of us would rather ignore. Pure Gold heralds the arrival of a vibrant new literary voice.

    Reading these stories entails abandoning the terms of one's own comfort. The author's relentless vision demands that readers allows themselves to be hypnotised, taken over by her repetitive cadences and burning images of grief and loss. And yet, in the beauty of her images there is a tremendous affirmation of the world.

    Icky" "Jemina"

    Her father and his brother worked in the colony of Fernando Po, but these letters tell a different story than the tales of life in Africa that made it to the dinner table. Clarence has no idea what really went on during their time at the cocoa plantations—or why no one in her family has ever returned to the island in all the years since. But the letters suggest that a great love story is buried beneath the years of silence.Setting out from her home in Spain’s snowy mountains, Clarence makes the same journey across the sea that her uncle and father traveled before her. There, she unlocks the painful secrets her family has hidden in the rich African soil. But what she discovers may also be the key to awakening her own listless heart.

    But a still greater horror will face the recluse - more inexorable, merciless and awful than any creature that can be fought or killed.A classic of the first water - H. P. Lovecraft

    Initially delighted with her new life—including the fashionable society balls to which she now has access—Emma soon realizes that her family harbors many ill feelings, not least those springing from the sisters' hopes—and disappointments—in snaring a husband. So when the eligible and suitably rich Tom Musgrove begins to transfer his affections from her sister Margaret to Emma, the result can only be further sibling rivalry and unrest. A delightful, exquisitely drawn portrait of family life, The Watsons is Jane Austen at her storytelling best. Author of the masterpieces Pride and Prejudice and Emma, Jane Austen (1775–1817) is one of the most beloved novelists of all time.