Rather than quibble, Short opts for inclusiveness. Here is a dazzling array: 100s of pieces (under 1250 words) from 24 Western countries, written over five centuries by more than 200 contributors, including major authors of every era. Fables, histories, aphorisms, anecdotes, faux dictionary entries, a faux job application, hint fiction, lists, tableaus, meditations, chants, rants, and much more. Intensely pleasurable.Contributors include: Montaigne, von Kleist, Leopardi, Poe, Baudelaire, Bierce, Chopin, Stein, Jacob, Woolf, Kafka, J. Roth, Toomer, Borges, Queneau, Kunitz, Beckett, Milosz, Cortazar, Paz, Barthes, Calvino, O'Hara, Merwin, Lispector, Transtromer, Sanchez, Edson, Simic, Atwood, Valenzuela, Wideman, L. Davis, Komunyakaa, A. Carson, Forche, Harjo, Hempel, Wenderoth, Keret, B. Marcus, A. Bender, Eggers, B. Lerner, T. Brimhall.

    He weaves discussions of work by Keats, Dickinson, and Whitman with quotes from three-thousand-year-old Egyptian poems, Inuit songs, and Japanese love poems to show that writing personal lyric has helped poets throughout history to process emotional and experiential turmoil, from individual stress to collective grief. More specifically, he considers how the acts of writing, reading, and listening to lyric bring ordering powers to the chaos that surrounds us. Moving into more contemporary work, Orr looks at the poetry of Sylvia Plath, Stanley Kunitz, and Theodore Roethke, poets who relied on their own work to get through painful psychological experiences.As a poet who has experienced considerable trauma--especially as a child--Orr refers to the damaging experiences of his past and to the role poetry played in his ability to recover and survive. His personal narrative makes all the more poignant and vivid Orr's claims for lyric poetry's power as a tool for healing. Poetry as Survival is a memorable and inspiring introduction to lyric poetry's capacity to help us find safety and comfort in a threatening world.

    Kennedy Jr., from The Atlantic Monthly “Watching the Detectives” by Jay Kirk, from Harper’s Magazine “For the Love of God” by Jon Krakauer, from GQ “Chief Bratton Takes on LA” by Heather Mac Donald, from City Journal “Not Guilty by Reason of Afghanistan” by John H. Richardson, from Esquire “Megan’s Law and Me” by Brendan Riley, from Details “Unfortunate Con” by Mark Schone, from The Oxford American “To Kill or Not to Kill” by Scott Turow, from The New Yorker

    For eighteen years, Holly Hughes has scoured both the online and print world to serve up the finest collection of food writing. This year, Best food Writing delves into the intersection of fine dining and food justice, culture and ownership, tradition and modernity; as well as profiles on some of the most fascinating people in the culinary world today. Once again, these standout essays--compelling, hilarious, poignant, illuminating--speak to the core of our hearts and fill our bellies. Whether you're a fan of Michel Richard or Guy Fieri--or both--there's something for everyone here. Take a seat and dig in.

    Rowling's popular character, Severus Snape, and the roles he played in the Harry Potter series.

    Ranging from childhood recollections to quirky cultural observations, these micro-memoirs build on one another to arrive at a portrait of Beth Ann Fennelly as a wife, mother, writer, and deeply original observer of life’s challenges and joys.Some pieces are wistful, some wry, and many reveal the humor buried in our everyday interactions. Heating Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs shapes a life from unexpectedly illuminating moments, and awakens us to these moments as they appear in the margins of our lives.

    If your train is late, it is typical. If there are no seats on the upper deck of a bus, it is typical. If it starts to rain at five o'clock just before you leave work, it is typical.''The English do not like to be wished "Have a nice day", because to them it sounds like a command. They think, Who the hell do you think you are to order me to have a nice day?' Ten years ago, Angela Kiss arrived in the UK without a word of English. All she brought with her was a small bag, a sense of adventure, a desire to work and a copy of George Mikes' classic 1940s' humour book about the peculiarities of the British, How to be an Alien.Through every dodgy flat share, low-paid waitressing job, awkward date and office mishap, Angela held tight to George's wit and wisdom. With his help she began to understand how to live amongst the English - with their eccentricity, spirit and singing train drivers - and fell in love with a land rich in green spaces, pubs and puddings. A wry, often affectionate view on the English, and how to navigate our national personality.

    His commentaries on “All Things Considered” and his radio spots for Motel 6 have delighted millions, but he’s never been funnier than in this, his second collection of casual essays. Here are further musings ont he everyday joys and embarrassments of being a husband, father, citizen, and breadwinner by the author of As Far As You Can Go Without a Passport. Fans will be comforted by the familiarity of this return visit to Bodett country. Those new to his work will discover one of the freshest, friendliest voices among writers of humor today.

    Chicken Soup for the Soul: A Christmas Treasury

    Lee Gutkind collects twenty-five essays that flourished in this new turf, all originally published in the groundbreaking journal he founded, Creative Nonfiction, now in its tenth anniversary year.Many of the writers here are crossing genres—from poetry to fiction to nonfiction. Annie Dillard provides the introduction, while Gutkind discusses the creative and ethical parameters of this new genre. The selections themselves are broad and fascinating. Lauren Slater is a therapist in the institution where she was once a patient. John Edgar Wideman reacts passionately to the unjust murder of Emmett Till. Charles Simic contemplates raucous gatherings at his Uncle Boris's apartment, while John McPhee creates a rare, personal, album quilt of his own life. Terry Tempest Williams speaks on the decline of the prairie dog, and Madison Smartt Bell invades Haiti.

    From Sherwood Anderson to Virginia Woolf, this anthology encompasses a rich global and historical mix of the very best works of short fiction and presents them in a way students will find accessible, engaging, and relevant. The book's unique integration of biographical and critical background gives students a more intimate understanding of the works and their authors.Contents:Part I. Introduction. The art of the short story.-- Part II. Stories [A-J]. Chinua Achebe: Dead men's path ; Author's perspective, Achebe: modern Africa as the crossroads of culture -- Sherwood Anderson: Hands ; Author's perspective, Anderson: Words not plot give form to a short story -- Margaret Atwood: Happy endings ; Author's perspective, Atwood: On the Canadian identity -- James Baldwin: Sonny's blues ; Author's perspective, Baldwin: Race and the African-American writer -- Jorge Luis Borges: The garden of forking paths ; Author's perspective, Borges: Literature as experience -- Albert Camus: The guest ; Author's perspective, Camus: Revolution and repression in Algeria -- Raymond Carver: Cathedral ; A small, good thing ; Author's perspective, Carver: Commonplace but precise language -- Willa Cather: Paul's case ; Author's perspective, Cather: Art as the process of simplification -- John Cheever: The swimmer ; Author's perspective, Cheever: Why I write short stories -- Anton Chekhov: The lady with the pet dog ; Misery ; Author's perspective, Chekhov: Natural description and "The center of gravity" -- Kate Chopin: The storm ; The story of an hour ; Author's perspective, Chopin: My writing method -- Sandra Cisneros: Barbie-Q ; Author's perspective, Cisneros: Bilingual style -- Joseph Conrad: The secret sharer ; Author's perspective, Conrad: The condition of art -- Stephen Crane: The open boat ; Author's perspective, Crane: The sinking of the Commodore -- Ralph Ellison: A party down at the square ; Author's perspective, Ellison: Race and fiction -- William Faulkner: Barn burning ; A rose for Emily ; Author's perspective, Faulkner: The human heart in conflict with itself -- F. Scott Fitzgerald: Babylon revisited ; Author's perspective, Fitzgerald: On his own literary aims -- Gustave Flaubert: A simple heart ; Author's perspective, Flaubert: The labor of style -- Gabriel García Marquez: A very old man with enormous wings ; Author's perspective, García Marquez: My beginnings as a writer -- Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The yellow wallpaper ; Author's perspective, Gilman: Why I wrote "The yellow wallpaper" -- Nikolai Gogol: The overcoat ; Author's perspective, Gogol: On realism -- Nadine Gordimer: A company of laughing faces ; Author's perspective, Gordimer: How the short story differs from the novel -- Nathaniel Hawthorne: Young Goodman Brown ; The birthmark ; Author's perspective, Hawthorne: On the public failure of his early stories -- Ernest Hemingway: A clean, well-lighted place ; Author's perspective, Hemingway: One true sentence -- Zora Neale Hurston: Sweat ; Author's perspective, Hurston: Eatonville when you look at it -- Shirley Jackson: The lottery ; Author's perspective, Jackson: The public reception of "The lottery" -- Henry James: The real thing ; Author's perspective, James: The mirror of a consciousness -- Ha Jin: Saboteur ; Author's perspective, Jin: Deciding to write in English -- James Joyce : Araby ; The dead ; Author's perspective, Joyce: Epiphanies. Contents: Part II[ Cont.]. Stories [K-W]. Franz Kafka: Before the law ; The metamorphosis ; Author's perspective, Kafka: Discussing The metamorphosis -- D.H. Lawrence: Odour of Chrysanthemums ; The rocking-horse winner ; Author's perspective, Lawrence: The novel is the bright book of life -- Ursula K. Le Guin: the ones who walk away from Omelas ; Author's perspective, Le Guin: On "The ones who walk away from Omelas" -- Doris Lessing: A woman on a roof ; Author's perspective, Lessing: My beginnings as a writer -- Jack London: To build a fire ; Author's perspective, London: Defending the factuality of "To build a fire" -- Katherine Mansfield: Miss Brill ; The garden-party ; Author's perspective, Mansfield: On "The garden-party" -- Bobbie Ann Mason: Shiloh ; Author's perspective, Mason: Minimalist fiction -- Guy de Maupassant: The necklace ; Author's perspective, Maupassant: The realist method -- Herman Melville: Bartleby, the scrivener : a story of Wall-Street ; Author's perspective, Melville: American literature -- Yukio Mishima: Patriotism ; Author's perspective, Mishima: Physical courage and death -- Alice Munro: How I met my husband ; Author's perspective, Munro: How I write short stories -- Joyce Carol Oates: where are you going, where have you been? ; Author's perspective, Oates: Productivity and the critics -- Flannery O'Connor: A good man is hard to find ; Revelation ; Author's perspective, O'Connor: The element of suspense in "A good man is hard to find" -- Edgar Allan Poe: The fall of the House of Usher ; The Tell-tale heart ; Author's perspective, Poe: The tale and its effect -- Katherine Anne Porter: Flowering Judas ; Author's perspective, Porter: Writing "Flowering Judas" -- Leslie Marmon Silko: The man to send rain clouds ; Author's perspective, Silko: the basis of "The man to send rain clouds" -- Isaac Bashevis singer: Gimpel the Fool ; Author's perspective, Singer: The character of Gimpel -- Leo Tolstoy: The death of Ivan Ilych ; Author's perspective, Tolstoy: The moral responsibility of art -- John Updike: Separating ; Author's perspective, Why write? -- Alice Walker: Everyday use ; Author's perspective, Walker: The Black woman writer in America -- Eudora Welty: Why I live at the P.O. ; Author's perspective, Welty: The plot of the short story -- Edith Wharton: Roman fever ; Author's perspective, Wharton: The subject of short stories -- Virginia Woolf: A haunted house ; Author's perspective, Woolf: Women and fiction. Contents: Part III. Writing. The elements of short fiction -- Writing about fiction -- Critical approaches to literature. Formalist criticism: Light and darkness in "Sonny's Blues" / Michael Clark -- Biographical criticism: Chekhov's attitude to romantic love / Virginia Llewellyn Smith -- Historical criticism: The Argentine context of Borges's fantastic fiction / John King -- Psychological criticism: The father-figure in "The tell-tale heart" / Daniel Hoffman -- Mythological criticism: Myth in Faulkner's "Barn Burning" / Edmond Volpe -- "Sociological criticism: Money and labor in "The rocking-horse winner" / Daniel P. Watkins -- Gender criticism: Gender and pathology in "The yellow wallpaper" / Juliann Fleenor -- Reader-response criticism: An Eskimo "A Rose for Emily" / Stanley Fish -- Deconstructionist criticism: The death of the author / Roland Barthes -- Cultural studies: What is cultural studies? / Makr Bauerlein. Part IV. Glossary of literary terms.

    Yet the literary landscape of this dynamic part of the world has been bound together not by borders and nationalities, but by a common experience of Western imperialism. Keenly aware of the collected scars left by a legacy of colonial rule, the acclaimed writer Reza Aslan, with a team of four regional editors and seventy-seven translators, cogently demonstrates with Tablet and Pen how literature can, in fact, be used to form identity and serve as an extraordinary chronicle of the disrupted histories of the region.Acting with Words Without Borders, which fosters international exchange through translation and publication of the world’s finest literature, Aslan has purposefully situated this volume in the twentieth century, beyond the familiar confines of the Ottoman past, believing that the writers who have emerged in the last hundred years have not received their full due. This monumental collection, therefore, of nearly two hundred pieces, including short stories, novels, memoirs, essays and works of drama—many of them presented in English for the first time—features translated works from Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Turkish. Organized chronologically, the volume spans a century of literature—from the famed Arab poet Khalil Gibran to the Nobel laureates Naguib Mahfouz and Orhan Pamuk, from the great Syrian-Lebanese poet Adonis to the grand dame of Urdu fiction, Ismat Chughtai—connected by the extraordinarily rich tradition of resplendent cultures that have been all too often ignored by the Western canon.By shifting America’s perception of the Middle Eastern world away from religion and politics, Tablet and Pen evokes the splendors of a region through the voices of its writers and poets, whose literature tells an urgent and liberating story. With a wealth of contextual information that places the writing within the historical, political, and cultural breadth of the region, Tablet Pen is transcendent, a book to be devoured as a single sustained narrative, from the first page to the last. Creating a vital bridge between two estranged cultures, "this is that rare anthology: cohesive, affecting, and informing" (Publishers Weekly).

     Let me test my presumption with a preview of four these ‘old’ stories. If I told you there was once a west coast sex cult with dozens of young girls, single ladies, and married women, who all fornicated with one well-endowed “prophet,” and he occasionally found it necessary to carry-out bondage S&M sessions here and there, you may not be surprised at all. But what if that sex cult began in 1903 and ended in 1906 with a couple of murders and suicides, does that sound like anything you have read about before? Or, how about a cheater who murders his inconvenient wife, disassembles her over a fifteen hour period, then puts her bones in the same stove he cooks breakfast for his sons before sending them off to school? If that doesn’t surprise you, perhaps the ending will–but you’ll have to find out for yourself. In ‘The Dandy and the Squire,’ a smooth-talking peacock from Kentucky visits his northern ‘cousins,’ and charms three of the women into his bed. He’s a big time operator who talks fancy, dresses fancy, and tells great stories of his days as an adventurer, riverboat gambler, and sharp-minded deal maker. He’s so smooth, he’s able to murder the patriarch’s son, make him look like the bad guy, and marry the boy’s tender-hearted sister before the Yankees get wise to his lies. Good thing, too, because he had also talked the father into giving him the family farm. Chapter Five is the stranger-than-fiction story of ‘Shoebox Annie.’ During the early 20th Century, this trollish-looking woman introduced her freakish-looking son to a life of crime. Their decade’s long spree of lyin’, cheatin’, and stealin’ led them to become America’s first mother and son team of serial killers. They were so good at disposing of bodies, none of their four victims have ever been found. If ‘old’ stories sound boring to readers of contemporary true crime, I hope this book will change minds, and fully reveal just how wicked and decadent our ancestors were. And deadly. Volume II in the Vintage True Crime Stories series is a wrecking ball that smashes to pieces that phrase, “The Good Old Days.” Maybe you will believe me when you get to the last page.

    Now, in his first book of nonfiction, Percy challenges the notion that literary and genre fiction are somehow mutually exclusive. The title essay is an ode to the kinds of books that make many readers fall in love with fiction: science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, horror, from J.R.R. Tolkien to Anne Rice, Ursula K. Le Guin to Stephen King. Percy's own academic experience banished many of these writers in the name of what is "literary" and what is "genre." Then he discovered Michael Chabon, Aimee Bender, Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, and others who employ techniques of genre fiction while remaining literary writers. In fifteen essays on the craft of fiction, Percy looks to disparate sources such as Jaws, Blood Meridian, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to discover how contemporary writers engage issues of plot, suspense, momentum, and the speculative, as well as character, setting, and dialogue. An urgent and entertaining missive on craft, Thrill Me brims with Percy's distinctive blend of anecdotes, advice, and close reading, all in the service of one dictum: Thrill the reader.

    Translated by Helen Lane.