Collected here for the first time are all the classic stories—and one all new tale—by The New York Times best-selling author R.A. Salvatore!From the startling origin of Drizzt’s panther companion, to the tale of Jarlaxle and Entreri’s first encounter with the dragon sisters, the tales in The Collected Stories enrich this epic series, and many are available here for the first time in years.

    This new collection of stories from the multi-award-winning author of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog contains:A Letter from the ClearysAt the RialtoDeath on the NileThe Soul Selects Her own SocietyFire WatchInside JobEven the QueenThe Winds of Marble ArchAll Seated on the GroundLast of the WinnebagosTen stories - which have all won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award or both - are compulsory reading for the serious science fiction fan.

    Though the characters may not be human, the situations in these stories bear an uncanny resemblance to the insanity of everyday life. In "The Toad, the Turtle, and the Duck," three strangers commiserate about animal bureaucracy while waiting in a complaint line. In "Hello Kitty," a cynical feline struggles to sit through his prison-mandated AA meetings. In "The Squirrel and the Chipmunk," a pair of star-crossed lovers is separated by prejudiced family members.With original illustrations by Ian Falconer, author of the bestselling Olivia series of children's books, these stories are David Sedaris at his most observant, poignant, and surprising.

    In News from Heaven, Jennifer Haigh—bestselling author of Faith and The Condition—returns to the territory of her acclaimed novel Baker Towers with a collection of short stories set in and around the fictionalized coal-mining town of Bakerton, Pennsylvania.Exploring themes of restlessness, regret, redemption and acceptance, Jennifer Haigh depicts men and women of different generations shaped by dreams and haunted by disappointments. Janet Maslin of the New York Times has called Haigh's Bakerton stories "utterly, entrancingly alive on the page," comparable to Richard Russo's Empire Falls.

    Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi,” William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” have been long regarded as literary classics, while others, such as Frank Stockton’s “The Lady or the Tiger?” and Ellis Parker Butler’s “Pigs Is Pigs,” are lesser known but well worth discovering.The carefully selected stories, each preceded by an illuminating headnote, powerfully illustrate the varied richness of our national literature and history. This beautifully packaged volume, containing the unforgettable classic short stories that evoke our shared American tradition and national identity, makes the perfect gift for the short story aficionado and novice alike.

    Major literary talent Ramona Ausubel, author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty, coming Summer 2016, combines the otherworldly wisdom of her much-loved debut novel, No One Is Here Except All of Us, with the precision of the short-story form. A Guide toBeing Born is organized around the stages of life—love, conception, gestation, birth—and the transformations that happen as people experience deeply altering life events, falling in love, becoming parents, looking toward the end of life. In each of these eleven stories Ausubel’s stunning imagination and humor are moving, entertaining, and provocative, leading readers to see the familiar world in a new way.In “Atria” a pregnant teenager believes she will give birth to any number of strange animals rather than a human baby; in “Catch and Release” a girl discovers the ghost of a Civil War hero living in the woods behind her house; and in “Tributaries” people grow a new arm each time they fall in love. Funny, surprising, and delightfully strange—all the stories have a strong emotional core; Ausubel’s primary concern is always love, in all its manifestations.

    Twenty-five or so outstanding writers have been asked by Zadie Smith to make up a fictional character. By any measure, creating character is at the heart of the fictional enterprise, and this book concentrates on writers who share a talent for making something recognizably human out of words (and, in the case of the graphic novelists, pictures). But the purpose of the book is variety: straight "realism"-if such a thing exists-is not the point. There are as many ways to create character as there are writers, and this anthology features a rich assortment of exceptional examples. The writers featured in The Book of Other People include: Aleksandar Hemon Nick Hornby Hari Kunzru Toby Litt David Mitchell George Saunders Colm Tóibín Chris Ware, and more

    1 Brooklyn and Tor.com's Books to Read in February From the author of Heartbreaker, a disquieting collection tracing the destructive consequences of the desire for connectionA man, forgotten by the world, takes care of his deaf brother while euthanizing dogs for a living. A stepbrother so desperately wants to become his stepsibling that he rapes his girlfriend. In Maryse Meijer’s decidedly dark and searingly honest collection Rag, the desperate human desire for connection slips into a realm that approximates horror.Meijer’s explosive debut collection, Heartbreaker, reinvented sexualized and romantic taboos, holding nothing back. In Rag, Meijer’s fearless follow-up, she shifts her focus to the dark heart of intimacies of all kinds, and the ways in which isolated people’s yearning for community can breed violence, danger, and madness. With unparalleled precision, Meijer spins stories that leave you troubled and slightly shaken by her uncanny ability to elicit empathy for society’s most marginalized people.

    His damaged, searching narrators deliver their reports of addiction, lust, loneliness, grief, and the doomed dream of rock 'n' roll with a sly lyricism and eerie spareness that somehow redeem them. Listen to this chorus of gallows humor and goodwill sometimes gone bad and hear wild voices rise out of the din of city living: Gary is a failed punk icon turned petty drug dealer and amateur self- actualization guru; the Chersky girl makes a strange midnight discovery roller-skating through a Depression-era morgue. Pot-dazed Trotskyists, summer-camp sadists, and babysitters with an eye toward erotic humiliation also make themselves known in the lost, shattered landscapes of Lipsyte's fictions. "When you have an old soul like I do," deadpans one hero, "everything gets old really quick. Nothing is new. An avocado, a glass of beer, everything tastes like it's been sitting out on a table too long." These stories, loosely linked in character and setting, recall the stark realism of Denis Johnson and the wild humor of Barry Hannah. In these poignant, sharp-witted tales, Sam Lipsyte proves himself one of today's most visceral and fearless short-story writers.

    Threaded with magic, transcending time and place, these stories explore what it means to cross borders and break down walls, personally and politically. In one story, suburban families perform oblations to cattlelike angels who live on their roofs, believing that their “thoughts and prayers” will protect them from the world’s violence. In another, inhabitants of an unnamed dictatorship slowly lose their own agency as pieces of their bodies go missing and, with them, the essential rights that those appendages serve. “The Great Escape” tells of an old woman who hides away in her apartment, reliving the past among beautiful objects she’s hoarded, refusing all visitors, until she disappears completely. In the title story, children begin to levitate, flying away from their parents and their home country, leading them to eat rocks in order to stay grounded. With elements of science fiction and fantasy, fabulism and magical realism, Brenda Peynado uses her stories to reflect our flawed world, and the incredible, terrifying, and marvelous nature of humanity.

    Some money from each copy of Speaking with the Angel sold will benefit autism education charities around the world, including The Treehouse School in London, where Nick’s son Danny is a student, and the New York Child Learning Institute here in the States. This project is truly a labor of love for Hornby and the other writers involved, many of whom are Nick’s friends.These original first-person narratives come from the most exciting voices in fiction. Melissa Bank gives readers a glimpse into the mind of a modern New Yorker whose still-new relationship is a constant source of surprise in “The Wonder Spot.” In Zadie Smith’s “I’m the Only One,” a young man recalls his strained relationship with his diva-esque sister. Dave Egger’s “After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned,” is told from the viewpoint of an unfortunate pit bull. Helen Fielding offers up a new twist on I’ve fallen and I can’t get up in “Luckybitch.” And in Nick Hornby’s “NippleJesus,” a bruiser finds out that guarding modern art is far more hazardous than controlling the velvet ropes at a nightclub. Speaking with the Angel also includes stories from Roddy Doyle, Irvine Welsh, Colin Firth, John O’Farrell, Robert Harris, Patrick Marber, and Giles Smith.Twelve completely new stories, written by twelve undeniably imaginative voices. Speaking with the Angel is at turns clever, outrageous, witty, edgy, tender, and wicked. This is what they meant by original.

    Homes exposes the heart of an uneasy America in her new collection - exploring our attachments to each other through characters who aren't quite who they hoped to become, though there is no one else they can be.In A Prize for Every Player, a man is nominated to run for president by the customers of a big box store, while he and his family do their weekly shopping. At a conference on genocide(s) in the title story, old friends rediscover themselves and one another - finding spiritual and physical comfort in ancient traditions. And in Hello Everybody and She Got Away, Homes revisits a Los Angeles family obsessed with the surfaces and frightened of what lives below.In the nearly three decades since her seminal debut collection The Safety of Objects, Homes has been celebrated by readers and critics alike as one of our boldest and most original writers, acclaimed for her psychological accuracy and "satire so close to the truth it's terrifying" (Ali Smith). Her first book since the Women's Prize-winning May We Be Forgiven, Days of Awe is a major new addition to her body of visionary, fearless, outrageously funny work.Brother on Sunday --Whose story is it, and why is it always on her mind? --Hello everybody --All is good except for the rain --National cage bird show --Your mother was a fish --Last good time --Be mine --A prize for every player --Omega point --She got away

    Hempel, fiercely admired by writers and reviewers, has a sterling reputation that is based on four very short collections of stories, roughly fifteen thousand stunning sentences, written over a period of nearly three decades. These are stories about people who make choices that seem inevitable, whose longings and misgivings evoke eternal human experience. With compassion, wit, and the acutest eye, Hempel observes the marriages, minor disasters, and moments of revelation in an uneasy America. When "Reasons to Live, " Hempel's first collection, was published in 1985, readers encountered a pitch-perfect voice in fiction and an unsettling assessment of the culture. That collection includes "San Francisco," which Alan Cheuse in "The Chicago Tribune" called "arguably the finest short story composed by any living writer." In "At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, " her second collection, frequently compared to the work of Raymond Carver, Hempel refined and developed her unique grace and style and her unerring instinct for the moment that defines a character. Also included here, in their entirety, are the collections "Tumble Home" and "The Dog of the Marriage." As Rick Moody says of the title novella in Tumble Home, "the leap in mastery, in seriousness, and sheer literary purpose was inspiring to behold.... And yet," he continues, ""The Dog of the Marriage, " the fourth collection, is even better than the other three...a triumph, in fact." "The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel" is the perfect opportunity for readers of contemporary American fiction to catch up to one of its masters. Moody's passionate and illuminating introduction celebrates both the appeal and the importance of Hempel's work.

    A poisoned apple and a monkey's paw with the power to change fate; a girl whose extraordinarily long hair causes catastrophe; a man with one human arm and one swan's wing; and a house deep in the forest, constructed of gumdrops and gingerbread, vanilla frosting and boiled sugar. In A Wild Swan and Other Tales, the people and the talismans of lands far, far away, the mythic figures of our childhoods and the source of so much of our wonder are transformed by Michael Cunningham into stories of sublime revelation. Here are the moments that our fairy tales forgot or deliberately concealed: the years after a spell is broken, the rapturous instant of a miracle unexpectedly realized, or the fate of a prince only half cured of a curse. The Beast stands ahead of you in line at the convenience store, buying smokes and a Slim Jim, his devouring smile aimed at the cashier. A malformed little man with a knack for minor acts of wizardry goes to disastrous lengths to procure a child. A loutish and lazy Jack prefers living in his mother's basement to getting a job, until the day he trades a cow for a handful of magic beans. Re-imagined by one of the most gifted storytellers of his generation, and exquisitely illustrated by Yuko Shimizu, rarely have our bedtime stories been this dark, this perverse, or this true.

    In this compelling, all--original anthology, the masters of suspense take you into the, darkest depths of terror as they explore both sides of the human hunt. These 19 chilling tales of horror and suspense will leave pulses pounding long after the last page has been turned.