Miss Read's wonderfully festive collection of Christmas stories is packed with entertaining characters and enchanting tales.

    . . A fat little mafioso is going to war--in the clean, well-mannered streets of Minneapolis . . . A Jewish boy watches with wonder the rise and fall of a Hebrew school rebel--and sees the sadness at the heart of his own family. . . . Welcome to the world of Ethan Coen, one half of the filmmaking team that has unleashed a visionary, brutal, and uproarious portrait of America in such screen classics as "Fargo" and "Raising Arizona." Now Ethan Coen translates that vision to the printed page--in fourteen keenly imagined, sharply etched short stories. Blending parody with pathos, making the heinous heartbreaking, Coen demonstrates his unique gift for stunningly inventive narrative, brutal irony, offbeat characters, and crackling dialogue, delivering everything you would expect from such an original imagination.

    Offering the finest examples from all reaches of the genre, this collection charts the mystery's eminent history from the turn-of-the-century puzzles of Futrelle, to the seminal pulp fiction of Hammett and Chandler, to the mystery story's rise to legitimacy in the popular mind, a trend that has benefited masterly writers like Westlake, Hunter, and Grafton. Nowhere else can readers find a more thorough, more engaging, more essential distillation of American crime fiction. Penzler, the Best American Mystery Stories series editor, and Hillerman winnowed this select group out of a thousand stories, drawing on sources as diverse as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Esquire, Collier's and The New Yorker. Giants of the genre abound -- Raymond Chandler, Stephen King, Dashiell Hammett, Lawrence Block, Ellery Queen, Sara Paretsky, and others -- but the editors also unearthed gems by luminaries rarely found in suspense anthologies: William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Damon Runyon, Harlan Ellison, James Thurber, and Joyce Carol Oates. Mystery buffs and newcomers alike will delight in the thrilling stories and top-notch writing of a hundred years' worth of the finest suspense, crime, and mystery writing.

    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

    In their most desperate hour, Earthrealm's champions rallied in strength and spirit—saving their world from the forces of evil. In the years that followed, there existed a peace between realms for the first time since the Mortal Kombat tournaments began. But peace did not last for long...

    They expose the absurdity of our rituals, our definitions of sexuality, and above all, our expectations of happiness and self-fulfillment.       Cain’s protagonists are destined to suffer—and sometimes enjoy—the consequences of their own restless discontent.  In the title story, Lisa, a city dweller, is dissatisfied with her life and relationships. Her attempt at self-rejuvenation takes her on a hiking excursion through a foreign land. Lisa discovers a remote village where the ritualized and generous bisexual love of its inhabitants entrances her. She begins to abandon thoughts of home.      In “Cultivation,” Frances, a divorced mother strapped with massive credit card debt, has become an expert at growing pot. When she packs her three children and twelve pounds of homegrown into the minivan and travels cross-country to sell the stash, their journey becomes one of anguish, revelation, and ultimately transformation. “Cultivation,” like many of the stories in The Necessity of Certain Behaviors, follows a trail of broken relationships and the unfulfilled promises of modern American life.       Told in precise, evocative prose, these memorable stories illuminate the human condition from a compelling, funny, and entirely original perspective.

    events that, while peripheral to the saga itself, will shape events to come, shake the republic, and herald the one thing Caesar's army have feared most: a full-scale revolt.Cenabum: The fire arrow - Caesar's chief quartermaster, Cita, encounters trouble with supply lines.Bovillae: The fallen eagle - Former prefect Paetus leaves Rome with revenge on his mind.Gergovia: Rise of kings - Priscus and his companions witness tumultuous events firsthand.

    This surreal collection features such storylines as: a young man is persuaded to donate his heart to his dying mother; a girl comes of age in strange suburbia; and a man and a woman conduct a passionate love affair on a park bench.

    There are thirty-one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime - Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find. O'Connor published her first story, "The Geranium," in 1946, while she was working on her master's degree at the University of Iowa. Arranged chronologically, this collection shows that her last story, "Judgement Day" - sent to her publisher shortly before her death - is a brilliantly rewritten and transfigured version of "The Geranium." Taken together, these stories reveal a lively, penetrating talent that has given us some of the most powerful and disturbing fiction of the twentieth century. Also included is an introduction by O'Connor's longtime editor and friend, Robert Giroux.Contents:The geranium -- The barber -- Wildcat -- The crop -- The turkey -- The train -- The peeler -- The heart of the park -- A stoke of good fortune -- Enoch and the gorilla -- A good man is hard to find -- A late encounter with the enemy -- The life you save may be your own -- The river -- A circle in the fire -- The displaced person -- A temple of the Holy Ghost -- The artificial nigger -- Good country people -- You can't be any poorer than dead -- Greenleaf -- A view of the woods -- The enduring chill -- The comforts of home -- Everything that rises must converge -- The partridge festival -- The lame shall enter first -- Why do the heathen rage? -- Revelation -- Parker's back -- Judgement Day.

    In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash represents one of the peaks of his achievement, a compound of irony, affection, and perfect detail that speaks across generations.In God We Trust, Shepherd's wildly witty reunion with his Indiana hometown, disproves the adage "You can never go back." Bending the ear of Flick, his childhood-buddy-turned-bartender, Shepherd recalls passionately his genuine Red Ryder BB gun, confesses adolescent failure in the arms of Junie Jo Prewitt, and relives a story of man against fish that not even Hemingway could rival. From pop art to the World's Fair, Shepherd's subjects speak with a universal irony and are deeply and unabashedly grounded in American Midwestern life, together rendering a wonderfully nostalgic impression of a more innocent era when life was good, fun was clean, and station wagons roamed the earth.A comic genius who bridged the gap between James Thurber and David Sedaris, Shepherd may have accomplished for Holden, Indiana, what Mark Twain did for Hannibal, Missouri.

    The number that dictates her life at the protection camp. Regulated by a system of ringing bells, fortified cars, and rations, the survivors are protected from residual contaminates on the other side of the wall. Breaking the monotony of the highly structured camp, Simone and her friend skip school to enjoy one of the last nice days of fall. An afternoon game leads them to a new part of the forest, uncovering more than they expected. All thoughts of protection and rules are shattered by the appearance of the ivory tower. A tower riddled with a history of danger and death.When her friend shows up with a bruised face and thinly veiled threats, Simone has to decide how much she is willing to risk to find out the truth of the tower.

    Volume 2. Introduction / by Loren D. Estleman --The hound of the Baskervilles --The valley of fear --His last bow : The adventure of Wisteria Lodge : The singular experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles ; The tiger of San Pedro ; The adventure of the cardboard box ; The adventure of the red circle ; The adventure of the Bruce-Partington plans ; The adventure of the dying detective ; The disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax ; The adventure of the devil's foot ; His last bow --The case-book of Sherlock Holmes : The adventure of the illustrious client ; The adventure of the blanched soldier ; The adventure of the Mazarin stone ; The adventure of the three gables ; The adventure of the Sussex vampire ; The adventure of the three Garridebs ; The problem of Thor Bridge ; The adventure of the creeping man ; The adventure of the lion's mane ; The adventure of the veiled lodger ; The adventure of Shoscombe old place ; The adventure of the retired colourman.

    D. Salinger, originally published in the January 31, 1948 issue of The New Yorker. It was anthologized in 1949's 55 Short Stories from The New Yorker, as well as in Salinger's 1953 collection, Nine Stories.

    In post-World War II Los Angeles, as power was concentrating and fortunes were being made, a do-it-yourself culture of cool cats, outsiders, and oddballs populated the old downtown neighborhoods of Bunker Hill and Chavez Ravine. Ordinary working folks rubbed elbows with petty criminals, grifters, and all sorts of women at foggy end-of-the-line outposts in Venice Beach and Santa Monica.Rich with the essence and character of the times, suffused with the patois of the city's underclass, these are stories about the common people of Los Angeles, "a sunny place for shady people," and the strange things that happen to them. Musicians, gun shop owners, streetwalkers, tailors, door-to-door salesmen, drifters, housewives, dentists, pornographers, new arrivals, and hard-bitten denizens all intersect in cleverly plotted stories that center around some kind of shadowy activity. This quirky love letter to a lost way of life will appeal to fans of hard-boiled fiction and anyone interested in the city itself."Taken as a whole, this collection offers a panoramic view of a rapidly changing Los Angeles and its immigrant communities, rich in period detail and idiomatic dialogue, sometimes based on Cooder's own memories of growing up in the same neighborhoods in which the stories are often set." —Uncut Magazine"Cooder shouldn't stop making records. He should keep writing, too." —Rolling Stones"The stories of Ry Cooder are a lot like his music: stately, precise, well constructed; they grab you by the throat, quietly, and never let go. . . . " —Andrew J. Khaled Madigan, The Iowa Review"The strict Los Angeles setting - the city's highs and lows romanticised ceaselessly - make them like Raymond Chandler or Mickey Spillane." —Chris Johnston, Sydney Morning Herald"In Los Angeles Stories, his first published collection of stories, Cooder pays homage to the jazz, the blues and the Latin beat of a bygone era. He also honors a cast of boisterous musicians, some murdered, others spared to tell their gritty tales of life and death. A few famous musicians - John Lee Hooker and Charlie Parker among them - make cameo appearances in these pages, but most of the guitar players, drummers and lounge singers are as unknown as the repossession men, waitresses and mechanics they entertain in forgotten bars and derelict nightclubs." — San Francisco ChronicleRy Cooder is a world-famous guitarist, singer, and composer known for his slide guitar work, interest in roots music, and more recently for his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries, including The Buena Vista Social Club. He has composed soundtracks for more than twenty films, including Paris, Texas. Two recent albums were accompanied by stories Cooder wrote to accompany the music. This is his first published collection of stories.

    James's --The worm in the apple --The trouble of Marcie Flint --The bella lingua --The Wrysons --The country husband --The duchess --The scarlet moving van --Just tell me who it was --Brimmer --The golden age --The lowboy --The music teacher --A woman without a country --The death of Justina --Clementina --Boy in Rome --A miscellany of characters that will not appear --The chimera --The seaside houses --The angel of the bridge --The brigadier and the golf widow --A vision of the world --Reunion --An educated American woman --Metamorphoses --Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin --Montraldo --The ocean --Marito in città --The geometry of love --The swimmer --The world of apples --Another story --Percy --The fourth alarm --Artemis, the honest well digger --Three stories --The jewels of the Cabots.