The Gentle Grafter


O. Henry - 1908
    Henry is the pen name of American writer William Sydney Porter (1862-1910). Porter's 400 short stories are known for their wit, wordplay, characterization and the clever use of twist endings. He travelled to Austin in 1884, where he took a number of different jobs over the next several years, first as pharmacist then as a draftsman, bank teller and journalist. He also began writing as a sideline to employment. Porter's most prolific writing period started in 1902, when he moved to New York City to be near his publishers. He wrote 381 short stories while living there. He wrote a story a week for over a year for the New York World Sunday Magazine. His wit, characterization and plot twists were adored by his readers, but often panned by the critics. Yet, he went on to gain international recognition and is credited with defining the short story as a literary art form. His works include: Cabbages and Kings (1904), The Four Million (1906), Heart of the West (1907), The Trimmed Lamp and Other Stories of the Four Million (1907), The Voice of the City: Further Stories of the Four Million (1908), The Gentle Grafter (1908) and Roads of Destiny (1909).This collection contains:The octopus marooned --Jeff Peters as a personal magnet --Modern rural sports --The chair of philanthromathematics --The hand that rules the world --The exact science of matrimony --A midsummer masquerade --Shearing the wolf --Innocents of Broadway --Conscience in art --The man higher up --A tempered wind --Hostages to Momus --The ethics of pig.

The Romantic Adventures Of A Milkmaid


Thomas Hardy - 1896
    With one hand he was tightly grasping his forehead, the other hung over his knee. The attitude bespoke with sufficient clearness a mental condition of anguish. He was quite a different being from any of the men to whom her eyes were accustomed. She had never seen mustachios before, for they were not worn by civilians in Lower Wessex at this date.

Somebody's Luggage


Charles Dickens - 1862
    He fails to discover this, but he does find, secreted away in different parts of the luggage, quite a number of stories. Impressed by their quality, he succeeds in getting them published, although the identity of their author remains a mystery until a visitor comes calling. Written with Dickens's characteristic wit and descriptive skill—and boasting contributions by eminent Victorian writers Wilkie Collins, Adelaide Anne Procter, and Elizabeth Gaskell—Somebody's Luggage is a wonderful composite of tales. Charles Dickens (1812–70) is one of England’s most important literary figures. His works enjoyed enormous success in his day and are still regarded as among the most popular and widely read classics of all time.

A Poor Wise Man


Mary Roberts Rinehart - 1920
    This engrossing story begins, "The city turned its dreariest aspect toward the railway on blackened walls, irregular and ill-paved streets, gloomy warehouses, and over all a gray, smoke-laden atmosphere which gave it mystery and often beauty. Sometimes the softened towers of the great steel bridges rose above the river mist like fairy towers suspended between Heaven and earth. And again the sun tipped the surrounding hills with gold, while the city lay buried in its smoke shroud, and white ghosts of river boats moved spectrally along.

The Friendly Persuasion


Jessamyn West - 2003
    Her husband, Jess, shares Eliza's love of people and peaceful ways but, unlike Eliza, also displays a fondness for a fast horse and a lively tune. With their children, they must negotiate their way through a world that constantly confronts them—sometimes with candor, sometimes with violence—and tests the strength of their beliefs. Whether it's a gift parcel arriving on their doorstep or Confederate soldiers approaching their land, the Birdwells embrace life with emotion, conviction, and a love for one another that seems to conquer all.The Friendly Persuasion has charmed generations of readers as one of our classic tales of the American Midwest.

The Lay of the Last Minstrel 1805 (Revolution and Romanticism, 1789-1834)


Walter Scott - 1805
    Its impact on Border tourism was vast, as countless people, moved by Scott’s evocative description of the moonlit Melrose Abbey, flocked to the area. Painters too were inspired by the scene, and such was its fame that even prime minister William Pit recited sections from it in front of dinner guests. Told by an ageing minstrel to Ann, Duchess of Buccleuch in return for hospitality at Newark Castle, The Lay of the Last Minstrel is a powerful and dramatic tale concerning love, murder and kidnapping. A strong supernatural element lies at its heart, making it one of the most significant gothic tales ever written. This edition features an introduction by the Duke of Buccleuch.

Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage


Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - 1981
    This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth."Vonnegut is at the top of his form, and it is wonderful."--Newsday

Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel


Truman Capote - 1986
    It takes in calculating beauties and sadistic husbands along with such real-life supporting characters as Colette, the Duchess of Windsor, Montgomery Clift, and Tallulah Bankhead. Above all, this malevolently funny book displays Capote at his most relentlessly observant and murderously witty.

Love and Freindship: And Other Youthful Writings


Jane Austen - 1790
    But it is also a product of the times in which she grew up—dark, grotesque, often surprisingly bawdy, and a far cry from the polished, sparkling novels of manners for which she became famous. Drunken heroines, babies who bite off their mothers’ fingers, and a letter-writer who has murdered her whole family all feature in these highly spirited pieces. This edition includes all of Austen’s juvenilia, including her “History of England” and the novella Lady Susan, in which the anti-heroine schemes and cheats her way through high society. With a title that captures a young Austen’s original idiosyncratic spelling habits and an introduction by Christine Alexander that shows how Austen was self-consciously fashioning herself as a writer from an early age, this is a must-have for any Austen lover.

Tristessa


Jack Kerouac - 1960
    Wrapped in a spiritual atmosphere that expresses the yearnings of Kerouac to find himself, "Tristessa", translated by Jorge García- Robles, a specialist in the beat generation, is the story of the strange loving relationship that the author had with Esperanza, as well as the significant description of the atmosphere that surrounded it, which depicts some key places of Mexico City back then.Hero of the beat generation, the creator of a model of life that would be followed by thousands of young people in the entire world, a sui generis mystic, "Tristessa", which until recently was not known in Spanish and that was published in English, is one of his fresher and better achieved works. Tristessa es el nombre con el que Kerouac bautizó a Esperanza Villanueva, una joven mexicana católica, prostituta y adicta a ciertas drogas, de quien se enamoró durante una de sus estancias en México, país que visitaba con frecuencia, a mediados de los años cincuenta. Tristessa, en la traducción de Jorge García- Robles, especialista en la generación beat, es el relato de la extraña relación amorosa que tuvo con Esperanza, así como la significativa descripción del ambiente que la rodeaba, en la que aparecen retratos de algunos lugares clave de la Ciudad de México: Plaza Garibaldi, Niño Perdido, la colonia Roma. Escritor «al rojo vivo», como lo calificó Henry Miller, héroe de la generación beat, creador de un modelo de vida que seguirían miles de jóvenes en todo el mundo, místico sui géneris, Tristessa, que hasta hace poco no se conocía en español y que se publicó en inglés apenas hace diez años, es una de sus obras más frescas y mejor logradas.

Love Among the Haystacks and Other Stories


D.H. Lawrence - 1930
    It offers a range of work from Lawrence's earliest surviving published story, 'A Prelude', to 'New Eve and Old Adam' written at the height of his early maturity in 1913. Each story in this edition appears in a new, authoritative text based on the manuscripts, typescripts, corrected proofs and early printings drawn from libraries and private collections in England, Italy and America. All the stories have thus been stripped of the layers of errors introduced by typists, editors and printers in their previous publication. John Worthen's introduction sets out the composition and publication history of each story, and gives a full account of the context in which it was created. A textual apparatus records all variant readings and explanatory notes explain allusions, dialect forms and foreign words.

The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea


James Fenimore Cooper - 1824
    His first choice of career had been the U.S. Navy, in which he served as a midshipman from 1808 to 1810.In 1823, Cooper began writing The Pilot, which he saw as a sea novel that seamen would appreciate for its fidelity and yet one that landsmen could understand."Cooper's poetic power is reserved for the sea, which is no backdrop but a separate world with forces and laws of its own. The individuation of the ships, particularly the personification of the Ariel, contributes to the magic, but the exhilaration of the book comes from the triumph of human skill and intelligence over the uncertainties and downright hostilities of a world of waves, winds, and hidden reefs. The land offers neither a comparable challenge nor so heady a victory." -- from the Introduction.

Half A Lifetime Ago


Elizabeth Gaskell - 1855
    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The Nancy Mitford Omnibus


Nancy Mitford - 1986
    

The Works of Anton Checkov (100+ stories and plays with an active table of contents)


Anton Chekhov - 1929
    6, and In the Ravine.