From a typical suburban childhood to his perpetual search for true love, Albo evokes a poignant, nostalgic past and a vibrant, energetic present. By turns vulnerable and jaded, flamboyant and obsessive, Hornito is full of subversive humor and outrageous irony.

    J. Charles ups the ante in her Society of Gentlemen series with a sizzling eBook short story. The youngest son and the blackest sheep in his family, Lord Gabriel Ashleigh never imagined he could sink so low. Though he’s a notoriously bad gambler, he takes on the formidable but strangely alluring Francis Webster, only to lose everything: all his money, the lovely estate he inherited from his aunt, and any hope of future happiness. So it’s a shock when Webster summons him to a private game for a chance to win back his possessions. The stake? If he fails, Ash must surrender his body. Francis has been waiting years for this moment. At Eton, Ash’s elder brother harassed him relentlessly. Now, consumed by lust and rage, Francis is only too happy to exploit Ash’s foolish indiscretions. But as Francis strips the magnificently built youth—first of his family assets, then his clothes—he begins to wonder whether he’s been plotting revenge . . . or exquisite seduction. Praise for the Society of Gentlemen series “The Regency period gets more rakish than ever in the Society of Gentlemen series. I’ll read anything K. J. Charles writes!”—New York Times bestselling author Kate Pearce Includes a special message from the editor, as well as an excerpt from another Loveswept title.

    In each chapter, titled after a letter of the alphabet, an anonymous narrator details his experiences, travelling to cruising grounds and sex clubs, exploring the boundaries of sex, desire, pleasure, and the body, while reflecting on the limits of language and the act of writing.In the tradition of Georges Bataille, Kathy Acker and Jean Genet, these pieces take us to places language doesn't often go. Kemp powerfully stages a series of anonymous encounters, describing the relentless pursuit of sexual pleasure with luminous intensity, while at the same time facing the impossibility of capturing the moments he describes. This is a bold and challenging work, unashamedly sensual and searching. Kemp beautifully counterpoises explicit description with a searing interrogation of the extreme measures taken in the quest for sexual fulfillment.

    For Hemingway fans The Complete Short Stories is an invaluable treasury.

    a land of medieval forests, stonewalled cities, and railways reaching into the mountains where the old gods dwell. A country where life is harsh, dreams are gentle, and people feel torn by powerful forces and fight to remain whole. In this enchanting collection, Ursula K. Le Guin brings to mainstream fiction the same compelling mastery of word and deed, of story and character, of violence and love, that has won her the Pushcart Prize, and the Kafka and National Book Awards.

    Yet all his work is united by one common thread: a vivid and profound understanding of the vast set of emotions that bring strength and mythic resonance to our frail species. Ray Bradbury characters may find themselves anywhere and anywhen. A horrified mother may give birth to a strange blue pyramid. A man may take Abraham Lincoln out of the grave—and meet another who puts him back. An amazing Electrical Grandmother may come to live with a grieving family. An old parrot may have learned over long evenings to imitate the voice of Ernest Hemingway, and became the last link to the great man. A priest on Mars may confront his fondest dream: to meet the Messiah. Each of these magnificent creations has something to tell us about our humanity—and all of their fates await you in this new trade edition of twenty-eight classic Bradbury stories and one luscious poem. Travel on an unpredictable and unforgettable literary journey—safe in the hands of one of the century's great men of imagination.

    In the title story, the narrator, desperate to save a love affair on the rocks, hires an actor to play a friend he invented in order to seem less lonely, after his boyfriend catches on to his compulsion for lying and demands to know this friend is real; in "Aim for the Heart", a man's lies about a hunting habit leave him with an unexpected deer carcass and the need to parse unsettling high school memories; in "Rorschach", a theater producer runs a show in which death row inmates are crucified in an on-stage rendering of the New Testament, while being haunted daily by an unrequited love and nightly by ghosts of his own creation.In I Know You Know Who I Am, Kispert deftly explores deception and performance, the uneasiness of reconciling a queer identity with the wider world, and creates a sympathetic, often darkly humorous, portrait of characters searching for paths to intimacy, desperate for connection.

    Named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, nominated for the 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award, and given the Lambda Award.

    From the author of Bad Behavior comes a new compilation of clever and cutting-edge stories propelling readers into a world of men and women where the ways of desire are sometimes distasteful and complex.Tiny, smiling daddy --Because they wanted to --Orchid --The blanket --Comfort --The girl on the plane --The dentist --Kiss and tell --The wrong thing Turgor --Respect --Processing --Stuff

    This makes life difficult for Matt as he maneuvers the marriage question with his lover and how best to "come out" to his traditional Chinese parents.This story is also included in Some of the Best From Tor.com, 2013 Edition: A Tor.Com Original

    In these twenty-seven stories, written and published while America was in the grip of McCarthyism, Philip K. Dick speaks up for ordinary people and against militarism, paranoia and xenophobia - and always in his marvellously varied, quirky and entertainingly idiosyncratic style.Comprising:The Cookie Lady;Beyond the Door;Second Variety;Jon's World;The Cosmic Poachers;Progeny;Some Kinds of Life;Martians Come in Clouds;The Commuter;The World She Wanted;A Surface Raid;Project: Earth;The Trouble with Bubbles;Breakfast at Twilight;A Present for Pat;The Hood Maker;Of Withered Apples;Human Is;Adjustment Team;The Impossible Planet;Imposter;James P. Crow;Planet for Transients;Small Town;Souvenir;Survey Team;Prominent Author.

    Macabre, unsettling and deliciously enjoyable, these stories make the perfect bedtime read – but be warned, once you've started reading you won't be able to stop . .

    I'd never known an adult I could communicate with or trust, and I communicated with him all the time, whether I was actually talking to him or not. And I trusted him...."Fourteen-year-old Charles desperately wants two things: a father and a way out. Little love has come his way until the summer he befriends a mysterious scarred man named Justin McLeod, nicknamed "The Man Without a Face." Charles enlists McLeod's help as tutor for the St. Matthew's school entrance exams, his ticket away from the unpleasant restrictions of his home life. But more important than anything he could get out of a book, that summer Charles learns from McLeod a stirring life lesson about the many faces of love.

    Yes, it will be dangerous, frequently brutal, and often devastating. But it’s also savagely funny, deliriously strange, and absolutely brimming with adventure.In these edgy, unexpected tales, a body-hopping mercenary avenges his pet elephant, and an orphan falls in love with a sentient starship. Fighters ally to power a reality-bending engine, and a swamp-dwelling introvert tries to save the world—from her plague-casting former wife.So come meet Kameron Hurley in the future. The version she's created here is weirder—and far more hopeful—than you could ever imagine.

    The stories collected here range from delightfully barbed portraits of the British upper classes to an alternative ending to Waugh's novel A Handful of Dust; from a "missing chapter" in the life of Charles Ryder, the nostalgic hero of Brideshead Revisited, to a plot-packed morality tale that Waugh composed at a very tender age; from an epistolary lark in the voice of "a young lady of leisure" to a darkly comic tale of scandal in a remote (and imaginary) African outpost.The Complete Stories is a dazzling distillation of Waugh's genius-abundant evidence that one of the twentieth century's most admired and enjoyed English novelists was also a master of the short form.