Against the relentless onslaught of Russian and Czechoslovakian divisions pouring into West Germany, Captain Kurt Mohr and his tank crews wage a desperate battle to delay the enemy advance. As a brand new company commander, he must also prove his metal to the men who serve under him. Amid the breakneck speed of mechanized warfare, Mohr battles his own self-doubt and fear in order to quickly adapt to the fast-paced battlefield environment. Fighting in Lower Bavaria also poses unique challenges to his command abilities as the close-in nature of the terrain forces him to deal with threats at point blank range. As the war's first day progresses, the brutal reality of war hits home. With the future of their nation at stake, Mohr and his men become the storm and steel that avenge the countrymen whose lives they are sworn to protect.

    Amrutananda and Kapiladeva were cunning and extremely sly landlords in two neighbouring villages. They would cheat and ill-treat their labourers, but make a lot of money. However, someone had to teach them a lesson and that’s how Manikya arrived on their doorstep, offering to work for them for free, all set to teach them two very important lessons. Another clever story from the master of funny stories, Two Unforgettable Lessons will amuse you, entertain you and leave you rooting for Manikya and his brains long after you’ve finished the story.

    This collection focuses upon the land he knew and loved so well—Normandy. Its people and its countryside are portrayed here in vivid colour and with great warmth. Amusing, saucy, and sometimes even farcical they may be, but they are also capable of great pathos, often branching off to end tragically. It is this skilful and affecting blend of tragedy and comedy, of tears and laughter, which make Maupassant's Normandy Stories the enduring favourites they are today.11 stories:Disc 1. In the country - Pierrot - A Normandy joke - A cock crowed - Old Boniface's crime - The confession - Disc 2. An apparition - The little cask - The castaway - Bombard - Master Belhomme's beast.

    All the works here are avaiable for free at The White Review (At the Clinic), The Dublin Review (Concord 34 and Even if you beat me), New Statesman (Robbie Brady's astonishing late goal takes its place in our personal histories), The Irish Times (Mr. Salary) and The New Yorker (Color and Light).We just wanted to put those stories together to read them better and more confortable. Sally Rooney has all the rights of this work reserved. Even the cover of this e-book is an adaptation of the cover of Two Stories's audiobook, by Sally Rooney and published by Faber & Faber.Thank you for everything, Sally Rooney! Your stories make the world happier <3

    Michelle Latiolais has given us the rarest item, a splendidly articulated masterpiece.” —William Kittredge“In this luminous collection of stories, the gifted Michelle Latiolais writes of loss in all its surprising manifestations. Widow is a devastation and a wonder.” —Christine Schutt“There is something mysterious about this book, as there always is in the writing that matters most. It eludes explanation. It illumines terrifying realities. Only because these pages seem nakedly willing to take the imprint of every emotion, no matter how ugly, do they possess this great beauty.” —Elizabeth TallentThe stories of Widow conjure the nuances of inner sensations as if hitting the notes of a song, deftly played across human memory. These meditations bravely explore the physiology of grief through a masterful interweaving of tender insight and unflinching detail—reminding us that the inner life is best understood through the medium of storytelling. Among these stories of loss are interwoven other tales, creating a bridge to the ineffable pleasures and follies of life before the catastrophe. Throughout this collection, Latiolais captures the longing, humor, and strange grace that accompany life’s most transformative chapters.Michelle Latiolais is the author of Widow: Stories, a New York Times Editor's Choice selection, and two previous novels, including A Proper Knowledge, also published by Bellevue Literary Press. She is the recipient of the Gold Medal for Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California and an English professor and co-director of the Programs in Writing at the University of California at Irvine.

    Set mainly amid Indian reservations and uranium mills, these twelve stories create a kaleidoscopic view of family, myth, love, landscape, and loss in a place where infinite skies and endless roads suggest a world of possibility, yet dreams are deceiving, like an oasis, just beyond reach. Whether it’s a young woman pushed quite literally to the edge on a desolate mountain pass, an orphaned brother and sister trying to patch together an existence one stitch at a time, a cop who suspects his kleptomaniac wife is stealing from other people — materially and emotionally — or a wily roadside hypnotist whose alleged power is both wonderful and strange, Ann Cummins’s characters want to transcend the circumstances of their lives, to believe in the eventuality of change. Again and again, Ann Cummins generates imagery of white-hot intensity and pushes the limits of both the human spirit and the short story form. Gritty, seductive, and always daring, this unforgettable collection puts forth a haunting new vision of hope and heartache in contemporary America and confirms the arrival of an important new voice.

    

    He sets his eyes upon the people, the beautiful places and the spectacular wildlife. He captures the adventure and joy filled in the way of life in the hills vividly. This collection of fiction and non-fiction works is a must-read for ardent Ruskin Bond fans.

    

    It springs spontaneously from the lofty hearts and makes its own way to unite with its generous reciprocators. At times, it becomes dry and seeks the abundance of a big-hearted lover. In other scenarios, the river gets frozen and looks for the warmth of a passionate soul. And in some cases, it may just be ready and waiting to leap forth from its humble abode. All it takes is just a little stroke of fate for that river to unleash itself and flow in its full glory.'Unleash That River' is an anthology of six short stories of love and contemporary romance.1) Keys: When Dhyey returns home to meet his mother after several months, he discovers that she has started sharing the house with a beautiful tenant, Nishita who not only holds the key to his house, but to his locked heart as well.2) Dot Every 'i' And Cross Every 't':Varun and Puja met for the first time through an arranged marriage proposal. However, in order to make sure that they are the ones who can really complement each other for the rest of their lives, they must take a step out of their comfort zones, and do something unprecedented and outright crazy.3) Why Not:Neel and Rashi both have miserably failed at their first romantic endeavor. Will they keep cursing their rotten luck and ask why? Or will they reclaim the charge of their lives to embrace the second chance and say why not?4) Immeasurable Nouns:Aditi and Kartik are the academic stars of their class and each other’s arch rivals. Aditi hates boys. But Kartik secretly loves her. To win her heart, he must wait for the right moment and make every move cautiously. One day, during an English class, that moment presents itself in its full bloom.5) Madly In Marriage:Swayam and Soniya have not left any stone unturned to avoid marrying each other. But their families see this union as a match made in heaven and are hellbent to see it through. 6) Hearts And Ice-creams:Tushar is obsessed with finding his childhood crush who disappeared out of his life without a clue. Fifteen years later, will he be able to move on or destiny has yet to play its last trick?

    Jim Tomlinson’s characters each face the desire to reclaim dreams left behind, along with something of the dreamer that was also lost. Starkly rendered, these spiraling characters inhabit a specific place and class---small-town Kentucky, working-class America---but the stories, told in all their humor and tragedy, are universal.In each story the characters face conflict, sometimes within themselves, sometimes with each other. Each carries a past and with it an urge to return and repair. In “First Husband, First Wife,” ex-spouses are repeatedly drawn together by a shared history they cannot seem to escape, and they are finally forced to choose between leaving the past or leaving each other. LeAnn and Cass are grown sisters who conspire to help their prideful mother in “Things Kept.” “Prologue” is a voyeuristic journey through the surprisingly different lives of two star-crossed friends, each with its successes and pitfalls, told through their letters over thirty-five years. In “Stainless,” Annie and Warren divide their possessions on the final night of their marriage. Their realtor has advised them to “declutter” the house they are leaving, but they discover that most of the clutter cannot be so easily removed. The choices are never simple, and for every thing kept, something must be abandoned. Tomlinson’s characters struggle but eventually find their way, often unknowingly, to points of departure, to places where things just might change.

    Henry Prize stories collection has offered an exciting selection of the best stories published in hundreds of literary magazines every year. Such classic works of American literature as Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers (1927); William Faulkner’s Barn Burning (1939); Carson McCuller’s A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud (1943); Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery (1949); J.D. Salinger’s For Esme with Love and Squalor (1963); John Cheever’s The Country Husband (1956) ; and Flannery O’Conner’s Everything that Rises Must Converge (1963) all were O. Henry Prize stories. An accomplished new series editor--novelist and short story writer Laura Furman--has read more than a thousand stories to identify the 20 winners, each one a pleasure to read today, each one a potential classic. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003 also contains brief essays from each of the three distinguished judges on their favorite story, and comments from the prize-winning writers on what inspired their stories. There is nothing like the ever rich, surprising, and original O. Henry collection for enjoying the contemporary short story.The Thing in the Forest A. S. Byatt The Shell Collector Anthony Doerr Burn Your Maps Robyn Jay Leff Lush Bradford Morrow God’s Goodness Marjorie Kemper Bleed Blue in Indonesia Adam Desnoyers The Story Edith Pearlman Swept Away T. Coraghessan Boyle Meanwhile Ann Harleman Three Days. A Month. More. Douglas Light The High Road Joan Silber Election Eve Evan S. Connell Irish Girl Tim Johnston What Went Wrong Tim O’Brien The American Embassy Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Kissing William Kittredge Sacred Statues William Trevor Two Words Molly Giles Fathers Alice Munro Train Dreams Denis Johnson

    

    Now, twisting the film novelization genre in an entirely new direction, Stillman has produced something equally fresh and surprising: a novel based on the characters and events touched on in The Last Days of Disco—the movie The New York Times called “deft, funny and improbably touching”—with results that are even defter, funnier, and more improbably poignant.Jimmy Steinway, the “Dancing Adman” of The Last Days of Disco (and, we later discover, a frustrated, desk-drawer novelist), gets his lucky break when Castle Rock Entertainment, unable to find anyone else to write a novelization of the movie, reluctantly gives the assignment to him. Jimmy struggles to bring to light the true origins of the story at Kate Preston’s party in Sag Harbor and the fast, then slow, then fast again unfolding of his love for Alice Kinnon, the boyfriendless social failure from Hampshire College whose quite charm detonated a bitter rivalry between him and four of his Harvard classmates. (He also sets the record straight about the beautiful, passionate, painfully candid Charlotte Pingree.)Set primarily in Manhattan in the early 1980s—but spanning two continents and two decades—The Last Days of Disco, with Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards redresses the wrongs done these characters and this period, while helping to ameliorate the comic novel shortage in the world today.

    Carol Shields' first novels, "Small Ceremonies" and "The Box Garden," each told from the viewpoint of a sister, published as one.