Two grown sisters struggle with old assumptions about each other as they stumble to build a new relationship in A Map of Modern Palm Springs. Rome is the setting of Puttanesca, as two young widows move tentatively forward, still surrounded by ghosts and disappointments from the past.These twelve stories, filled with the sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language that are sure to become Straub’s hallmarks, announce the arrival of a major new talent.

    In the title story, an elephant keeper courts danger from his gentle charge; in “Miss Waldron’s Red Colobus,” a headstrong young woman in Africa is lured by the freedom of the monkeys in the trees; in “Talk Turkey,” a boy has secret conversations with the turkeys on his friend’s family’s farm; in “Slim’s Last Ride,” a child plays chilling games with his pet rabbit; in “Gallus Gallus,” a pompous husband projects his anger at his wife onto her prized rooster.This fresh, inventive debut will introduce Hannah Tinti as one of the most gifted writers of her generation. Enter her world at your own risk, and you will come away bewitched.From the Hardcover edition.

    Written with unsparing honesty, these stories vividly illustrate love's complexities, the intricacies of family relationships, struggles with sexual identity, and the specter of AIDS. Whether chronicling a dying man's acts of vandalism, a divorcée under house arrest, a Mormon couple's potluck dinner for their few homosexual acquaintances, or a young Los Angeles boy's sexual awakening, the stories in Guess Again are full of wit, subtlety, and emotional generosity.

    Indeed, this enduring obsession provided fodder for some of Singh’s best-known work, both as a journalist and as a peerless raconteur.On Women, a wide-ranging selection of Singh’s writings on the subject, includes Singh’s recounting of an embarrassingly drunken meeting with Begum Para, an actress of yesteryears; a sharp profile of Shraddha Mata, a tantric sadhvi who was alleged to have borne Jawaharlal Nehru’s illegitimate child; and a touching sketch of Singh’s grandmother in the twilight of her life. Also featured in this volume are unforgettable women characters from Khushwant Singh’s most popular works of fiction: Georgine, a clueless American teenager who is seduced by a middle-aged tour guide in Delhi; and Nooran, a young girl in pre-Partition Punjab, who discovers the sweet pleasure of first love only to be overtaken by cataclysmic events which leave her adrift.Insightful, poignant, and occasionally wicked, the essays and extracts in On Women are testament to why Khushwant Singh remains one of the most popular writers of our times.

    They are stories about the woods, houses hidden in the gaps between mountains. Behind them, the skeletons of old and powerful machines rust into the slate and leaves. Water red with iron leeches from the empty mines and pools near a stone foundation. The boy there plays in the bones because he is a child and this will be his childhood. He watches while winter comes falling slowly down over the road. Sometimes he remembers a girl, her hair and the perfume she wore. These are stories about her and where she might have gone. He waits for sleep because in the next story he will leave. The boy watches an airplane blink red past his window. From here, you can't hear its violence.

    In these three linked stories, “Chance,” “Soon,” and “Silence”—which, together, inspired Pedro Almodóvar’s film Julieta—her virtuosic talents are once again on display. The stories follow a schoolteacher named Juliet as she is swept up by fate: meeting an older man on a train and starting an affair; later, visiting her parents as a young mother; and later still, searching for contact with her estranged daughter. As with all of Munro’s characters, Juliet radiates warmth, dignity, and hope, even as she is unflinching in the face of betrayal and loss. In Munro’s hands, her journey is as surprising, extraordinary, and precious as life itself.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    A teacher struggles to bond with jaded students as bodies drop from the sky; a man meets his illegitimate son for an awkward pumpkin picking excursion; a professor develops a sexual obsession with the student destined to surpass him; and a female cyberotica writer looks for conventionality in the form of a suitor who may be in love with her dog. Whether writing about a small town murder, homeschooling, experiments on lab mice, or the disintegration of a long marriage over the course of a golf game, Amend's characters are more than whip-smart and laugh-out-loud funny, they are chillingly real, memorable people looking for love--or what passes for it.

    The exalted, memorable characters in Kirn's acclaimed debut short story col lection confront the real hard bargains in life that spring up from the business of simply living, and Kirn transforms these hard-luck stories into strapping moral lessons which evoke the bonds that unite us all.

    ----- From the mind of pulp great, H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and that the universe is fundamentally alien. He's developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Christian humanism. -----48 Stories included in this volume: The Beast in the Cave; The Alchemist; The Tomb; Dagon; A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson; Sweet Ermengarde; Polaris; The Green Meadow; Beyond the Wall of Sleep; Memory; Old Bugs; The Transition of Juan Romero; The White Ship; The Doom that Came to Sarnath; The Statement of Randolph Carter; The Terrible Old Man; The Tree; The Cats of Ulthar; The Temple; Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn; The Street; Poetry and the Gods; Celephais; From Beyond; Nyarlathotep; The Picture in the House; The Crawling Chaos; Ex Oblivione; The Nameless City; The Quest of Iranon; The Moon-Bog; The Outsider; The Other Gods; The Music of Erich Zann; Herbet West: Reanimator; Hypnos; What the Moon Brings; Azathoth; The Horror at Martin's Beach; The Hound; The Lurking Fear; The Rats in the Walls; The Unnamable; The Festival; The Shunned House; The Horror at Red Hook; He; In the Vault ---- Full of intrigue, romance and adventure, this collection is a must for pulp literature fans!

    In these and other thought-provoking stories, legendary author Harlan Ellison dissects the primal fears and inherent frailties common to all people and gives voice to the thoughts and feelings human beings bury deep within their souls. Unflinching and unapologetic, Ellison depicts men and women in all their ugliness and beauty, and humanity in all its fury and glory. Stories include “Introduction: Mortal Dreads,” “Jeffty Is Five,” “How’s the Night Life on Cissalda?,” “Flop Sweat,” “Would You Do it For a Penny?” (written in collaboration with Haskell Barkin), “The Man Who Was Heavily Into Revenge,” “Shoppe Keeper,” “All the Lies That Are My Life,” “Django,” “Count the Clock That Tells the Time,” “In the Fourth Year of the War,” “Alive and Well on a Friendless Voyage,” “All the Birds Come Home to Roost,” “Opium,” “The Other Eye of Polyphemus,” “The Executioner of the Malformed Children,” and “Shatterday.”

    Come Up and See Me Sometime is a thought-provoking rant, surprising readers with mirror images of the fears, foibles, and facades of their own lives.

    It was the opinion of the community that her mother was heartbroken and had lost the will to live. Sarah couldn’t even blame her mother; losing a daughter and a husband in one year was a bitter pill to swallow for anyone. Taking care of her mother had become Sarah’s number one priority; her second was finding her missing sister. Since Katie had disappeared during her rumspringa shortly after their father had passed away Sarah had done everything within her power to find her sister to no avail. With her sister still missing and her neighbor David, whom she secretly loves, courting a girl Sarah knew would only hurt him, she is not looking forward to Christmas at all. But when hope starts to bloom in her chest, things suddenly start to change. Sarah knows it’s the work of God, but the question remains will a Christmas miracle soothe the loneliness in her heart? Enjoy this sweet Amish romance that follows the hardships Sarah faces as she takes care of her mother while searching for her sister. Will Sarah finally find her sister? Can David be honest about his feelings and will Sarah’s mother ever recover? Enjoy a sweet Christmas story that is bound to warm your heart after you dry the tears

    Sainsbury. Two short, punchy, action-packed episodes in each book.They murdered his parents, shot him in the head, and left him to die. They should have made sure.Twenty years after Tom Lewis watched his parents die, those responsible are being killed. One by one.Gentle, brain-damaged Tom, a giant of a man who can barely speak, can’t be responsible for their deaths. Can he?When Tom Lewis was shot, something new was created. Something unique. Something deadly. Something patient enough to plan revenge for twenty long years.Meet Bedlam Boy

    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.

    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?