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Evening in Paradise: More Stories
Lucia Berlin - 1981
It was a New York Times bestseller; the paper's Book Review named it one of the Ten Best Books of 2015; and NPR, Time, Entertainment Weekly, The Guardian, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and other outlets gave the book rave reviews.Evening in Paradise is a careful selection from the remaining Berlin stories--a jewel box follow-up for Lucia Berlin's hungry fans.Foreword: The story is the thing / by Mark Berlin --The musical vanity boxes --Sometimes in summer --Andado: a Gothic romance --Dust to dust --Itinerary --Lead Street, Albuquerque --NoeÌ⁸l. Texas. 1956 --The adobe house with a tin roof --A foggy day --Cherry blossom time --Evening in Paradise --La Barca de la Ilusion --My life is an open book --The wives --NoeÌ⁸l, 1974 --The pony bar, Oakland --Daughters --Rainy day --Our brother's keeper --Lost in the Louvre --Sombra --Luna nueva --A note on Lucia Berlin
Teatro Grottesco
Thomas Ligotti - 2006
The cycle of narratives that includes the title work of this collection, for instance, introduces readers to a freakish community of artists who encounter demonic perils that ultimately engulf their lives. These are selected examples of the forbidding array of persons and places that compose the mesmerizing fiction of Thomas Ligotti.
Without Feathers
Woody Allen - 1986
From THE WHORE OF MENSA, to GOD (A Play), to NO KADDISH FOR WEINSTEIN, old and new Woody Allen fans will laugh themselves hysterical over these sparkling gems.
The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories
Charles Bukowski - 1983
In Europe, however (particularly in Germany, Italy, and France where he is published by the great publishing houses), he is critically recognized as one of America's greatest realist writers.
The Book of Other People
Zadie SmithChris Ware - 2007
Twenty-five or so outstanding writers have been asked by Zadie Smith to make up a fictional character. By any measure, creating character is at the heart of the fictional enterprise, and this book concentrates on writers who share a talent for making something recognizably human out of words (and, in the case of the graphic novelists, pictures). But the purpose of the book is variety: straight "realism"-if such a thing exists-is not the point. There are as many ways to create character as there are writers, and this anthology features a rich assortment of exceptional examples. The writers featured in The Book of Other People include: Aleksandar Hemon Nick Hornby Hari Kunzru Toby Litt David Mitchell George Saunders Colm Tóibín Chris Ware, and more
Hollywood Nocturnes
James Ellroy - 1993
Quartet novels (which include L.A. Confidential and The Big Nowhere).Dig this: the swinging sax man's doing repos and plotting a kidnapping-of himself; a tommy gun is ripping apart windows, curtains, and bodies in High Darktown; a carhop at Scrivner's is keeping two extremely sweet sugar daddies, Howard Hughes and mobster Mickey Cohen, happy-until the scene turns murderous.This is the hip-hop hard-edged world of L.A. 1950s style: cars with fins, Commies in closets, starmakers with come-ons, ex-cons with guns, and cops with mean streaks as wide as Sunset Strip.James Ellroy's bizarre, stark tales dazzle us with their unexpected humor, raw brutality, and slightly lighter-than-usual noir realism. Hollywood Nocturnes is quintessential Ellroy: bluesy, black, and very, very hot.
Gutshot
Amelia Gray - 2015
A medical procedure reveals an object of worship. A carnivorous reptile divides and cauterizes a town. Amelia Gray’s curio cabinet expands in Gutshot, where isolation and coupling are pushed to their dark and outrageous edges. These singular stories live and breathe on their own, pulsating with energy and humanness and a glorious sense of humor. Hers are stories that you will read and reread—raw gems that burrow into your brain, reminders of just how strange and beautiful our world is. These collected stories come to us like a vivisected body, the whole that is all the more elegant and breathtaking for exploring its most grotesque and intimate lightless viscera.
Shatterday
Harlan Ellison - 1978
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.”
The Stories of John Cheever
John Cheever - 1978
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.
The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories
Peter HainingA.E. Coppard - 2000
Over 40 tales of visitation by the undead--from vengeful and violent spirits, set on causing harm to innocent people tucked up in their homes, to rarer and more kindly ghosts, returning from the grave to reach out across the other side. Yet others entertain desires of a more sinister bent, including the erotic. This new edition includes a selection of favorite haunted house tales chosen by famous screen stars such as Boris Karloff, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. In addition, a top ranking list of contributors includes Stephen King, Bram Stoker, Ruth Rendell, and James Herbert--all brought together by an anthologist who himself lives in a haunted house.Contents1 • The Haunted House • (2000) • short fiction by Elizabeth Albright and Ray Bradbury3 • Foreword: I Live In A Haunted House • (2000) • essay by Peter Haining9 • The Haunted and the Haunters • (1919) • novelette by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (variant of The Haunted and the Haunters; or, The House and the Brain 1859)39 • Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House • (2000) • short story by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (variant of An Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House 1862)53 • A Case of Eavesdropping • [Jim Shorthouse] • (1900) • short story by Algernon Blackwood69 • A Haunted House • (1921) • short story by Virginia Woolf73 • Ghost Hunt • (1948) • short story by H. Russell Wakefield81 • Dark Winner • (1976) • short story by William F. Nolan89 • The Old House in Vauxhall Walk • (1882) • novelette by Mrs. J. H. Riddell [as by Charlotte Riddell]109 • No. 252 Rue M. Le Prince • (1895) • short story by Ralph Adams Cram125 • The Southwest Chamber • (1903) • novelette by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman [as by Mary Eleanor Freeman]145 • The Toll-House • (1907) • short story by W. W. Jacobs157 • Feet Foremost • (1932) • novelette by L. P. Hartley191 • Happy Hour • (1990) • novelette by Ian Watson217 • The Ankardyne Pew • (1979) • short story by William Fryer Harvey [as by W. F. Harvey]231 • The Real and the Counterfeit • (1988) • short story by Mrs. Alfred Baldwin [as by Louisa Baldwin]249 • A Night at a Cottage ... • (1926) • short story by Richard Hughes253 • The Considerate Hosts • (1939) • short story by Thorp McClusky265 • The Grey House • (1967) • short story by Basil Copper309 • Watching Me, Watching You • (1981) • short story by Fay Weldon329 • A Spirit Elopement • (1915) • short story by Richard Dehan339 • The House of Dust • (1920) • short story by Herbert de Hamel357 • The Kisstruck Bogie • (1946) • short story by A. E. Coppard367 • Mr Edward • (2000) • short story by Norah Lofts (variant of Mr. Edward 1947)385 • House of the Hatchet • (1941) • short story by Robert Bloch403 • Napier Court • (1971) • short story by Ramsey Campbell423 • Lost Hearts • (1895) • short story by M. R. James435 • The Shadowy Third • (1916) • novelette by Ellen Glasgow461 • A Little Ghost • (1922) • short story by Hugh Walpole477 • The Patter of Tiny Feet • (1950) • short story by Nigel Kneale489 • Uninvited Ghosts • (1981) • short story by Penelope Lively497 • Playing with Fire • (1900) • short story by Arthur Conan Doyle [as by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle]513 • The Whistling Room • [Carnacki (Hodgson)] • (1910) • short story by William Hope Hodgson533 • Bagnell Terrace • (1925) • short story by E. F. Benson547 • The Companion • (1978) • short story by Joan Aiken557 • The Ghost Hunter • (2000) • short fiction by James Herbert563 • Computer Séance • (1997) • short story by Ruth Rendell573 • In Letters of Fire • [L'homme qui a vu le diable] • (1908) • novelette by Gaston Leroux (trans. of L'homme qui a vu le diable)593 • The Judge's House • (1891) • short story by Bram Stoker613 • The Storm • (1944) • short story by McKnight Malmar627 • The Waxwork • (1931) • short story by A. M. Burrage [as by Ex-Private X]641 • The Inexperienced Ghost • (1902) • short story by H. G. Wells655 • Sophy Mason Comes Back • (1930) • short story by E. M. Delafield669 • The Boogeyman • (1973) • short story by Stephen King683 • Appendix: Haunted House Novels: A Listing • (2000) • essay by Peter Haining
Mirrorwork: 50 Years of Indian Writing 1947-1997
Salman Rushdie - 1997
Selected by Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West, these novel excerpts, stories, and memoirs illuminate wonderful writing by authors often overlooked in the West. Chronologically arranged to reveal the development of Indian literature in English, this volume includes works by Jawaharlal Nehru, Nayantara Sahgal, Saadat Hasan Manto, G.V. Desani, Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Kamala Markandaya, Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan, Ved Mehta, Anita Desai, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Satyajit Ray, Salman Rushdie, Padma Perera, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Rohinton Mistry, Bapsi Sidhwa, I. Allan Sealy, Shashi Tharoor, Sara Suleri, Firdaus Kanga, Anjana Appachana, Amit Chaudhuri, Amitav Ghosh, Githa Hariharan, Gita Mehta, Vikram Seth, Vikram Chandra, Ardashir Vakil, Mukul Kesavan, Arundhati Roy, and Kiran Desai.
Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays
David Sedaris - 1994
A manic cross between Mark Leyner, Fran Lebowitz, and the National Enquirer, Sedaris’s collection of essays is a rollicking tour through the national Zeitgeist: a do-it-yourself suburban dad saves money by performing home surgery; a man who is loved too much flees the heavyweight champion of the world; a teenage suicide tries to incite a lynch mob at her funeral; a bitter Santa abuses the elves.David Sedaris made his debut on NPR’s Morning Edition with “SantaLand Diaries”, recounting his strange-but-true experiences as an elf at Macy’s, and soon became one of the show’s most popular commentators. With a perfect eye and a voice infused with as much empathy as wit, Sedaris writes stories and essays that target the soulful ridiculousness of our behavior. Barrel Fever is like a blind date with modern life, and anything can happen.Parade --Music for lovers --The last you'll hear from me --My manuscript --Firestone --We get along --Glen's homophobia newsletter vol. 3, no. 2 --Don's story --Season's greeting to our friends and family!!! --Jamboree --After Malison --Barrel fever --Diary of a smoker --Giantess --The curly kind --SantaLand diaries
All Aunt Hagar's Children: Stories
Edward P. Jones - 2006
Jones, a prodigy of the short story, returns to the form that first won him praise in this new collection of stories, All Aunt Hagar's Children. Here he turns an unflinching eye to the men, women, and children caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations that await them in the city, people who in Jones's masterful hands emerge as fully human and morally complex. With the legacy of slavery just a stone's throw behind them and the future uncertain, Jones's cornucopia of characters will haunt readers for years to come.
Novels 1930-1935: As I Lay Dying / Sanctuary / Light in August / Pylon
William Faulkner - 1985
The four novels in this Library of America collection display an astonishing range of characters and treatments in his Depression-era fiction.As I Lay Dying (1930) is a combination of comedy, horror, and compassion, a narrative woven from the inarticulate desires of a peasant family in conflict. It presents the conscious, unconscious, and sometimes hallucinatory impressions of the husband, daughter, and four sons of Addie Bundren, the long-suffering matriarch of her rural Mississippi clan, as the family marches her body through fire and flood to its grave in town.Sanctuary (1931) is a novel of sex and social class, of collapsed gentility and amoral justice, that moves from the back roads of Mississippi and the fleshpots of Memphis to the courthouse of Jefferson and the appalling spectacle of popular vengeance. With its fascinating portraits of Popeye, a sadistic gangster and rapist, and Temple Drake, a debutante with an affinity for evil, it offers a horrific and sometimes comically macabre vision of modern life.Light in August (1932) incorporates Faulkner’s religious vision of the hopeful stubbornness of ordinary life. The guileless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn child; the disgraced minister Gail Hightower, who dreams of Confederate cavalry charges; Byron Bunch, who thought working Saturdays would keep a man out of trouble, and the desperate, enigmatic Joe Christmas, consumed by his mixed ancestry—all find their lives entangled in the inexorable succession of love, birth, and death.Pylon (1935), a tale of barnstorming aviators in the carnival atmosphere of an air show in a southern city, examines the bonds of desire and loyalty among three men and a woman, all characters without a past. Dramatizing what, in accepting his Nobel Prize, Faulkner called “the human heart in conflict with itself,” it illustrates how he became one of the great humanists of twentieth-century literature.The Library of America edition of Faulkner’s work publishes, for the first time, new, corrected texts of these four works. Manuscripts, typescripts, galleys, and published editions have been collated to produce versions that are free of the changes introduced by the original editors and that are faithful to Faulkner’s intentions.
Crimes in Southern Indiana: Stories
Frank Bill - 2011
Frank Bill delivers what is both a wake-up call and a gut punch. Welcome to heartland America circa right about now, when the union jobs and family farms that kept the white on the picket fences have given way to meth labs, backwoods gunrunners, and bare-knuckle brawling.Bill's people are pressed to the brink--and beyond. There is Scoot McCutchen, whose beloved wife falls terminally ill, leaving him with nothing to live for--which doesn't quite explain why he brutally murders her and her doctor and flees, or why, after years of running, he decides to turn himself in. In the title story, a man who has devolved from breeding hounds for hunting to training them for dog-fighting crosses paths with a Salvadoran gangbanger tasked with taking over the rural drug trade, but who mostly wants to grow old in peace. As Crimes in Sourthern Indiana unfolds, we witness the unspeakable, yet are compelled to find sympathy for the depraved.Bill's southern Indiana is haunted with the deep, authentic sense of place that recalls the best of Southern fiction, but the interconnected stories bristle with the urban energy of a Chuck Palahniuk or a latter-day Nelson Algren and rush with the slam-bang plotting of pulp-noir crime writing a la Jim Thompson. Bill's prose is gritty yet literary, shocking, and impossible to put down. A dark evocation of the survivalist spirit of the working class, this is a brilliant debut by an important new voice.