Later Short Stories, 1888-1903


Anton Chekhov - 1999
    "His stories, which deluge us with feeling, make feeling more intelligent; more magnanimous. He is an artist of our moral maturity." This volume presents forty-two of Chekhov's later short stories, written between 1888 and 1903, in acclaimed translations by Constance Garnett and chosen by Shelby Foote. Among the most outstanding are "A Dreary Story," a dispassionate tale that reflects Chekhov's doubts about his role as an artist. Thomas Mann deemed it "a truly extraordinary, fascinating story . . . unlike anything else in world literature." "The Darling," a delightful work highly admired by Tolstoy, offers comic proof that life has no meaning without love. And in "The Lady with the Dog," which Vladimir Nabokov called "one of the greatest stories ever written," a chance affair takes possession of a bored young woman and a cynical roué, changing their lives forever. Also included in this collection are the famous trilogy, "The Man in a Case," "Gooseberries," and "About Love," as well as "Sleepy," "The Horse-Stealers," and "Betrothed." "The greatest of Chekhov's stories are, no matter how many times reread, always an experience that strikes deep into the soul and produces an alteration there," wrote William Maxwell. "As for those masterpieces 'The Lady with the Dog,' 'The Horse-Stealers,' 'Sleepy,' 'Gooseberries,' 'About Love'—where else do you see so clearly the difference between light and dark, or how dark darkness can be?" Shelby Foote has provided an Introduction for this edition.

July 7th


Jill McCorkle - 1984
    Two memorable presences are Granner Weeks, a white widow, and Fannie McNair, a black housekeeper. They know that people learn to live by living with each other--in each other's ways and in each other's hearts. "With these JULY 7th and The CHEER LEADER . . . McCorkle emerges as the most exciting young American writer of fiction to come along in years."--Cleveland Plain Dealer.

The Catalpa Tree


Denyse Devlin - 2004
    In the seven years that follow, Jude struggles with being alone in the world and Oliver struggles with caring for a beloved child who is becoming a woman.

Love, life & all that jazz....


Ahmed Faiyaz - 2010
    It’s about where they go from here, the changes they see in themselves and in other people in their lives and the choices they make. The choices make affects their relationships and shapes their personality.

Chinaberry


James Still - 2011
    The author of the classics River of Earth (1940) and The Wolfpen Poems (1986), Still is known for his careful prose construction and for the poetry of his meticulous, rhythmic style. Upon his death, however, one manuscript remained unpublished. Still's friends, family, and fellow writer Silas House will now deliver this story to readers, having assembled and refined the manuscript to prepare it for publication. Chinaberry, named for the ranch that serves as the centerpiece of the story, is Still's last and perhaps greatest contribution to American literature.Chinaberry follows the adventures of a young boy as he travels to Texas from Alabama in search of work on a cotton farm. Upon arriving, he discovers the ranch of Anson and Lurie Winters, a young couple whose lives are defined by hard work, family, and a tragedy that haunts their past. Still's entrancing narrative centers on the boy's experience at the ranch under Anson's watchful eye and Lurie's doting care, highlighting the importance of home, whether it is defined by people or a place.In this celebration of the art of storytelling, Still captures a time and place that are gone forever and introduces the reader to an unforgettable cast of characters, illustrating the impact that one person can have on another. A combination of memoir and imagination, truth and fiction, Chinaberry is a work of art that leaves the reader in awe of Still's mastery of language and thankful for the lifetime of wisdom that manifests itself in his work.

Selected Short Stories of Rabindranath Tagore


Rabindranath Tagore
    The short stories included in this selection are representative not only of Tagore's range, but they also enable us to revise the conventional view of Tagore as a short story writer. Writing them at a time when the form was not yet popular, Tagore eschewed the romantic strain prevalent in his day. His stories are fables of modern man, where fairy tale meets hard ground, where myths are reworked, and the religion of man triumphs over the religion of rituals and convention, where the love of a woman infuses the universe with humanity. He writes with concern about such issues as the Hindu revivalism in the late nineteenth century and the bondage of women. The rhythms of daily life, his rural encounters and childhood reminiscences, unfold in his tales, as does a sense of history, the reality of the political situation and its impact on individual lives. Tagore wishes to see the world of humanity not only reflected in his own life but also actualized in Bengali literature. His profound sensibility led him beyond the merely regional, his humanity stretching across east and west, fulfilling the purpose of his Jibandebata, his life's deity, Edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri, a well-known scholar and translator, this is an authoritative and readable translation of Tagore's short stories. An essential Tagore for the collector, it is one that will find its place on every discerning reader's shelf.

The Ringer


Bill Scheft - 2002
    He thinks Mount Sinai Hospital is an exclusive golf course and his catheter is a gym bag. His only link to reality is his thirty-five-year-old nephew, who makes his living as a hired gun for thirteen softball teams and still goes by the name College Boy.But College Boy's body has begun to betray him -- almost as much as his lack of ambition. (His only legitimate paycheck comes from a gig as a laugher on a morning radio show.) Not only that, the Dirt King, a small-time gangster who controls all the replacement soil in Central Park, is after College Boy. As their lives collide, College Boy takes refuge in the arms of Sheila -- his uncle's cleaning woman and a part-time call girl.And then it gets weird.

The Coal Tattoo


Silas House - 2004
    Easter finds her life in the Pentecostal Holiness church and its music, while Anneth dances and drinks in less-than-holy honky-tonks. Will the differences in their young lives and in their very natures tear them apart or will the bond of the sisters prevail? In lucid prose with an ear for the voice of the sisters’ time and place, Silas House brings readers a rich and moving story of coal country.This novel was named The Appalachian Book of the Year, and was a finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Prize.Blair brings this novel into a beautiful new paperback edition, along with two other Silas House novels, Clay’s Quilt and A Parchment of Leaves. The three novels, which share a common setting and some characters, are companion novels. They may be read individually, in any order, but collectively, they form a rich tableau of life in rural mountain Kentucky in the last century.

The Honk and Holler Opening Soon


Billie Letts - 1998
    But a fateful misunderstanding gave Vietnam vet Caney the flashiest joke in the entire state. Twelve years later, the once-busy highway is dead and the sign is as worn as Caney, who hasn't ventured outside the diner since it opened. Then one blustery December day, a thirtyish Crow woman blows in with a three-legged dog in her arms and a long-buried secret on her mind. Hiring on as a carhop, Vena Takes Horse is soon shaking up business, the locals, and Caney's heart...as she teaches them all about generosity of spirit, love, and the possibility of promise-just like the sign says.

Ray


Barry Hannah - 1980
    Dr. Ray--a womanizer, small-town drunk, vigilante, poet, adoring husband--is a man trying to make sense of life in the twentieth century. In flight from the death he dealt flying over Vietnam, Dr. Ray struggles with those bound to him by need, sickness, lunacy, by blood and by love.

James Joyce's Dubliners


Harold Bloom - 2000
    -- Presents the most important 20th-century criticism on major works from The Odyssey through modern literature-- The critical essays reflect a variety of schools of criticism-- Contains critical biographies, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index

Love Letters Of Great Men Vol. 2


John KeatsRichard Lovelace - 2010
    *** Volume 1 plays a key role in the plot of the US movie Sex and the City. *** This Volume 2 includes love poems written by Matthew Arnold, Alfred Austin, Samuel Alfred Beadle, William Blake, Christopher Brennan, Lord Byron, Robert Burns, John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Constable, William Cowper, Michael Drayton, George Eliot, Thomas Ford, Stephen Foster, Robert Frost, Thomas Frost, Norman Rowland Gale, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Alfred P. Graves, Robert Herrick, Leigh Hunt, Benjamin Jonson, John Keats, Richard Lovelace, Pablo Neruda, Edgar Allen Poe, and William Shakespeare.

Marriage: A Duet


Anne Taylor Fleming - 2003
    . . this duet is worth contemplating." (Philadelphia Inquirer)In the first novella, A Married Woman, Caroline Betts keeps a careful vigil over her husband's deathbed. For 40 years, she had been a devoted wife. But during one awful moment in their otherwise good marriage, her husband William was in love with someone else. At the end of William's life, Caroline confronts her sorrow, anger, and odd flashes of relief and feelings of rebirth.In the second novella, A Married Man, David -- husband, father, businessman -- finds his sense of well-being and achievement undermined by the betrayal of his wife, who's had a brief affair. The novella takes readers inside the couple's heartbreaking efforts to reclaim their marriage. Elegantly written, profoundly affecting, and subtly illuminating, Fleming's fiction debut is a revelation.

Show Me Good Land


Shonna Milliken Humphrey - 2011
    Loosely linked through a grisly murder, its characters must navigate the ambiguous moral landscape of a waning community. It is a moving, sometimes melancholy, often funny novel about family, community, loss, redemption, and coming home. The pleasure lies in exploring the personalities of the characters, none of whom are all good or all bad, and eventually deciding where the reader's own moral lines are drawn. Not since Carolyn Chute's The Beans of Egypt, Maine, has a cast of characters been so shocking, beautifully rendered, and ultimately likeable.

Rob Roy, Volume 01


Walter Scott - 1817
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.