Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 - 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's most memorable fictional characters and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period. During his life, his works enjoyed unprecedented fame, and by the twentieth century his literary genius was broadly acknowledged by critics and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to be widely popular. Born in Portsmouth, England, Dickens was forced to leave school to work in a factory when his father was thrown into debtors' prison. Although he had little formal education, his early impoverishment drove him to succeed. Over his career he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas and hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms. Dickens sprang to fame with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire, and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most published in monthly or weekly installments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication. The installment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback. For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens went on to improve the character with positive features. Fagin in Oliver Twist apparently mirrors the famous fence Ikey Solomon; His caricature of Leigh Hunt in the figure of Mr Skimpole in Bleak House was likewise toned down on advice from some of his friends, as they read episodes. In the same novel, both Lawrence Boythorne and Mooney the beadle are drawn from real life-Boythorne from Walter Savage Landor and Mooney from 'Looney', a beadle at Salisbury Square. His plots were carefully constructed, and Dickens often wove in elements from topical events into his narratives. Masses of the illiterate poor chipped in ha'pennies to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers.

    

    The powerful tales gathered here vividly evoke the turn-of-the-century colonial Pacific and its capricious tropical landscape, while also trenchantly observing the delicate interplay between imperialism and the exotic. And as Tony Horwitz asserts in his Introduction, “When London’s stories click, we are utterly there, at the edge of the world and the limit of human endurance.”

    Filled with the sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language Moore has become famous for, these nine glittering tales marked the introduction of an extravagantly gifted writer.

    

      The title story, inspired by Raymond Carver’s masterpiece, is a provocative portrait of two marriages in which the Holocaust is played out as a devastating parlor game. In the outlandishly dark “Camp Sundown” vigilante justice is undertaken by a group of geriatric campers in a bucolic summer enclave. “Free Fruit for Young Widows” is a small, sharp study in evil, lovingly told by a father to a son. “Sister Hills” chronicles the history of Israel’s settlements from the eve of the Yom Kippur War through the present, a political fable constructed around the tale of two mothers who strike a terrible bargain to save a child. Marking a return to two of Englander’s classic themes, “Peep Show” and “How We Avenged the Blums” wrestle with sexual longing and ingenuity in the face of adversity and peril. And “Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother’s Side” is suffused with an intimacy and tenderness that break new ground for a writer who seems constantly to be expanding the parameters of what he can achieve in the short form.   Beautiful and courageous, funny and achingly sad, Englander’s work is a revelation.

    It was originally released via the Kickstarter/fan-funded live album An Evening With Neil Gaiman & Amanda Palmer.

    The 6 ladies are reminiscent of an elite high school clique where there is heavy competition and an odd man out. The story focuses on the visit of a famous guest author, that doesn't turn out quite as planned. The only topic presented that the guest will discuss is Xingu. The ladies all state that they have just studied it ... but have they and do they even know what it is?

    There is only Lady Day.”

    O'Connor herself singled it out by making it the title piece of her first collection and the story she most often chose for readings or talks to students. It is an unforgettable tale, both riveting and comic, of the confrontation of a family with violence and sudden death. More than anything else O'Connor ever wrote, this story mixes the comedy, violence, and religious concerns that characterize her fiction.This casebook for the story includes an introduction by the editor, a chronology of the author's life, the authoritative text of the story itself, comments and letters by O'Connor about the story, critical essays, and a bibliography. The critical essays span more than twenty years of commentary and suggest several approaches to the story--formalistic, thematic, deconstructionist-- all within the grasp of the undergraduate, while the introduction also points interested students toward still other resources. Useful for both beginning and advanced students, this casebook provides an in-depth introduction to one of America's most gifted modern writers.

    The young Daisy Miller, an American on holiday with her mother on the shores of Switzerland’s Lac Leman, is one of James’s most vivid and tragic characters. Daisy’s friendship with an American gentleman, Mr. Winterbourne, and her subsequent infatuation with a passionate but impoverished Italian bring to life the great Jamesian themes of Americans abroad, innocence versus experience, and the grip of fate. As Elizabeth Hardwick writes in her Introduction, Daisy Miller “lives on, a figure out of literature who has entered history as a name, a vision.”

    They exchange numbers. They text, flirt and eventually have sex – the type of sex you attempt to forget. How could one date go so wrong?Everything that takes place in Cat Person happens to countless people every day. But Cat Person is not an everyday story. In less than a week, Kristen Roupenian's New Yorker debut became the most read and shared short story in their website's history. This is the bad date that went viral. This is the conversation we’re all having.This gift edition contains photographs by celebrated photographer Elinor Carucci, who was commissioned by the New Yorker to capture the image that accompanied Kristen Roupenian's Cat Person when it appeared in the magazine.

    Not all diseases deserve the word plague. Fate can be ironic indeed. The chilling short story, The Giving Plague, follows microbiologist Forry, a self-proclaimed cynic, as he encounters a virus transmitted by blood donations that could alter humanity for good, forcing him to wrestle with his own inner demons.

    Gerry Weiss & Helen S. Weiss; Tor Books, 2007.Set in Newford during 1967's Summer of Love, Beirut-born teen Dharma, runs away from his Muslim home and reinvents himself as a hippie poet-musician. Street-busking one day at an impromptu music jam, Dharma meets a lovely young hippie girl called Button. Love is in the air. Button and Dharma share a gorgeous, magical night at a huge music festival. But is this newfound love as perfect it seems?

    It includes Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, The Canterville Ghost, The Sphinx Without a Secret and The Model Millionaire.Written between 1887 and 1891, at the height of his creative powers, these stories confirm Oscar Wilde’s reputation as a master storyteller in their sense of fun, quick intelligence and witty dissection of Victorian society. They also reveal his compassion for the poor and downtrodden who were so readily ignored by that age.