Dewy, a foul-mouthed realist, happily takes Gunnar under his wing and tries to teach him how to maneuver safely through the dangers of the Columbus, Ohio, streets. Together they devise increasingly ingenious ways to reclaim properly from their most recalicitrant customers. They become fixated in particular on a woman who will not respond to any of their attempts to repossess her furniture. Both Dewy and the customer refuse to give in. And thus the stage is set for a series of events that send Gunnar's life spiraling out of control.

    Stacey Tanner flees a stalking psychopathic ex-boyfriend and confronts all of her worst fears in one fateful evening.

    He's got everything he ever wanted, except his health. The knives are out. His rivals sense blood. Their time is now. But Thompson's not going down without a fight. Violence in the Blood documents Thompson's rise to power from the backstreets of Glasgow to the industrial heartland of the Midlands. Join the rampage as Malkie and his crew blaze a trail of mayhem and destruction north and south of the border.

    Jeremy Shepherd has reached post-ambition, giving up the trappings of his London life (flash job, flash cars, even flashier girlfriends) and moved back to his home town and his parents' house. By day, he is a low-level civil servant, chained to his desk and content to idle away the hours filing and answering emails. There isn't a lot to do in a small town, but the English are very resourceful and Jeremy quickly finds a hobby that delivers lots of fresh air and exercise. By night, he prowls local car parks to indulge in altogether more challenging pursuits - anonymous sex with strangers. This is no ordinary hobby - each encounter is tinged with a definite air of danger, as police stake out each site and the cloak of anonymity brings its own risks. As the scene's night-time liaisons increasingly threaten the sensibilities of the local Daily Mail readers, things take a turn for the worse. Locals take a dislike to the illicit rendezvous and as the police step up surveillance, private pursuits risk becoming very public.

    When not plying his trade, he passes his time managing a jazz club in the City of Light. To make ends meet, he freelances by offering his services to help rid the earth of the world's worst criminals. Max is enjoying his ritual post-job vodka when he meets a stunning woman; a haunting visage of his former fiancé. Suddenly, he finds himself the target of an assassination plot in his beloved city of Paris. Fighting for his life, Max must overcome his own demons to stay alive.

    Poems discuss a journey across the ocean, a veterans' cemetery, money, an abandoned collection of dolls, and a man who escapes from his prison cell to commit a murder.

    Includes the stories "Where I Live," "Harrison Bergeron," "Who Am I This Time?," "Welcome to the Monkey House," "Long Walk to Forever," "The Foster Portfolio," "Miss Temptation," "All the King's Horses," "Tom Edison's Shaggy Dog," "New Dictionary," "Next Door," "More Stately Mansions," "The Hyannis Port Story," and "D.P."

    Away in Medical School, Molly believed her life was on track. That was until she returned home for Christmas and learned her life was nothing she had always believed. As this surprising journey unfolds, Molly not only learns how to put aside the pain of her past but she finally learns how to say goodbye.

    He established the style of the modern short story and influenced many great writers, including George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Katherine Mansfield, and Virginia Woolf.

    In one narrative, a man wakes up one morning to find the odor of dead fish won't go away, but no one else can smell it. In another, a couple's visit with friends to watch the Academy Awards has the protagonist envying his friends' lawn and lifestyle. In these and eleven other stories, Christopher Meeks balances tragedy and wit. As novelist David Scott Milton explains, "In this collection, Christopher Meeks examines the small heartbreaks of quiet despair that are so much a part of all our lives. He does it in language that is resonant, poetic, and precise.... If you like Raymond Carver, you'll love Meeks. He may be as good--or better."

    Three Americans, a man and two women, are living together in obvious intimacy. Their habits, strange to the Mexicans, are strangest of all to themselves.When Fern Winters’ attention is caught by movement behind a window in a run-down Greenwich Village apartment building, she can’t suspect that her encounter with the apartment’s occupant will eventually lead her to be come upon in an abandoned chapel, in a tiny mountain village—clutching the bloody machete with which one of the three has been murdered.Going Down is a rarity among novels—brilliantly and poetically written, faultlessly constructed, centered on fully realized people, and yet completely uninhibited in its depiction of startling eroticism.

    This collection-- dazzling, diverse, sophisticated-- demonstrates the enormous range of her talent between two camps-- alongside such contemporary issues as mortgage debt and medical error.

    A date in suburbia has dramatic results. A seamstress takes revenge on an unsuspecting customer, while in France, a mother is promised 'fantastic news' - and lets her imagination run away with her. With each story, Jenny Eclair introduces a fascinating new character. And behind each woman lies a gripping tale - of betrayal, of love, of hope and defiance. Funny, heart-breaking, inspiring - and packed with wicked one liners - this wonderful collection shows Jenny Eclair's exceptional talent for observation at its very best.Based on the BBC Radio 4 series Little Lifetimes.

    He is grieving for the loss of his wife when the tunnel collapses and traps the bus inside. In the darkness that follows, he manages to fumble out of the bus with the only other survivor, an astute and gentle woman who reminds him of his late wife. Without any light to guide them and with only each other to depend on, they try to escape the stifling darkness and along the way find themselves confronted by their pasts and given their last chance at intimacy, and ultimately, absolution.A realist story that plays with surreal elements, the tale poses a simple question: what is the meaning of hope?

    A collection of humorous essays, accompanied by the author's own bizarre drawings, presenting Thurber's unremitting retort to the multitude of "self-help" books which were widespread in the 1930s and whose successors are still with us today.