These texts are characterized by a startling and macabre novelty, with elements of the grotesque, fantastic and child-like touching the imagination of the everyday. They express the cultural landscape of Stalinism -- years of show trials, mass atrocities and stifled political life. Their painful, unsettling eloquence testify to the humane and the comic in this absurdist writer's work. The translator Neil Cornwall gives a biographical introduction to his subject, enlarged upon by the poet Hugh Maxton in a contextual assessment of the writing of Flann O'Brien, Le Fanu and Doyle, and of their shared concerns with detective fiction, terror and death. Daniil Kharms 91905-42) died under Stalin. Along with fellow poets and prose-writers of the era -- Khlebnikov, Biely, Mandelstam, Zabolotsky and Pasternak -- he is one of the emerging experimentalists of Russian modernism.

    

    

    'My only concern', John McGahern once said, 'is that I get the sentence right and describe my world clearly and deeply.''The Country Funeral' witnesses three brothers, John, Philly and Fonsie Ryan, as they travel west from Dublin to Gloria Bog - the heart of the territory where so many of McGahern's stories take place - to attend the funeral of their uncle. Depicting the customs and rituals of the day, McGahern exquisitely traces how the brothers react to the area in unexpected and tender ways, and face their own feelings about the transience of life.Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.

    Reginald Harlan, M.A. Of course Archer generally didn't like people whose names started with a single syllable. Harlan hired Lew to find his sister. A respectable school mistress that has run off with a bohemian artist type. But he finds more than what he expected when he has a corpse literally dumped on him!

    Now, a familiar posse runs the town called Marigold and its mining community with their sharp and newly deputized claws. After finding out that this shot of evil has infected her life again and now rules everyone still left on the mountain, she quickly begins to search for the root source of its existence, before it poisons the people and the land itself forever.

    

    With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online.Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content.The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers' story comprehension and develop vocabulary.Visit the Penguin Readers websiteExclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock online resources including a digital book, audio edition, lesson plans and answer keys.This book is about sweet shops, school days and summer holidays! It is the story of the famous writer Roald Dahl when he was a boy. These tales are exciting, funny and sometimes frightening. All of them are true.

    The weather had been extreme that month: days of drenching rain, sudden showers of hail, temperatures passing record highs. Local children whispered that an angel had fallen to earth in a thunderstorm. There were roving groups who swore they had found signs. Footprints in the grass, black feathers, a campfire in the woods behind the high school where there were sparks of shimmering ash. One neighborhood boy vowed that he had seen a man in a black cloak rise above the earth and walk on air, and although no one believed his account, mothers began to keep their children home. They locked the doors, called in the dogs, kept the lights on after dusk..."Alice Hoffman is the New York Times bestselling author of Practical Magic, The Dovekeepers, and The Marriage of Opposites. Hoffman’s work has been published in more than twenty translations and more than one hundred foreign editions. Her novels have received mention as notable books of the year by The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, Library Journal, and People Magazine. She has also worked as a screenwriter and is the author of the original screenplay “Independence Day,” a film starring Kathleen Quinlan and Diane Wiest. Her teen novel Aquamarine was made into a film starring Emma Roberts. Her short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, Kenyon Review, The Los Angeles Times, Architectural Digest, Harvard Review, Ploughshares and other magazines.Flyleaf Journal Issue #15December 2014Illustrated by Timothy TangHand Lettering by Heidi Unkefer

    SUMMER ON BLOSSOM STREET Knitting and life are both about beginnings—and endings. That's why Lydia Goetz, owner of A Good Yarn on Seattle's Blossom Street, offers a class called Knit to Quit. It's for people who want to quit something—or someone!—and start a new phase of their lives. But when your life—and your stitches—get snarled, your friends can always help! HANNAH'S LIST On the anniversary of his beloved wife's death, Dr. Michael Everett receives a letter Hannah wrote him. In it she reminds him of her love and makes one final request. An impossible request. I want you to marry again. She tells him he shouldn't spend the years he has left grieving—and she's chosen three women she asks him to consider. During the months that follow, he spends time with these three women, learning more about each of them…and about himself. Learning what Hannah already knew. He's a man who needs the completeness only love can offer. And Hannah's list leads him to the woman who can help him find it. A TURN IN THE ROAD In the middle of the year, in the middle of her life, Bethanne Hamlin takes a road trip with her daughter, Annie, and her former mother-in-law, Ruth. So, there they are, three women driving across America. They have their maps and their directions—but even the best-planned journey can take you to a turn in the road. Or lead to an unexpected encounter, like the day Bethanne meets a man named Max…

    As a Houston prosecutor he sent sixteen men to death row, and watched seven of them die. But now, in the aftermath of his wife's death, the grief-stricken father packs up his four-year-old daughter, Annie, and returns to his hometown in search of healing. But peace is not what he finds there.Natchez, Mississippi, is the jewel of the antebellum South, a city of old money and older sins, where passion, power, and racial tensions seethe beneath its elegant façade. After twenty years away, Penn is stunned to find his own family trapped in a web of intrigue and danger. Determined to save his father from a ruthless blackmailer, Penn stumbles over a link to the town's darkest secret: the thirty-year-old unsolved murder of a black Korean War veteran. But what drives him to act is the revelation that this haunting mystery is inextricably bound up in his own past.24 HoursRead by Dick Hill (Ruth Bloomquist, Russell Byers)24 Hours begins with the perfect family. On the perfect day. About to become trapped in the perfect crime. Will Jennings is a successful young doctor in Jackson, Mississippi, with his whole life ahead of him. He has a thriving practice, a beautiful wife, and a young daughter he loves beyond measure. But Will and his family are being watched by a con man and psychopath. A man who has crafted the unbeatable crime. A man who has never been caught, and whose victims have never talked to the police. A man whose life's work strikes at the heart of every family's nightmare: the unstoppable kidnapping. But this man has never met Will and Karen Jennings.Dead SleepRead by Susie Breck (Dick Hill)Jordan Glass, a photojournalist on a well-earned vacation, wanders into a Hong Kong art museum and is puzzled to find fellow patrons eying her with curiosity. Minutes later, she stumbles upon a gallery containing a one-artist exhibition called "The Sleeping Women," a mysterious series of paintings that has caused a sensation in the world of modern art. Collectors have come to believe that the canvases depict female nudes not in sleep but in death, and they command millions at auction. When Jordan approaches the last work in the series, she freezes. The face in the painting seems to be her own. This unsettling event hurls her back into a nightmare she has fought desperately to put behind her - for, in fact, the face in the painting belongs not to Jordan but to her twin sister, murdered one year ago. At the urging of the FBI, Jordan becomes both hunter and hunted in a duel with the anonymous artist, a gifted murderer who knows the secret history of Jordan's family, and truths that even she has never had the courage to face.

    Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories. He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards. This volume collects 8 classic stories:WITCH OF THE DEMON SEAS (1951)DUEL ON SYRTIS (1951)SECURITY (1953)SENTIMENT, INC. (1953)THE SENSITIVE MAN (1954)THE CHAPTER ENDS (1954)THE VALOR OF CAPPEN VARRA (1957)INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION (1963)And if you enjoy this volume, don't forget to search your favorite ebook store for "Wildside Press Megapack" to see the more than 170 entries in the MEGAPACK™ ebook series, covering science fiction, fantasy, horror, mysteries, westerns, classics -- and much, much more!

    When his mysterious employer, Eli Glinn, gives him an eyebrow-raising mission, he has no reason to refuse. Gideon's task: steal a page from the priceless Book of Kells, now on display in New York City and protected by unbreakable security. Accomplishing the impossible, Gideon steals the parchment--only to learn that hidden beneath the gorgeously illuminated image is a treasure map dating back to the time of the ancient Greeks. As they ponder the strange map, they realize that the treasure it leads to is no ordinary fortune. It is something far more precious: an amazing discovery that could perhaps even save Gideon's life.Together with his new partner, Amy, Gideon follows a trail of cryptic clues to an unknown island in a remote corner of the Caribbean Sea. There, off the hostile and desolate Mosquito Coast, the pair realize the extraordinary treasure they are hunting conceals an even greater shock-a revelation so profound that it may benefit the entire human race . . . if Gideon and Amy can survive.

    Abduction is a high-tech thriller about a mysterious transmission from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean that will change everything you know about life on Earth. Two great thriller by the master of the medical thriller.

    Woken one night when the body of a young woman is found torn apart, that peace is shattered as it dawns on him that a predator is among them.EVERYONE A SUSPECT...With little to go on, all the men in the town are potential suspects and Jesse begins an investigation that spans across the social spectrum. Unable to find the killer, the mayor goes against Jesse and decides to bring in bounty hunters. But the cure may be more dangerous than the disease.A WINDOW INTO THE DARKNESS OF MEN...As another murder occurs under their noses, Jesse realizes he is outmatched and facing an evil he has never encountered. He enlists the help of an alienist from Harvard University. Someone trained in the new science of the mind. Together they are about to journey into the darkest recesses of the human soul, and they may not make it out alive...