Book picks similar to
Children On Their Birthdays by Truman Capote
short-stories
penguin-mini-modern-classics
fiction
classics
The Crime Wave at Blandings
P.G. Wodehouse - 1936
Wodehouse's most gloriously funny stories, this is the tale of bumbling Lord Emsworth, whose quiet life reading "The Care Of The Pig" and pottering among the flowers at Blandings Castle is shattered by an outbreak of lawlessness involving his niece Jane (the third prettiest girl in Shropshire), an airgun - and the trouser seat of the abominable Baxter.
The Sexes
Dorothy Parker - 1944
Includes such stories as: 'The Sexes', 'The Lovely Leave', 'The Little Hours', 'Glory in the Daytime' and 'Lolita'.
Rich In Russia
John Updike - 2011
The writer Henry Bech travels to Europe on a hapless cultural exchange, first to Russia, where he struggles to spend his money when everything – from his meals to his bugged hotel room – is already paid for, and then to RumaniaThis book includes Rich In Russia, Foreword, Bech in Rumania, Appendix A and Appendix B.
Flypaper
Robert Musil - 1936
In these nine stories and essays, he considers holidaymakers and stone monuments, tales of war and blackbirds, and the great pathos of a tiny death: a fly's impossible fight against the grip of flypaper.
Lunar Caustic
Malcolm Lowry - 1963
When he arrives to New York, finds that everything in his life have been sinking and losses, like his own band and his companion, Ruth. His pilgrimage by the taverns of the city port culminates in a psychiatric hospital, in fact a hell, or a stranded boat, depending on how you look, a prison, where hell share his time and fortune with sailors, drunken, poor and solemnity characters like the old Kalowsky evicted, the young Garry or Battle, the black guy. While watching the boats passing by the East River Bill understands that Dr. Claggart, the psychiatrist who is in care of him, will never heal his sick soul.
The Magic Paint
Primo Levi - 2011
It includes: 'The Magic Paint', 'The Death of Marinese', 'Censorship in Bitinia', and 'Knall'.
The Expelled
Samuel Beckett - 2011
In these two stories, the pains of companionship, and of loneliness and of the human body are starkly explored.
Some Of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby
Donald Barthelme - 2011
Includes nine short stories: "Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby", "The Glass Mountain", "I Bought a Little City", "The Palace at Four AM", "Chablis", "The School", "Margins", "Game", and "The Balloon".
The Widow Ching-Pirate
Jorge Luis Borges - 2011
In these five stories there is danger on the high seas, an ungracious teacher of etiquette and an encyclopedia of an unknown planet - and Borges's unique imagination and intellect play throughout.
Dear Illusion
Kingsley Amis - 1962
But it was fun. And I felt like getting a bit of my own back on some of the people who'd conned and flattered me into wasting all those years.'
Babylon Revisited
F. Scott Fitzgerald - 1931
Scott Fitzgerald's stories defined the 1920s 'Jazz Age' generation, with their glittering dreams and tarnished hopes. In these three tales of a fragile recovery, a cut-glass bowl and a life lost, Fitzgerald portrays, in exquisite prose and with deep human sympathy, the idealism of youth and the ravages of success.This book includes Babylon Revisited, The Cut-Glass Bowl and The Lost Decade.
The Gifts of War
Margaret Drabble - 2011
In these two stories of lives colliding, a mother buying a birthday gift has her dreams destroyed, and a honeymoon leads to an unexpected epiphany.
The Last Demon
Isaac Bashevis Singer - 2011
The three collected here, about a girl who pretends to be a man in order to study the Torah, a frustrated demon, and a writer trying to understand the confusion of a holocaust survivor, illuminate the great themes of human suffering with supernal grace.
They
Rudyard Kipling - 1904
&'grave;Dat sort,'' she wailed -- &'grave;dey're just as much to us dat has 'em as if dey was lawful born. Just as much -- just as much! An' God he'd be just as pleased if you saved 'un, Doctor. Don't take it from me. Miss Florence will tell ye de very same. Don't leave 'im, Doctor!''
Him With His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories
Saul Bellow - 1984
This dazzling collection of shorter fiction describes a series of self-awakenings -- a suburban divorcee deciding among lovers, a celebrity drawn into his cousin's life of crime, a father remembering bygone Chicago, an artist, and an academic awaiting extradition for some unnamed offense.