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Metamorphosis and Other Stories
Franz Kafka
Fiction / Philosophy / Short Stories
For the 125th anniversary of Kafka's birth, an astonishing new translation of his best-known stories, in a spectacular graphic package
For all his fame, Franz Kafka published only a small number of stories in his lifetime. This new translation of those stories, by Michael Hofmann, one of the most respected German-to-English translators at work today, makes Kafka's best-known works available to a new generation of readers. "Metamorphosis" gives full expression to the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary depth of his imagination.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Other American Stories
Hunter S. Thompson
Nonfiction / Entertainment / Gonzo Journalism
Dr. Thompson made the list of inspirational scribes when I polled in a recent writing workshop, and why not? Back in a spiffy Modern Library edition, replete with additional essays, I find in this iconographic work that HST both invoked--and provoked--an era that was not so much the '60s proper, but rather the mean, shadow-filled death of that time, which is still playing out. Thank God Thompson was there to explode the myth of "objective" journalism and help pave the way for the pens and voices that followed.
Short Stories from Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship and Dangerous Hobbies
Part #1 of "Pottermore Presents" series by J. K. Rowling
Fiction / Young Adult / Fantasy
‘Minerva was the Roman goddess of warriors and wisdom. William McGonagall is celebrated as the worst poet in British history. There was something irresistible to me about his name, and the idea that such a brilliant woman might be a distant relative of the buffoonish McGonagall.’ – J.K. RowlingPottermore Presents is a collection of J.K. Rowling’s writing from the Pottermore archives: short reads originally featured on pottermore.com with some exclusive new additions. These eBooks, with writing curated by Pottermore, will take you beyond the Harry Potter stories as J.K. Rowling reveals her inspiration, intricate details of characters’ lives and surprises from the wizarding world.These stories of heroism, hardship and dangerous hobbies profile two of the Harry Potter stories’ most courageous and iconic characters: Minerva McGonagall and Remus Lupin. J.K. Rowling also gives us a peek behind the closed curtains of Sybill Trelawney’s life, and you’ll encounter the reckless, magical-beast-loving Silvanus Kettleburn along the way.Cover art by MinaLima
The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Fiction / Sociology / Poetry
Best known for the 1892 title story of this collection, a harrowing tale of a woman's descent into madness, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote more than 200 other short stories. Seven of her finest are reprinted here.
Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a naïve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories.
These charming tales are not only highly readable and full of humor and invention, but also offer ample food for thought about the social, economic, and personal relationship of men and women — and how they might be improved.
The yellow wallpaper
Three Thanksgivings
The cottagette
Turned
Making a change
If I were a man
Mr. Peebles' heart.
Short Stories from Hogwarts of Power, Politics and Pesky Poltergeists
Part #2 of "Pottermore Presents" series by J. K. Rowling
Fiction / Young Adult / Fantasy
\'No Muggle Prime Minister has ever set foot in the Ministry of Magic, for reasons most succinctly summed up by ex-Minister Dugald McPhail (term of office 1858-1865): “their puir wee braines couldnae cope wi’ it.”’ – J.K. RowlingPottermore Presents is a collection of J.K. Rowling’s writing: short reads originally featured on pottermore.com with some exclusive new additions. These eBooks, with writing curated by Pottermore, will take you beyond the Harry Potter stories as J.K. Rowling reveals her inspiration, intricate details of characters’ lives and surprises from the wizarding world.These stories of power, politics and pesky poltergeists give you a glimpse into the darker side of the wizarding world, revealing the ruthless roots of Professor Umbridge, the lowdown on the Ministers for Magic and the history of the wizarding prison Azkaban. You will also delve deeper into Horace Slughorn’s early years as Potions master at Hogwarts - and his acquaintance with one Tom Marvolo Riddle.
More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Alvin Schwartz
Children's Books / Horror
The iconic anthology series of horror tales that's soon to be a highly anticipated feature film!More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a timeless collection of chillingly scary tales and legends. Folklorist Alvin Schwartz offers up some of the most alarming tales of horror, dark revenge, and supernatural events of all time.Available for the first time as an ebook, Stephen Gammell's artwork from the original More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark appears in all its spooky glory. Read if you dare!And don't miss Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Scary Stories 3!
Twelve Short Stories With A Twist
Mario V. Farina
These are twelve stories that have a "twist;" that is, a surprise at the end. The titles of the stories are Remembering the Anniversary; The Mistrial; A Meal to End All Meals; Judge Me Fair; English Major; The Woman In The Diner; Woman On The Phone; Thou Art A Witch; Voyage To Mars; Betrayer; Brain Transplant; A Reenactment To Justice. You may have already read these stories from other sources.A recovering drug addict who had lost her family, friends and career to a designer drug that nearly killed her, Cil struggled every day just to find enough food to keep her alive while desperately trying to convince potential employers that her days of self-destruction were over. She was fighting the despair that came from yet another employer rejection when she tripped over something on the ground and slammed her head into a transport. When she came back to consciousness, Cil was looking up into the face of a short compact woman with bright red hair and freckles. The woman was wearing the pin of a Kre Master, though Cil could not remember how she knew that was what that pin represented.“My name is P’Hilz. What is your name?”“Huh? Uh, Cil. My name is Cil…. Ma’am”Cil was very pleased with herself for remembering that a master was to be addressed so.“Well Cil, you cracked your head pretty good just now, with your permission, I would like to use my talents to heal you.”“Heal me? My permission? I’m okay ma’am and not worth your trouble even if I were not.”“Nonsense. You are neither okay, nor is there anyone who is not worth helping. May I have your permission to help?”Cil felt dizzy and could tell she was about to lose consciousness again, and she welcomed the thought, but heard herself consent to receive assistance as she slipped back into blessed darkness.
The Door in the Wall, and Other Stories
H. G. Wells
Literature & Fiction / Science Fiction & Fantasy / History
The Door in the Wall The Star A Dream of Armageddon The Cone A Moonlight Fable The Diamond Maker The Lord of the Dynamos The Country of the BlindThe Door in the Wall The Star A Dream of Armageddon The Cone A Moonlight Fable The Diamond Maker The Lord of the Dynamos The Country of the Blind
Sideways Stories from Wayside School
Part #1 of "Wayside School" series by Louis Sachar
Children's Books / Literature & Fiction
There has been a terrible mistake. Wayside School was supposed to have been built with thirty classrooms all next to each other in a row. Instead it was built with the thirty classrooms all on top of each other – thirty storeys high! That may be why all kinds of strange stuff happens at Wayside School. Especially on the thirtieth floor. It is a school full of unusual characters too. Mrs Gorf, the meanest teacher in the world. Terrible Todd who always gets sent home early. John who can only read upside down. It is a crazy mixed-up school, brilliantly brought to life by the irresistible Louis Sachar.
Little Wizard Stories of Oz
L. Frank Baum
Children's Books / Fantasy / Fiction
2 Books Dorothy and The Wizard in Oz & Little Wizard Stories of Oz Dorothy and The Wizard in Oz Dorothy Gale is glady joining her Uncle Henry in California to visit relatives who live at Hugson's Ranch, after their vacation from Australia in Ozma of Oz. Dorothy meets Hugson's nephew who is her second cousin, Zeb of Hugson's Ranch. Dorothy, Eureka (her cat) and Zeb are riding a buggy being pulled by a cab-horse named Jim when a violent earthquake hits and starts to open a crevice beneath them that sends them all hurtling deep into the chasm, being swallowed by the bowels of the Earth. Little Wizard Stories of Oz Dorothy Gale is glady joining her Uncle Henry in California to visit relatives who live at Hugson's Ranch, after their vacation from Australia in Ozma of Oz. Dorothy meets Hugson's nephew who is her second cousin, Zeb of Hugson's Ranch. Dorothy, Eureka (her cat) and Zeb are riding a buggy being pulled by a cab-horse named Jim when a violent earthquake hits and starts to open a crevice beneath them that sends them all hurtling deep into the chasm, being swallowed by the bowels of the Earth.
Politically Correct Bedtime Stories
James Finn Garner
These hilarious adaptations of classic bedtime stories satirise the modern proclivity to all sexist, racist, culturist, nationalist, ageist, sizeist, ethnocentrist and phallocentrist bias and reflect a more enlightened sensibility. The Emperor is not naked in his new clothes but "is endorsing a clothing-optional lifestyle". Snow White escapes to the cottage of "seven vertically-challenged men", while Goldilocks is an ambitious scientist studying anthropomorphic bears. Fourteen timeless fairy tales are purged of the influence of a flawed and insensitive cultural past to become tales that are a must for all who pride themselves on being socially aware.
A Little Magic
Nora Roberts
Fiction / Suspense / Fantasy
#1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts presents three of her favorite Irish stories—together in one volume for the first time.SPELLBOUNDA bewitchingly beautiful lady casts a thousand-year love spell on the man of her dreams—and unleashes a nightmare that only true love can conquer...EVER AFTERAn ancient star pendant sends an enchanting woman to an otherwordly land—where she introduces a skeptical stranger to the magical powers of love...IN DREAMSA beautiful young woman is drawn to a castle in the forests of Ireland and becomes the link to a stranger’s past—and the curse that has trapped him forever in the eternity of his own dreams..."Spellbound" previously appeared in Once Upon a Castle"Ever After" previously appeared in Once Upon a Star"In Dreams" previously appeared in Once Upon a Dream
Summer Days and Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories
Stephanie Perkins
Young Adult
Maybe it's the long, lazy days, or maybe it's the heat making everyone a little bit crazy. Whatever the reason, summer is the perfect time for love to bloom.
Summer Days & Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories, written by twelve bestselling young adult writers and edited by the international bestselling Stephanie Perkins, will have you dreaming of sunset strolls by the lake. So set out your beach chair and grab your sunglasses. You have twelve reasons this summer to soak up the sun and fall in love.
For Her Pleasure
Maya Banks
Romance / Erotic Romance / Fiction
A delicious twist on erotic romance, and the debut collection from a hot new author. Three novellas. Two interlocking stories. One sizzling read.Nice set up: one spirited woman in Kit Townsend, and two hot buddies, Ryder and Mac, who take turns giving Kit what she needs. It\'s the perfect no-strings triangle and while it doesn\'t exactly follow the rules, neither does Kit. But when love unexpectedly throws these three friends for a loop, can they still have a happy ending?And then there\'s Mia Malone, a sweet Dallas girl who had big dreams for the future when she first met Texas Ranger Logan Kincaid. That fairy tale was a lifetime ago. Today, framed for drug possession, she\'s forced to work undercover at a strip joint where several working girls have disappeared. Then in walks Logan-her protector, savior, and lover.
Ford County
John Grisham
Thriller / Nonfiction / Young Adult
In his first collection of short stories John Grisham takes us back to Ford County, Mississippi, the setting of his first novel, A Time to Kill. Wheelchair-bound Inez Graney and her two older sons, Leon and Butch, take a bizarre road trip through the Mississippi Delta to visit the youngest Graney brother, Raymond, who\'s been locked away on death row for eleven years. It could well be their last visit. Mack Stafford, a hard-drinking and low-grossing run-of-the-mill divorce lawyer, gets a miracle phone call with a completely unexpected offer to settle some old, forgotten cases for more money than he has ever seen. Mack is suddenly bored with the law, fed up with his wife and his life, and makes drastic plans to finally escape. Quiet, dull Sidney, a data collector for an insurance company, perfects his blackjack skills in hopes of bringing down the casino empire of Clanton\'s most ambitious hustler, Bobby Carl Leach, who, among other crimes, has stolen Sidney\'s wife. Three good ol\' boys from rural Ford County begin a journey to the big city of Memphis to give blood to a grievously injured friend. However, they are unable to drive past a beer store as the trip takes longer and longer. The journey comes to an abrupt end when they make a fateful stop at a Memphis strip club. The Quiet Haven Retirement Home is the final stop for the elderly of Clanton. It\'s a sad, languid place with little controversy, until Gilbert arrives. Posing as a low-paid bedpan boy, he is in reality a brilliant stalker with an uncanny ability to sniff out the assets of those "seniors" he professes to love. One of the hazards of litigating against people in a small town is that one day, long after the trial, you will probably come face-to-face with someone you\'ve beaten in a lawsuit. Lawyer Stanley Wade bumps into an old adversary, a man with a long memory, and the encounter becomes a violent ordeal. Clanton is rocked with the rumor that the gay son of a prominent family has finally come home, to die. Of AIDS. Fear permeates the town as gossip runs unabated. But in Lowtown, the colored section of Clanton, the young man finds a soul mate in his final days. Featuring a cast of characters you\'ll never forget, these stories bring Ford County to vivid and colorful life. Often hilarious, frequently moving, and always entertaining, this collection makes it abundantly clear why John Grisham is our most popular storyteller.
The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories
Lord Dunsany
Fantasy / Memoir / Science Fiction
The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories is the third book by Irish fantasy writer Lord Dunsany, considered a major influence on the work of J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Ursula LeGuin and others. It was first published in hardcover by George Allen & Sons in October, 1908, and has been reprinted a number of times since. Issued by the Modern Library in a combined edition with A Dreamer's Tales as A Dreamer's Tales and Other Stories in 1917. The book is a series of short stories, some of them linked by Dunsany's invented pantheon of deities who dwell in Pegana, which were the focus of his earlier collections The Gods of Pegana and Time and the Gods. One of the stories, "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth," was afterwards (1910) published by itself as a separate book, a now very-rare "Art-and-Craft" style limited edition.
Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories
Agatha Christie
Mystery / Crime / Thriller
At last, a single volume that gathers together all of the short stories featuring Agatha Christie's most famous creation, Hercule Poirot. The dapper, mustache-twirling little Belgian with the egg-shaped head and curious mannerisms has solved some of the most puzzling crimes of the century—and, in his own humble opinion, is "probably the greatest detective in the world."
In this complete collection of more than 50 stories, ranging from short tales to novellas, Poirot faces violent murders, poisonings, kidnappings, and thefts—all solved with his characteristic panache. Only Agatha Christie could have devised cases worthy of Hercule Poirot's skill and "little gray cells."
A Very Gothic Christmas
Part #1 of "Feehan Christmas Stories" series by Christine Feehan
Romance / Paranormal / Fantasy
*TWO WICKED AND WONDROUS HOLIDAY NOVELLAS*
**AFTER THE MUSIC** by CHRISTINE FEEHAN
Terrified by mysterious threats, Jessica Fitzpatrick spirits away her twin wards, Tara and Trevor, to the remote island mansion of their estranged father, world-famous musician Dillon Wentworth. Ever since the fire that claimed his troubled wife's life and left him horribly disfigured, Dillon has shut out the world. With Christmas approaching, the spark between him and Jessica might light the future, but there are those who shared Dillon's wife's love of the occult . . . and their evil machinations may plunge the family into darkness -- unless a Christmas miracle occurs. . . .
**LADY OF THE LOCKET** by MELANIE GEORGE
The echoes of history and romance lure Rachel Hudson to Glengarren, the Scottish castle where her parents met many Christmases ago. But it is the portrait of fierce Highlander Duncan MacGregor that sparks an inexplicable yearning inside her. On a storm-tossed night, as lightning cracks across the castle's turrets, Rachel finds herself face-to-face with MacGregor himself, astride a mighty stallion. Now, stepping into Rachel's time -- and her heart -- the warrior from the past is pursued by an ancient, evil enemy. . . .
The Shadows of Christmas Past
Part #3 of "Feehan Christmas Stories" series by Christine Feehan
Romance / Paranormal / Fantasy
Dark magic heats up the holiday season as two sizzling *New York Times *bestselling authors team up for a seductive Christmas anthology!
Magic is in the air this Christmas—but is it good or evil? In this sexy yuletide anthology from two of the hottest names in paranormal romance, animal instincts take over…
In #1 *New York Times *bestselling author Christine Feehan’s “Rocky Mountain Miracle,” the sparks flying on a remote ranch could melt all the snow in Wyoming when an injured horse brings together a rugged womanizer with a dangerous reputation and an irresistible veterinarian rumored to cast spells. But does her magic touch work on animals *and *men?
A small town woman is shocked when the injured wolf she takes back to her kennel turns into a man in *New York Times *bestselling author Susan Sizemore’s “A Touch of Harry.” The only thing more difficult to hide than his stunning escape is the burning desire she feels for this stranger who brings out her wild side.
Azazel
Isaac Asimov
Science Fiction & Fantasy / Mystery & Thrillers / Science
He's two centimetres tall. He's fiery red. He has magical powers strong enough to wreck a normal human's life...all with the best intentions, of course. George Bitternut, an eccentric linguist stumbles onto an ancient incantation that calls forth this diminutive demon of astonishing wizardry. Unfortunately, Azazel refuses to do anything for George's personal gain - but he agrees to help out a few of his friends. This devilish collection of stories follows the antic adventures - and misadventures - of Azazel and our beleaguered Mr Bitternut. Told with great fun and in the inimitable Asimov style, Azazel makes for hours of pure impish delight.
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
65 Short Stories
W. Somerset Maugham
Fiction / Short Stories
65 Short Stories (Complete and Unabridged)
A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories
Ray Bradbury
Literature & Fiction / Science Fiction & Fantasy / Horror
Ray Bradbury is a painter who uses words rather than brushes--for he created lasting visual images that, once observed, are impossible to forget. Sinister mushrooms growing in a dank cellar. A family's first glimpse at Martians. A wonderful white vanilla ice-cream summer suit that changes everyone who wears it. A great artist drawing in the sand on the beach. A clunky contraption made out of household implements to help some kids play a game called Invasion. The most marvelous Christmas display a little boy ever saw. All those images and many more are inside this book, a new trade edition of thirty-one of Bradbury's most arresting tales--timeless short fiction that ranges from the farthest reaches of space to the innermost stirrings of the heart. Ray Bradbury is known worldwide as one of the century's great men of imagination. Here are thirty-one reasons why.
Round the Fire Stories
Arthur Conan Doyle
Fiction / Crime / Thriller
Round the Fire Stories shows Arthur Conan Doyle at his finest. These seventeen tales of suspense, murder, ghosts, unsolved crimes and inexplicable happenings were written to be read 'round the fire' on a winter's night. With intriguing titles such as 'The Pot of Caviare', 'The Brazilian Cat' and 'The Brown Hand', the stories are utterly compelling and are guaranteed to entertain and exhilarate.
Dickens' Stories About Children Every Child Can Read
Charles Dickens
Fiction
How is this book unique? Font adjustments & biography included Unabridged (100% Original content) Illustrated About Dickens\' Stories About Children Every Child Can Read by Charles Dickens Charles Dickens was one of the greatest among the many story-writers of "the Victorian age;" that is, the middle and latter part of the Nineteenth Century, when Victoria was Queen of Great Britain. Perhaps he was the greatest of them all for now, a generation after he passed away, more people read the stories of Dickens than those by any other author of that period. In those wonderful writings are found many pictures of child-life connected with the plan of the novels or stories. These child-stories have been taken out of their connections and are told by themselves in this volume. By and by you will read for yourselves, "The Christmas Carol," "The Chimes," "David Copperfield," "The Old Curiosity Shop," and the other great books by that fascinating writer, who saw people whom nobody else ever saw, and made them real. When you read those books you will meet again these charming children, and will remember them as the friends of your childhood.
The Complete Stories
Franz Kafka
Fiction / Philosophy / Short Stories
The Complete Stories brings together all of Kafka’s stories, from the classic tales such as “The Metamorphosis,” “In the Penal Colony,” and “A Hunger Artist” to shorter pieces and fragments that Max Brod, Kafka’s literary executor, released after Kafka’s death. With the exception of his three novels, the whole of Kafka’s narrative work is included in this volume.
--penguinrandomhouse.com
Two Introductory parables: Before the law --
Imperial message --
Longer stories: Description of a struggle --
Wedding preparations in the country --
Judgment --
Metamorphosis --
In the penal colony --
Village schoolmaster (The giant mole) --
Blumfeld, and elderly bachelor --
Warden of the tomb --
Country doctor --
Hunter Gracchus --
Hunter Gracchus: A fragment --
Great Wall of China --
News of the building of the wall: A fragment --
Report to an academy --
Report to an academy: Two fragments --
Refusal --
Hunger artist --
Investigations of a dog --
Little woman --
The burrow --
Josephine the singer, or the mouse folk --
Children on a country road --
The trees --
Clothes --
Excursion into the mountains --
Rejection --
The street window --
The tradesman --
Absent-minded window-gazing --
The way home --
Passers-by --
On the tram --
Reflections for gentlemen-jockeys --
The wish to be a red Indian --
Unhappiness --
Bachelor's ill luck --
Unmasking a confidence trickster --
The sudden walk --
Resolutions --
A dream --
Up in the gallery --
A fratricide --
The next village --
A visit to a mine --
Jackals and Arabs --
The bridge --
The bucket rider --
The new advocate --
An old manuscript --
The knock at the manor gate --
Eleven sons --
My neighbor --
A crossbreed (A sport) --
The cares of a family man --
A common confusion --
The truth about Sancho Panza --
The silence of the sirens --
Prometheus --
The city coat of arms --
Poseidon --
Fellowship --
At night --
The problem of our laws --
The conscripton of troops --
The test --
The vulture --
The helmsman --
The top --
A little fable --
Home-coming --
First sorrow --
The departure --
Advocates --
The married couple --
Give it up! --
On parables.
The Wanted Short Stories
Part #5.50 of "Wanted" series by Kelly Elliott
Romance / Contemporary / Historical Fiction
The story that was never told…
Three short stories based off the best selling novels, Wanted, Saved, and Faithful by Kelly Elliott.
Step into the future to get a glimpse of some of your favorite characters from the Wanted Series. Take a journey with Gunner and Ellie, Jeff and Ari, and Josh and Heather as they learn to love continues to make them feel wanted, saved, and forever faithful.
A Rose for Emily and Other Stories
William Faulkner
Fiction / Poetry / Southern Gothic
Here is a classic collection from one of America’s greatest authors. Though these short stories have universal appeal, they are intensely local in setting. With the exception of “Turn About,” which derives from the time of the First World War, all these tales unfold in a small town in Mississippi, William Faulkner’s birthplace and lifelong home.
Some stories—such as “A Rose for Emily,” “The Hound,” and “That Evening Sun”—are famous, displaying an uncanny blend of the homely and the horrifying. But others, though less well known, are equally colorful and characteristic. The gently nostalgic“Delta Autumn” provides a striking contrast to “Dry September” and “Barn Burning,” which are intensely dramatic.
As the editor, Saxe Commins, states in his illuminating Foreword: “These eight stories reflect the deep love and loathing, the tenderness and contempt, the identification and repudiation William Faulkner has felt for the traditions and the way of life of his own portion of the world.”
Stories in this volume: A Rose for Emily; The Hound; Turn About; That Evening Sun; Dry September; Delta Autumn; Barn Burning; An Odor of Verbena.
The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford and Other Classic Stories
Philip K. Dick
Science Fiction & Fantasy / Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction
This collection includes all of the writer’s earliest short and medium-length fiction (including some previously unpublished stories) covering the years 1952-1955. These fascinating stories include “Beyond Lies the Wub”, “The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford”, “The Variable Man”, and 22 others.
Twisted: The Collected Stories - 1
Jeffery Deaver
Mystery / Fiction / Thriller
A beautiful woman goes to extremes to rid herself of her stalker; a daughter begs her father not to go fishing in an area where there have been a series of brutal killings; a contemporary of the playwright William Shakespeare vows to avenge his family's ruin; and Jeffery Deaver's most beloved character, criminalist Lincoln Rhyme, is back to solve a chilling Christmastime disappearance.
Sweet Land Stories
E. L. Doctorow
Literature & Fiction
One of America’s premier writers, the bestselling author of Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, The Book of Daniel, and World’s Fair turns his astonishing narrative powers to the short story in five dazzling explorations of who we are as a people and how we live.
Ranging over the American continent from Alaska to Washington, D.C., these superb short works are crafted with all the weight and resonance of the novels for which E. L. Doctorow is famous. You will find yourself set down in a mysterious redbrick townhouse in rural Illinois (“A House on the Plains”), working things out with a baby-kidnapping couple in California (“Baby Wilson”), living on a religious-cult commune in Kansas (“Walter John Harmon”), and sharing the heartrending cross-country journey of a young woman navigating her way through three bad marriages to a kind of bruised but resolute independence (“Jolene: A Life”). And in the stunning “Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden,” you will witness a special agent of the FBI finding himself at a personal crossroads while investigating a grave breach of White House security.
Two of these stories have already won awards as the best fiction of the year published in American periodicals, and two have been chosen for annual best-story anthologies.
Composed in a variety of moods and voices, these remarkable portrayals of the American spiritual landscape show a modern master at the height of his powers.
Loggerheads and Other Stories
Jonathan Coe
Fiction / Contemporary / Humor and Comedy
Jonathan Coe is not a prolific writer of short stories - the seven in this collection make up his entire output (as against ten published novels) - but each one is a jewel of storytelling and characterization. And each could only have come from the pen of the novelist Coe. In fact at least three of the stories here, though self-contained, are part of a larger project to depict the history of a fictional Midlands family, a project which includes the novels The Rain Before It Falls and Expo 58. Loggerheads is therefore essential reading for all fans of Coe.
Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread
Chuck Palahniuk
Literature & Fiction
Stories you'll never forget—just try—from literature's favorite transgressive author
Representing work that spans several years, Make Something Up is a compilation of 21 stories and one novella (some previously published, some not) that will disturb and delight. The absurdity of both life and death are on full display; in "Zombies," the best and brightest of a high school prep school become tragically addicted to the latest drug craze: electric shocks from cardiac defibrillators. In "Knock, Knock," a son hopes to tell one last off-color joke to a father in his final moments, while in "Tunnel of Love," a massage therapist runs the curious practice of providing 'relief' to dying clients. And in "Expedition," fans will be thrilled to find to see a side of Tyler Durden never seen before in a precursor story to Fight Club.
Funny, caustic, bizarre, poignant; these stories represent everything readers have come to love and expect from Chuck Palahniuk. They have all the impact of a sharp blow to the solar plexus, with considerable collateral damage to the funny bone.
The World and Other Places: Stories
Jeanette Winterson
Literature & Fiction / Gay & Lesbian
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson's delectable first novel, announced the arrival of 'a fresh voice with a mind behind it,' as Muriel Spark has written. 'She is a master of her material, a writer in whom great talent deeply abides'--and her reputation and accomplishment have grown with each of her five subsequent novels.
Now, with her first collection--seventeen stories that span her entire career--Jeanette Winterson reveals all the facets of her extraordinary imagination. Whether transporting us to bizarre new geog-raphies--a world where sleep is illegal, an island of diamonds where the rich wear jewelry made of coal--or revealing so perfectly, so exactly, the joy and pain of owning a brand-new dog, she proves herself a master of the short form.
For her readers, a celebration--and for everyone else, a wonderful introduction to this highly original and consistently daring writer, who has become 'one of our most brilliant, visionary storytellers' (San Francisco Chronicle)
Day and Night Stories
Algernon Blackwood
Horror / Short Stories / Weird Fiction
Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE (14 March 1869 – 10 December 1951) was an English short story writer and novelist, one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. He was also a journalist and a broadcasting narrator. S. T. Joshi has stated that "his work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer\'s except Dunsany\'s" and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century"
Astounding Stories, February, 1931
Various
Humor / Jokes
Astounding Stories, February, 1931 By Various
Collected Short Stories Volume 2
W. Somerset Maugham
Fiction / Short Stories
The stories in this collection move from Malaya to America and England, and include some of Maugham's most famous tales; 'Flotsam and Jetsam', the story of an old woman trapped for years in a loveless marriage in the remote rubber plantations; 'The Man with the Scar', and notably the opening story 'The Vessel of Wrath', a tale of the unexpected love that grows between a devout missionary nurse and a drunken reprobate. In this second volume of his collected stories, Maugham illustrates his characteristic wry perception of human foibles and his genius for evoking compelling drama from an acute sense of time and place.
Back in the World: Stories
Tobias Wolff
Biographies & Memoirs / Nonfiction / Literature & Fiction
To American soldiers in Vietnam, "back in the world" meant America and safety. To Tobias Wolff's characters, Back in the World is where lives that have veered out of control just might become normal again. Unfortunately, the men and women in these gripping, pungent, and wonderfully skewed stories have only the vaguest notion of what normal is. A gentle priest finds himself in a Vegas hotel with a hysterical, sun-burned stranger. A show-biz hopeful undergoes a dubious audition in a hearse speeding across the California desert. An aging soldier is distracted from a night of philandering by a gun-toting neighbor and a suicidal enlisted man. As he moves among these unfortunates, Wolff observes the disparity between their realities and their dreams, in ten stories of exhilarating lucidity and grace.
Stories included are: "The Missing Person," "Say Yes," "The Poor Are Always With Us," "Sister," "Soldier's Joy," "Desert Breakdown," "Our Story Begins," "Leviathan," and "The Rich Brother."
"Terrific...The magic of his fiction cannot be explained. It is the ancient art of the master storyteller."--Tim O'Brien
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Tenth of December: Stories
George Saunders
Short Stories / Fiction
One of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story, and Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet.
In the taut opener, “Victory Lap,” a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In “Home,” a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned. And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is. A hapless, deluded owner of an antiques store; two mothers struggling to do the right thing; a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a brutal brush with reality; a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love, to kill—the unforgettable characters that populate the pages of Tenth of December are vividly and lovingly infused with Saunders’s signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.
Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.
Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of December—through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit—not only entertain and delight; they fulfill Chekhov’s dictum that art should “prepare us for tenderness.”
Advance praise for *Tenth of December
“Tenth of December shows George Saunders at his most subversive, hilarious, and emotionally piercing. Few writers can encompass that range of adjectives, but Saunders is a true original—restlessly inventive, yet deeply humane.”—Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad
“George Saunders is a complete original, unlike anyone else, thank god—and yet still he manages to be the rightful heir to three other complete American originals—Barthelme (the lyricism, the playfulness), Vonnegut (the outrage, the wit, the scope), and Twain (the common sense, the exasperation). There is no author I recommend to people more often—for ten years I’ve urged George Saunders onto everyone and everyone. You want funny? Saunders is your man. You want emotional heft? Saunders again. You want stories that are actually about something—stories that again and again get to the meat of matters of life and death and justice and country? Saunders. There is no one better, no one more essential to our national sense of self and sanity.”—Dave Eggers, author of A Hologram for the King*
From the Hardcover edition.
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Fiction
THE ONLY COMPLETE COLLECTION BY THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR
In this definitive collection of Ernest Hemingway's short stories, readers will delight in the author's most beloved classics such as "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," "Hills Like White Elephants," and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and will discover seven new tales published for the first time in this collection. For Hemingway fans The Complete Short Stories is an invaluable treasury.
T.C. Boyle Stories
T. Coraghessan Boyle
Literature & Fiction
T. C. Boyle is one of the most inventive and wickedly funny short story writers at work today. Over the course of twenty-five years, Boyle has built up a body of short fiction that is remarkable in its range, richness, and exuberance. His stories have won accolades for their irony and black humor, for their verbal pyrotechnics, for their fascination with everything bizarre and queasy, and for the razor-sharp way in which they dissect America's obsession with image and materialism. Gathered together here are all of the stories that have appeared in his four previous collections, as well as seven that have never before appeared in book form. Together they comprise a book of small treasures, a definitive gift for Boyle fans and for every reader ready to discover the "ferocious, delicious imagination" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) of a "vibrant sensibility fully engaged with American society" (The New York Times).
The Governess and Other Stories
Stefan Zweig
Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs
These four stories illustrate the wide range of Zweig's subject matter dating from quite early in his career as a writer of fiction (The Governess, rooted in a world of strict Edwardian morality), to late (Did He Do It?, almost an English detective story set near Bath, where Zweig lived in exile). In addition The Miracles of Life, set in 16th-century Antwerp during the time of Protestant iconoclasm, and Downfall of a Heart both address the theme of anti-Semitism.
On the Yankee Station: Stories
William Boyd
Literature & Fiction
Wiliam Boyd, winner of the Whitbread and Somerset Maugham Awards, introduces unlikely heroes desperate to redeem their unsatisfying lives.
From California poolsides to the battlegrounds of Vietnam, here is a world populated by weary souls who turn to fantasy as their sole escape from life's inequities. Stranded in an African hotel during a coup, an oafish Englishman impresses a young stewardess with stories of an enchanted life completely at odds with his sordid existence in "The Coup." In the title story, an arrogant, sadistic American pilot in Vietnam underestimaets the power of revenge when he relentlessly persecutes a member of his maintenance crew. With droll humor and rare compassion, Boyd's enthralling stories remind us of his stature as one of contemporary fiction's finest storytellers.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Are You Loathsome Tonight?: A Collection of Short Stories
Poppy Z. Brite
Horror / Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction
This collection by Poppy Z. Brite, author of Exquisite Corpse and Love in Vein, among others, features anew story, Monday's Special. Poppy contributed story notes as well as the Preface.
Collected Short Stories Volume 4
W. Somerset Maugham
Fiction / Short Stories
This final classic collection of stories reveals Somerset Maugham's unique talent for exposing and exploring the bitter realities of human relationships. Brilliant tales of love, infidelity, passion and prejudice, the stories range from 'The Lotus Eater' in which a man has a vision of a life of bliss in the Mediterranean, to the astringent tales of 'The Outstation' and 'The Back of Beyond' in Malaya and South East Asia. Largely set in favourite Maugham country, this colourful collection brilliantly evokes the numbered days of the British Empire.
The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories
Charles Bukowski
Fiction / Contemporary / Poetry
These mad immortal stories, now surfaced from the literary underground, have addicted legions of American readers, even though the high literary establishment continues to ignore them. In Europe, however (particularly in Germany, Italy, and France where he is published by the great publishing houses), he is critically recognized as one of America's greatest living realist writers.
Charles Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany in 1920 and brought to America at the age of two. Eighteen or twenty books of prose and poetry, Bukowski, after publishing prose in Story and Portfolio, stopped writing for ten years. He arrived in the charity ward of the Los Angeles County General Hospital, hemorrhaging as a climax to a ten year drinking bout. Some say he didn't die. After leaving the hospital he got a typewriter and began writing again—this time, poetry. He later returned to prose and gained some fame with his column, Notes of a Dirty Old Man. After 14 years in the Post Office he resigned at age 50, he says, to keep from going insane. He now claims to be unemployable and eats typewriter ribbons.
How They Met and Other Stories
David Levithan
Literature & Fiction / Young Adult / Gay & Lesbian
Just in time for Valentine’s Day comes a confection from David Levithan that is sure to have fans of Boy Meets Boy eager to devour it. Here are 18 stories, all about love, all kinds of love. From the aching for the one you pine for, to standing up and speaking up for the one you love, to pure joy and happiness, these love stories run the gamut of that emotion that at some point has turned every one of us inside out and upside down.
What is love? With this original story collection, David Levithan proves that love is a many splendored thing, a varied, complicated, addictive, wonderful thing.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Creeping Siamese and Other Stories
Dashiell Hammett
Mystery & Thrillers
Whether chasing hoodlums or solving impossible murders, Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op is one of the toughest detectives in the history of crime fiction
The Continental Op is going over his expense reports when a raw-boned man staggers through the door of his office, stretches out his arms, and dies. As the stranger falls to the floor, he utters a final word: Hell. It’s apt, because this man’s death will drag the Op right into the inferno. The contents of the man’s pockets are enough to send the Op off in search of his identity, his connection to San Francisco, and the treacherous underworld dealings of both the victim and his killers.
The Continental Op made his name taking punches and dodging bullets, but unraveling “The Creeping Siamese” is the kind of mystery that will baffle even him. This story, along with “The Big Knock-Over” and “$106,000 Blood Money,” is a testament to the enduring genius of Dashiell Hammett.
The Perseids and Other Stories
Robert Charles Wilson
Science Fiction
Robert Charles Wilson's time has come. His first novel from Tor, Darwinia, was a finalist for science fiction's Hugo award, and a #1 Locus bestseller in paperback. His next novel, Bios, is a critical and commercial success. Now Wilson's brilliant short science fiction is available in book form for the first time.
Beginning with "The Perseids," winner of Canada's national SF award, this collection showcases Wilson's suppleness and strength: bravura ideas, scientific rigor, and living, breathing human beings facing choices that matter. Also included among the several stories herein are the acclaimed Hugo Award finalist "Divided by Infinity" and three new stories written specifically for this collection.
One Cretan Evening and Other Stories
Victoria Hislop
Literature & Fiction
Five short stories by the million-copy bestselling author of The Island and The Return, collected for the first time in one edition. Set in Greece and in England, One Cretan Evening, The Pine Tree, By the Fire, The Warmest Christmas Ever and Aflame in Athens are five unmissable stories told in Victoria's unique voice. This ebook includes the opening of The Thread, Victoria's new novel: a powerful tale of love and loyalty set in the vibrant city of Thessaloniki, Greece.
The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig
Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs
In this magnificent collection of Stefan Zweig's short stories the very best and worst of human nature are captured with sharp observation, understanding and vivid empathy. Ranging from love and death to faith restored and hope regained, these stories present a master at work, at the top of his form. Perfectly paced and brimming with passion, these twenty-two tales from a master storyteller of the Twentieth Century are translated by the award-winning Anthea Bell.
Deluxe, clothbound edition.
From the Hardcover edition.
Who Killed Bob Teal? And Other Detective Stories
Dashiell Hammett
Mystery & Thrillers
WHO KILLED BOB TEAL? AND OTHER DETECTIVE STORIES contains fifteen detective tales by Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961). Often regarded as one of the United States' most successful detective writers, Hammett created the characters of Nick and Nora Charles (THE THIN MAN) and the hard-boiled detective Sam Spade (THE MALTESE FALCON).
• The Assistant Murder
• Arson Plus
• Who Killed Bob Teal?
• Afraid of a Gun
• Bodies Piled Up
• Death on Pine Street
• Mike, Alec, or Rufus
• Night Shots
• Nightmare Town
• One Hour
• Ruffian’s Wife
• The Man Who Killed Dan Odoms
• The Second-Story Angel
• The Tenth Clew
• Zigzags of Treachery
The Time and the Place: And Other Stories
Naguib Mahfouz
Literature & Fiction / Short Stories
Selected and translated by the distinguished scholar Denys Johnson-Daivies, these stories have all the celebrated and distinctive characters and qualities found in Mahfouz's novels: The denizens of the dark, narrow alleyways of Cairo, who struggle to survive the poverty; melancholy ruminations on death; experiments with the supernatural; and witty excursions into Cairene middle-class life.
Rag, Tag and Bobtail and Other Magical Stories
Enid Blyton
Children's / Mystery / Fantasy
Magic and mayhem from one of the world's best-loved storytellers. Join pixies Rag, Tag and Bobtail, rabbits Flop and Whiskers, the quarrelsome tin soldiers, the little brown pony, the two good fairies and many other loveable characters in this collection of 30 delightful and funny short stories about magical adventures, naughty children and charming animals.
The Eskimo's Secret
Part #76 of "Nancy Drew Mystery Stories" series by Carolyn Keene
Children's Books / Mystery & Thrillers / Young Adult
Nancy suspects that sabotage in a chain of West Coast shops selling imported art objects is connected with the theft of a valuable Eskimo sculpture.
The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories
H. P. Lovecraft
Horror / Weird Fiction / Short Stories
A definitive edition of stories by the master of supernatural fiction
Howard Phillips Lovecraft's unique contribution to American literature was a melding of traditional supernaturalism (derived chiefly from Edgar Allan Poe) with the genre of science fiction that emerged in the early 1920s. This Penguin Classics edition brings together a dozen of the master's tales-from his early short stories "Under the Pyramids" (originally ghostwritten for Harry Houdini) and "The Music of Erich Zann" (which Lovecraft ranked second among his own favorites) through his more fully developed works, "The Dunwich Horror," The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and At the Mountains of Madness.
** The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories* * presents the definitive corrected texts of these works, along with Lovecraft critic and biographer S. T. Joshi's illuminating introduction and notes to each story.
Contains the following tales:
- The Tomb
- Beyond the Wall of Sleep
- The White Ship
- The Temple
- The Quest of Iranon
- The Music of Erich Zann
- Imprisoned with the Pharaohs aka Under the Pyramids
- Pickman's Model
- The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
- The Dunwich Horror
- At the Mountains of Madness
- The Thing on the Doorstep
Pigeon Feathers: And Other Stories
John Updike
Fiction
When this classic collection of stories first appeared—in 1962, on the author’s thirtieth birthday—Arthur Mizener wrote in The New York Times Book Review: “Updike is a romantic [and] like all American romantics, that is, he has an irresistible impulse to go in memory home again in order to find himself. . . . The precise recollection of his own family-love, parental and marital, is vital to him; it is the matter in which the saving truth is incarnate. . . . Pigeon Feathers is not just a book of very brilliant short stories; it is a demonstration of how the most gifted writer of his generation is coming to maturity; it shows us that Mr. Updike’s fine verbal talent is no longer pirouetting, however gracefully, out of a simple delight in motion, but is beginning to serve his deepest insight.”
The Shipshape Miracle: And Other Stories
Clifford D. Simak
Science Fiction
Nine tales of imagination and wonder from one of the formative voices of science fiction and fantasy, the author of Way Station and City.
Named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America, Clifford D. Simak was a preeminent voice during the decades that established sci-fi as a genre to be reckoned with. Held in the same esteem as fellow luminaries Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and Ray Bradbury, his novels continue to enthrall today’s readers. And his short fiction is still as gripping and surprising now as when it first entertained an entire generation of fans.
The title story is just one example of this. Cheviot Sherwood doesn’t believe in miracles. They never seem to pay off. So when he’s marooned on a planet with no plan for escape and no working radio, he takes it in stride and prepares for a long stay gathering food, making shelter, and collecting all the diamonds the world has to offer. But when a ship like none he’s ever encountered lands, he sees his salvation—and an opportunity to take the priceless craft for himself. Unfortunately, his “rescuer” has the same idea . . .
This volume also includes the celebrated short works “Eternity Lost,” “Shotgun Cure,” and “Paradise,” among others.
Each story includes an introduction by David W. Wixon, literary executor of the Clifford D. Simak estate and editor of this ebook.
Enemy Match
Part #73 of "Nancy Drew Mystery Stories" series by Carolyn Keene
Children's Books / Mystery & Thrillers / Young Adult
Nancy helps an old friend, Nina Ford, learn what happened to her father. Mr. Ford was falsely accused of a crime, and while in police custody, he was swept away in a flood. Nancy acquires her very own assistant, a young girl named Midge who regards Nancy as a hero
Lost in the Everglades
Part #161 of "Nancy Drew Mystery Stories" series by Carolyn Keene
Children's Books / Mystery & Thrillers / Young Adult
When Nancy and her friends visit the Florida Everglades, they join in the search for a missing park volunteer, Jade Romero, and for the sculpture of a panther said to be hidden in the backwoods.
The M.R. James Megapack: 27 Classic Horror Stories
M. R. James
Short Stories / Mystery & Thrillers / Religion
Montague Rhodes James (1862 - 1936), who wrote as M. R. James, was an English medieval scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905-1918), and of Eton College (1918-1936). He is best remembered for his ghost stories, which are regarded as among the best in the genre. James redefined the ghost story for the new century by abandoning many of the formal Gothic cliches of his predecessors and using more realistic contemporary settings. However, James's protagonists and plots tend to reflect his own antiquarian interests. Accordingly, he is known as the originator of the "antiquarian ghost story." This volume collects 27 of his classic tales, including:
CANON ALBERIC'S SCRAP-BOOK
LOST HEARTS
THE MEZZOTINT
THE ASH-TREE
NUMBER 13
COUNT MAGNUS
QUIS EST ISTE QUI VENIT
THE TREASURE OF ABBOT THOMAS
PART 2: THE FIVE JARS
THE DISCOVERY
THE FIRST JAR
THE SECOND JAR
THE SMALL PEOPLE
DANGER TO THE JARS
THE CAT, WAG, SLIM AND OTHERS
THE BAT-BALL
WAG AT HOME
PART 3: MORE GHOST STORIES OF AN ANTIQUARY
CASTING THE RUNES
THE ROSE GARDEN
THE TRACTATE MIDDOTH
THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER CATHEDRAL
MARTIN'S CLOSE
MR HUMPHREYS AND HIS INHERITANCE
PART 4: A THIN GHOST AND OTHERS
THE RESIDENCE AT WHITMINSTER
THE DIARY OF MR. POYNTER
AN EPISODE OF CATHEDRAL HISTORY
THE STORY OF A DISAPPEARANCE AND AN APPEARANCE
TWO DOCTORS
And don't forget to search this ebook store for "Wildside Megapack" to see all the entries in the Megapack series -- including volumes of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, westerns, and much, much more!
This is version 2.0 of this ebook release, correcting several typos from version 1.0.
Charlie Martz and Other Stories: The Unpublished Stories
Elmore Leonard
Mystery & Thrillers / Western
A collection of fifteen stories, eleven of which have never been previously published, from the early career of bestselling American master Elmore Leonard
**“Elmore Leonard is a classic of one.”—Dennis Lehane
“He might justifiably be called America’s Author.”—San Diego Union-Tribune**
Over his long and illustrious career, Elmore Leonard was recognized as one of the greatest crime writers of all time, the author of dozens of bestselling books—many adapted for the big screen—as well as a master of short fiction. A superb stylist whose crisp, tight prose crackled with trademark wit and sharp dialogue, Leonard remains the standard for crime fiction and a literary model for writers of every genre.
Marked by his unmistakable grit and humor, the stories in Charlie Martz and Other Stories—produced early in his career, when he was making his name particularly with westerns—reveal a writer in transition, exploring new voices and locations, from the bars of small-town New Mexico and Michigan to a film set in Hollywood, a hotel in Southern Spain, even a military base in Kuala Lumpur. They also introduce us to classic Leonard characters, some who recur throughout the collection, such as aging lawman Charlie Martz and weary former matador Eladio Montoya.
Devoted Leonard aficionados and fans new to his fiction will marvel at these early works that reveal an artist on the cusp of greatness.
The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories
E. M. Forster
Fiction / Essays
English author and critic, member of Bloomsbury group and friend of Virginia Woolf who achieved fame through his novels, which include: Room with a View, Maurice, A Passage to India, and Howard's End. The Celestial Omnibus is a collection of short-stories Forster wrote during the prewar years, most of which were symbolic fantasies or fables. Contents: The Story of a Panic; The Other Side of the Hedge; The Celestial Omnibus; Other Kingdom; The Curate's Friend; and The Road from Colonus. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.
The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories
Part #21 of "Hercule Poirot" series by Agatha Christie
Mystery / Crime / Thriller
A diamond worth several fortunes is stolen as a dinner party trick, and then stolen from the thief...How lucky that Mr. Parker Pyne is also a guest at the party. The incomparable Hercule Poirot proves that a crowd is the best place for a murder. And Miss Marple solves a crime that stumped the police without ever leaving her fireside. This superb collection assembles all of Agatha Christie's top detectives to solve the most challenging cases of their careers.
This short story collection contains the following: The Regatta Mystery, The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest, How Does Your Garden Grow?, Problem at Pollensa Bay, Yellow Iris, Miss Marple Tells a Story, The Dream, In a Glass Darkly and Problem At Sea.
Burning Your Boats: Collected Short Stories
Angela Carter
Fiction
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SALMAN RUSHDIE
As well as her eight novels, Angela Carter published four wonderful collections of short stories during her lifetime, and contributed stories to several anthologies. The stories were scattered amongst different publishers, and a couple of the volumes are now out of print. In Burning your Boats they are gathered for the first time; this is a key collection and a major event for Angela Carter aficionados.
The Whore's Child and Other Stories
Richard Russo
Literature & Fiction
To this irresistible debut collection of short stories, Richard Russo brings the same bittersweet wit, deep knowledge of human nature, and spellbinding narrative gifts that distinguish his best-selling novels. His themes are the imperfect bargains of marriage; the discoveries and disillusionments of childhood;the unwinnable battles men and women insist on fighting with the past.
A cynical Hollywood moviemaker confronts his dead wife’s lover and abruptly realizes the depth of his own passion. As his parents’ marriage disintegrates, a precocious fifth-grader distracts himself with meditations on baseball, spaghetti, and his place in the universe. And in the title story, an elderly nun enters a college creative writing class and plays havoc with its tidy notions of fact and fiction. The Whore’s Child is further proof that Russo is one of the finest writers we have, unsparingly truthful yet hugely compassionate and capable of creating characters real that they seem to step off the page.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Real Thing: Stories and Sketches
Doris Lessing
Fiction
The stories and sketches in this collection penetrate to the heart of human experience with the passion and intelligence readers have come to expect of Doris Lessing. Most of the piece are set in contemporary London, a city the author loves for its variety, its diversity, its transitoriness, the way it connects the life of animals and birds in the parks to the streets. Lessing's fiction also explores the darker corners of relationships between women and men, as in the rich and emotionally complex title story, in which she uncovers a more parlous reality behind the facade of the most conventional relationship between the sexes.
Skin and Other Stories
Roald Dahl
Children's Books / Literature & Fiction / Short Stories
The eleven stories in this volume are drawn from Dahl's popular adult short stories and were chosen for their quirky, twisted, and haunting plots -- sure to please Dahl teenage fans.
Contents
vii • Introduction (Skin and Other Stories) • (2000) • essay by Wendy Cooling
1 • Skin • non-genre • (1952) • short story by Roald Dahl
22 • Lamb to the Slaughter • non-genre • (1953) • short story by Roald Dahl
35 • The Sound Machine • (1949) • short story by Roald Dahl
53 • An African Story • (1946) • short story by Roald Dahl
71 • Galloping Foxley • non-genre • (1953) • short story by Roald Dahl
90 • The Wish • (1948) • short story by Roald Dahl
95 • The Surgeon • non-genre • (1988) • novelette by Roald Dahl
129 • Dip in the Pool • non-genre • (1952) • short story by Roald Dahl
144 • The Champion of the World • non-genre • (1959) • novelette by Roald Dahl
179 • Beware of the Dog • non-genre • (1944) • short story by Roald Dahl
195 • My Lady Love, My Dove • non-genre • (1952) • short story by Roald Dahl
A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories
Flannery O'Connor
Fiction / Short Stories / Essays
This now classic book revealed Flannery O'Connor as one of the most original and provocative writers to emerge from the South. Her apocalyptic vision of life is expressed through grotesque, often comic situations in which the principal character faces a problem of salvation: the grandmother, in the title story, confronting the murderous Misfit; a neglected four-year-old boy looking for the Kingdom of Christ in the fast-flowing waters of the river; General Sash, about to meet the final enemy. Stories include:
"A Good Man Is Hard to Find"
"The River"
"The Life You Save May Be Your Own"
"A Stroke of Good Fortune"
"A Temple of the Holy Ghost"
"The Artificial Nigger"
"A Circle in the Fire"
"A Late Encounter with the Enemy"
"Good Country People"
"The Displaced Person"
©1955 Flannery O'Connor; 1954, 1953, 1948 by Flannery O'Connor; renewed 1983, 1981 by Regina O'Connor; renewed 1976 by Mrs. Edward F. O'Connor; (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Land of Cards: Stories, Poems, and Plays for Children
Rabindranath Tagore
Songs, Poetry & Arts / Literature & Fiction / Spirituality & Philosophy
Poet, novelist, painter, musician and Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore was one of modern India ’s greatest literary figures. This collection brings together some of his best works—poems, short stories and plays in one volume. Be it the wit, magic and lyricism of his poetry or the vividly etched social milieu of his stories, or the sheer power and vibrancy of his plays, Tagore’s versatility and unceasing creativity come alive in these writings. The title play ‘The Land of Cards’ is a satire against the bondage of orthodox rules, while in ‘The Post Office’, a child suffocated by his confined existence dreams of freedom in the world outside. From a son’s cherished desire to protect his mother in the poem ‘Hero’ to a fruit-seller longing for his daughter faraway in the story ‘Kabuliwala’, Tagore’s works convey his humanism and his deep understanding of human relationships.
New Folks' Home: And Other Stories
Clifford D. Simak
Science Fiction
Ten stories of wonder and imagination by an author named Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America
In the collection’s title story, Frederick Gray is closing in on seventy and has outlived his usefulness as a professor of law. He has no family; his best friend, fellow faculty member Ben Lovell, has recently died. Before Gray moves into a retirement home, he takes a final canoe trip to a favorite fishing spot he and Lovell had visited many times, only to find that someone has built a house on the remote riverside. When an accident leaves Gray stranded and in pain, he returns to the shelter seeking aid and instead finds a new reason for living.
Nine additional tales showcase Clifford D. Simak’s talent for spinning stories that allow us to glimpse the possibilities of life beyond Earth as well as expand our wisdom of what it means to be human.
Each story includes an introduction by David W. Wixon, literary executor of the Clifford D. Simak estate and editor of this ebook.
The Spook's Stories: Grimalkin's Tale
Joseph Delaney
Young Adult / Horror / Science Fiction & Fantasy
'I fear nobody. But my enemies fear me . . . Without ruthlessness and savagery I would not survive even a week of the life I lead. I am the witch assassin of the Malkin clan.'
Meet Grimalkin, the fearsome witch assassin, and find out how she came to take the role she now holds.
This exclusive digital short story set in the world of Joseph Delaney's best-selling series The Wardstone Chronicles first appeared in the spine-tingling collection The Spook's Stories: Witches. Now available separately for the first time, and including a preview of the first chapter of I Am Grimalkin, this is perfect for existing fans and newcomers alike. The only question is, are you brave enough . . .
Three Twisted Stories: Go Deep, Necessary Women, Remmy Rothstein Toes the Line
Karin Slaughter
Mystery & Thrillers / Fiction / Thriller
This genre-bending eBook bundle proves that not only is Karin Slaughter “one of the best crime novelists in America” (The Washington Post), she’s one of today’s very best writers, period. From the hallucinatory noir novella Go Deep to the twisted short stories “Necessary Women” and “Remmy Rothstein Toes the Line,” this collection showcases the New York Times bestselling author’s dark humor, limitless imagination, and masterly command of voice and character.
GO DEEP
Growing up dirt poor, Charlie Lam worked his ass off to make something of himself, no thanks to his deadbeat father or his long-suffering mother. And now a lot of people depend on Charlie: by his last count, sixty-eight employees at his Atlanta auto dealership, eleven shiftless brothers and sisters, an ungrateful wife, a spoiled daughter, a shameless girlfriend. Who could really blame him for wanting a little extra?
The arrangement is simple: Charlie picks up a suit from the dry cleaner’s. In the suit pocket is the name of a very important man. The next day, that man walks into the dealership, drives out in a new car, and Charlie gets a fat envelope full of cash. Everyone’s happy. No one gets hurt. So long as Charlie doesn’t cross his business partner. But with one twist of a knife, the unthinkable happens. And suddenly Charlie is in deeper trouble than he could have possibly imagined.
NECESSARY WOMEN
In a border town between Georgia and Alabama, in a three-room house made of cement block, a fourteen-year-old girl watches her mother die. Her father is a long-haul trucker, away for weeks, sometimes months, at a time. Her mother, with two menial jobs cleaning restrooms and working nights at the laundry, had been just thirty years old.
A week before she died, noticing her daughter getting attention from a boy, the girl’s mother warned her not to make the same mistakes she did. Now, her father tells her, she’s the woman of the house, and she must do all the necessary things the woman must do: the cleaning, the cooking, the laundry. But there’s a lot more to being a woman than fixing dinner and doing the wash. Her mother was right: She won’t end up like her—and she’ll do anything to prove it.
REMMY ROTHSTEIN TOES THE LINE
As an intrepid adjudicator of World Records, Mindy Patel has met lots of strange people in lots of strange places. But they’re no match for the Swampers of the Georgia bayou. Mindy has braved the oppressive August heat in search of Remmy Rothstein, who they call “The Cajun Jew.” If the photos are indeed accurate, she might be about to certify Remmy as the World Record Holder for Longest Tongue in the World . . . and maybe even the Widest!
First Mindy meets Remmy’s half-brother, Buell Rabinowitz, surely the world’s only one-legged, albino, Jewish African American. Then she makes the acquaintance of Remmy’s mother, a foul-mouthed old woman with an impressive beard. None of which prepares her for an eyeful of Remmy: a man who measures up to his singular reputation in ways that will change the course of Mindy’s life.
Zima Blue and Other Stories
Alastair Reynolds
Science Fiction & Fantasy
The stories in Zima Blue represent a more optimistic take on humanity's future, a view that says there may be wars, there may be catastrophes and cosmic errors, but something human will still survive.
Troublemakers: Stories by Harlan Ellison
Harlan Ellison
Science Fiction & Fantasy / Mystery & Thrillers / Horror
In a career spanning more than 50 years, Harlan Ellison has written or edited 75 books, more than 1700 stories, essays, articles and newspaper columns, two dozen teleplays, and a dozen movies. Now, for the first time anywhere, Troublemakers presents a collection of Ellison's classic stories -- chosen by the author -- that will introduce new readers to a writer described by the New York Times as having "the spellbinding quality of a great nonstop talker, with a cultural warehouse for a mind."
.jpg "Short Fuses (Four short stories)")
Short Fuses (Four short stories)
Stephen Leather
Mystery & Thrillers
Four short stories from bestselling author Stephen Leather, plus opening chapters of six of his bestselling thrillers.Four short stories from bestselling author Stephen Leather, plus opening chapters of six of his bestselling thrillers.The short stories are: Breaking In (where a burglar gets more than he bargained for when he breaks into a London house), Strangers On A Train (where a mugging on a train doesn't go to plan), Inspector Zhang and the Hotel Guest (where the Singaporean detective solves a mystery) and Cat's Eyes (the backstory of a Bangkok go-go dancer).There are also tasters of six of his bestselling novels, including The Chinaman, The Vets and The Birthday Girl.Stephen Leather is one of the UK's most successful thriller writers. He was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. Before that, he was employed as a biochemist for ICI, shovelled limestone in a quarry, worked as a baker, a petrol pump attendant, a barman, and worked for the Inland Revenue. He began writing full time in 1992. His bestsellers have been translated into more than ten languages. He has also written for television shows such as London's Burning, The Knock and the BBC's Murder in Mind series. Two of his books, The Stretch and The Bombmaker, were made into movies.
Stories About Facing Challenges, Realizing Dreams and Making a Difference
Jack Canfield
Nonfiction / Self Help / Inspirational
Filled with relevant, inspiring, and fun stories written mostly by kids, this new volume features a unique, innovative chapter that highlights real preteen kids achieving real dreams, helping less fortunate people, starting their own business, and utilizing their unique abilities.
The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham: East and West (Vol. 1 of 2))
W. Somerset Maugham
Fiction / Short Stories
30 stories
Rain --
Fall of Edward Barnard --
Mackintosh --
Red --
Honolulu --
Pool --
Letter --
Before the party --
Force of circumstance --
Outstation --
Yellow streak --
P & O --
Jane --
Round dozen --
Creative impulse --
Miss King --
Hairless Mexican --
Giulia Lazzari --
Traitor --
His Excellency --
Mr. Harrington's washing --
Footprints in the jungle --
Human element --
virtue --
Alien corn --
Book-bag --
Vessel of wrath --
Door of opportunity --
Back of beyond --
Neil MacAdam.
Wild Nights!: Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway
Joyce Carol Oates
Literature & Fiction / Short Stories / Criticism
Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Samuel Clemens ("Mark Twain"), Henry James, Ernest Hemingway--Joyce Carol Oates evokes each of these American literary icons in her newest work of prose fiction, poignantly and audaciously reinventing the climactic events of their lives. In subtly nuanced language suggestive of each of these writers, Oates explores the mysterious regions of the unknowable self that is "genius."
Darkly hilarious, brilliant, and brazen, "Wild Nights " is Joyce Carol Oates's most original and haunting work of the imagination.
.jpg "Historical Romance: Regency Romance: The Heartless Rake (Sweet Regency Historical Romance Short Stories)")
Historical Romance: Regency Romance: The Heartless Rake (Sweet Regency Historical Romance Short Stories)
Rose Haven
★★★★★ "POWERFUL! Rose Haven creates an intensely romantic world for young and old alike. A place where there is darkness and light, love and hope, and if you dare to go there you will never want to leave."Breeding for dowry was never really his thing...Lord Adam Sonhurst, the seventh Marquess of Norfolk, is notorious for his rakish character. He has no intention of settling down any time soon. In fact, he would prefer downing a glass of poison than getting married. And he firmly believes that love is a dangerous notion that incapacitates a person’s logical reasoning power. His father once fell in love with his mother and he had seen how that love had ruined him! But his mother wants him to produce an heir soon to carry on the family legacy. She has chosen for him a lady of impeccable breeding who would also bring a sizeable dowry. As much as he loathes his mother, Adam knows that she is right. But he refuses to marry the girl of her choice.When circumstances force him to get married to that very girl, he vows to make life hell for her! ★★★★★ "POWERFUL! Rose Haven creates an intensely romantic world for young and old alike. A place where there is darkness and light, love and hope, and if you dare to go there you will never want to leave."
A Sense of Reality: And Other Stories
Graham Greene
Fiction / Thriller / Memoir
A collection that captures a wealth of the writer's diverse themes.
The Night in Question: Stories
Tobias Wolff
Biographies & Memoirs / Nonfiction / Literature & Fiction
One of the sinuous and subtly crafted stories in Tobias Wolff's new collection--his first in eleven years--begins with a man biting a dog. The fact that Wolff is reversing familiar expectations is only half the point. The other half is that Wolff makes the reversal seem inevitable: the dog has attacked his protagonist's young daughter. And everywhere in The Night in Question, we are reminded that truth is deceptive, volatile, and often the last thing we want to know.
A young reporter writes an obituary only to be fired when its subject walks into his office, very much alive. A soldier in Vietnam goads his lieutenant into sending him on increasingly dangerous missions. An impecunious mother and son go window-shopping for a domesticity that is forever beyond their grasp. Seamless, ironic, dizzying in their emotional aptness, these fifteen stories deliver small, exquisite shocks that leave us feeling invigorated and intensely alive.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Summer Lies: Stories
Bernhard Schlink
Literature & Fiction / Philosophy / Politics
From Bernhard Schlink, the internationally best-selling author of The Reader, come seven provocative and masterfully calibrated stories. A keen dissection of the ways in which we play with truth and less-than-truth in our lives. Summer Lies brims with the delusions, the passions, the outbursts, and the sometimes irrational justifications people make within a mélange of beautifully rendered relationships. In ”After the Season,” a man falls quickly in love with a woman he meets on the beach but wrestles with his incongruous feelings of betrayal after he learns she’s rich. In “Johann Sebastian Bach on Ruegen,” a son tries to put his resentment toward his emotionally distant father behind him by proposing a trip to a Back festival but soon realizes, during his efforts to reconnect, that it wasn’t his father who was the distant one. A philandering playwright is accused to infidelity by his wife in “The Night in Baden-Baden,” but he sees her accusations as nothing more than a means to exculpate himself of his guilt as he carries on with his ways. And in “Stranger in the Night,” an obliging professor becomes an accomplice—not entirely unwittingly—to the temporary escape of a charismatic fugitive on a delayed flight from New York to Frankfurt.
The truth, as once character puts it, is “passionate, beautiful sometimes, and sometimes hideous, it can make you happy and it can torture you, and it always sets you free.” Tantalizingly, so is the act of telling a lie—to others and to ourselves.
The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
Fantasy / Horror / History
Here are Howard’s greatest horror tales, all in their original, definitive versions. Some of Howard’s best-known characters–Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, and sailor Steve Costigan among them–roam the forbidding locales of the author’s fevered imagination, from the swamps and bayous of the Deep South to the fiend-haunted woods outside Paris to remote jungles in Africa.
The collection includes Howard’s masterpiece “Pigeons from Hell,” which Stephen King calls “one of the finest horror stories of [the twentieth] century,” a tale of two travelers who stumble upon the ruins of a Southern plantation–and into the maw of its fatal secret. In “Black Canaan” even the best warrior has little chance of taking down the evil voodoo man with unholy powers–and none at all against his wily mistress, the diabolical High Priestess of Damballah. In these and other lavishly illustrated classics, such as the revenge nightmare “Worms of the Earth” and “The Cairn on the Headland,” Howard spins tales of unrelenting terror, the legacy of one of the world’s great masters of the macabre.
Blood in Her Veins: Nineteen Stories From the World of Jane Yellowrock
Faith Hunter
Fantasy / Mystery & Thrillers / Paranormal
New York Times bestselling author Faith Hunter presents a comprehensive collection of stories starring everyone’s favorite “smart, sexy, and ruthless”* shapeshifting skinwalker...
In this must-have collection of stories, experience nineteen thrilling adventures from the world of vampire-hunter Jane Yellowrock, including many fan favorites and two all-new novellas. Read about the first time Jane put the pedal to the metal in “The Early Years,” and the last thing a werewolf will ever see as Jane delivers justice in “Beneath a Bloody Moon.” Get a searing look into the pasts of some of the series’ best-loved characters: Beast in “WeSa and the Lumber King,” Rick LaFleur in “Cat Tats,” and Molly Everhart Trueblood in “Haints.”
In the brand-new “Cat Fight,” the witches and vampires of Bayou, Oiseau, are at war over a magical talisman—and Jane must figure out how to keep the mysterious artifact out of the covetous hands of the Master of New Orleans. And in the never-before-published “Bound No More,” Jane welcomes a visit from Molly and her daughter, Angie, who is about to prove she’s the most powerful witch in Everhart history....
From the Big Easy to the bad bayou, from the open road to a vampire’s lair—with Jane Yellowrock, it’s always a given: have stakes, will travel.
*New York Times Bestselling Author Kim Harrison
Collected Stories
William Faulkner
Fiction / Poetry / Southern Gothic
“I’m a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can’t and then tries the short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing that, only then does he take up novel writing.” —William Faulkner
Winner of the National Book Award
Forty-two stories make up this magisterial collection by the writer who stands at the pinnacle of modern American fiction. Compressing an epic expanse of vision into hard and wounding narratives, Faulkner’s stories evoke the intimate textures of place, the deep strata of history and legend, and all the fear, brutality, and tenderness of the human condition. These tales are set not only in Yoknapatawpha County, but in Beverly Hills and in France during World War I. They are populated by such characters as the Faulknerian archetypes Flem Snopes and Quentin Compson, as well as by ordinary men and women who emerge so sharply and indelibly in these pages that they dwarf the protagonists of most novels.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Japanese Girl & Other Stories
Winston Graham
Literature & Fiction
When an acknowledged master of one literary form turns with equal excellence to another, his readers can anticipate a double pleasure.
Complete Stories of Eveyln
Evelyn Waugh
Fiction / Biography / Memoir
Collected for the first time in a single volume: all of the short fiction by one of the 20th century's wittiest and most trenchant observers of the human comedy.
Windup Stories
Paolo Bacigalupi
Science Fiction / Short Stories / Science
Contains two stories from the world of The Windup Girl:
1) “The Calorie Man” (2005) - Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October/November 2005.
2) “Yellow Card Man” (2006) - Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, December 2006.
Snowdrift and Other Stories
Georgette Heyer
Romance / Historical Fiction / Mystery & Thrillers
Previously titled Pistols for Two, this edition includes three recently discovered short stories. A treat for all fans of Georgette Heyer, and for those who love stories full of romance and intrigue.
Affairs of honour between bucks and blades, rakes and rascals; affairs of the heart between heirs and orphans, beauties and bachelors; romance, intrigue, escapades and duels at dawn. All the gallantry, villainy and elegance of the age that Georgette Heyer has so triumphantly made her own are exquisitely revived in these wonderfully romantic stories of the Regency period.
Contents:
Snowdrift
Full Moon
Pistols for Two
A Clandestine Affair
Bath Miss
A Husband for Fanny
To Have the Honour
Night at the Inn
The Duel
Hazard
Pursuit
Runaway Match
Incident on the Bath Road
The Howard Marks Book of Dope Stories
Howard Marks
Business
Since the Stone Age, drugs have been sniffed to induce sleep, mixed to cure ills, swallowed to stimulate creativity, snorted to increase sexuality, popped for the hell of it and smoked to see God.
Natural or synthesized, they have been smuggled for all kinds of reasons from saving the world to becoming stinking rich. Blamed for deaths, wars, suicides, collapses of governments, multiple crashes, individual crises, anarchy and chaos, they have also been praised for opening minds and expanding consciousness.
Worshipped and demonised, venerated and chastised, force-fed and forbidden. Every society has had its intoxicant, be it sacrament or scourge.
They have also become irreversibly interwoven with politics, sex, business, religion, and rock and roll, providing writers, whether emerging from the ancient classical world or the street laboratory of today, with both inspiration and challenge.
An unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime trip, The Howard Marks Book of Dope Stories includes his favourite drugs writings from Alexander Dumas to Aleister Crowley via Hunter S. Thompson and Charles Baudelaire, as well as unpublished works and many new and compelling pieces from Mr Nice himself.
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men: Stories
David Foster Wallace
Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction / Short Stories
David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. The series of stories from which this exuberantly acclaimed book takes its title is a sequence of imagined interviews with men on the subject of their relations with women. These portraits of men at their most self-justifying, loquacious, and benighted explore poignantly and hilariously the agonies of sexual connections.
Selected Stories
Stefan Zweig
Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs
Fantastic Night is the story of one transforming evening in the life of a rich and bored young man. He spends a day at the races and an evening in the seedy but thrilling company of the dregs of society. His experiences jolt him out of his languor and give him a newfound relish for life, which is then cut short by the Great War. The Invisible Collection and Buchmendel, two of Zweig's most powerful works, explore lives led in the single minded pursuit of art and literature against a backdrop of poverty and corruption. Letter from an Unknown Woman is a poignant and heartbreaking tale of the strength and madness of unrequited love. This story was made into a film by Max Ophuls starring Joan Fontaine (1948). In The Fowler Snared, it is the man whose passion remains unrequited. Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman is the story of a middle-aged English widow who travels to escape loneliness and boredom. One evening while enjoying the elegant atmosphere of the Monte Carlo Casino, she becomes mesmerised by the obsessive gambling of a young Polish aristocrat. This fateful encounter leads to passion, despair and death, changing their lives forever.
Translated from the German by Eden and Cedar Paul, Stefan Zweig's Selected Stories is published by Pushkin Press.
Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Science Fiction & Fantasy / Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction
Philip K. Dick was a master of science fiction, but he was also a writer whose work transcended genre to examine the nature of reality and what it means to be human. A writer of great complexity and subtle humor, his work belongs on the shelf of great twentieth-century literature, next to Kafka and Vonnegut. Collected here are twenty-one of Dick's most dazzling and resonant stories, which span his entire career and show a world-class writer working at the peak of his powers.
In "The Days of Perky Pat," people spend their time playing with dolls who manage to live an idyllic life no longer available to the Earth's real inhabitants. "Adjustment Team" looks at the fate of a man who by mistake has stepped out of his own time. In "Autofac," one community must battle benign machines to take back control of their lives. And in "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon," we follow the story of one man whose very reality may be nothing more than a nightmare. The collection also includes such classic stories as "The Minority Report," the basis for the Steven Spielberg movie, and "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," the basis for the film Total Recall. Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick is a magnificent distillation of one of American literature's most searching imaginations.
» Introduction by Jonathan Lethem
1. Beyond Lies the Wub (wikipedia)
3. Paycheck (imdb)
4. Second Variety (imdb)
5. Imposter (wikipedia, wikipedia, wikipedia)
9. Upon the Dull Earth (wikipedia)
11. The Minority Report (imdb)
12. The Days of Perky Pat (wikipedia, wikipedia)
17. The Electric Ant (wikipedia)
19. The Exit Door Leads In (wikipedia)
21. I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon (
Peasants and Other Stories
Anton Chekhov
Classics / Fiction / Humor and Comedy
The ever maturing art and ever more ambitious imaginative reach of Anton Chekhov, one of the world's greatest masters of the short story, led him in his last years to an increasingly profound exploration of the troubled depths of Russian society and life. This powerful and revealing selection from Chekhov's final works, made by the legendary American critic Edmund Wilson, offers stories of novelistic richness and complexity, published in the only formatp edition to present them in chronological order.
Table of Contents
003 A Woman’s Kingdom (1894)
053 Three Years (1895)
161 The Murder (1895)
199 My Life (1896)
311 Peasants (1897)
363 The New Villa (1899)
383 In The Ravine (1900)
433 The Bishop (1902)
455 Betrothed (1903)
The Christmas Kid: And Other Brooklyn Stories
Pete Hamill
Biographies & Memoirs / Literature & Fiction
"Hamill, a master raconteur, mines his own roots in this enchanting new anthology." ---New York Times
Pete Hamill's collected stories about Brooklyn present a New York almost lost but not forgotten. They read like messages from a vanished age, brimming with nostalgia---for the world after the war, the days of the Dodgers and Giants, and even, for some, the years of Prohibition and the Depression.
THE CHRISTMAS KID is vintage Hamill. Set in the borough where he was born and raised, it is a must-read for his many fans, for all who love New York, and for anyone who seeks to understand the world today through the lens of the world that once was.
Short Stories of Jorge Luis Borges - the Giovanni Translations (And Others)
Jorge Luis Borges
Fiction / Short Stories / Poetry
A compilation of Borges short fiction utilizing the translations of Norman Thomas di Giovanni whenever possible.
Includes works from:
The Aleph & Other Stories
A History of Infamy
The Book of Sand
In Praise of Darkness
Doctor Brodie's Report
The Garden of Branching Paths
Labyrinths
The Book of Imaginary Beings