A sweetly humorous middle grade novel packed with action, basketball, and a dash of magical realism about friendship and family, first crushes, and belonging, from acclaimed author Gary Soto.Thirteen-year-old Jordan Mendoza has a huge crush on his classmate, Sierra, but he's never going to win her affections if he stays a C student and keeps embarrassing himself on the basketball court. And it doesn't help that his best friend, Antonio, likes to tease him about it all a little too much.But when Jordan dives into the waters of a dangerous irrigation canal to save a drowning puppy, he's suddenly got even more on his mind than kissing Sierra and making the starting team. Can he nurse the abandoned puppy back to health (and will his parents let him keep her)? Who threw her into the canal—and is it possible that there are more puppies needing rescue? And why are the cops suddenly at Jordan's door, looking for him? There's something for...

An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge\' is a short story by American author Ambrose Bierce. It is one of the best classic tales filled with detail and vision. This story inspires the imagination, then provides one of the best twists ever invented. The story is set in the time of the Civil War. It is famous for its irregular time sequence and twisted end. Bierce\'s abandonment of strict linear narration in favor of the internal mind of the protagonist is considered an early example of experimentation with stream of consciousness. It is one of Bierce\'s most anthologized stories.

The battle is over, and the prophecy has come to pass, but is Nicholas prepared for what is to follow?This book of short verse and haiku was inspired by nature. Many of the poems reference the river and were written after visits to the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. The book is dedicated to Columbia Bottoms Conservation Area in Spanish Lake, Missouri. Read, relax, enjoy!

One of America's most accessible and engaging poets takes readers on a lively and surprising night tour of America's public places.Night of the Republic showcases one of America's best poets not only working at the height of his powers but pushing into new and exciting territory as well. In Night of the Republic, Alan Shapiro visits a gas station restroom, a shoe store, a convention hall, and a racetrack, among other places—and in stark Edward Hopper–like imagery reveals the surreal and dreamlike quality of these familiar but empty night spaces. Shapiro finds in them not the expected alienation but rather an odd, companionable spirit of a community of solitude rising from the quiet emptiness. The collection also includes moving meditations of his childhood in Brookline, Massachusetts, and of tragic and haunting events such as the Cuban missile crisis and the assassination of JFK. While Night of the Republic is Shapiro's most ambitious...

Lovers of Haiku, Zen and Japan will find this novel truly inspiring!An extraordinary man at a crucial time and place."In Mister Timeless Blyth, writer Alan Spence has created a fascinating (auto) biography, convincingly in R.H. Blyth's own voice. In it, he has conveyed the haiku scholar's love of music, eastern and western literature, Zen Buddhism, and sly contradictions. Blyth's profound understanding of haiku and his self-deprecating humor permeate every page. Throughout this work, Mr. Spence has included an interesting constellation of characters who influenced Blyth on what he considered his own karmic path, giving us an entirely new perspective of his life and personal development. I could not put the book down." — William Scott Wilson, author of The Life and Zen Haiku Poetry of Santoka TanedaImprisoned during World War I as a conscientious objector and interned during World War II as an enemy alien, Reginald Horace Blyth...

Nabokov’s third novel, The Luzhin Defense, is a chilling story of obsession and madness. As a young boy, Luzhin was unattractive, distracted, withdrawn, sullen — an enigma to his parents and an object of ridicule to his classmates. He takes up chess as a refuge from the anxiety of his everyday life. His talent is prodigious and he rises to the rank of grandmaster — but at a cost: in Luzhin’s obsessive mind, the game of chess gradually supplants reality. His own world falls apart during a crucial championship match, when the intricate defense he has devised withers under his opponent’s unexpected and unpredictable lines of assault. One of the twentieth century’s master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940, he moved to the United States and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. In 1961, he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977. “[Nabokov is] the supreme master.” — The New York Times Book Review **

First published in 1899. A collection of stories for younger children by the author of "The Railway Children". --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

A story collection full of a fantastic and whimsical assortment of odd characters only Dylan Thomas could have conceived.This collection of the poet Dylan Thomas's fiction––and what an extraordinary storyteller he was!––holds special interest because it ranges from the early stories such as "The School for Witches" and "The Burning Baby," with their powerful inheritance of Welsh mythology and wild imagination, to the chapters he completed before his death of the alas unfinished novel Adventures in the Skin Trade. Adventures is the story, written in a shrewd, sly, deadpan vein of picaresque comedy, of young Samuel Bennet, who runs away from his home in Wales to seek his fortune in London.

Benjamin Alire Saenz's stories reveal how all borders--real, imagined, sexual, human, the line between dark and light, addict and straight--entangle those who live on either side. Take, for instance, the Kentucky Club on Avenida Juarez two blocks south of the Rio Grande. It's a touchstone for each of Saenz's stories. His characters walk by, they might go in for a drink or to score, or they might just stay there for a while and let their story be told. Saenz knows that the Kentucky Club, like special watering holes in all cities, is the contrary to borders. It welcomes Spanish and English, Mexicans and gringos, poor and rich, gay and straight, drug addicts and drunks, laughter and sadness, and even despair. It's a place of rich history and good drinks and cold beer and a long polished mahogany bar. Some days it smells like piss. "I'm going home to the other side." That's a strange statement, but you hear it all the time at the Kentucky Club. Benjamin Alire Saenz is a highly regarded writer of fiction, poetry, and children's literature. Like these stories, his writing crosses borders and lands in our collective psyche. "Poets & Writers Magazine "named him one of the fifty most inspiring writers in the world. He's been a finalist for the "Los Angeles Times "Book Prize and PEN Center's prestigious award for young adult fiction. Saenz is the chair of the creative writing department of University of Texas at El Paso.

Kipling may be best known as a commentator on the British Empire, but he was also a vivid observer and chronicler of the sea - and of ships and all who sailed in them. For him the sea was the glue which bound the British Empire together. To reach distant lands, you needed to sail. So Kipling wrote copiously about his own voyages - to India, across the Pacific and Atlantic, down to South Africa and Australia - and about the voyages of others. Sailors were particular heroes of his, as adventurers who braved every kind of element and danger in order to reach distant lands. In writing about them, he was enthralled by the romance of the sea, touching on everything from pirates to technical changes in ships.

Ten young Florentines take refuge in the countryside from the Black Death and tell stories to pass the time. From the unfaithful wife who unwittingly eats her lover's heart to the sly peasant plotting to seduce a whole nunnery, these are tales of lust, adventure and unexpected twists of fate.United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be introduced to love's endlessly fascinating possibilities and extremities: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love, not to mention lost love, twisted and obsessional love....

Growing up in Detroit in the 1950s, and going to college when the first seeds of sexual freedom are being sown, Jill and Donna are coming of age in an exciting, turbulent time. Wry, independent Jill thrives in the new free-spirited world, while her beautiful cousin Donna desperately searches for a man to make her life whole. As each cousin is driven by different demons and desires, they eventually realize that they cannot overcome fundamental differences in each others' lives. Still, as their futures assume contrary paths, Jill and Donna realize that they may be separated, but they'll never be truly divided from one another. "Rings with passionate awareness...honest and impressive." THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD From the Paperback edition.

** *“A young man married is a man that’s marr’d.”* ** **—All’s Well That Ends Well** ** ** Eminent Shakespearean scholars Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen provide a fresh new edition of this classic play about gender, desire, and sexual love. **THIS VOLUME ALSO INCLUDES MORE THAN A HUNDRED PAGES OF EXCLUSIVE FEATURES:** • an original Introduction to *All’s Well That Ends Well* • incisive scene-by-scene synopsis and analysis with vital facts about the work • commentary on past and current productions based on interviews with leading directors, actors, and designers • photographs of key RSC productions • an overview of Shakespeare’s theatrical career and chronology of his plays Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers, these modern and accessible editions from the Royal Shakespeare Company set a new standard in Shakespearean literature for the twenty-first century.

Lord Peter Wimsey and his bride, mystery writer Harriet Vane, start their honeymoon with murder. The former owner of Talboys estate is dead in the cellar with a misspelled "notise" to the milkman, not a spot of blood on his smashed skull, and £600 in his pocket.

England, 1307. . .Templar Knight Galeren de Massard is sent to investigate an incident where a nun claims to have been attacked by "a man who became a wolf." When Galeren meets Catherine, he instinctively knows that her attacker was Esquin de Floyran and that his return is dangerous for the increasingly unpopular Templar Order. A supernatural tale revolving around the fall of the Templars.England, 1307 . . .Templar Knight Galeren de Massard is sent to investigate an incident where a nun claims to have been attacked by "a man who became a wolf." When Galeren meets Catherine, he instinctively knows that her attacker was Esquin de Floyran, an old foe, and that his return is dangerous for the increasingly unpopular Templar Order. Out for revenge, De Floyran has betrayed his brotherhood's secret to the French King who has long sought to discredit the Templars. When he discovers the truth of their nature, he vows to destroy the Order and have the Knights burned to the last. When hundreds of Templars are arrested in France and Catherine is taken by De Floyran, Galeren resolves to rescue her and save as many of his brethren as he can. Alone, he journeys to France and into the heart of danger to face his enemy and risk everything to save his race from destruction.