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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.
A Rogue by Any Other Name
Part #1 of "The Rules of Scoundrels" series by Sarah MacLean
Romance / Young Adult / History
What a scoundrel wants, a scoundrel gets. . . A decade ago, the Marquess of Bourne was cast from society with nothing but his title. Now a partner in London's most exclusive gaming hell, the cold, ruthless Bourne will do whatever it takes to regain his inheritance—including marrying perfect, proper Lady Penelope Marbury.A broken engagement and years of disappointing courtships have left Penelope with little interest in a quiet, comfortable marriage, and a longing for something more. How lucky that her new husband has access to an unexplored world of pleasures.Bourne may be a prince of London's illicit underworld, but he vows to keep Penelope untouched by its wickedness—a challenge indeed as the lady discovers her own desires, and her willingness to wager anything for them . . . .even her heart.
Home Tears
Tijan
Fiction / Romance / Young Adult
Dani’s survived a lot of sh*t storms.Her mother died. Her two sisters loathed her. One aunt hated her. The other was strangely distant, but the worst storm—being dumped by her childhood best friend/high school boyfriend/first love for her younger sister.There went the one person who was hers and with that, the main reason she stuck around. So, she left for ten years. But now she’s back, and nothing’s the same.With help from Jonah Bannon, a reformed—kind of—bad boy she remembers from high school, Dani uncovers family secrets that have spanned generations. And along with those, she’s about to face the biggest sh*t storm of her life.Only this time, she may not survive.
Sustain
Tijan
Fiction / Romance / Young Adult
Stand-alone!! I had a simple life. I worked two jobs, made ends meet, and hung out with my mom and twin brother. The other part of my life was about avoiding him, but when SWAT raided my boyfriend’s home, that was the last straw. The boyfriend got tossed and to help me keep busy, my brother talked me into joining their old band again, but I had to be honest. It wasn’t a hard sell. Playing drums was in my blood. I used to be addicted and that craving hadn’t been satisfied in three long years. The only problem was their lead singer. It was him. The drums might not have been the only thing I was addicted to. I think I was still addicted to him too.
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.
I Am Legend
Richard Matheson
Science Fiction & Fantasy / Horror / Mystery & Thrillers
Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth. . . but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville's blood. By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilisation. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn. How long can one man survive like this?
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
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.
Other Voices, Other Rooms
Truman Capote
Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction
Truman Capote’s first novel is a story of almost supernatural intensity and inventiveness, an audacious foray into the mind of a sensitive boy as he seeks out the grown-up enigmas of love and death in the ghostly landscape of the deep South.
At the age of twelve, Joel Knox is summoned to meet the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at the decaying mansion in Skully’s Landing, his father is nowhere in sight. What he finds instead is a sullen stepmother who delights in killing birds; an uncle with the face—and heart—of a debauched child; and a fearsome little girl named Idabel who may offer him the closest thing he has ever known to love.
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.
The Husband
Dean Koontz
Thriller / Mystery / Science Fiction & Fantasy
With each and every new novel, Dean Koontz raises the stakes--and the pulse rate--higher than any other author. Now, in what may be his most suspenseful and heartfelt novel ever, he brings us the story of an ordinary man whose extraordinary commitment to his wife will take him on a harrowing journey of adventure, sacrifice, and redemption to the mystery of love itself--and to a showdown with the darkness that would destroy it forever. What would you do for love? Would you die? Would you kill? We have your wife. You can get her back for two million cash. Landscaper Mitchell Rafferty thinks it must be some kind of joke. He was in the middle of planting impatiens in the yard of one of his clients when his cell phone rang. Now he's standing in a normal suburban neighborhood on a bright summer day, having a phone conversation out of his darkest nightmare. Whoever is on the other end of the line is dead serious. He has Mitch's wife and he's named the price for her safe return. The caller doesn't care that Mitch runs a small two-man landscaping operation and has no way of raising such a vast sum. He's confident that Mitch will find a way. If he loves his wife enough. . . Mitch does love her enough. He loves her more than life itself. He's got seventy-two hours to prove it. He has to find the two million by then. But he'll pay a lot more. He'll pay anything. From its tense opening to its shattering climax, The Husband is a thriller that will hold you in its relentless grip for every twist, every shock, every revelation. . . until it lets you go, unmistakably changed. This is a Dean Koontz novel, after all. And there's no other experience quite like it.
First Love and Other Shorts
Samuel Beckett
Literature & Fiction / Theatre / Poetry
This new collection brings together "First Love", "The Calamative", "The End" and "The Expelled"; these four novellas are among the first major works of Beckett's decision to use French as his language of literary composition. Rich in verbal and situational humour, they offer a fascinating insight into many of the issues which preoccupied Beckett all his working life. As the first novella reveals, nobody writes with quite such cruel and unnervingly clever wit as Beckett...
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.
Death and Taxes: Hydriotaphia and Other Plays
Tony Kushner
Literature & Fiction
"This is an odd assemblage of plays, for which gathering-together there is no overarching thematic justification. Because several of the plays deal with death, and one of the death-plays deals as well with money, and the last play deals with taxation, we're calling the book Death & Taxes. But all plays, directly or indirectly, are about death and taxes, so this title explains little..." –Tony Kushner
This stunning new collection by Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angels in America, showcases his masterful explorations of form and style. A rich and vibrant collection from one of our greatest American playwrights, Death & Taxes includes the following treasure trove of works:
In Reverse Transcription: Six Playwrights Bury a Seventh, six playwrights come together to bury their contemporary and friend, Ding. They discuss and brood on their lives, writings, and loves. Theatre critic Dr. David Nowlan calls Reverse Transcription “rich in allusion, elegant in language and satirically funny” (Irish Times).
Hydriotaphia or The Death of Dr. Browne begins at one man’s deathbed and becomes an epic farce spanning Heaven and Earth.
“Karl Marx said that history occurs first as tragedy and then as farce. In Hydriotaphia, Tony Kushner says that history is tragedy and farce at once. Ben Jonson meets Bertolt Brecht in this brilliantly funny and dark knockabout play of the rise of the entrepreneurial spirit. As in all of Kushner’s work, the play teems with ideas.” –Robert Hass, former U.S. Poet Laureate
“The play flourishes Kushner’s trademark ability to mix up wildly diverse tonalities and ideas — bawdy humor, theological and class warfare debate, fourth-wall-breaking, dizzying monologues, fantasy and domestic intrigue all whirl like a juggler’s pins.” -Variety
Inspired by Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 75,” Terminating or Sonnet LXXV “is a delirious, scatological encounter between a psychotherapist, her madly besotted patient and their lovers, which contains some dizzyingly fine writing” (Variety).
“Tony Kushner at his most fanciful and eclectic ... fierce, strange and clever theatre.” –Evening Standard
East Coast Ode to Howard Jarvis is a one-man show featuring two dozen characters’ involvement in a tax evasion scheme.
“Surreal, confrontational and funny.” –Prospect Magazine (UK)
"There is such clarity conveyed not just in the language but in the rhythm and the nuance. Ideas and phrases honey drip from the script. Listening is an indulgence.” –The Stage
Notes on Akiba has been performed at The Jewish Museum and other venues during Passover. Fictionalized versions of playwright Tony Kushner and director Michael Mayer reimagine aspects of Jewish history, tradition and myth.
G. David Schine in Hell was originally published in New York Times Magazine. Featuring an appearance by Kushner’s fictionalized Roy Cohn of Angels in America, this short play revisits Cohn and several other American Conservatives of the McCarthy era as they adjust to an afterlife in Hell.
The Other
K. A. Applegate
Science Fiction / Young Adult / Fiction
Ax and the Animorphs find new hope when they learn that he is not the only non-infected Andalite on Earth.
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.
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)
Paingod and Other Delusions
Harlan Ellison
Science Fiction & Fantasy / Mystery & Thrillers / Horror
Robert Heinlein says, ?This book is raw corn liquor ? you should serve a whiskbroom with each shot so the customer can brush the sawdust off after he gets up from the floor.? Perhaps a mooring cable might also be added as necessary equipment for reading these eight wonderful stories: They not only knock you down?they raise you to the stars. Passion is the keynote as you encounter the Harlequin and his nemesis, the dreaded Tictockman, in one of the most reprinted and widely taught stories in the English language; a pyretic who creates fire merely by willing it; the last surgeon in a world of robot physicians; a spaceship filled with hideous mutants rejected by the world that gave them birth. Touching and gentle and shocking stories from an incomparable master of impossible dreams and troubling truths.
Contents:
7 · New Introduction: Your Basic Crown of Thorns · in
19 · Spero Meliora · in
24 · Paingod · ss Fantastic Jun ’64
35 · “Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman · ss Galaxy Dec ’65
49 · The Crackpots [Kyben] · nv If Jun ’56
89 · Sleeping Dogs · ss Analog Oct ’74
100 · Bright Eyes · ss Fantastic Apr ’65
112 · The Discarded [“The Abnormals”] · ss Fantastic Apr ’59
125 · Wanted in Surgery · nv If Aug ’57
156 · Deeper Than the Darkness · nv Infinity Science Fiction Apr ’57
Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays
David Foster Wallace
Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction / Short Stories
Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person?
David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures. Whether covering the three-ring circus of John McCain's 2000 presidential race, plunging into the wars between dictionary writers, or confronting the World's Largest Lobster Cooker at the annual Maine Lobster Festival, Wallace projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his and a voice as powerful and distinct as any in American letters.
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.
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.
The Mousetrap and Other Plays
Agatha Christie
Mystery / Crime / Thriller
Agatha Christie created magnificent works of suspense for the theater, and eight of her riveting stage dramas are collected in The Mousetrap and Other Plays—including the title piece, the longest running play in history, still a smash hit in London's West End after 60 years!
On an isolated island, ten people have been brought together to be killed off. An evil old woman has a rendezvous with death in the desert heat of Jerusalem. A scheming wife testifies against her husband in a shocking murder trial. And a homicidal maniac terrorizes a group of snowbound guests to the refrain of "Three Blind Mice."
This collection of eight works proves that Agatha Christie's plays are as compulsive as her novels, with their colorful characters and ingenious plots providing yet more evidence of her mastery of the detective thriller.
Includes: And Then There Were None, Appointment with Death, The Hollow, The Mousetrap, Witness for the Prosecution, Towards Zero, Verdict, and Go Back for Murder.
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.
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 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.
The Girl Who Cried Flowers and Other Tales
Jane Yolen
Children's / Literature & Fiction / Young Adult
Five original stories with the flavor of classic folk literature focus on the themes of love, truth, fear, and kindness.
The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain
Lloyd Alexander
Children's / Science Fiction / Fantasy
When Lloyd Alexander finished the Chronicles of Prydain, readers asked for more! So, in 1973, Mr. Alexander wrote a collection of short tales about the land of Prydain. These stories revisit familiar characters and reveal more about the history of this magical land.
Here readers will find Dallben, destined to be an enchanter; Angharad, Princess of the House of Lyr; Kadwyr, the rascal crow; and Medwyn, the mystical protector of all animals. They'll learn the grim history of the sword Dyrnwyn and even find out how Fflewdur Fflam came by his enchanted harp.
In The Foundling, Lloyd Alexander's land of fantasy and adventure lives on.
The Other Side of Gravity
Shelly Crane
Young Adult / Romance / Science Fiction & Fantasy
My name is Maxton and I’m a trader.
I live on a soulless planet where gravity, oxygen, and everything else are sold to the highest bidder on the black market. People are sold on the black market, too. You have to work really hard not to become one of those people. Pay your taxes, keep your friends and family close, and more than anything else—don’t get caught by the Militia. But all the rules changed for me the day I found her.
My name is Sophelia and I’m a stowaway.
I’ve been a slave for almost as long as I can remember. Waiting for the one day, one second, for my proprietor to turn his head so I could run and never look back. Now I'm on the run. And on a planet where no one is on your side and people would turn you in for a good meal or a piece of a silver, being on the run on Landu is the last place you want to be. Until he found me.
I won't survive without him.
I can't breathe without her.
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.
Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings
Sigmund Freud
Psychology / Psychoanalysis / Neurology
A collection of some of Freud's most famous essays, including ON THE INTRODUCTION OF NARCISSISM; REMEMBERING, REPEATING AND WORKING THROUGH; BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE; THE EGO AND THE ID and INHIBITION, SYMPTOM AND FEAR.
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.
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.
Love That Moves the Sun and Other Stars
Dante Alighieri
Poetry / Religion / Philosophy
'Happiness beyond all words! A life of peace and love, entire and whole!'
A collection of cantos from Paradiso, the most original and experimental part of the Divina Commedia.
One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.
Comfort & Joy
Kristin Hannah
Literature & Fiction
Joy Candellaro once loved Christmas more than any other time of the year. Now, as the holiday approaches, she is at a crossroads in her life; recently divorced and alone, she can’t summon the old enthusiasm for celebrating. So without telling anyone, she buys a ticket and boards a plane bound for the beautiful Pacific Northwest. When an unexpected detour takes her deep into the woods of the Olympic rainforest, Joy makes a bold decision to leave her ordinary life behind--to just walk away--and thus begins an adventure unlike any she could have imagined. In the small town of Rain Valley, six-year-old Bobby O’Shea is facing his first Christmas without a mother. Unable to handle the loss, Bobby has closed himself off from the world, talking only to his invisible best friend. His father Daniel is beside himself, desperate to help his son cope. Yet when the little boy meets Joy, these two unlikely souls form a deep and powerful bond. In helping Bobby and Daniel heal, Joy finds herself again. But not everything is as it seems in quiet Rain Valley, and in an instant, Joy’s world is ripped apart, and her heart is broken. On a magical Christmas Eve, a night of impossible dreams and unexpected chances, Joy must find the courage to believe in a love--and a family--that can’t possibly exist, and go in search of what she wants . . . and the new life only she can find.
Love and Other Words
Christina Lauren
Romance / Young Adult / Fiction
Love, loss, friendship, and the betrayals of the past all collide in this first fiction novel from New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Christina Lauren (Autoboyography, Dating You / Hating You).
The story of the heart can never be unwritten.
Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away.
But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos—the first and only love of her life—the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world—growing from her gangly bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother...only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her.
Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more—spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion. Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macy’s decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love.
The Other Hand
Chris Cleave
Literature & Fiction
From the author of the international bestseller Incendiary comes a haunting novel about the tenuous friendship that blooms between two disparate strangers---one an illegal Nigerian refugee, the other a recent widow from suburban London.
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.
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 Other Story
Tatiana de Rosnay
Literature & Fiction
Vacationing at a luxurious Tuscan island resort, Nicolas Duhamel is hopeful that the ghosts of his past have finally been put to rest… Now a bestselling author, when he was twenty-four years old, he stumbled upon a troubling secret about his family - a secret that was carefully concealed. In shock, Nicholas embarked on a journey to uncover the truth that took him from the Basque coast to St. Petersburg - but the answers wouldn't come easily.
In the process of digging into his past, something else happened. Nicolas began writing a novel that was met with phenomenal success, skyrocketing him to literary fame whether he was ready for it or not - and convincing him that he had put his family's history firmly behind him. But now, years later, Nicolas must reexamine everything he thought he knew, as he learns that, however deeply buried, the secrets of the past always find a way out.
Page-turning, layered and beautifully written, Tatiana de Rosnay's The Other Story is a reflection on identity, the process of being a writer and the repercussions of generations-old decisions as they echo into the present and shape the future.
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.
My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs: The Nobel Lecture
Kazuo Ishiguro
Fiction / Science Fiction / Fantasy
Delivered in Stockholm on 7 December 2017, My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs is the lecture of the Nobel Laureate in Literature, Kazuo Ishiguro. A generous and hugely insightful biographical sketch, it explores his relationship with Japan, reflections on his own novels and an insight into some of his inspirations, from the worlds of writing, music and film. Ending with a rallying call for the ongoing importance of literature in the world, it is a characteristically thoughtful and moving piece.
The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror
Joyce Carol Oates
Literature & Fiction / Short Stories / Criticism
Bold and haunting, The Doll-Master and Other Tales is a collection of six psychologically daring stories from Joyce Carol Oates. In the title story, a boy becomes obsessed with his cousin’s doll after she tragically passes away, and as he grows older, he begins to collect “found dolls” from surrounding neighborhoods. But just what kind of dolls are they? In “Gun Accident,” a teenage girl is delighted to house-sit for her favorite teacher, until an intruder forces his way inside the old Colonial—changing more than one life forever. The Doll-Master closes with a taut bibliomystery, about the owner of a middling chain of mystery bookstores whose plan to take over a rare bookshop in scenic New Hampshire derails into a game of verbal cat-and-mouse that threatens to have real-life consequences. Throughout the collection, Oates evokes “the fascination of the abomination” that is at the core of the most profound, the most unsettling, and the most memorable of dark mystery fiction.
No Other Will Do
Karen Witemeyer
Historical Fiction / Religion & Spirituality
Men are optional. That's the credo Emma Chandler's suffragette aunts preached and why she started a successful women's colony in Harper's Station, Texas. But when an unknown assailant tries repeatedly to drive them out, Emma admits they might need a man after all. A man who can fight--and she knows just the one.
Malachi Shaw finally earned the respect he craved by becoming an explosives expert for the railroad. Yet when Emma's plea arrives, he bolts to Harper's Station to repay the girl who once saved his life. Only she's not a girl any longer. She's a woman with a mind of her own and a smile that makes a man imagine a future he doesn't deserve.
As the danger intensifies, old feelings grow and deepen, but Emma and Mal will need more than love to survive.
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 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.
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
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.
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)
Mindy Kaling
Essays / Humor and Comedy / Memoir
Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck–impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and, finally, a comedy writer and actress prone to starting fights with her friends and coworkers with the sentence “Can I just say one last thing about this, and then I swear I’ll shut up about it?”
Perhaps you want to know what Mindy thinks makes a great best friend (someone who will fill your prescription in the middle of the night), or what makes a great guy (one who is aware of all elderly people in any room at any time and acts accordingly), or what is the perfect amount of fame (so famous you can never get convicted of murder in a court of law), or how to maintain a trim figure (you will not find that information in these pages). If so, you’ve come to the right book, mostly!
In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy invites readers on a tour of her life and her unscientific observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood, with several conveniently placed stopping points for you to run errands and make phone calls. Mindy Kaling really is just a Girl Next Door—not so much literally anywhere in the continental United States, but definitely if you live in India or Sri Lanka.
From the Hardcover edition.
The Battle of the Books and Other Short Pieces
Jonathan Swift
Fiction / Satire / Poetry
A satire portraying a literal battle between books in the St. James library, together with fifteen other pieces
Let Sleeping Sea-Monsters Lie and Other Cautionary Tales
Eva Ibbotson
Children's Books / Young Adult / Romance
A funny, fantastical collection of cautionary tales from the mind-bogglingly brilliant and bestselling Eva Ibbotson. Now with a brand-new look!
Are you BRAVE enough to find out what happens when a spoilt girl is spiteful to a giant hungry worm?
Can you BEAR to watch a (very silly) boy poke an angry sleeping sea-monster?
Do you DARE to discover why should you never, ever steal milk from a Frid?
Beware: Naughty children always get their just deserts . . .
A dog-munching rock. Doesn’t everyone know that?
Other People
Martin Amis
Fiction / Essays / Contemporary
She wakes in an emergency room in a London hospital, to a voice that tells her: "You're on your own now. Take care. Be good." She has no knowledge of her name, her past, or even her species. It takes her a while to realize that she is human — and that the beings who threaten, befriend, and violate her are other people. Some of whom seem to know all about her.
In this eerie, blackly funny, and sometimes disorienting novel, Martin Amis gives us a mystery that is as ambitious as it is intriguing, an investigation of a young woman's violent extinction that also traces her construction of a new and oddly innocent self.
The Other Mother
Carol Goodman
Fiction / Suspense / Young Adult
“An atmospheric and harrowing tale, richly literary in complexity but ripe with all the crazed undertones, confusions, and forebodings inherent in the gothic genre. Recommend this riveting, du Maurier–like novel to fans of Jennifer McMahon.” — Booklist (starred review)****
From the author of the internationally bestselling The Lake of Dead Languages comes a gripping novel about madness, motherhood, love, and trust.
When Daphne Marist and her infant daughter, Chloe, pull up the gravel drive to the home of Daphne’s new employer, it feels like they’ve entered a whole new world. Tucked in the Catskills, the stone mansion looks like something out of a fairy tale, its lush landscaping hiding the view of the mental asylum just beyond its border. Daphne secured the live-in position using an assumed name and fake credentials, telling no one that she’s on the run from a controlling husband who has threatened to take her daughter away.
Daphne’s new life is a far cry from the one she had in Westchester where, just months before, she and her husband welcomed little Chloe. From the start, Daphne tries to be a good mother, but she’s plagued by dark moods and intrusive thoughts that convince her she’s capable of harming her own daughter. When Daphne is diagnosed with Post Partum Mood Disorder, her downward spiral feels unstoppable—until she meets Laurel Hobbes.
Laurel, who also has a daughter named Chloe, is everything Daphne isn’t: charismatic, sophisticated, fearless. They immediately form an intense friendship, revealing secrets to one another they thought they’d never share. Soon, they start to look alike, dress alike, and talk alike, their lives mirroring one another in strange and disturbing ways. But Daphne realizes only too late that being friends with Laurel will come at a very shocking price—one that will ultimately lead her to that towering mansion in the Catskills where terrifying, long-hidden truths will finally be revealed....
My Family and Other Animals
Gerald Durrell
Outdoors & Nature / Biographies & Memoirs / Science
When the unconventional Durrell family can no longer endure the damp, gray English climate, they do what any sensible family would do: sell their house and relocate to the sunny Greek isle of Corfu. My Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural history of the island but ended up as a delightful account of Durrell’s family’s experiences, from the many eccentric hangers-on to the ceaseless procession of puppies, toads, scorpions, geckoes, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, bats, and butterflies into their home.
About Love and Other Stories
Anton Chekhov
Classics / Fiction / Humor and Comedy
Raymond Carver called Anton Chekhov "the greatest short story writer who has ever lived." This unequivocal verdict on Chekhov's genius has been echoed many times by writers as diverse as Katherine Mansfield, Somerset Maugham, John Cheever and Tobias Wolf. While his popularity as a playwright has sometimes overshadowed his achievements in prose, the importance of Chekhov's stories is now recognized by readers as well as by fellow authors. Their themes - alienation, the absurdity and tragedy of human existence - have as much relevance today as when they were written, and these superb new translations capture their modernist spirit. Elusive and subtle, spare and unadorned, the stories in this selection are among Chekhov's most poignant and lyrical. The book includes well-known pieces such as The Lady with the Little Dog, as well as less familiar work like Gusev inspired by Chekhov's travels in the Far East, and Rothschild's Violin, a haunting and darkly humorous tale about death and loss. The stories are arranged chronologically to show the evolution of Chekhov's art.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Call if You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose
Raymond Carver
Literature & Fiction / Poetry
Raymond Carver’s complete uncollected fiction and nonfiction, including the five posthumously discovered “last” stories, found a decade after Carver’s death and published here in book form for the first time.
Call If You Need Me includes all of the prose previously collected in No Heroics, Please, four essays from Fires, and those five marvelous stories that range over the period of Carver’s mature writing and give his devoted readers a final glimpse of the great writer at work. The pure pleasure of Carver’s writing is everywhere in his work, here no less than in those stories that have already entered the canon of modern literature.
Secret Lives and Other Stories
Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o
This book is currently out of stock with a ready about date of December 31, 1999Ngugi wa Thiong'o is world-famous for his novels from Weep Not, Child to Matigari and for the political impact of his plays, which led to his detention in Kenya. He is presently Professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University. This collection of early stories displays Ngugi's immense skill as a storyteller. He vividly portrays a world of magic and superstition which has not yet been erased by the "white strangers" and their new religion. In "The Village Priest" the rainmaker still exerts deep-rooted power, while the priest cannot deal in certainties, nor work miracles to end the drought; and "A Meeting in the Dark" sees the central character caught in moral dilemma. Christian ideals and ancient tribal customs are shown in conflict, causing tragedy. His later stories reveal an increased political disillusionment and foreshadow the novels which have made him one of Africa's leading commentators.
The Rope and Other Stories
Philippa Pearce
Children's Books / Fantasy / Fiction
"The rope hung from top to bottom of his dream. The rope hung softly, saying nothing, doing nothing. Then the rope began to swing very softly, very gently...towards him."
The need to face your fears; the comedy of family life; the pressure of others' expectations...Intense experiences of childhood are vividly brought to life in these eight atmospheric tales.
A gripping collection of short stories from award-winning author Philippa Pearce.
The Assistant Murderer and Other Stories by Dashiell Hammett
Dashiell Hammett
Mystery & Thrillers
This Halcyon classics ebook contains three stories by detective writer Samuel Dashiell Hammett. Hammett is best known for his creation of the hard-boiled detective Sam Spade (THE MALTESE FALCON) and Nick and Nora Charles (THE THIN MAN). This ebook includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.
The Assistant Murderer
Arson Plus
Who Killed Bob Teal?
Dis Mem Ber and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense
Joyce Carol Oates
Literature & Fiction / Short Stories / Criticism
Including "The Crawl Space," winner of the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction and a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Short Story
Joyce Carol Oates is renowned for her rare ability to "illuminate the mind's most disturbing corners" (Seattle Times). That genius is on full display in her new collection of seven feverishly unsettling works, DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense.
In the title story, a precocious eleven-year-old named Jill is in thrall to an older male relative, the mysterious, attractive black sheep of the family. Without telling her parents Jill climbs into his sky-blue Chevy to be driven to an uncertain, and unforgettable, fate. In "The Drowned Girl," a university transfer student becomes increasingly obsessed with the drowning/murder of another female student, as her own sense of self begins to deteriorate. In "Great Blue Heron," a recent widow grieves inside the confines of her lakefront home and fantasizes about transforming into that great flying predator--unerring and pitiless in the hunt. And in the final story, "Welcome to Friendly Skies," a trusting group of bird-watchers is borne to a remote part of the globe, to a harrowing fate.
At the heart of this meticulously crafted, deeply disquieting collection are girls and women confronting the danger around them, and the danger hidden inside their turbulent selves.
Pawn's Gambit: And Other Stratagems
Timothy Zahn
Science Fiction & Fantasy
This collection showcases the career-launching short fiction of Timothy Zahn, acclaimed author of Blackcollar, the Quadrail series, and the #1 New York Times bestseller *Star Wars: Heir to the Empire*
The pieces included in Pawn’s Gambit range from the adventure science fiction Timothy Zahn is famous for to post-apocalyptic tales and humorous fantasy. In “The Price of Survival,” an alien ship arrives in our solar system without hostile intentions—but with a desperate need that could destroy humanity. “The Giftie Gie Us” is set in a post-apocalyptic United States, in which two lonely survivors find love among the ruins. And in the title story, a human and his alien opponent face off over a game that will decide which one of them will return home—and which will not. This collection also includes the Hugo Award–winning novella Cascade Point and eight stories previously unpublished in book form.
The Golden Ball and Other Stories
Agatha Christie
Mystery / Crime / Thriller
Is it a gesture of good will or a sinister trap that lures Rupert St. Vincent and his family to magnificent estate? How desperate is Joyce Lambert, a destitute young widow whose only recourse is to marry a man she despises? What unexpected circumstance stirs old loyalties in Theodora Darrell, and unfaithful wife about to run away with her lover? In this collection of short stories, the answers are as unexpected as they are satisfying. The Queen of Crime takes bizarre romantic entanglements, supernatural visitations, and classic murder to inventive new heights.
The Listerdale Mystery
The Girl in the Train
The Manhood of Edward Robinson
Jane in Search of a Job
A Fruitful Sunday
The Golden Ball
The Rajah's Emerald
Swan Song
The Hound of Death
The Gypsy
The Lamp
The Strange Case of Sir Arthur Carmichael
The Call of Wings
Magnolia Blossom
Next to a Dog
Between Eternities: And Other Writings
Javier Marías
Literature & Fiction
An exhilarating, far-ranging collection of non-fiction writing from the internationally acclaimed author of A Heart So White and *The Infatuations*
Internationally renowned writer Javier Marias is a tireless examiner of the world around us, an enthusiastic debunker of pretensions of every kind, a polymath and a rogue. This
selection of his inimitable non-fiction pieces are published together in English for the first time.
Following in the essayistic tradition of Montaigne, Between Eternities ranges widely from the literary to the philosophical to the autobiographical, from football to cinema, comic books to mortality to 'Why Almost No One Can Be Trusted'. Trenchant
and wry, subversive and penetrating, Marias demonstrates a dazzling intellectual vigour, showing with exhilarating verve why he is so often said to be Spain's greatest living writer.
A Knot in the Grain and Other Stories
Robin McKinley
Science Fiction & Fantasy / Children's Books / Young Adult
Magical stories set in alternate universes . . . tales of curses and gifts of healing . . . a wizard who has lost his powers . . . and a princess, a troll, and a teenage girl are featured in this diverse collection from Newbery Medalist Robin McKinley
Includes “The Healer,” “The Stagman,” “Touk’s House,” “Buttercups,” and “A Knot in the Grain."
Double Sin and Other Stories
Part #36 of "Hercule Poirot" series by Agatha Christie
Mystery / Crime / Thriller
In one of London's most elegant shops, a decorative doll in green velvet adopts some rather human, and sinister, traits. . . . A country gentleman is questioned about a murder that has yet to be committed. . . . While summoning spirits, a medium is drawn closer to the world of the dead than she ever imagined possible. . . . In a small country church, a dying man's last word, sanctuary, becomes both an elegy and a clue to a crime.
Only the Queen of Mystery could have conceived such delicious treats for suspense lovers. Only the inimitable Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple could solve them with such chilling perfection.
The Travelling Grave and Other Stories
L. P. Hartley
Literature & Fiction / Children's Books / Nonfiction
The Travelling Grave and Other Stories contains the following tales:
"A Visitor from Down Under"
"Podolo"
"Three, or Four, for Dinner"
"The Travelling Grave"
"Feet Foremost"
"The Cotillion"
"A Change of Ownership"
"The Thought"
"Conrad and the Dragon"
"The Island"
"Night Fears"
"The Killing Bottle"
Most of the stories had appeared previously in various British editions. this was the first US appearance of most of these stories.
The Devil Delivered and Other Tales
Steven Erikson
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Steven Erikson has carved a name for himself among the pantheon of great fantasy writers. But his masterful storytelling and prose style go beyond the awe-inspiring Malazan world. In The Devil Delivered and Other Tales, Erikson tells three different, but captivating stories:
"The Devil Delivered" tells a story set within the near future, where the land owned by the great Lakota Nation blisters beneath an ozone hole the size of the Great Plains. As the natural world falls victim to its wrath, and scientists scramble to understand it, a lone anthropologist wanders the deadlands, recording observations that threaten to bring the entire world to its knees.
"Revolvo" takes place in an alternate Earth where evolution took an interesting turn and the arts scene is ruled by technocrats who thrive in a secret, nepotistic society of granting agencies, bursaries, and peer-review boards, all designed to permit self-proclaimed artists to survive without an audience.
"Fishin' with Grandma Matchie" is told in the voice a nine-year-old boy, writing the story of his summer vacation. What starts as a typical recount of a trip to see Grandma quickly becomes a stunning fantastical journey into imagination and perception in the wild world that Grandma Matchie inhabits.
But I Trusted You and Other True Cases
Ann Rule
Nonfiction / True Crime
Trust. It's the foundation of any enduring relationship between friends, lovers, spouses, and families. But when trust is placed in those who are not what they seem, the results can be deadly. Ann Rule, who famously chronicled her own shocking experience of unknowingly befriending a sociopath in The Stranger Beside Me, offers a riveting, all-new collection from her true-crime files, with the lethally shattered bonds of trust at the core of each bloodsoaked account.
Whether driven to extreme violence by greed or jealousy, passion or rage, these calculating sociopaths targeted those closest to them - unwitting victims whose last disbelieving words could well have been "but I trusted you...."
Headlining this page-turning anthology is the case of middle-school counselor Chuck Leonard, found shot to death outside his Washington State home on an icy February morning. A complicated mix of family man and wild man, Chuck played hard and loved many... but who crossed the line by murdering him in cold blood? And why? The revelation is as stunning as the shattering crime itself, powerfully illuminating how those we think we know can ingeniously hide their destructive and homicidal designs.
Along with other shattering cases, immaculately detailed and sharply analyzed by America's #1 true-crime writer, this fourteenth Crime Files volume is essential reading for getting inside the mind of the hidden killers among us.
The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
P. G. Wodehouse
Fiction / Humor / Music
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, (15 October 1881 – 14 February 1975) was an English writer whose body of work includes novels, collections of short stories, and musical theatre. Wodehouse enjoyed enormous popular success during a career of more than seventy years and his prolific writings continue to be widely read. Despite the political and social upheavals that occurred during his life, much of which was spent in France and the United States, Wodehouse\'s main canvas remained that of pre-war English upper-class society, reflecting his birth, education, and youthful writing career. An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by modern writers such as Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Terry Pratchett. Journalist and writer Christopher Hitchens commented, "... there is not, and never will be anything to touch him." Best known today for his short stories, Wodehouse was also a playwright and lyricist who was part author and writer of 15 plays and of 250 lyrics for some 30 musical comedies, many of them produced in collaboration with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton. He worked with Cole Porter on the musical Anything Goes (1934), wrote the lyrics for the hit song "Bill" in Kern\'s Show Boat (1927), wrote lyrics to Sigmund Romberg\'s music for the Gershwin – Romberg musical Rosalie (1928), and collaborated with Rudolf Friml on a musical version of The Three Musketeers (1928).
The Relive Box and Other Stories
T. Coraghessan Boyle
Literature & Fiction
A raucous collection of short stories from the astonishingly inventive and bestselling writer of The Harder They Come and The Terranauts
While T. C. Boyle is known as one of our greatest American novelists, he is also an acknowledged master of the short story. In The Relive Box, his first collection following two hugely influential collected volumes, Boyle’s crackling wit and thematic range combine with a penetrating social consciousness to produce his trademark “inventive and often crushingly comic” (NPR) short fiction.
From the title story, featuring a so-called relive box that allows users to experience anew almost any moment from their past, to “The Five-Pound Burrito,” the tale of a man aiming to build the biggest burrito in town, the twelve stories in this collection represent a whole new way of looking at the world from one of the best storytellers at work today.
The Relive Box is an exuberant, linguistically dazzling book from someone the Boston Globe has said is “such a good storyteller it will probably take, as in Alice Munro’s case, the Nobel Prize or retirement for us to realize what tremendous talent has lain right in front of our noses.”
The Convict and Other Stories
James Lee Burke
Mystery & Thrillers / Historical Fiction / Crime
The Convict and Other Stories is a collection of nine award-winning and beautifully composed stories, set in locales along the Gulf coasts of Louisiana and Texas and battlefields around the world. These masterful stories are at once poignant portrayals of the rugged, conflicted Southern man as well as explorations of themes long familiar to Burke's readership: loss and hard-won courage, betrayal and friendship, violence and heroism, and the inveitability of death.
Fantastic Night & Other Stories
Stefan Zweig
Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs
Five of Stefan Zweig's most compelling novellas are presented together in this powerful volume. 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. Fantastic Night is joined by The Invisible Collection and Buchmendel, two of Zweig's most powerful works, which explore lives led in the single minded pursuit of art and literature against a backdrop of poverty and corruption. And finally, Letter from an Unknown Woman, Zweig's poignant and heartbreaking tale of the strength and madness of unrequited love, and The Fowler Snared complete the collection.
The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions
Robert Rankin
Science Fiction & Fantasy / Humor
Rankin's far-fetched steampunk sequel to The War of the Worlds!
It's 1895; nearly a decade since Mars invaded Earth, chronicled by H.G. Wells in The War of the Worlds. Wrecked Martian spaceships, back-engineered by Charles Babbage and Nikola Tesla, have carried the Queen's Own Electric Fusiliers to the red planet, and Mars is now part of the ever-expanding British Empire. Professor Coffin has a problem: the pickled Martian's tentacles are fraying at the ends, and his Most Meritorious Unnatural Attraction (the remains of the original alien autopsy, performed by Sir Frederick Treves at the London Hospital) is no longer drawing the crowds. The less-than-scrupulous sideshow proprietor likes Off-worlders' cash, so he needs a sensational new attraction. Word has reached him of the Japanese Devil Fish Girl; nothing quite like her has ever existed before. But Professor Coffin's quest to possess the ultimate showman's exhibit is about to cause considerable friction among the folk of other planets. Sufficient, in fact, to spark off Worlds War Two.
Hope and Other Luxuries: A Mother's Life With a Daughter's Anorexia
Clare B. Dunkle
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Clare Dunkle seemed to have an ideal life—two beautiful, high-achieving teenage daughters, a loving husband, and a satisfying and successful career as a children's book novelist. But it's when you let down your guard that the ax falls. Just after one daughter successfully conquered her depression, another daughter developed a life-threatening eating disorder. Co-published with Elena Vanishing, the memoir of her daughter, this is the story—told in brave, beautifully written, and unflinchingly honest prose—of one family's fight against a deadly disease, from an often ignored but important perspective: the mother of the anorexic.
Along For The Ride: And Other Stories
Martin Alvarez
Along For the Ride: And Other Stories is an enchanting collection of short stories which range from Fantasy to Science Fiction with some Horror in between, all while focusing on the human condition and what lies within us.Along for the Ride: And Other Stories explores the point of view of a literal beast in Rex Noctem and the outcomes of the far more terrible, figurative ones that lie just behind the self control of those in power with Purgation. Then, The Final Account of Dr. Fredrick Morrison takes us back to real monsters that spill over from our darkest fears into reality to pull us into the nightmares we harbor in our mind from day to day. Next, Along for the Ride ventures into an examination of life and to which unknown we are heading to from the darkness that we all come from, with a colorful, metaphoric depiction of all the puzzling mystery in between. Finally, Rebirth closes with a tale about the possibility of the consequences of our actions leading us to discover who we really are in Rebirth.
Corkscrew and Other Stories
Dashiell Hammett
Mystery & Thrillers
From the sands of Arizona to the alleys of the Tenderloin, the Continental Op deals out *rough* justice, in this collection of short stories from master of noir fiction Dashiell Hammett
In the Arizona desert, the sun’s high, the heat’s relentless, and there’s murder in the air. Across this long stretch of sunbaked hell, one town stands out as the worst of all. Someone is killing the cowboys of Corkscrew, and Continental Op has been hired to stop the slaughter. From the moment he rides into town, he tastes dust on his teeth and blood in the wind. The locals have no respect for this hardboiled San Francisco detective, so it’s up to the Op to show them he deserves his badge. But before peace can come to Corkscrew, more men will die.
A portrait of a tough man in a rough town, “Corkscrew” offers a taste of Dashiell Hammett’s first novel, the legendary epic of hardboiled violence Red Harvest. Along with the other stories in this volume—“Dead Yellow Women” and “The Gutting of Couffignal”—it shows Hammett and his infamous Continental Op at the top of their forms.
The Pier Falls: And Other Stories
Mark Haddon
Children's / Fiction
Mark Haddon, author of the international bestselling novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and A Spot of Bother, returns with a collection of unsparing short stories
In the prize-winning story "The Gun," a man's life is marked by a single afternoon and a rusty .45; in "The Island," a mythical princess is abandoned on an island in the midst of war; in "The Boys Who Left Home to Learn Fear," a cadre of sheltered artistocrats sets out to find adventure in a foreign land and finds the gravest dangers among themselves. These are but some of the men and women who fill this searingly imaginative and emotionally taut collection of short stories by Mark Haddon, that weaves through time and space to showcase the author's incredible versatility.
Yet the collection achieves a sum that is greater than its parts, proving itself a meditation not only on isolation and loneliness but also on the tenuous and unseen connections that link individuals to each other, often despite themselves. In its titular story, the narrator describes with fluid precision a catastrophe that will collectively define its victims as much as it will disperse them—and brilliantly lays bare the reader's appetite for spectacle alongside its characters'. Cut with lean prose and drawing inventively from history, myth, fairy tales, and, above all, the deep well of empathy that made his three novels so compelling, The Pier Falls reveals a previously unseen side of the celebrated author.
The Other
David Guterson
Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction
From the author of the bestselling Snow Falling on Cedars comes a compelling new novel about youth and idealism, adulthood and its compromises, and two powerfully different visions of what it means to live a good life.
A Separate War and Other Stories
Joe Haldeman
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Here are fifteen stories-never before collected- spanning 36 years of Joe Haldeman's award-winning writing...tales that tread upon familiar Haldeman territory, as well as explore the outer reaches of his phenomenal imagination.
From the first short story Haldeman ever sold, "Out of Phase," to "A Separate War," which revisits a character from his classic novel The Forever War, to his personal favorite, "For White Hill," based on a Shakespeare sonnet, this collection will take readers on a journey through a writer's growth from struggling artist to one of the premier voices of his generation. And notes on the stories at the end of the volume gives first-hand insight into the wit and wisdom that went into each of Haldeman's works.
Contents
ix • Meet Joe Haldeman • essay by Connie Willis
xv • Introduction: The Secret of Writing (A Separate War and Other Stories) • essay by Joe Haldeman
1 • A Separate War • [Forever War] • (1999) • novelette by Joe Haldeman
36 • Diminished Chord • (2005) • shortstory by Joe Haldeman
44 • Giza • (2003) • shortstory by Joe Haldeman
49 • Foreclosure • (2005) • shortstory by Joe Haldeman
61 • Four Short Novels • (2003) • shortstory by Joe Haldeman
69 • For White Hill • (1995) • novella by Joe Haldeman
111 • Finding My Shadow • (2003) • shortstory by Joe Haldeman
127 • Civil Disobedience • (2005) • shortstory by Joe Haldeman
135 • Memento Mori • (2004) • shortstory by Joe Haldeman
139 • Faces • (2004) • shortstory by Joe Haldeman
152 • Heartwired • (2005) • shortstory by Joe Haldeman
155 • Brochure • (2000) • shortstory by Joe Haldeman
157 • Out of Phase • (1969) • shortstory by Joe Haldeman
173 • Power Complex • (1972) • novelette by Joe Haldeman
215 • Fantasy for Six Electrodes and One Adrenaline Drip • shortstory by Joe Haldeman
261 • Notes on the Stories (A Separate War and Other Stories) • essay by Joe Haldeman
270 • Copyrights
The Cage Keeper and Other Stories
Andre Dubus III
Fiction / Short Stories
Passion and betrayal, violent desperation, ambivalent love that hinges on hatred, and the quest for acceptance by those who stand on the edge of society-these are the hard-hitting themes of a stunningly crafted first collection of stories by the bestselling author of House of Sand and Fog*.
*A vigilant young man working in a halfway house finds himself unable to defend against the rage of one of the inmates in the title story. In "White Trees, Hammer Moon," a man soon to leave home for prison finds himself as unprepared for a family camping trip in the mountains of New Hampshire as he has been for most things in his life. And in the award-winning "Forky," an ex-con is haunted by the punishment he receives just as he is being released into the world. With an incisive ability to inhabit the lives of his characters, Dubus travels deep into the heart of the elusive American dream.
.jpg "The Maestro & Other Stories (three free flash fictions)")
The Maestro & Other Stories (three free flash fictions)
Morgen Bailey
Short Stories / Mystery & Thrillers / Literature & Fiction
In December 2015, I started a free monthly competition challenging my blog visitors to provide me with prompts for me to choose my favourite and write their story in around 500 words. The three pieces published here are the winning prompts from the Jan / Feb 2016 competition, as well as those that came second and third. The prompts submitted can be found at the end of each story.In December 2015, I started a free monthly competition challenging my blog visitors to provide me with prompts for me to choose my favourite and write their story in around 500 words. The three pieces published here are the winning prompts from the Jan / Feb 2016 competition, as well as those that came second and third. The prompts submitted can be found at the end of each story.In the first - the title - story, 'The Maestro', we meet Amontillado-swigging Joe 'The Bricklayer' Marsh who has been seeking revenge for the past ten years.The second, 'Jungfrau', is another revenge story and features Zurich-born Birgitta who, unlike Joe, has nothing to lose.Finally, 'Is it me?', introduces us to job-seeking Dubliner, Arthur, who turns his back on sales for a more interesting career.
Every Other Day
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Science Fiction & Fantasy / Paranormal Romance / Young Adult
Every other day, Kali D’Angelo is a normal sixteen-year-old girl. She goes to public high school. She argues with her father. She’s human.
And then every day in between . . . she’s something else entirely.
Though she still looks like herself, every twenty-four hours predatory instincts take over and Kali becomes a feared demon-hunter with the undeniable urge to hunt, trap, and kill zombies, hellhounds, and other supernatural creatures. Kali has no idea why she is the way she is, but she gives in to instinct anyway. Even though the government considers it environmental terrorism.
When Kali notices a mark on the lower back of a popular girl at school, she knows instantly that the girl is marked for death by one of these creatures. Kali has twenty-four hours to save her, and unfortunately she’ll have to do it as a human. With the help of a few new friends, Kali takes a risk that her human body might not survive . . . and learns the secrets of her mysterious condition in the process.
Moment of Vengeance and Other Stories
Elmore Leonard
Mystery & Thrillers / Western
Before he brilliantly traversed the gritty landscapes of underworld Detroit and Miami, the incomparable Elmore Leonard wrote breathtaking adventures set in America's nineteenth-century western frontier—elevating a popular genre with his now-trademark twisting plots, rich characterizations, and scalpel-sharp dialogue.
There is a moment when obsession, rage, and destiny come together at the end of a shotgun barrel—when wrongs, actual or perceived, are addressed with violence, and the awesome power of life or death rests in a trigger finger. In seven magnificent stories of sins, crimes, conscience, and savage retribution, the New York Times-bestselling master carries us back to an untamed time and place where a simple transgression most often proved fatal . . . and the only true justice lived in the hands of the gunman.
The Door in the Hedge: And Other Stories
Robin McKinley
Science Fiction & Fantasy / Children's Books / Young Adult
Ensorcelled princesses . . . a frog that speaks . . . a magical hind—Newbery Medal winner Robin McKinley opens a door into an enchanted world in this collection of original and retold fairy tales
The last mortal kingdom before the unmeasured sweep of Faerieland begins has at best held an uneasy truce with its unpredictable neighbor. There is nothing to show a boundary, at least on the mortal side of it; and if any ordinary human creature ever saw a faerie—or at any rate recognized one—it was never mentioned; but the existence of the boundary and of faeries beyond it is never in doubt either.
So begins “The Stolen Princess,” the first story of this collection, about the meeting between the human princess Linadel and the faerie prince Donathor. “The Princess and the Frog” concerns Rana and her unexpected alliance with a small, green, flipper-footed denizen of a pond in the palace gardens. “The Hunting of the Hind” tells of a princess who has bewitched her beloved brother, hoping to beg some magic of cure, for her brother is dying, and the last tale is a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses in which an old soldier discovers, with a little help from a lavender-eyed witch, the surprising truth about where the princesses dance their shoes to tatters every night.