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Azazel
Isaac Asimov
Science Fiction & Fantasy / Mystery & Thrillers / Science
He's two centimetres tall. He's fiery red. He has magical powers strong enough to wreck a normal human's life...all with the best intentions, of course. George Bitternut, an eccentric linguist stumbles onto an ancient incantation that calls forth this diminutive demon of astonishing wizardry. Unfortunately, Azazel refuses to do anything for George's personal gain - but he agrees to help out a few of his friends. This devilish collection of stories follows the antic adventures - and misadventures - of Azazel and our beleaguered Mr Bitternut. Told with great fun and in the inimitable Asimov style, Azazel makes for hours of pure impish delight.
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Twisted: The Collected Stories - 1
Jeffery Deaver
Mystery / Fiction / Thriller
A beautiful woman goes to extremes to rid herself of her stalker; a daughter begs her father not to go fishing in an area where there have been a series of brutal killings; a contemporary of the playwright William Shakespeare vows to avenge his family's ruin; and Jeffery Deaver's most beloved character, criminalist Lincoln Rhyme, is back to solve a chilling Christmastime disappearance.
Collected Short Stories Volume 2
W. Somerset Maugham
Fiction / Short Stories
The stories in this collection move from Malaya to America and England, and include some of Maugham's most famous tales; 'Flotsam and Jetsam', the story of an old woman trapped for years in a loveless marriage in the remote rubber plantations; 'The Man with the Scar', and notably the opening story 'The Vessel of Wrath', a tale of the unexpected love that grows between a devout missionary nurse and a drunken reprobate. In this second volume of his collected stories, Maugham illustrates his characteristic wry perception of human foibles and his genius for evoking compelling drama from an acute sense of time and place.
Collected Short Stories Volume 4
W. Somerset Maugham
Fiction / Short Stories
This final classic collection of stories reveals Somerset Maugham's unique talent for exposing and exploring the bitter realities of human relationships. Brilliant tales of love, infidelity, passion and prejudice, the stories range from 'The Lotus Eater' in which a man has a vision of a life of bliss in the Mediterranean, to the astringent tales of 'The Outstation' and 'The Back of Beyond' in Malaya and South East Asia. Largely set in favourite Maugham country, this colourful collection brilliantly evokes the numbered days of the British Empire.
The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig
Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs
In this magnificent collection of Stefan Zweig's short stories the very best and worst of human nature are captured with sharp observation, understanding and vivid empathy. Ranging from love and death to faith restored and hope regained, these stories present a master at work, at the top of his form. Perfectly paced and brimming with passion, these twenty-two tales from a master storyteller of the Twentieth Century are translated by the award-winning Anthea Bell.
Deluxe, clothbound edition.
From the Hardcover edition.
Burning Your Boats: Collected Short Stories
Angela Carter
Fiction
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SALMAN RUSHDIE
As well as her eight novels, Angela Carter published four wonderful collections of short stories during her lifetime, and contributed stories to several anthologies. The stories were scattered amongst different publishers, and a couple of the volumes are now out of print. In Burning your Boats they are gathered for the first time; this is a key collection and a major event for Angela Carter aficionados.
Collected Stories
William Faulkner
Fiction / Poetry / Southern Gothic
“I’m a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can’t and then tries the short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing that, only then does he take up novel writing.” —William Faulkner
Winner of the National Book Award
Forty-two stories make up this magisterial collection by the writer who stands at the pinnacle of modern American fiction. Compressing an epic expanse of vision into hard and wounding narratives, Faulkner’s stories evoke the intimate textures of place, the deep strata of history and legend, and all the fear, brutality, and tenderness of the human condition. These tales are set not only in Yoknapatawpha County, but in Beverly Hills and in France during World War I. They are populated by such characters as the Faulknerian archetypes Flem Snopes and Quentin Compson, as well as by ordinary men and women who emerge so sharply and indelibly in these pages that they dwarf the protagonists of most novels.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume 3: Something Wild Is Loose: 1969-72
Robert Silverberg
Science Fiction / Fantasy
"The world that these stories sprang from was the troubled, bewildering, dangerous, and very exciting world of those weird years when the barriers were down and the future was rushing into the present with the force of a river unleashed. But of course I think these stories speak to our times, too, and that most of them will remain valid as we go staggering onward through the brave new world of the twenty-first century. I am not one of those who believes that all is lost and the end is nigh. Like William Faulkner, I do think we will somehow endure and prevail against increasingly stiff odds.
"A great many strange and dizzying things happen to the characters in these sixteen stories, and in the fourteen stories of the 1972-73 volume that will follow. The reader who makes the journey from beginning to end of all thirty stories will be taken on many a curious trip, that I promise -- as was their author during the years when they were being written."
--Robert Silverberg, from the Introduction
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Something Wild is Loose
In Entropy's Jaws
The Reality Trip
Going Caliban
Good News from the Vatican
Thomas the Proclaimer
When We Went to See the End of the World
Push No More
The Wind and the Rain
Some Notes on the Pre-Dynastic Epoch
The Feast of St. Dionysus
What We Learned from This Morning’s Newspaper
The Mutant Season
Caught in the Organ Draft
Many Mansions
Collected Stories
Willa Cather
Literature & Fiction
A ruined beauty whose dignity has suffered a lifetime of loss and disenchantment. A Czech immigrant who finds a paradoxical contentment on the harsh expanse of the Nebraska prairie. A solitary young painter spying raptly and guiltily on his exquisite neighbor. These are some of the lives that Willa Cather renders, with a fine balance of compassion and detachment, in these nineteen stories.
Here are the great themes that Cather staked out like tracts of land: the plight of people hungry for beauty in a country that has no room for it; the mysterious arc of human lives; the ways in which the American frontier transformed the strangers who came to it, turning them imperceptibly into Americans. In these fictions, Cather displays her vast moral vision, her unerring sense of place, and her ability to find the one detail or episode that makes a closed life open wide in a single exhilarating moment.
BONUS: The edition includes an excerpt from The Selected Letters of Willa Cather.
Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories
Hugh Howey
Science Fiction & Fantasy / Short Stories / Literature & Fiction
A new collection of stories, including some that have never before been seen, from the New York Times best-selling author of the Silo trilogy
Hugh Howey is known for crafting riveting and immersive page-turners of boundless imagination, spawning millions of fans worldwide, first with his best-selling novel Wool, and then with other enthralling works such as Sand and Beacon 23.
Now comes Machine Learning, an impressive collection of Howey’s science fiction and fantasy short fiction, including three stories set in the world of Wool, two never-before-published tales written exclusively for this volume, and fifteen additional stories collected here for the first time. These stories explore everything from artificial intelligence to parallel universes to video games, and each story is accompanied by an author’s note exploring the background and genesis of each story.
Howey’s incisive mind makes Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories a compulsively readable and thought-provoking selection of short works—from a modern master at the top of his game.
Platinum Pohl: The Collected Best Stories
Frederik Pohl
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Platinum Pohl is the first collection to collect all of the essential works of Frederik Pohl. First and foremost, Pohl is a master of the science fiction short story. For more than fifty years he has been writing incisive, entertaining SF stories, several hundred in all. Even while writing his bestselling triple-crown (Hugo, Nebula, Campbell Award) novel Gateway and the other Heechee Saga novels, he has always written short fiction.
Now, for the first time, he has gathered together the best of his many stories. Spanning the decades, these tales are in their way a living history of science fiction. Because Frederik Pohl has been on the frontlines of the field since the halcyon days of the late 1930s, and has written short stories in every decade since. And because he has always been a keen observer of the human condition and the world that is shaped by it, his stories reflect the currents of political movements, social trends, major events that have shaken the world . . .
Yet at their core, all his stories are most acutely concerned with people. All sorts of people. Some are people you'll love, some you'll hate. But you will need to find out what happens to the people who inhabit these stories. Because Frederik Pohl imbues his characters with a depth and individuality that makes them as real as people you see every day. Of course, he also employs a mind-boggling variety of scientific ideas and science fictional tropes with which his characters must interact. And he does it all with seemingly no effort at all. That's some trick. Not everyone can do that . . . but that's why he was named a Grand Master of Science Fiction by his peers in the Science Fiction Writers of America.
Here are his two Hugo Award winning stories, "Fermi and Frost" and "The Meeting" (with C. M. Kornbluth), along with such classic novellas as the powerful "The Gold at the Starbow's End" and "The Greening of Bed-Stuy," and stories such as "Servant of the People," "Shaffery Among the Immortals," and "Growing Up in Edge City," all finalists for major awards. And dozens of other tales, like the wonderful "The Mayor of Mare Tranq" and the provocative "The Day the Martians Landed" and many others.
Altogether, a grand collection of thought-provoking, entertaining science fiction by one of the all-time greats!
T.C. Boyle Stories II: The Collected Stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle, Volume II
T. Coraghessan Boyle
Literature & Fiction
A man falls from a roof whilst spying on his beautiful widowed neighbour. A newly married couple seeking enlightenment take a three year vow of silence and move to a yurt in the Arizona desert. A handsome young man works in real-estate by day, but has a far more sinister profession by night. An elderly woman is determined to return to her home in the countryside, despite the knowledge that in doing so she may be signing her own death warrant. Giant men are kept in cages to ensure their nightly service to their country. A man develops an unhealthy interest in his recently deceased reclusive rock-star neighbour. And on Christmas day at the San Francisco Zoo a terrible and tragic event occurs.
The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll
Heinrich Böll
Literature & Fiction / Travel / Short Stories
The definitive short story collection by the Nobel Laureate and master of the form
These diverse, psychologically rich, and morally profound stories explore the consequences of war on individuals and on an entire culture. The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll provides readers with the only comprehensive collection by this master of the short-story form.
Includes all the stories from Böll’s The Mad Dog, Eighteen Short Stories, The Casualty, and The Stories of Heinrich Böll. A Nobel Laureate, Böll was considered a master 20th century literature, and The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll contains some of his finest work.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Collected Stories
Richard Yates
Fiction / Short Stories
Richard Yates was acclaimed as one of the most powerful, compassionate and accomplished writers of America's post-war generation. Whether addressing the smothered desire of suburban housewives, the white-collar despair of Manhattan office workers or the heartbreak of a single mother with artistic pretensions, Yates ruthlessly examines the hopes and disappointments of ordinary people with empathy and humour.
Contents:
Doctor Jack-o'-Lantern --
The best of everything --
Jody rolled the bones --
No pain whatsoever --
A glutton for punishment --
A wrestler with sharks --
Fun with a stranger --
The B.A.R. man --
A really good jazz piano --
Out with the old --
Builders --
Oh, Joseph, I'm so tired --
A natural girl --
Trying out for the race --
Liars in love --
A compassionate leave --
Regards at home --
Saying goodbye to Sally --
The canal --
A clinical romance --
Bells in the morning --
Evening on the Cote d'Azur --
Thieves --
A private possession --
The comptroller and the wild wind --
A last fling, like --
A convalescent ego.
Collected Short Stories: Volume 1
W. Somerset Maugham
Fiction / Short Stories
This first volume of Somerset Maugham's collected short stories includes the famous story 'Rain', the tragedy of the prudish missionary Mr Davidson and Sadie Thompson, the prostitute. The collection contains thirty stories that take us from the islands of the Pacific Ocean to England, France and Spain. They all reveal Maugham's acute and often sardonic observation of human foibles and his particular genius for exposing the bitter reality of human relationships.
Somerset Maugham learnt his craft from Maupassant, and these stories display the remarkable talent that made him an unsurpassed storyteller.
Collected Short Stories: Volume II
Barry Rachin
* Grace Paulson’s train wreck of a personal life takes a turn for the better when the elementary school teacher meets a gifted artisan whose handmade jewelry boxes are featured at the local museum. Well-versed in nineteenth century Russian literature, Carl Solomon also happens to be the school janitor.* Grace Paulson’s train wreck of a personal life takes a turn for the better when the elementary school teacher meets a gifted artisan whose handmade jewelry boxes are featured at the local museum. Well-versed in nineteenth century Russian literature, Carl Solomon also happens to be the school janitor.* Following his divorce, Dr. Stanley Gilford, chief of cardiology at Our Lady of Fatima Hospital, restructured his life on the guiding principle of maximum gain, minimum pain. So what is the well-heeled doctor doing with Ruby, a high school dropout and waitress at the local greasy spoon, and what are his options visa vie the pallid, five year old boy whose damaged heart beats in three-four time?* A year out of high school, Clarissa, who couldn't even score a date for the senior prom, is into tantric sex, Pablo Neruda and orgasms bordering on divine rapture. And she's still a virgin!* While studing to become a rabbi at a yeshivah in Jersusalem, Peter Ostrowski witnesses a senseless act of violence that causes him to abandon the religious life. When he stumbles across the writings of Leo Pinsker, an equally disaffected seventeenth century, Polish Jew, Peter grasps what needs to be done to salvage his fractured humanity.These are just a few of the situations you will find in this collection of bittersweet short stories, where the characters struggle to manage their lives in a user-unfriendly universe.
Trouble in Mind: The Collected Stories - 3
Jeffery Deaver
Mystery / Fiction / Thriller
**Fiendish suspense. Shocking twists.
Twelve diabolical tales.**
*New York Times* bestselling author and highly acclaimed storyteller Jeffery Deaver-the undisputed "grand master of the plot twist" (*Booklist*)-returns with a dazzling new collection of short stories. In these twelve electrifying tales (including six written just for this anthology) Deaver proves once again his genius for the unexpected-in his world, appearances are always deceiving.
A devoted housekeeper embarks on a quest to find the truth behind her employer's murder. A washed-up Hollywood actor gets one last, high-stakes chance to revive his career. A man makes an impulsive visit to his hometown, and learns more about his past than he bargained for. Two Olympic track hopefuls receive terrorist threats. And Deaver's beloved series characters Lincoln Rhyme, Kathryn Dance, and John Pellam return in stories now in print for the first time.
Collected Stories from Contests and Events 2014
Christine Brand
Romance / Paranormal / Fantasy
A Collection of flash fiction. During 2014 I entered a few writing contests, and submitted to many events.Collected Stories from Contests and Events 2014A Collection of flash fiction.During 2014 I entered a few writing contests, and submitted to many events.Here you will find all my submissions from the year including the prize-winning story Julie's Problem. Some are humorous, some serious, a few might come as a surprise to anyone who has read my Flashes of Light collections.
Collected Short Stories: Volume IV
Barry Rachin
* Bethany Glaspell approached the first-ever meeting with Great-uncle Vern, a man who returned from the jungles of Vietnam with a Hmong bride and warped personality, much as a cat burglar might plan his next heist, telling no one, neither friend nor family, her intentions.* Bethany Glaspell approached the first-ever meeting with Great-uncle Vern, a man who returned from the jungles of Vietnam with a Hmong bride and warped personality, much as a cat burglar might plan his next heist, telling no one, neither friend nor family, her intentions.* There are five levels of gifted intelligence ranging from bright to profoundly gifted. One in every thirty thousand is 'exceptional', which makes Curtis Stedman, the part-time dishwasher at Nagel’s Bagels, one smart cookie!* Tawana Saunders is writing the great American novel. Problem is, six months into the project, she’s only got a rough draft plus three lousy paragraphs.* Lenny slept with Elsie McGivney, a woman so dim-witted she can't make change or hold down an entry-level job. Lenny bedded the chucklehead but got no sex in the bargain. So why is he going back for more?These are just a few of the situations you will find in this collection of bittersweet short stories, where the characters struggle to manage their lives in a user-unfriendly universe.
The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Seven: We Are for the Dark
Robert Silverberg
Science Fiction / Fantasy
The stories collected here, written between August of 1987 and May of 1990, demonstrate that I still believe in the classical unities. Of course, what seems to us a unity now might not have appeared that way when H.G. Wells was writing his wonderful stories in the nineteenth century. Wells might have argued that my 'To the Promised Land' is built around two speculative fantastic assumptions, one that the Biblical Exodus from Egypt never happened, the other that it is possible to send rocketships to other worlds. But in fact we've sent plenty of rocketships to other worlds by now, so only my story's alternative-world speculation remains fantasy today. Technically speaking the space-travel element of the plot has become part of the given; it's the other big assumption that forms the central matter of the story.
--Robert Silverberg, from his Introduction
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Dead Man's Eyes
Enter A Soldier. Later: Enter Another
To The Promised Land
Chip Runner
A Sleep And A Forgetting
In Another Country
The Asenion Solution
We Are For The Dark
Lion Time in Timbuctoo
A Tip On A Turtle
The Millennium Express: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Nine
Robert Silverberg
Science Fiction / Fantasy
But, for all that, I went on writing short fiction all through the seventh and eighth decades of my life, and though I’m not very active these days, I would still pay attention if someone were to approach me with an interesting and challenging short-story project, or if some absolutely irresistible story idea were to come into my mind. I will not, at this point, try to claim that the stories that are collected here are the last short stories I will ever write. Surely some editor, in the years ahead, will tickle my imagination with a proposal I can’t resist. But I doubt that will be happening very often; and, meanwhile, here’s the harvest of the fourteen years that began in 1995—not an enormous number of stories, no, but stories nevertheless that I think are worth reading and reprinting.
—Robert Silverberg, from his Introduction
Collected Ghost Stories
M. R. James
Short Stories / Mystery & Thrillers / Religion
M. R. James is widely regarded as the father of the modern ghost story, and his tales have influenced horror writers from H. P. Lovecraft to Stephen King. First published in the early 1900s, they have never been out of print, and are recognized as classics of the genre. This collection contains some of his most chilling tales, including A View from a Hill, Rats, A School Story, The Ash Tree, and The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance. Read by BAFTA and Emmy-award winning actor Derek Jacobi, and with haunting and evocative music, these tales cannot fail to send a shiver down your spine.
Collected Stories
Carson McCullers
Fiction / Poetry / Tragicomedy
Carson McCullers--novelist, dramatist, poet--was at the peak of her powers as a writer of short fiction. Here are nineteen stories that explore her signature themes: wounded adolescence, loneliness in marriage, and the tragicomedy of life in the South. Here too are "The Member of the Wedding" and "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe," novellas that Tennessee Williams judged to be "assuredly among the masterpieces of our language." (A Mariner Reissue)
Collected Stories
Jorge Luis Borges
Fiction / Short Stories / Poetry
“Perhaps the chief justification of this book is the translation itself, which we have undertaken in what may be a new way. Working closely together in daily sessions, we have tried to make these stories read as though they had been written in English. We do not consider English and Spanish as compounded of sets of easily interchangeable synonyms; they are two quite different ways of looking at the world, each with a nature of its own. English, for example, is far more physical than Spanish. We have therefore shunned the dictionary as much as possible and done our best to rethink every sentence in English words.” — Jorges Luis Borges, Norman Thomas di Giovanni, 1970A compilation of the long out-of-print Giovanni translations of many of the short stories of J. L. Borges. These English translations were collaborative efforts between Borges and Giovanni and represent the author's preferred English text.They have been supplanted by the rather mundane Hurley translations due to Borges's widow, who currently manages his estate. Currently the estate allows no new printings of the Giovanni translations - hence this volume. Yes, it is unauthorized; this edition takes its authorization from the author's stated preference while he was alive, and its view on legality that nothing should steal from the public sphere the beautiful words of Jorge Luis Borges.
The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Five: The Palace at Midnight
Robert Silverberg
Science Fiction / Fantasy
Somehow, for all my outward pretence of cold-eyed professionalism, all my insistence that writing is simply a job like any other, I’ve discovered to my surprise and chagrin that there’s more than that going on around here, that I write as much out of karmic necessity and some inescapable inner need to rededicate my own skills constantly to my—what? My craft? My art? My profession? I wrote these stories because the only way of earning a living I have ever had has been by writing, but mainly, I have to admit, I wrote these stories because I couldn’t not write them. Well, so be it. They involved me in a lot of hard work, but for me, at least, the results justify the toil. I’m glad I wrote them. Writing them, it turns out, was important for me, and even pleasurable, in a curiously complex after-the-fact kind of way. May they give you pleasure now too.
—Robert Silverberg, from his Introduction
Table of Contents
Introduction
Our Lady of the Sauropods
Waiting for the Earthquake
The Regulars
The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve
A Thousand Paces Along the Via Dolorosa
How They Pass the Time in Pelpel
The Palace at Midnight
The Man Who Floated in Time
Gianni
The Pope of the Chimps
Thesme and the Ghayrog
At the Conglomeroid Cocktail Party
The Trouble with Sempoanga
Jennifer’s Lover
Not Our Brother
Gate of Horn, Gate of Ivory
Dancers in the Time-Flux
Needle in a Timestack
Amanda and the Alien
Snake and Ocean, Ocean and Snake
The Changeling
Basileus
Homefaring
The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume 4: Trips: 1972-73
Robert Silverberg
Science Fiction / Fantasy
The stories here, all of them written between March of 1972 and November of 1973, mark a critical turning point in my career. Those who know the three earlier volumes have traced my evolution from a capable journeyman, very young and as much concerned with paying the rent as he was to advancing the state of the art, into a serious, dedicated craftsman now seeking to leave his mark on science fiction in some significant way. Throughout the decade of the 1960s I had attempted to grow and evolve within the field of writing I loved building on the best that went before me, the work of Theodore Sturgeon and James Blish and Cyril Kornbluth and Jack Vance and Philip K. Dick and half a dozen others whose great stories had been beacons beckoning me onward and then, as I reached my own maturity, now trying to bring science fiction along with me into a new realm of development, hauling it along even farther out of its pulp-magazine origins toward what I regarded as a more resonant and evocative kind of visionary storytelling.
Robert Silverberg, from his introduction
Table of Contents
Introduction
In the Group
Getting Across
Ms. Found in an Abandoned Time Machine
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame
A Sea of Faces
The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV
Breckenridge and the Continuum
Capricorn Games
Ship-Sister, Star-Sister
This is the Road
Trips
Born with the Dead
D.V. Perrot: Teach Yourself Swahili
Schwartz Between the Galaxies
In the House of Double Minds
The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis
Machado De Assis
Literature & Fiction / Romance / Poetry
Widely acclaimed as a progenitor of twentieth-century Latin American fiction, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908), the son of a mulatto father and a washerwoman, was hailed in his lifetime as Brazil’s greatest writer. His prodigious output of novels, plays, and stories rivaled contemporaries like Chekhov, Flaubert, and Maupassant, but, shockingly, he was barely translated into English until 1963, and still lacks proper recognition today. Aware of this lacuna and drawn to the master’s psychologically probing tales of fin-de-siècle Rio de Janeiro—a world populated with down-and-out aristocrats, parvenus, and struggling spinsters—Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson have combined all seven of Machado’s short-story collections appearing in his lifetime into one volume featuring seventy-six stories, a dozen appearing in English for the first time. Machado’s daring narrative techniques and postcolonial realism anticipated the dominant themes of twentieth-century literature and this majestic translation reintroduces him as a literary giant who must finally be integrated into the world literary canon.
The Collected Short Stories
Jean Rhys
Fiction
Jean Rhys may be best known as the author of Wide Sargasso Sea and other novels. But she was as accomplished a short story writer as a novelist. The Collected Short Stories brings all of Jean Rhy's stories together in one volume.
Informed by the places she lived and the people she knew, these stories, set in London, Paris, and the Caribbean, hold and haunt the reader because they call up emotions, places, atmosphere, even physical sensations, with a powerful freshness. They are, as Ford Madox Ford writes, "extraordinarily distinguished by the rendering of passion."
The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter
Katherine Anne Porter
Literature & Fiction
Despite the enormous success--both critical and popular--of her novel Ship of Fools, Katherine Anne Porter's reputation as one of America's most distinguished writers rest chiefly on her superb short stories. This volume brings together the collections Flowering Judas; Pale Horse, Pale Rider; and The Leaning Tower as well as four stories not available elsewhere in book form.
Dear Illusion: Collected Stories
Kingsley Amis
Fiction / Humor and Comedy / Memoir
When he published his first novel, Lucky Jim, in which his misbehaving hero wreaks havoc with the starchy protocols of academic life, Kingsley Amis emerged as a bad boy of British letters. Later he became famous as another kind of bad boy, an inveterate boozer, a red-faced scourge of political correctness. He was consistent throughout in being a committed enemy of any presumed “right thinking,” and it is this, no doubt, that made him one of the most consistently unconventional and exploratory writers of his day, a master of classical English prose who was at the same time altogether unafraid to apply himself to literary genres all too often dismissed by sophisticates as “low.” Science fiction, the spy story, the ghost story were all grist for Amis’s mill, and nowhere is the experimental spirit in which he worked, his will to test both reality and the reader’s imagination, more apparent than in his short stories. These “woodchips from [his] workshop”—here presented in a new selection—are anything but throwaway work. They are instead the essence of Amis, a brew that is as tonic as it is intoxicating.
Collected Stories
Saul Bellow
Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction
Collects stories featuring such characters as art critic Victor Wulpy, cheeerful and tragic Hattie Waggoner, and death-bed witness Dr. Braun.
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick 5: The Eye of the Sibyl
Philip K. Dick
Science Fiction & Fantasy / Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction
Since his untimely death in 1982, interest in Philip K. Dick's works has continued to grow, and his reputation has been enhanced by an expanding body of critical appreciation. This fifth and final volume of Dick's collected works includes 25 short stories, some previously unpublished.
The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of James Hain Friswell-Ghost Stories and Phantom Fancies
James Hain Friswell
A rare treasure of ghostly tales from the Victorian era Shropshire born James Hain Friswell (1825-78) was a prolific author of the Victorian age. A noted defender of the Christian faith, much of his non-fiction output quite naturally concentrated on religious matters. He also contributed to a number of journals of his time, wrote non-fiction on a plethora of subjects and penned a number of novels and short stories. He was especially regarded in his own time for his efforts to improve the quality of literature for young readers. In this special Leonaur edition is Friswell's small, but select, collection of the ghostly and other worldly fiction. Here is Ghost Stories and Phantom Fancies, a dozen or so pieces (including a poem) to please aficionados of supernatural fiction as it was a written during its golden age including, 'The Dead Man's Story,' 'The Black Madonna,' 'The Oxford Ghost,' 'A Phantom of the Du Barry' and others. This comparatively concise work published in 1858 is, of course, rare on the antiquarian market so the Leonaur editors are pleased to be able to represent it to modern readers as part of our Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction series.Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.**
The Collected Mystery Stories
Lawrence Block
Mystery & Thrillers / Fiction
The 71 tales in this indispensable volume represent the complete short fiction of one of the genre's giants....like all the best short stories, each of them, from the badger game turned murderous to the fatalistic ex-con trying vainly to go straight, seems less created than discovered, dug up from dark places and carved to gemlike brightness. Lots of suspense writers can keep you turning pages far into the night. But how many others can keep you starting story after story, popping just one more poisoned chocolate, hours after you meant to turn out the light?
Unexpected Magic: Collected Stories
Diana Wynne Jones
Science Fiction & Fantasy / Young Adult / Children's Books
Master storyteller Diana Wynne Jones presents a riveting collection of unpredictable tales, including:
A cat tells how the kindhearted wizard she owns is suddenly called upon to defeat a horrific Beast.
When Anne has mumps, her drawings come to life, and she must protect her home from them
Four children become involved in the intrigue surrounding an innocent prince, an evil count, and a brave outlaw.
These fifteen stories and one novella will enchant, startle, and surprise!
Collected Stories
Wallace Stegner
Literature & Fiction
In a literary career spanning more than fifty years, Wallace Stegner created a remarkable record of the history and culture of twentieth-century America. Each of the thirty-one stories contained in this volume embody some of the best virtues and values to be found in contemporary fiction, demonstrating why the author is acclaimed as one of America's master storytellers.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. **
Collected Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Howard Fast
A pair of imaginative science fiction story collections from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Spartacus, Freedom Road, and the Immigrants saga. Over his long and illustrious career, New York Times–bestselling author and prolific novelist Howard Fast proved himself a master of any literary genre, from historical fiction in Spartacus to family generational drama in his bestselling Immigrants saga. Although his output in fantasy and science fiction is relatively modest, these two short story collections, reminiscent of classic Twilight Zone episodes, demonstrate that Fast's imagination knew no boundaries. The General Zapped an Angel: Nearly forty years after the publication of his first story, "Wrath of Purple," in the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, Fast returned to the genre with a set of nine supremely entertaining tales. In this collection, a Vietnam general shoots...
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge
Science Fiction & Fantasy / Nonfiction
Since his first published story, "Apartness," appeared in 1965, Vernor Vinge has forged a unique and awe-inspiring career in science fiction as his work has grown and matured. He is now one of the most celebrated science fiction writers in the field , having won the field's top award, the Hugo, for each of his last two novels.
Now, for the first time, this illustrious author gathers all his short fiction into a single volume. This collection is truly the definitive Vinge, capturing his visionary ideas at their very best. It also contains a never-before-published novella, one that represents precisely what this collection encapsulates--bold, unique, challenging science fictional ideas brought to vivid life with compelling storytelling.
Including such major pieces as "The Ungoverned" and "The Blabber," this sumptuous volume will satisfy any reader who loves the sense of wonder, and the excitement of great SF.
The volume collects Vinge's short fiction through 2001 (except "True Names", including Vinge's comments from the earlier two volumes.)
Contents:
"Bookworm, Run!"
"The Accomplice"
"The Peddler's Apprentice" (with Joan D. Vinge)
"The Ungoverned"
"Long Shot"
"Apartness"
"Conquest by Default"
"The Whirligig of Time"
"Bomb Scare"
"The Science Fair"
"Gemstone"
"Just Peace" (with William Rupp)
"Original Sin"
"The Blabber"
"Win A Nobel Prize!" (originally published in Nature, Vol 407 No 6805 "Futures")
"The Barbarian Princess" (this is also the first section of "Tatja Grimm's World")
"Fast Times at Fairmont High" (occurs in the same milieu as Rainbows End) (winner 2002 Hugo Award for Best Novella)
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick 3: Second Variety
Philip K. Dick
Science Fiction & Fantasy / Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction
Many thousands of readers consider Philip K. Dick the greatest science fiction mind on any planet. Since his untimely death in 1982, interest in Dick's works has continued to mount and his reputation has been further enhanced by a growing body of critical attention. The Philip K. Dick Award is now given annually to a distinguished work of science fiction, and the Philip K. Dick Society is devoted to the study and promulgation of his works.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 Second Variety, Foster, You're Dead and The Father-Thing, and many others.
"A useful acquisition for any serious SF library or collection." -- Kirkus
"The collected stories of Philip K. Dick is awe inspiring." -- The Washington Post
"More than anyone else in the field, Mr. Dick really puts you inside people's minds." -- Wall Street Journal
Head West (The Collected Western Stories of B.J. Holmes)
BJ Holmes
For the first time ever, Piccadilly Publishing presents SEVENTEEN classic western stories by B. J . Holmes, bestselling author of THE REAPER and SHATTERHAND series!GRIMM HEFTED THE CLEAVER.It was bigger than a throwing axe but it had a similar balance. He raised it and waited. Spurred on by his boss the ugly squat figure of Toad burst through the door, two guns at the ready. What could Grimm do with no guns against two? In the situation as it was, Jonathan Grimm had one, and only one, chance. He grabbed the cleaver and hurled it. Its vertical rotations whooshed the air rhythmically slicing through the dust motes. It split the reptilian gunny at the neck as easy as splitting a melon; and just as messy as that action could be. With no noise other than an ugly gurgle, Toad staggered back and collapsed in a bloody heap. Then bullets started slamming non-stop into the building from back and front...
Lost Library Collected Short Stories
Kate Baray
Delve further into the secrets of the Lost Library world with these collected short stories! Clara and Logan's stories include: Rage, Forgiveness, Love, and Moving. Also included is: * Revealed, Max Thornton's introduction to the Texas Lycan pack, * Krampus Gone Wild, a Christmas story featuring Lizzie and John, and * The Covered Mirror, a Halloween story set in the Lost Library world. Author's Note: The stories included in this collection have been previously published individually.
The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume 6: Multiples: 1983-87
Robert Silverberg
Science Fiction / Fantasy
By the time this present group of stories was written I had passed through the cultural turbulence that engulfed nearly everyone’s life in the wild, stormy period we know as “the Sixties,” which for me had actually lasted from 1968 to 1974 or 1975. I had come through my own angry four-year-long retirement from writing in the middle 1970s, and was working again at a steady pace, though not with the frenetic prolificacy of the pre-retirement years. At the beginning of this period my personal life was still pretty chaotic, a carryover from all that Sixties madness, and plenty of new chaos was going to descend on me while some of these stories were written, but I was tiptoeing toward an escape from the various messes that were complicating my life, and by the time the last five stories of this volume were being written I was heading into the stability of my second marriage.
—Robert Silverberg, from his Introduction
Table of Contents
Introduction
Tourist Trade
Multiples
Against Babylon
Symbiont
Sailing to Byzantium
Sunrise on Pluto
Hardware
Hannibal’s Elephants
Blindsight
Gilgamesh in the Outback
The Pardoner’s Tale
The Iron Star
The Secret Sharer
House of Bones
The Collected Short Stories and Essays
Dana Stabenow
Edgar Award-winning author Dana Stabenow is best known for her Kate Shugak series of crime novels, but the unifying protagonist of almost all her writing, be it crime, fantasy, horror, or science fiction, is Alaska. This genre-spanning collection of sixteen short stories features familiar characters like Kate and Jim, Liam and Wy, and Bill and Moses, but also ranges farther afield than many readers will expect, leaping from modern-day Anchorage to twenty-second-century Mars to the fantasy kingdom of Mnemosynea. Remarkably disparate, but indisputably Stabenow, a writer whose fertile imagination is anything but predictable.Titles in this collection are 'Nooses Give', 'Conspiracy', 'Under the Influence', 'Wreck Rights', 'Cherchez la Femme', 'Siren Song', 'The Eyak Interpreter', 'Any Taint of Vice', 'On the Evidence', 'Missing, Presumed...', 'The Perfect Gift', 'Gold Fever', 'Cheechako', 'No Place Like Home', 'Justice is a Two-Edged Sword', and 'A Woman's Work'. Newly added in this...
The Collected Short Stories
D. H. Lawrence
Literature & Fiction / Poetry / Travel
It could be said that only in these short works, with their dramatic clarity and immediacy, did Lawrence fully realize his entirely original vision of the erotic and of the power of the irrational in human affairs.
The New Collected Short Stories
E. M. Forster
Fiction / Essays
Includes the classic anthologies originally published as * The Celestial Omnibus and * The Eternal Moment, as well as three important stories published after Forster's death: "Dr. Woolacott," "The Life to Come," and "The Other Boat."
Collected Short Stories
Jeffrey Archer
Mystery & Thrillers
Available only in Bangalore.
The book is in good condition.
Collected Short Stories
Ruskin Bond
Ruskin Bond wrote his first short story, 'Untouchable', at the age of sixteen, and has written memorable fiction ever since. He is famous not only for his love of the hills, but for imbuing the countryside with life and vibrancy through moving descriptions. The simple people who inhabit his stories evoke sympathy and laughter in equal measure. This wonderful collection of seventy stories, including classics like 'A Face in Dark', 'The Kitemaker', 'The Tunnel', 'The Room of Many Colours', 'Dust on the Mountain' and 'Times Stops at Shamli', is a must-have for any bookshelf.
The Collected Stories
Dylan Thomas
Poetry / Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction
This gathering of all Dylan Thomas's stories, ranging chronologically from the dark, almost surrealistic tales of Thomas's youth to such gloriously rumbustious celebrations of life as A Child's Christmas in Wales and Adventures in the Skin Trade, charts the progress of "The Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive" toward his mastery of the comic idiom.Here, too, are stories originally written for radio and television and, in a short appendix, the schoolboy pieces first published in the Swansea Grammar School Magazine. A highpoint of the collection is Thomas's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, a vivid collage of memories from his Swansea childhood that combines the lyricism of his poetry with the sparkle and sly humor of Under Milk Wood. Also here is the fiction from Quite Early One Morning, a collection planned by Thomas shortly before his death.Altogether there are more than forty stories, providing a rich and varied literary feast and...
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick 4: The Minority Report
Philip K. Dick
Science Fiction & Fantasy / Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction
Many thousands of readers consider Philip K. Dick the greatest science fiction mind on any planet. Since his untimely death in 1982, interest in Dick's works has continued to mount and his reputation has been further enhanced by a growing body of critical attention. The Philip K. Dick Award is now given annually to a distinguished work of science fiction, and the Philip K. Dick Society is devoted to the study and promulgation of his works.
This collection includes all of the writer's earliest short and medium-length fiction (including some previously unpublished stories) covering the years 1954-1964. These fascinating stories include Service Call, Stand By, The Days of Perky Pat, and many others.
Contents:
Autofac --
Service call --
Captive market --
The mold of Yancy --
The minority report --
Recall mechanism --
The unreconstructed M --
Explorers we --
War game --
If there were no Benny Cemoli --
Novelty act --
Waterspider --
What the dead men say --
Orpheus with clay feet --
The days of Perky Pat --
Stand-by --
What'll we do with Ragland Park? --
Oh, to be a Blobel! --
"A useful acquisition for any serious SF library or collection" -- Kirkus
"The collected stories of Philip K. Dick is awe inspiring". -- The Washington Post
"More than anyone else in the field, Mr. Dick really puts you inside people's minds". -- Wall Street Journal
Collected Ghost Stories
James
Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James is the title of M. R. James' omnibus collection of ghost stories, published in 1931, bringing together all but four of his ghost stories (which had yet to be published). Montague Rhodes James (1862–1936) was a medievalist scholar; Provost of King's College, Cambridge. He wrote many of his ghost stories to be read aloud in the long tradition of spooky Christmas Eve tales. His stories often use rural settings, with a quiet, scholarly protagonist getting caught up in the activities of supernatural forces. The details of horror are almost never explicit, the stories relying on a gentle, bucolic background to emphasize the awfulness of the otherworldly intrusions (font: Wikipedia)
Volume Five-Frontier Stories
Part #5 of "Collected Shorts" series by Louis L'Amour
Short Stories / Fiction / Poetry
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume FiveLouis L’Amour’s world is built on those dramatic moments when men and women cast their fears, doubts, and pasts behind them and plunge into the unknown–into split-second decisions with life-and-death consequences. Nowhere is that more evident than in this latest collection of stories set on the American frontier. Here L’Amour takes us across a bold, beautifully rendered landscape where strangers may come to trust–or kill–one another; where old scores haunt new lives and the wrong choice leaves unwitting victims. Even at the best of times, this is a world in which every man and woman must be responsible for their own survival.This keepsake volume features unforgettable moments and timeless characters. From fugitives to visionaries, from fortune seekers and drifters seeking a new life to young women trying to build homes in an all too often lawless world, the characters in these pulse-pounding stories are vintage L’Amour. Together in this vivid, rollicking collection of stories, they bring to life the American spirit and confirm Louis L’Amour’s place at the very top of the pantheon of American writers.From the Trade Paperback edition.contentsNo Man’s ManThe Nester and the PiuteDesert Death SongHeritage of HateHattan’s CastleBig ManShowdown on the Tumbling TWaltz Him Around Again, ShadowRowdy Rides to GloryThe Ghost MakerDown the Pogonip TrailThe Romance of Piute BillThat Triggernometry TenderfootThe Sixth ShotgunBarney Takes a HandRain on the HalfmoonWhen a Texan Takes OverBig MedicineGila CrossingThe Marshal of Painted RockRide, You Tonto Raiders!No Trouble for the Cactus KidMedicine GroundLove and the Cactus KidThe Cactus Kid Pays a DebtBattle at Burnt CampThe Cactus Kid
Volume Three-Frontier Stories
Part #3 of "Collected Shorts" series by Louis L'Amour
Short Stories / Fiction / Poetry
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour: The Frontier Stories: Volume ThreeThis third volume of Louis L'Amour's collected stories gathers twenty-eight tales of the American West in a keepsake edition sure to delight fans old and new. This collection is a thrilling tribute to the unique spirit of our frontier heritage and proves again the enduring popularity of America's favorite storyteller.The essence of Louis L'Amour's timeless appeal can be found in these unforgettable short stories. Filled with men and women who embody the values we cherish most, L'Amour's frontier tales satisfy our longing for the inspiration provided by those who struggle against the odds with justice, honor, and courage.Open this volume anywhere and you'll discover classic stories you'll never forget: like that of the man who finds a gruesome mystery at the site where a friend's ranch has vanished into thin air, or the one about the soft-spoken young suitor accused of cowardice who proves his courage when the guns are against him…without firing a shot. You'll read stories of ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances, from the drifter who poses as a murdered man to solve a mystery to the grizzled recluse who protects a runaway from a brutal "guardian" with the law on his side.Whether following the exploits of a couple taking refuge in a cabin with a group of outlaws who don't intend to let them see sunrise or a man on horseback battling sleeplessness, Indians, and a cold-blooded killer in a life-and-death race through a harsh wilderness, these gripping tales all have one thing in common: you won't be able to put them down until the last page.For lovers of great storytelling everywhere, this exciting collection features the unforgettable characters, heart-stopping drama, and careful attention to historical detail that have entertained readers for decades and earned Louis L'Amour a permanent place among our finest American writers.From the Hardcover edition.contentsRiding for the BrandFour-Card DrawOne Last Gun NotchShandy Takes the HookA Night at Wagon CampSix-Gun StampedeValley of the SunFork Your Own BroncsPardner from the RioThe Guns Talk LoudSquatters on the LonetreeThat Slash Seven KidHome in the ValleyRed Butte ShowdownJackson of HorntownRide or Start Shootin’Regan of the Slash BLoniganLit a Shuck for TexasWest of Dry CreekThere’s Always a TrailWe Shaped the Land with Our GunsTo Hang Me HighWest of DodgeMonument RockA Gun for KilkennyIn Victorio’s CountryThat Packsaddle Affair
Cthulhu Resurgent
Part #2 of "The Collected Harrison Peel Stories" series by David Conyers
Humans are a mistake. The laws of physics prove it.
Army intelligence officer Major Harrison Peel has spent a lifetime fighting eldritch horrors, constantly clawing through the veil of reality ready to annihilate our world. But how do you win the war when these alien gods — and not terrestrial life — are the true nature of reality? In Antarctica, a new threat emerges. Shape-shifting aliens called Shoggoths that can mimic people and integrate into human society, who are manipulating us from within. Then Peel discovers their true intensions… If Peel can’t defeat these Shoggoths abominations, they won’t just destroy us, but enslave humanity into a billion years of servitude… For fans of weird science fiction, Delta Green and Charles Stross’s The Laundry , the Harrison Peel series is a collection of interconnected cosmic horror stories that explore the world, and the entire universe, of H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, stretched across all space and time.
Collected Stories
Paul Bowles
In these hauntingly beautiful stories of abandonment and vengeance, extreme situations lead to disturbing conclusions. A missionary is sent to a place so distant he finds his God has no power there; a husband abandons his wife as they honeymoon in the South American jungle; a splash of water triggers an explosion of violence; and a boy's drug-induced transformation leads to cruelty enjoyed and suffered.Masterfully written, these are chilling tales from sun-drenched and brutal climes.
Volume Four-Adventure Stories
Part #4 of "Collected Shorts" series by Louis L'Amour
Short Stories / Fiction / Poetry
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four, The Adventure StoriesThe fourth volume of Louis L’Amour’s collected short stories features more than forty of the master’s greatest adventure tales in a keepsake edition to cherish for generations. This unique collection gathers stories guaranteed to thrill and delight readers again and again, establishing why Louis L’Amour is truly America’s favorite storyteller.Louis L’Amour’s tales of adventure cannot be surpassed for sheer storytelling excitement, and they stand as a testament to his legendary appeal. Here are timeless stories of danger and daring, wanderlust and heroism, filled with ordinary men and women facing often insurmountable challenges with courage, dignity, honor–and heart.Perhaps never before has a single volume contained so many breathtaking thrills: from the down-on-his-luck fortune hunter who risks everything to save a diamond-hunting couple walking straight into a jungle massacre to the mystery “hero” aboard a downed commercial plane dangling six hundred feet above certain doom. You’ll trek across the harsh steppes of East Asia with an American widow and her young son among a fierce nomadic warrior people, and you’ll relive a harrowing tale of survival at sea against thirst, madness, and the elements as a common seaman redefines extraordinary courage as simply “doing his job.”Whether joining an American captain running a cargo ship through Japanese-controlled waters during World War II, only to find his vessel hijacked by traitorous pirates, or marveling at the resourcefulness of a young woman pushed to the limits of endurance as she flees a killer through a primeval forest, these adrenaline-laced tales of mystery, suspense, murder, and survival never let up and will keep your heart pounding long after the final page.From those numbering a few intense pages to novella-length works, the tales in this action-packed anthology bear all the trademarks of the master’s touch–the historical accuracy, memorable characters, and timeless themes that have earned Louis L’Amour his unique place among American writers.From the Hardcover edition.contentsBeyond the Great Snow MountainsMay There Be a RoadBy the Waters of San TadeoMeeting at FalmouthCrash LandingWith These HandsThe Diamond of JeruDeath, WestboundOld Doc YakIt’s Your MoveAnd Proudly DieSurvivalShow Me the Way to Go HomeThicker Than BloodThe AdmiralShanghai, Not Without GesturesThe Man Who Stole ShakespeareThe Dancing KateOff the Mangrove CoastGlorious! Glorious!By the Ruins of “El Walarieh”Where There’s FightingThe Cross and the CandleA Friend of the GeneralAuthor’s TeaEast of GorontaloOn the Road to AmurangFrom Here to BanggaiThe House of QasavaraWell of the Unholy LightWest from SingaporeSouth of SuezVoyage to TobalaiWings Over BrazilPirates of the SkyFlight to the NorthCoast PatrolWings Over KhabarovskFlight to EnbetuThe Goose Flies SouthTailwind to TibetPirates With WingsMission to SiberutDown Paagumene WayNight Over the SolomonsAfterword
American Falls: The Collected Short Stories
Barry Gifford
American Falls is the first major collection of short stories from Barry Gifford, master of the dark side of the American reality. These stories range widely in style and period, from the 1950s to the present, from absurdist exercises to romantic tales, from stories about childhood innocence to novellas of murder and revenge.In the title story, a Japanese-American motel operator chooses not give up a total stranger, a black man wanted for murder, when the police come searching for him. In "Room 584, The Starr Hotel," a man rants his outrage at an amorous couple in the room next door before he himself is arrested for having committed multiple murders. "The Unspoken" recounts the confessions of a man without a mouth who tells about the woman who loved him. And in this collection’s longest fiction, a novella called "The Lonely and the Lost," a small town’s talented and colorful inhabitants solve their problems as best they can until it comes time for the devil to reap what they have sown.Dark and light intermix in masterful chiaroscuro, dark becoming light, light revealing sinister or brooding complexity. No simple endings, only happy beginnings.From BooklistUnlike his novels, most of which fit solidly in the noir tradition and are crackling with kinetic energy, Gifford's short stories are reflective, often elegiac--small moments placed under a microscope. In "My Last Martini," for example, which is one of several stories here to have appeared in previous collections, the narrator listens quietly as an unknown woman on the next barstool tells the story of her family's legacy of sexual dysfunction. The flatness of the narrative style, while seeming to mask emotion, actually manages to heighten the reader's sense of turmoil below the surface. That turmoil takes center stage in a noirish novella, " The Lonely and the Lost," which has more in common with Gifford's novels, including Wild at Heart (1989), than it does with the other stories collected here. Whether passion and violence erupt in surrealistic bursts or roil silently under a placid surface, however, Gifford's insistently idiosyncratic fiction never fails to surprise, jolting us into recognizing the mundane in the midst of the surreal or forcing us to confront tragedy in an empty martini glass. Bill OttCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reservedAbout the AuthorThe author of more than forty published works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, which have been translated into twenty-eight languages, BARRY GIFFORD began as a poet and musician. His most recent prose works are Sailor & Lula: The Complete Novels, Sad Stories of the Death of Kings, and Memories from a Sinking Ship: A Novel. His most recent poetry collection is Imagining Paradise: New and Selected Poems (2012). Gifford lives in the San Francisco area and maintains a website at www.barrygifford.com.
Collected Stories
Peter Carey
Fiction
For the first time, Booker Prize-winner Peter Carey's dazzling stories are gathered in one volume. Bound together with his critically acclaimed collection, The Fat Man in History, are seventeen fantastic and disturbing tales previously unpublished in Canada. In each one Carey reveals the surreal within the ordinary. A man begins peeling off his girlfriend's clothes and then layers of her skin to discover another person underneath. A lone soldier who is guarding a fence that runs across the desert forgets which side is which. A mild-mannered architect, fearing that his lover will leave him because he is too ordinary, plots to steal a drug-dealer's secret cache. Collected Stories is a testament to Carey's remarkable imagination and his exceptional achievements in the short-story form.
Collected Stories (Everyman's Library)
Raymond Chandler
Hard Boiled / Mystery / Thriller
The only complete edition of stories by the undisputed master of detective literature, collected here for the first time in one volume, including some stories that have been unavailable for decades.
When Raymond Chandler turned to writing at the age of forty-five, he began by publishing stories in pulp magazines such as “Black Mask” before later writing his famous novels. These stories are where Chandler honed his art and developed his uniquely vivid underworld, peopled with good cops and bad cops, informers and extortionists, lethally predatory blondes and redheads, and crime, sex, gambling, and alcohol in abundance. In addition to his classic hard-boiled stories–in which his signature atmosphere of depravity and violence swirls around the cool, intuitive loners whose type culminated in the famous detective Philip Marlowe–Chandler also turned his hand to fantasy and even a gothic romance.
This rich treasury of twenty-five stories shows Chandler developing the terse, laconic, understated style that would serve him so well in his later masterpieces, and immerses the reader in the richly realized fictional universe that has become an enduring part of our literary landscape.
To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories Volume One
Doris Lessing
Fiction
From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, a collection of some of her finest short stories.
For more than four decades, Doris Lessing’s work has observed the passion and confusion of human relations, holding a mirror up to our selves in her unflinching dissection of the everyday.
From the magnificent ‘To Room Nineteen’, a study of a dry, controlled middle-class marriage ‘grounded in intelligence’, to the shocking ‘A Woman on the Roof’, where a workman becomes obsessed with a pretty sunbather, this superb collection of stories written over four decades, from the 1950s to the 1990s, bears stunning witness to Doris Lessing’s perspective on the human condition.
The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume 2: To the Dark Star: 1962-69
Robert Silverberg
Science Fiction / Fantasy
This story, “To See the Invisible Man,” written in June of 1962, marks the beginning of my real career as a science-fiction writer, I think. The 1953-58 stories collected in To Be Continued, the first of this series of volumes, are respectable professional work, some better than others but all of them at least minimally acceptable—but most of them could have been written by just about anyone. Aside from a few particularly ambitious items, they were designed to slip unobtrusively into the magazines of their time, efficiently providing me with regular paychecks. But now, by freeing me from the need to calculate my way around the risk of rejection, Fred Pohl allowed—indeed, required—me to reach as deep into my literary resources as I was capable of doing. I knew that unless I gave him my very best, the wonderful guaranteed-sale deal I had with him would vanish as quickly as it had appeared. Therefore I would reach deeper and deeper, in the years ahead, until I had moved so far away from my youthful career as a hack writer that latecomers would find it hard to believe that I had been emotionally capable of writing all that junk, let alone willing to do it. In “To See the Invisible Man” the distinctive Silverberg fictional voice is on display for just about the first time.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
To See The Invisible Man
The Pain Peddlers
Neighbor
The Sixth Palace
Flies
Halfway House
To The Dark Star
Hawksbill Station
Passengers
Bride 91
Going Down Smooth
Fangs of the TREES
Ishmael in Love
Ringing the Changes
Sundance
How It Was When the Past Went Away
A Happy Day in 2381
(Now + n, Now - n )
After the Myths Went Home
The Pleasure of Their Company
We Know Who We Are
Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories
Angela Carter
Fiction
One of our most imaginative and accomplished writers, Angela Carter left behind a dazzling array of work: essays, citicism, and fiction. But it is in her short stories that her extraordinary talents—as a fabulist, feminist, social critic, and weaver of tales—are most penetratingly evident. This volume presents Carter's considerable legacy of short fiction gathered from published books, and includes early and previously unpublished stories. From reflections on jazz and Japan, through vigorous refashionings of classic folklore and fairy tales, to stunning snapshots of modern life in all its tawdry glory, we are able to chart the evolution of Carter's marvelous, magical vision.
The Collected Stories
W. Somerset Maugham
Fiction / Short Stories
A magnificent collection of stories from one of the 20th century’s greatest writers, presented as a beautiful ebook. Includes Up at the Villa, Cakes and Ale, The Razor’s Edge, Theatre, Of Human Bondage, The Magician, The Painted Veil, and The Moon and Sixpence. Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.
Collected Short Stories: Volume III
Barry Rachin
* A young boy spends a magical weekend with his sister, a former collegiate track star crippled in a freak accident. During the visit he learns a poignant lesson about the resilience of monarch butterflies and the human heart* A young boy spends a magical weekend with his sister, a former collegiate track star crippled in a freak accident. During the visit he learns a poignant lesson about the resilience of monarch butterflies and the human heart* Mrs. Chowdhary named her youngest daughter after Saint Theresa, the Little Flower of Jesus. Unfortunately, Terry has more in common with Attila the Hun than her nineteenth century namesake.* Marcie Callahan’s parents run around the house in their underwear. They belch and fart and do all sorts of gross and disgusting things. The Callahan clan doesn't have a stitch of class, culture, brains or social graces, which is why Marcie is ready for a change.* Dick wants fun. He has no dog. He has no cat. No Spot. No Puff. But he has a plan. See Dick board the plane. See Dick fly away. Far, far away. Hello happiness! Goodbye JaneThese are just a few of the situations you will find in this collection of bittersweet short stories, where the characters struggle to manage their lives in a user-unfriendly universe.
Collected Stories
Franz Kafka
Fiction / Philosophy / Short Stories
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Franz Kafka’s imagination so far outstripped the forms and conventions of the literary tradition he inherited that he was forced to turn that tradition inside out in order to tell his splendid, mysterious tales. Scrupulously naturalistic on the surface, uncanny in their depths, these stories represent the achieved art of a modern master who had the gift of making our problematic spiritual life palpable and real.This edition of his stories includes all his available shorter fiction in a collection edited, arranged, and introduced by Gabriel Josipovici in ways that bring out the writer’s extraordinary range and intensity of vision.
--randomhouse.com
Children on a country road --
Unmasking a confidence trickster --
The sudden walk --
Resolutions --
Excursion into the mountains --
Bachelor's ill luck --
The tradesman --
Absent-minded window-gazing --
The way home --
Passers-by --
On the tram --
Clothes --
Rejection --
Reflections for gentlemen-jockeys --
The street window --
The wish to be a red Indian --
The trees --
Unhappiness --
The judgment --
The stoker --
The metamorphosis --
In the penal colony --
A country doctor: The new advocate --
A country doctor --
Up in the gallery --
An old manuscript --
Before the law --
Jackals and Arabs --
A visit to a mine --
The next village --
An imperial message --
The cares of a family man --
Eleven sons --
A fratricide --
A dream --
A report to an academy --
The bucket rider --
A hunger artist: First sorrow --
A little woman --
A hunger artist --
Josephine the singer, or the mouse folk --
Descriptions of a struggle --
Wedding preparations in the country --
The student --
The angel --
The village schoolmaster (The giant mole) --
Blumfeld, an elderly bachelor --
The hunter Gracchus --
The proclamation --
The bridge --
The Great Wall of China --
The knock at the manor gate --
An ancient sword --
New lamps --
My neighbor --
A crossbreed (A sport) --
A splendid beast --
The watchman --
A common confusion --
The truth about Sancho Panza --
The silence of the siren --
Prometheus --
The city coat of arms --
Poseidon --
Fellowship --
At night --
The problem of our laws --
The conscription of troops --
The test --
The vulture --
The helmsman --
The top --
Hands --
A little fable --
Isabella --
Home-coming --
A Chinese puzzle --
The departure --
Advocates --
Investigations of a dog --
The married couple --
Give it up! --
On parables --
The burrow.
The Collected Stories
Earl
Scanned, converted, re-formatted, proofed, custom title page, custom bok cover and eBook creation by Jerry.
More Twisted: Collected Stories - 2
Jeffery Deaver
Mystery / Fiction / Thriller
"New York Times" bestselling author Jeffery Deaver has famously thrilled and chilled fans with tales of masterful villains and the brilliant minds who bring them to justice. Now the author of the Lincoln Rhyme series ("The Cold Moon" and "The Bone Collector," among others) has compiled a second volume of his award-winning, spine-tingling short stories of suspense.While best known for his twenty-four novels, Jeffery Deaver is also a short story master -- he is a three-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Reader's Award for Best Short Story, and he won the Short Story Dagger from the Crime Writers Association for a piece that appeared in his first short story collection, "Twisted. The New York Times" said of that book: "A mystery hit for those who like their intrigue short and sweet . . . [The stories] feature tight, bare-bones plotting and the sneaky tricks that Mr. Deaver's title promises." The sneaky tricks are here in spades, and Deaver even gives his fans a new Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs story.
Deaver is back with sixteen stories in the tradition of O. Henry and Edgar Allan Poe. His subjects range from a Westchester commuter to a brilliant Victorian England caper. With these intricately plotted, bone-chilling stories, Jeffery Deaver is at the top of his crime-writing game.
Year of Miracles
Part #1 of "Collected Stories of the Old Races" series by C. E. Murphy
Never mate with humans. Never tell them of our existence.And never kill one of our own. For time immemorial, the Old Races adhered to these laws......except, of course, when they did not.Tales of hidden yeti, mad harpies, and selkies who dared to risk all reveal the path that led to the Negotiator Trilogy......and most of all, of Sarah Hopkins, a beauty born to London’s slaughterfields centuries ago, whose love for thedragonlord Janx and master vampire Daisani ravaged a city. This is the story of London burning.This is the story of the YEAR OF MIRACLES...and other tales of the Old Races.
Collected Stories
Tennessee Williams
Theater
Tennessee Williams’ Collected Stories combines the four short-story volumes published during Williams’ lifetime with previously unpublished or uncollected stories. Arranged chronologically, the forty-nine stories, when taken together with the memoir of his father that serves as a preface, not only establish Williams as a major American fiction writer of the twentieth century, but also, in Gore Vidal’s view, constitute the real autobiography of Williams’ "art and inner life."
The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford
Jean Stafford
The innocents abroad: Maggie Meriwether's rich experience -- The children's game -- The echo and the nemesis -- The maiden -- A modest proposal -- Caveat emptor. The Bostonians, and other manifestations of the American scene: Life is no abyss -- The hope chest -- Polite conversation -- A country love story -- The bleeding heart -- The Lippia lawn -- The interior castle. Cowboys and Indians, and magic mountains: The healthiest girl in town -- The tea time of Stouthearted ladies -- The mountain day -- The darkening moon -- Bad characters -- In the zoo -- The liberation -- A reading problem -- A summer day -- The philosophy lesson. Manhattan Island: Children are bored on Sunday -- Beatrice Trueblood's story -- Between the porch and the altar -- I love someone -- Cops and robbers -- The captain's gift -- The end of a career
Slab City Blues: The Collected Stories
Anthony Ryan
Science Fiction & Fantasy / History / Comics & Graphic Novels
Presenting in one volume all five stories in the Sci-fi Noir series by New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author Anthony Ryan, author of the acclaimed Raven's Shadow Trilogy. * WELCOME TO THE SLAB. A vast orbiting slum where rats grow big, sweat falls in rain and the gene-spliced come in all shapes and sizes. Slab City Blues - * There's a stranger on the Slab, a stranger with very sharp claws and a penchant for killing assassins. Finding him is the job of Inspector Alex McLeod, detective, disfigured war veteran and reluctant widower. Some days are worse than others on the Slab but today is going to be a gem. * A Song for Madame Choi - An old enemy embroils Inspector Alex McLeod in the hunt for a kidnapped girl. With no leads he finds himself reluctantly seeking help from drug dealer and fellow war veteran Madame Choi. But can he really trust her? * A Hymn to Gods Long Dead - Inspector Alex McLeod, recently suspended for excessive force and nurturing a growing addiction to bourbon, has been reduced to tending bar when an improbably beautiful vampire comes to him with a bizarre theory: there’s a killer on the Slab, a killer with a liking for recreating ancient myth, in bloody and spectacular fashion. But who exactly is this vampire, and how does she know so much? And what kind of killer can walk through security systems without a trace, leaving deadly traps for those hunting him? * The Ballad of Bad Jack - The Asteroid Belt, home to mining corporations and those who prefer to live beyond the heavily policed habitats of Earth orbit – the perfect hunting ground for Bad Jack, captain of the Dead Reckoning and the most feared pirate in the solar system. About to embark upon the biggest job of his career, Jack finds himself in need of a specialist, but is unaware his latest recruit has a new face, a new name and an agenda of his own. Chief Inspector Alex McLeod has been reset to war mode, and things are about to get very ugly. The fourth story in the Slab City Blues series, The Ballad of Bad Jack is an all-action future-crime thriller from the best-selling author of the Raven’s Shadow trilogy. * An Aria for Ragnarok - Alex McLeod has a score to settle. Back on the Slab and newly promoted to head of Special Homicide, Alex decides it’s time to finally bring down Mr Mac - his longest-standing enemy and the most powerful criminal kingpin in the Confederation of Autonomous Orbiting States. But, before the hunt can begin he finds himself lumbered with the inconvenient and spectacularly bloody murder of a famous industrialist. A swift but violent resolution to the case raises more questions than it answers and Alex’s inability to tolerate a mystery soon uncovers a far greater threat than he has ever faced before. Ragnarok is coming. To stop it, Alex must call on the help of both friends and foes, as well as placing himself in an alien and hostile environment: it’s time for a return visit to Planet Earth.
Volume Six-Crime Stories
Part #6 of "Collected Shorts" series by Louis L'Amour
Short Stories / Fiction / Poetry
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour Volume 6, The Crime StoriesOne of America’s most beloved storytellers, Louis L’Amour’s vibrant tales of adventure bring the American West to life. Now, in this sixth volume of collected short stories, L’Amour takes us beyond the frontier with thirty-three gripping stories of crime, sports, and the murky world where the two often meet. From suspenseful whodunits to rueful tales of fortunes gained and lost, this remarkable collection will enthrall and entertain L’Amour fans old and new. Traversing a vivid landscape, from sunblasted hills and canyons to the nighttime streets of America’s greatest cities, some of Louis L’Amour’s most compelling fiction was set in his own time—whether in the naked electric glare of boxing rings where men go head-to-head with their dreams and demons in an underworld rife with corruption, or along freight docks where laborers toil to earn just enough to get by, or in the penthouses of the rich and arrogant who calculate the odds of how to get even more. Here are tales of innocents caught in the schemes of criminals, detectives hunting down truths that hide more lies, gamblers and beauties, wiseguys and cops. Here is a world populated by the kinds of people who risk their lives to right a wrong, make a buck, or save a friend. A war veteran makes a journey to visit the man who saved his life in Korea. Instead he uncovers a killing and finds his own heroic cause…. Confronted with an easy chance to steal, an honest man gives in to temptation—and finds himself ensnared in a web of blackmail and violence…. An elderly Hawaiian seafarer is found dead with a hand-carved figure beside his body. Unraveling his murder will mean solving the mystery of a shipwreck—and of the forces that drive some to take fatal chances and others to kill.Brimming with thought-provoking characters and situations—from a man who awakens from unconsciousness to find a fortune in a burning house to a man who meets a killer who is supposed to be dead in a seedy diner—these thrilling, atmospheric stories course with authenticity and bear the mark of a timeless master.From the Hardcover edition.contentsUnguarded MomentPolice BandTime of TerrorThe Gravel PitThe Hand of Kuan-yinSand TrapUnder the Hanging WallToo Tough to KillAnything for a PalFighter’s FiascoSideshow ChampionFighters Should Be HungryThe Money PunchMaking It the Hard WayThe Rounds Don’t MatterFighters Don’t DiveGloves for a TigerThe Ghost FighterDream FighterCorpse on the CarpetWith Death in His CornerDead Man’s TrailThe Street of Lost CorpsesStay Out of My NightmareThe Hills of HomicideI Hate to Tell His WidowCollect from a CorpseThe Unexpected CorpseThe Sucker SwitchA Friend of a HeroThe Vanished BlondeBackfield Battering RamMoran of the Tigers
All the Days and Nights: The Collected Stories
William Maxwell
Fiction / Historical / Historical Fiction
From the American Book Award-winning author of Ancestors and Time Will Darken comes a masterful collection of stories, spanning more than 50 years--a tour of a world that engages readers entirely, and whose characters command the deepest loyalty and tenderness.
Collected Short Stories Volume 3
W. Somerset Maugham
Fiction / Short Stories
The third volume of Somerset Maugham's Collected Short Stories, introduced by the author, contains the celebrated series about Ashenden, a secret service agent in World War I. Based on Maugham's own experiences with the British Intelligence service in Switzerland, the stories are vignettes in which he dramatises both the romance and absurdity of espionage as well as its ruthlessness and brutality. Accountable only to 'R', Ashenden travels all over the Continent on assignments which entangle him with such characters as the traitor Grantley Caypor, the passionate Guilia Lazzari, and the sinister 'hairless Mexican'.
Kiss of Angels
Part #3 of "Collected Stories of the Old Races" series by C. E. Murphy
REVEL IN THE CHAOS OF THE AFTERMATHThe laws that governed the Old Races for time immemorial have been broken. Ancient rivals are scattered. Friendships are ended. What was hidden begins to step out of shadow and into the light.And after millennia of imagining this moment, the Old Races discover they are unprepared for what it brings.Human magic subtly infiltrates the world as dreamwalkers face down dragonlords and Orpheus's mythical songs resonate through ancient bloodlines. Through it all, pirate, queen, and vigilante Grace O'Malley is drawn back into the world she was banished from centuries ago: the world of the living. Cursed by a witch, the deepest of all human magics, she searches for the impossible, the one thing that even the Old Races agree doesn't exist:The kiss of angels....
Sherwood Anderson: Collected Stories
Sherwood Anderson
Fiction
In the winter of 1912, Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941) abruptly left his office and spent three days wandering through the Ohio countryside, a victim of “nervous exhaustion.” Over the next few years, abandoning his family and his business, he resolved to become a writer. Novels and poetry followed, but it was with the story collection Winesburg, Ohio that he found his ideal form, remaking the American short story for the modern era. Hart Crane, one of the first to recognize Anderson’s genius, quickly hailed his accomplishment: “America should read this book on her knees.” Here––for the first time in a single volume––are all the collections Anderson published during his lifetime: Winesburg, Ohio (1919), The Triumph of the Egg (1921), Horses and Men (1923), and Death in the Woods (1933), along with a generous selection of stories left uncollected or unpublished at his death. Exploring the hidden recesses of small town life, these haunting, understated, often sexually frank stories pivot on seemingly quiet moments when lives change, futures are recast, and pasts come to reckon. They transformed the tone of American storytelling, inspiring writers like Hemingway, Faulkner, and Mailer, and defining a tradition of midwestern fiction that includes Charles Baxter, editor of this volume.
The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Science Fiction & Fantasy / Literature & Fiction / Science
The forty-seven stories in this collection, selected by Singer himself out of nearly one hundred and fifty, range from the publication of his now-classic first collection, Gimpel the Fool, in 1957, until 1981. They include supernatural tales, slices of life from Warsaw and the shtetls of Eastern Europe, and stories of the Jews displaced from that world to the New World, from the East Side of New York to California and Miami.
Collected Short Stories: Volume V
Barry Rachin
Twenty-eight year-old Jesse Caldwell is painfully shy, lives at home and hates his moronic life. Miranda Huffington suffers from a gimpy leg and equally stunted personality. This is not your standard Harlequin romance.* Twenty-eight year-old Jesse Caldwell is painfully shy, lives at home and hates his moronic life. Miranda Huffington suffers from a gimpy leg and equally stunted personality. This is not your standard Harlequin romance.* Bartholomew Schroeder, a recent widower and retired plumber, can sweat pipes and fix broken toilets, but, on a weekend excursion to Martha's Vineyard, can he mend a teenage girl's broken spirit?* Maria Santos, who just bought the Breakfast Nook, knows nothing about cross-contamination, pest control, immersion gauges or reduced-oxygen packaging. The new health inspector is every restaurant owner’s worse nightmare, but Maria needn’t worry. She’s got an ace up her culinary sleeve.* Sixteen-year-old Ned Scoletti is travelling north on a Greyhound bus from Fort Pierce, Florida to Spaulding, Massachusetts, to visit Aunt Josie. Problem is, his mother’s identical twin sister died when Nick was just a toddler. Or did she?These are just a few of the situations you will find in this collection of bittersweet short stories, where the characters struggle to manage their lives in a user-unfriendly universe.
Collected Short Stories
Ruth Rendell
Four collections of some of Ruth Rendell's greatest original crime thrillers.