Download or read book A Year in Provence written by Peter Mayle and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-05-19 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this witty and warm-hearted account, Peter Mayle tells what it is like to realize a long-cherished dream and actually move into a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in the remote country of the Lubéron with his wife and two large dogs. He endures January's frosty mistral as it comes howling down the Rhône Valley, discovers the secrets of goat racing through the middle of town, and delights in the glorious regional cuisine. A Year in Provence transports us into all the earthy pleasures of Provençal life and lets us live vicariously at a tempo governed by seasons, not by days.

Download or read book Steps written by Mona Simpson and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-05-23 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection The acclaimed author gives us a mesmerizing story of a family built, not by blood, but by second and third marriages and the relationships children have to “step” fathers, mothers and siblings long after their own parents have left them behind. When Julie, an actress in her forties, receives a phone call from her one-time stepfather’s newest family asking her to come to see him once more before he dies, she agrees to make the trip. An ebook short.

Download or read book Blossoming in Provence written by Kristin Espinasse and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Kristin Espinasse's new book "Blossoming in Provence," every encounter with the natives (including her own French family) is a chance to learn more than a country's etiquette, it is an opportunity to grow. Follow along with Kristin as she meets and overcomes obstacles along the path to French integration: sit on the edge of your seat at her wedding, when her future husband's ex shows up in a slinky dress; hold your breath as she gets in the car to take the French Drivers exam; share a slice of humble pie with her as her children continue to enlighten her, in their native tongue, about the mystery and meaning of la vie en rose. "Espinasse recounts her adventures with honesty and humor, never afraid to have a good laugh at her own expense" --Publishers Weekly.

Download or read book A Market Tale written by Martin Walker and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-12-02 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eighth installment in the delightful, internationally acclaimed series featuring Chief of Police Bruno. Between the seventeenth-century mairie and the stone bridge over the river that winds through town, the village of St. Denis hosts its weekly market, as well-stocked with local gossip as with fresh produce and pâtés. As summer blooms, the newest talk of the town is the rapport between Kati, a Swiss tourist, and Marcel, a popular stall owner whom Kati meets over his choice strawberries. None are happier than police chief Bruno to see Marcel, a young widower, interested in love again, but as his friend’s romance deepens, Bruno senses trouble in the form of Marcel’s meddlesome sister Nadette. Even as Kati begins to put down roots in St. Denis, vending her delicious baking in the market, it seems the overbearing Nadette will stop at nothing to make her feel unwelcome. When her schemes reach the limits of law, Bruno takes it upon himself to set things right. An eBook short. A Vintage Short.

Download or read book The Office written by Alice Munro and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A short story from Nobel Prize–winning Alice Munro’s first collection, Dance of the Happy Shades “It is no exaggeration to state that Munro’s short stories are among the finest that have ever been written.”—The Dallas Morning News The solution came to the writer one evening: she should have an office. From Nobel Laureate Alice Munro, a brilliantly executed and revelatory story—one of the earliest published works of her career—in which simply finding a place to write turns out to be the hardest act of all. In “The Office,” a selection from her first short story collection, Alice Munro demonstrates the precise observation, straightforward prose style, and masterful technique hailed by John Updike, who wrote in the New York Times Book Review that “one must go back to Tolstoy and Chekhov . . . for comparable largeness.” “What a stunning, subtle and sympathetic explorer of the heart Munro is.”—Ron Hansen, The Washington Post A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection

Download or read book Accompany Me written by Nora Gallagher and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-02-13 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her deeply affecting and profound portrait of illness and how it can dramatically alter the fabric of our lives and our faith, Nora Gallagher depicts the process of alienation she experienced when she encountered her first major crisis of health. Learning to suddenly have to ask for help, to heal, and to find her own capacity for wellness and resilience—Gallagher makes a powerful call for a more meditative, shared existence in which we can sit quietly with one another, open our hearts, listen, accept, and throw off the narrative of business and function that pervades our lives and blinds us to compassion. Meditative, touching, and an inspiration—Accompany Me welcomes people from all walks of life and tradition to join Gallagher on her journey to rediscover her faith, her home and her comfort in a community of all of the other souls who spend their days with one another in the land of the vulnerable. A Vintage Shorts Original. An ebook short.

Download or read book Yeoman written by Charles Yu and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection Who explores the final frontier? The ship has reached the last world. Beamed down from the transporter bay is the captain, the XO, the medic, the security chief, the ethnographer, and finally an unnamed yeoman, the narrator of Charles Yu’s mind-bending journey into the science fiction unknown. And the yeoman knows one thing, if he knows anything at all: the yeoman always dies. In the tradition of Jonathan Lethem and Douglas Adams, National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 award winner Charles Yu presents a story of searching (not wandering) and the galactic limits of home, from the utterly original collection Sorry Please Thank You. An eBook short.

Download or read book Children of the Corn written by Stephen King and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-05-22 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Driving through the cornfields in rural Nebraska, Burt and Vicky run over a young boy—only to discover that they may not be responsible for his death. Out in the corn, something is watching them, and help is nowhere to be found. From the unrivaled master of horror and the supernatural, Stephen King. “Children of the Corn,” first collected in the extraordinary collection Night Shift in 1973 and then adapted into a horror film franchise of the same name, is a terrifying and unforgettable classic of the genre. A Vintage Short.

Download or read book Berlin Wall s End written by Timothy Garton Ash and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A selection from The Magic Lantern, Timothy Garton Ash’s classic first-person history of the Revolution of ’89 and the end of the Cold War—an on-the-ground glimpse of the fall of the Berlin Wall. “In the beginning was the Wall itself.” So writes matchless chronicler and observer Timothy Garton Ash on the strange life and stranger death of the Wall that divided two worlds. Garton Ash takes the reader with him as he walks through the Wall and across no-man’s land in early November of 1989, where as recently as that February a man attempting to cross had been shot dead. But November 9 ushers in a new world. Garton Ash introduces us to the East Berliners lining up for the “greeting money” offered at banks; the newfound wanderers looking for the ferry to England; and the chaotic, intoxicating political atmosphere sweeping through the reunited city. This is a vivid and enduring picture of a defining moment in history, when a wall came tumbling down. An eBook short.

Download or read book Imitation written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-05-13 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” selection from the award-winning, bestselling author Nkem is living a life of wealth and security in America, until she discovers that her husband is keeping a girlfriend back home in Nigeria. In this high-intensity story of passion and the masks we all wear, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of the acclaimed novels Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah and winner of the Orange Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, explores the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Africa and the United States. “Imitation” is a selection from Adichie’s collection The Thing Around Your Neck. An eBook short.

Download or read book Insider Baseball written by Joan Didion and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Vintage Shorts Selection • Almost three decades ago, iconic and incomparable American essayist Joan Didion’s now-classic report from the Dukakis campaign trail exposed, in no uncertain terms, the complete sham that is the modern American presidential run. Writing with bite and some humor too, Didion betrays “the process”—the way in which power is exchanged and the status quo is maintained. All insiders—politicians, journalists, spin doctors—participate in a political narrative that is “designed as it is to maintain the illusion of consensus by obscuring rather than addressing actual issues.” The optics of presidential campaigns have grown ever more farcical and remote from the needs and issues most relevant to Americans’ lives, and Didion’s elegant, shrewd, and prescient commentary has never been more urgent than it is right now. An ebook short.

Download or read book Vengeful Creditor written by Chinua Achebe and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection Mrs. Emenike resents that her husband drives a Mercedes while she is relegated the “noisy Fiat,” and she loathes the words “free primary education,” a new government initiative for which three of her servants have abandoned her. But, when the program is recalled, ten-year-old Vero, whose hopes of going to school have been dashed, is Mrs. Emenike’s next willing recruit—young, innocent, and desperate to do anything and everything she must to earn an education. In this masterful story by “the father of Nigerian writing,” Chinua Achebe portrays the devastating injustice done to young women by government corruption and wealth inequality. Selected from Achebe’s much-lauded collection of short fiction, Girls at War. An ebook short.

Download or read book Peep Show written by Nathan Englander and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-05-29 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection Allen Fein— née Ari Feinberg—is on his way to Port Authority when he hears it: “Girls,” the hawker says. “Three-hundred-and-sixty-degree all-around stage.” This is the Times Square Allen remembers. But he’s a married man now. Well, maybe one little peek . . . From one of the most dazzling voices in contemporary literature, “Peep Show” is a funny, surprising, surreal story of sexual longing and the deeper shadows of desire. In the peep show, you never know who’s behind the curtain. A selection from the acclaimed volume What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, winner of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. An eBook short.

Download or read book The Prophet s Hair written by Salman Rushdie and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-05-02 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection • Secular moneylender and manic collector of treasures, Hashim lives a life of gentle honor until he discovers, washed up to his private quay, a great relic: a silver pendant bearing a strand of the Prophet’s hair. From one of the most controversial novelists of the last century, world-renowned master of invention and allusion Salman Rushdie, “The Prophet’s Hair” vibrates with fantastical promise, smashing together cultures and worlds, fantasy with reality, into breathless and lush allegorical fable. Selected from Rushdie’s collection of nine enchanting short stories, East West. An ebook short.

Download or read book St Patrick The First Missionary written by Thomas Cahill and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A selection from How The Irish Saved Civilization, everything you need to know about the historical St. Patrick, the extraordinary Iron Age man who became Ireland’s patron saint. The real St. Patrick neither dressed in green nor chased the snakes from Ireland; instead, he was a kind and courageous former slave who had been stolen from Britain during childhood and brought to Ireland. Though he escaped from slavery, he later returned in triumph to the island of his captivity. From the first volume of his widely acclaimed “Hinges of History” series, Thomas Cahill brings St. Patrick to life, and sheds light on the chaotic but starkly beautiful ancient Ireland. An eBook short.

Download or read book The Wizard of West Orange written by Steven Millhauser and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-05-02 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection The Wizard, the greatest inventor in history, can make anything. His machines capture light, motion, and sound. So what’s going on in The Box, the most secret, most mysterious room in the Wizard’s bustling labs? When the staff librarian decides to find out, he stumbles upon a new realm of invention and sensation that will leave the world irreparably changed. “The Wizard of West Orange” is Pulitzer Prize-winner Steven Millhauser’s incantatory reimagining of Thomas Edison’s work, from the dazzling collection Dangerous Laughter. An eBook short.

Download or read book Alive written by Ha Jin and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-09-23 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of our most celebrated contemporary writers, winner of the National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award: Ha Jin’s staggering story “Alive,” from the collection The Bridegroom. Tong Guhan is a regular businessman, husband, and father, trying to find a job for his daughter and an apartment for his son in rural China. He’s next in line to be Vice Director of the cannery where he works. One morning in late July he makes the eleven hour train trip from Muji City to Taifu, to conduct business for his company that he hopes will finally lead to a promotion and the easy life. The events that follow are nothing short of astonishing, as the very earth shifts under Guhan’s feet. This is Ha Jin’s moving, strange, captivating story of an earthquake and a common man, the ties of family and the powers of circumstance: the perfect introduction to an internationally acclaimed modern master. An eBook short.