Download or read book The Wrong Set and Other Stories written by Angus Wilson and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2009-06-04 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Angus Wilson's first volume of short stories, The Wrong Set was first published in 1949 to immense critical acclaim. The collection is a brilliantly funny exposure of the protective devices with which people seek to mask deep-laid egotism. There is the wallowing in self-adulation on the part of the 'crazy Cockshott family', as they delight to dub themselves. There is the search for really nice standards on the part of Vi, singer at the 'Passion Fruit' nightclub - as hopelessly bemused a spirit as ever lived in sin at Earl's Court and attempted to lecture a young Communist nephew with untidy hair and spectacles. There is the humbug of the bullying new curator at the provincial Art Gallery. And the staff dance at the South Kensington hotel, where lives the lady who spends her life trying to achieve 'a Knightsbridge appearance on a Kensington purse', and where, as the evening progresses and the drinks begin to tell, the lady-like façades and gentlemanly courtesy of the clientele crack up with a vengeance.
Download or read book Orange World and Other Stories written by Karen Russell and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Finalist and universally beloved author of the New York Times best sellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove, a stunning new collection of short fiction that showcases Karen Russell’s extraordinary, irresistible gifts of language and imagination. Karen Russell’s comedic genius and mesmerizing talent for creating outlandish predicaments that uncannily mirror our inner in lives is on full display in these eight exuberant, arrestingly vivid, unforgettable stories. In“Bog Girl”, a revelatory story about first love, a young man falls in love with a two thousand year old girl that he’s extracted from a mass of peat in a Northern European bog. In “The Prospectors,” two opportunistic young women fleeing the depression strike out for new territory, and find themselves fighting for their lives. In the brilliant, hilarious title story, a new mother desperate to ensure her infant’s safety strikes a diabolical deal, agreeing to breastfeed the devil in exchange for his protection. The landscape in which these stories unfold is a feral, slippery, purgatorial space, bracketed by the void—yet within it Russell captures the exquisite beauty and tenderness of ordinary life. Orange World is a miracle of storytelling from a true modern master.
Download or read book Beluthahatchie and Other Stories written by Andy Duncan and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a collection of short stories, including "Beluthahatchie," which tells the story of a guitarist who refuses to disembark a train at Hell and his adventures at the next stop.
Download or read book Karma and Other Stories written by Rishi Reddi and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Reddi’s understated prose and her choice of detail give her revelations a quiet power.” — The New Yorker “[A]mong such time-tested topics of immigrant fiction, Reddi suddenly soars.” — San Francisco Chronicle “While many of the stories seem simple, characters and plots linger long after you turn the page.” — Washington Post “...reminiscent of Jhumpa Lahiri... The immigrant experience...is rendered with the starkest honesty... substance and depth.” — Philadelphia Inquirer “Reddi has produced a piece of writing that masterfully contrasts the assumed with the experienced, myth with reality.” — India Currents “...superb debut collection... much like Jhumpa Lahiri...a gem of a book...characters remain etched in memory...” — Indian Express “In deceptively simple prose...a compassionate look at what happens when the insular world of the Indian immigrant is breached.” — St. Louis Post-Dispatch “...Reddi deftly employs images to crystallize... the isolation and occasional bewilderment shared by her sympathetic characters.” — Publishers Weekly “This excellent debut collection... [offers] elegant studies of a culture that is both familiar and foreign.” — Booklist “Reddi’s voice is gentle and her eye watchful...A soft-spoken, sympathetic collection.” — Kirkus Reviews “Sad, sweet, tender--a truly lovely book.” — Kiran Desai, Man Book Prize-winning author of THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS “Only the finest writers can craft short stories with the richness of a novel...[an] exceptional debut collection.” — Arthur Golden, bestselling author of MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA “Rishi Reddi has written a unique and beautiful book with the power to both entertain and educate.” — Judith Guest, bestselling author of ORDINARY PEOPLE “Reddi’s characters are complicated people...and, as are the stories they inhabit, memorable and very worthy of our attention. Exquisite.” — Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of AN ALMOST PERFECT MOMENT “Reddi is the brightest light in Boston’s latest literary constellation.” — Boston magazine
Download or read book The Under Dog and Other Stories written by Agatha Christie and published by William Morrow Paperbacks. This book was released on 2012-08-07 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A beautiful heiress has been found dead on a train. A playboy has been stabbed through the heart during a costume ball. An elderly woman suspects that she is being slowly poisoned to death. A prince fears for his reputation when his fiancÉe is embroiled in another man's murder. A forgotten recluse makes headlines after he is shot in the head. Who but Agatha Christie could concoct such canny crimes? Who but Belgian detective Hercule Poirot could possibly solve them? It's a challenge to be met—in a triumph of detection.
Download or read book The Drug and Other Stories written by Aleister Crowley and published by Wordsworth Editions. This book was released on 2010 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edited, with an Introduction, by William Breeze. Foreword by David Tibet. This volume brings together the uncollected short fiction of the poet, writer and religious philosopher Aleister Crowley (1875 - 1947). Crowley was a successful critic, editor and author of fiction from 1908 to 1922, and his short stories are long overdue for discovery. Of the fifty-two stories in the present volume, only thirty were published in his lifetime. Most of the rest appear here for the first time. Like their author, Crowley's stories are fun, smart, witty, thought-provoking and sometimes unsettling. They are set in places he had lived and knew well: Belle Epoque Paris, Edwardian London, pre-revolutionary Russia and America during the first World War. The title story The Drug stands as one of the first - if not the first - accounts of a psychedelic experience. His Black and Silver is a knowing early noir discovery that anticipates an entire genre. Atlantis is a masterpiece of occult fantasy, a dark satire that can stand with Samuel Butler's Erewhon. Frank Harris considered The Testament of Magdalen Blair the most terrifying tale ever written. Extensive editorial end-notes give full details about the stories.
Download or read book Honeymoon and Other Stories written by Kevin Canty and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-02-22 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kevin Canty is a master of the short story, a writer whose work has been compared to that of Flannery O'Connor and Raymond Carver, but always with the understanding that Canty's is strikingly new, cool, and real. Now in Honeymoon, after two novels, Kevin Canty returns to short fiction, his first collection since his debut A Stranger in this World, a book that was hailed as "Superb: These tautly structured stories breathe with sharp, distilled intelligence." Honeymoon is a book about love, about lovers and would-be lovers exploring unlikely alliances, all of them toeing a certain eventful edge, a decision between rational restraint and something altogether different. In the title story, a man leaves his lover's wedding with the bride's ex-girlfriend; in "Flipper" a young escapee from "fat camp" discovers a different kind of hunger while enjoying a pregnant teen's gifts of forbidden chocolate; in "Aquarium," a thirty-eight-year old woman who claims to "follow the straight and narrow" tries to resist seducing her fifteen-year-old nephew again. Revealing the hidden longings and quirky needs of both men and women with a tough sensitivity and deep, sometimes biting humor, Honeymoon presents a masterful writer purely at home in his form, yet continuing to push himself and his stories to their limits with enthusiasm and daring.
Download or read book Steel written by Richard Matheson and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new collection featuring the story that inspired Real Steel, a major motion picture starring Hugh Jackman.
Download or read book Chemistry and Other Stories written by Ron Rash and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2007-04-17 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chemistry and Other Stories, A Picador Paperback Original From the pre-eminent chronicler of this forgotten territory, stories that range over one hundred years in the troubled, violent emergence of the New South. In Ron Rash's stories, spanning the entire twentieth century in Appalachia, rural communities struggle with the arrival of a new era. Three old men stalk the shadow of a giant fish no one else believes is there. A man takes up scuba diving in the town reservoir to fight off a killing depression. A grieving mother leads a surveyor into the woods to name once and for all the county where her son was murdered by thieves. In the Appalachia of Ron Rash's stories, the collision of the old and new south, of antique and modern, resonate with the depth and power of ancient myths.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of the English Short Story written by Dominic Head and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-14 with total page 1082 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge History of the English Short Story is the first comprehensive volume to capture the literary history of the English short story. Charting the origins and generic evolution of the English short story to the present day, and written by international experts in the field, this book covers numerous transnational and historical connections between writers, modes and forms of transmission. Suitable for English literature students and scholars of the English short story generally, it will become a standard work of reference in its field.
Download or read book Sourdough and Other Stories written by Angela Slatter and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Hidden Girl and Other Stories written by Ken Liu and published by Gallery / Saga Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From award-winning author Ken Liu comes his much anticipated second volume of short stories. Ken Liu is one of the most lauded short story writers of our time. This collection includes a selection of his science fiction and fantasy stories from the last five years—sixteen of his best—plus a new novelette. In addition to these seventeen selections, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories also features an excerpt from book three in the Dandelion Dynasty series, The Veiled Throne.
Download or read book Ruth s Fables and Other Stories written by R.E. Todd and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2002-07-31 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of true stories about real people, family and friends and the influence they had on my life. It is all about the journey that each of us makes through life and how we arrive at our destination.
Download or read book The Harlequin Tea Set and Other Stories written by Agatha Christie and published by Center Point. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Brings together nine rare ... tales of murder and detection that span nearly half a century of [Christie's] storytelling [abilities]"--Back cover.
Download or read book Regression and Other Stories written by Andrew Gelman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-23 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A practical approach to using regression and computation to solve real-world problems of estimation, prediction, and causal inference.
Download or read book The First Person and Other Stories written by Ali Smith and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-10-04 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The First Person and Other Stories is the fourth collection of short stories by Ali Smith. The First Person and Other Stories effortlessly appeals to our hearts, heads and funny bones. Always intellectually playful, but also very moving and funny, Smith explores the ways and whys of storytelling. In one, a middle-aged woman conducts a poignant conversation with her gauche fourteen-year-old self. In another, an innocent supermarket shopper finds in her trolley a foul-mouthed, insulting and beautiful child. Challenging the boundaries between fiction and reality, a third presents its narrator, 'Ali', as she drinks tea, phones a friend and muses on the relationship between the short story and - a nymph. Innovative, sophisticated and intelligent, the stories in The First Person and Other Stories are packed full of ideas, jokes, nuance and compassion. Ali Smith and the short story are made for each other. 'Smith's is a profoundly optimistic vision. These stories are frightening yet funny, and the sheer exuberance and playfulness of her language endows dark matters with a lightness of touch' New Statesman 'She's a genius, genuinely modern in the heroic, glorious sense' Alain de Botton 'Terrific . . . hurrah for Ali Smith . . . The best short-story writers make it look as easy as making a cup of tea. Ali Smith is one of these . . . A bold and brilliant collection of stories by a writer unafraid to give it to us as it is' Times 'A glorious collection that celebrates and subverts the short story form' Independent
Download or read book Fortune Smiles written by Adam Johnson and published by Random House. This book was released on 2015-08-18 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Book Award–winning story collection from the author of The Orphan Master’s Son offers something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world. “MASTERFUL.”—The Washington Post “ENTRANCING.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “PERCEPTIVE AND BRAVE.”—The New York Times Throughout these six stories, Pulitzer Prize winner Adam Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal, giving voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear. In “Nirvana,” a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finds solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In “Hurricanes Anonymous,” a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. “George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine” follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind. WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Miami Herald • San Francisco Chronicle • USA Today AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • NPR • Marie Claire • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • BuzzFeed • The Daily Beast • Los Angeles Magazine • The Independent • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews “Remarkable . . . Adam Johnson is one of America’s greatest living writers.”—The Huffington Post “Haunting, harrowing . . . Johnson’s writing is as rich in compassion as it is in invention, and that rare combination makes Fortune Smiles worth treasuring.”—USA Today “Fortune Smiles [blends] exotic scenarios, morally compromised characters, high-wire action, rigorously limber prose, dense thickets of emotion, and, most critically, our current techno-moment.”—The Boston Globe “Johnson’s boundary-pushing stories make for exhilarating reading.”—San Francisco Chronicle
