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This early work by Henry James was originally published in 1903 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. Henry James was born in New York City in 1843. One of thirteen children, James had an unorthodox early education, switching between schools, private tutors and private reading.. James published his first story,'A Tragedy of Error', in the Continental Monthly in 1864, when he was twenty years old. In 1876, he emigrated to London, where he remained for the vast majority of the rest of his life, becoming a British citizen in 1915. From this point on, he was a hugely prolific author, eventually producing twenty novels and more than a hundred short stories and novellas, as well as literary criticism, plays and travelogues. Amongst James's most famous works are The Europeans (1878), Daisy Miller (1878), Washington Square (1880), The Bostonians (1886), and one of the most famous ghost stories of all time, The Turn of the Screw (1898). We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 - November 28, 1859) was an American author of the early 19th century. Best known for his short stories The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip van Winkle (both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon), he was also a prolific essayist, biographer and historian. Irving and James Fenimore Cooper were the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and Irving is said to have encouraged authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe. Irving was also the U.S. minister to Spain 1842-1846.

The great author of Vanity Fair and The Luck Of Barry Lyndon was born in India in 1811. At age 5 his father died and his mother sent him back to England. His education was of the best but he himself seemed unable to apply his talents to a rigorous work ethic. However, once he harnessed his talents the works flowed in novels, articles, short stories, sketches and lectures. Sadly, his personal life was rather more difficult. After a few years of marriage his wife began to suffer from depression and over the years became detached from reality. Thackeray himself suffered from ill health later in his life and the one pursuit that kept him moving forward was that of writing. In his life time, he was placed second only to Dickens. High praise indeed.

The celebrated career of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud is well known to readers of French literature. This comprehensive collection—the first to be translated into English—introduces a distinct and dynamic voice to the Anglophone world. In many ways, Châteaureynaud is France's own Kurt Vonnegut, and his stories are as familiar as they are fantastic.A Life on Paper presents characters who struggle to communicate across the boundaries of the living and the dead, the past and the present, the real and the more-than-real. A young husband struggles with self-doubt and an ungainly set of angel wings in “Icarus Saved from the Skies,” even as his wife encourages him to embrace his transformation. In the title story, a father's obsession with his daughter leads him to keep her life captured in 93,284 unchanging photographs. While Châteaureynaud's stories examine the diffidence and cruelty we are sometimes capable of, they also highlight the humanity in the strangest of us and our deep appreciation for the mysterious.Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud is the author of eight novels and almost one hundred short stories, and he is a recipient of the prestigious Prix Renaudot and the Bourse Goncourt de la nouvelle. His work has been translated into twelve languages.Edward Gauvin has published Châteaureynaud's work in AGNI Online, Conjunctions, Words Without Borders, The Café Irreal, and The Brooklyn Rail. The recipient of a residency from the Banff International Literary Translation Centre, he translates graphic novels for Tokyopop, First Second Books, and Archaia Studios Press.

This collection of exploratory pieces, short stories, and reflections was originally published in Zurich in 1936. It was the last volume Robert Musil published before his sudden death in 1942. Musil had begun to fathom the impossibility of com- pleting his monumental masterpiece The Man Without Qualities and this volume reveals a radically different aspect of his work. Musil observes a fly's tragic struggle with flypaper, the laughter of a horse; he peers through microscopes and telescopes, dissecting both large and small. Musil's quest for the essential is a voyage into the minute.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 22nd May 1859. His childhood was blighted by his father's heavy drinking which for some years broke up the family. Fortunately, wealthy uncles were willing to support them by paying for education and clothing. He was accepted at the University of Edinburgh to study medicine and also began to write short stories the first, ‘The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe', was published in Blackwood's Magazine. Despite several other stories and some articles in the British Medical Journal his medical studies took priority.When these finished he was appointed as Doctor on the Greenland whaler ‘Hope of Peterhead'in 1880 and then, after graduation, as ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba on its voyage to West Africa.1882 saw a move to Plymouth and his own independent practice. With few patients he resumed writing and completed his first novel, ‘The Mystery of Cloomber', although most of his output was short stories based on his experiences at sea. He married Louisa Hawkins in 1885. However, two years later he met and fell in love with Jean Elizabeth Leckie, though they remained platonic out of respect for, and loyalty to, his wife.His literary career suddenly burst into life in November 1886 with ‘A Study In Scarlet', the first of the fabulously successful Sherlock Holmes stories. With two children to support he now revisited his haphazard commercial arrangements and curtailed everything save for commissions from the Strand Magazine. As a sportsman he was remarkably proficient. He was goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club and played ten first-class cricket matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club as well as captain of the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club in East Sussex. In 1891 tired of writing Holmes stories, he began a series of historical novels and even went so far as to apparently kill off Holmes in a lethal brawl with his arch-nemesis Moriarty.Despite heavy and sustained criticism he continued to write in support of the Boer War, a fact he thought contributed to his knighthood in 1902. The following year to great relief and acclaim he brought Sherlock Holmes back from the dead in his first outing for a decade.Sadly, his wife Louisa died from TB in 1906 and, a year later, he at last married Jean. During the War and for several years after family deaths had left him depressed. In a search for solace and answers he alighted upon spiritualism and, such was his interest, that he wrote several books on the subject.On 7th July 1930 Conan Doyle was discovered in the hall of Windlesham Manor, his house in East Sussex, clutching his chest dying of a heart attack. He was 71.

'The Yellow Wallpaper'by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a mesmerizing and unsettling exploration of the female psyche and the stifling constraints of 19th-century society. The story is narrated by a woman suffering from what her husband and physicians diagnose as'nervous depression.'She is confined to a room in her home and prescribed a treatment of complete rest.As the protagonist spends her days in isolation, she becomes increasingly obsessed with the room's yellow wallpaper. Her descent into madness is vividly portrayed through her journal entries, revealing a haunting journey of unraveling sanity.Gilman's writing is a poignant critique of the patriarchal norms that suppressed women's voices and autonomy during her time. The novella serves as a powerful feminist statement, highlighting the devastating effects of the'rest cure'and the silencing of women's inner struggles.'The Yellow Wallpaper'is a psychological masterpiece that continues to resonate with readers, scholars, and feminists alike. It offers a chilling portrayal of the intersection of mental health, gender, and societal expectations.Step into the haunting world of'The Yellow Wallpaper'and experience the eerie and thought-provoking narrative that challenges the status quo and illuminates the resilience of the human spirit. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's work remains a timeless exploration of the female experience and the importance of self-expression.ABOUT THE AUTHORCharlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) was a pioneering American feminist, writer, and social reformer. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Gilman is best known for her influential works of feminist literature, including the short story'The Yellow Wallpaper.'Gilman's writing often addressed gender inequality and the stifling effects of the traditional roles assigned to women in society.'The Yellow Wallpaper'is a powerful portrayal of a woman's descent into madness as a result of the oppressive treatment and confinement she experiences at the hands of her physician husband. In addition to her literary achievements, Gilman was an advocate for women's rights and believed in economic independence for women. She wrote extensively on topics related to feminism, including her book'Women and Economics.'Gilman's legacy as a feminist thinker and writer continues to be celebrated today, as her works remain relevant in discussions of gender equality, mental health, and social reform. She played a significant role in advancing the feminist movement and challenging societal norms of her time.

Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction. In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and often funny portrait of life in post–World War II America—a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. Determined to trip up a murder suspect, a small-town police chief relies on the good word of a scrupulous newspaper delivery boy whose dedication to his craft—and to his cowardly father—may hold the key to cracking the case. The Honor of a Newsboy and the thirteen other never-before-published pieces that comprise Look at the Birdie serve as an unexpected gift for devoted readers who thought that Kurt Vonnegut's unique voice had been stilled forever—and provide a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius.

The Yellow Wallpaper is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the nineteenth century toward women's physical and mental health. The story also has been classified as Gothic fiction and horror fiction. The story is written as a collection of first person journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband has confined her to the upstairs bedroom of a house that he has rented for the summer. She is forbidden from working, and has to hide her journal entries from him, so that she can recuperate from what he calls a'temporary nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency,'a diagnosis common to women in that period. Her husband controls her access to the rest of the house. In the end, she imagines that there are women creeping around behind the patterns of the wallpaper, and comes to believe that she is one of them. She locks herself in the room, now the only place where she feels safe, refusing to leave when the summer rental is up.

From a Pulitzer Prize finalist and'greatly gifted and highly original artist'comes a masterful collection of stories about the timeless universal struggle to connect (New York Times).Joanna Scott, the critically acclaimed author of ten novels and two collections, turns her “incandescent imagination” (Publishers Weekly) back to the craft of the short story, with breathtaking results. Ranging across history from the distant past to the future, Scott tours the many forms our stories can take, from cave wall paintings to radio banter to digitized archives, and the far-reaching consequences of our communications.In Venice in the Late Middle Ages, a painter's apprentice finds a way to make his mark on canvases that will survive for centuries. In the near future, after the literary canon has been preserved only on the cloud and then lost, a scholar tries to piece together a little-known school of writers committed to using actual paper. In present day New England, a radio host invites his electrician to stay for dinner, opening up new narrative possibilities for both men.Written in prose so naturally elegant, smooth, and precise that it becomes invisible, Excuse Me While I Disappear asks what remains of our stories—as individuals and civilizations—after we are gone.

'Smart and smarting, Banks's incisive stories reveal the sharp tensions and chaotic impassivities of modern life. A triumph.'– Eley Williams, author of Attrib.'We do have a complaints procedure. You will find paper and a pen (chained) to the shelf by the bin. Write your concerns and then place them in the bin. PLEASE NOTE: We do not allow items to be placed in the bin. Please do not write on the paper.'A lonely woman invites danger between tedious dates; a station guard plays a bloody game of heads-or-tails; an office cleaner sneaks into a forbidden room hiding grim secrets. Compelling and provocative, Annabel Banks's debut short fiction collection draws deeply upon the human need to be in control — no matter how devastating the cost.

Three “sly, self-knowing, and hilarious” novellas from the highly acclaimed author of The Lost Language of Cranes (The New York Times). Here are three novellas of escape and exile, touching and funny and at times calculatedly outrageous. In “Saturn Street,” a disaffected LA screenwriter delivers lunches to homebound AIDS patients, only to find himself falling in love with one of them. In “The Wooden Anniversary,” Nathan and Celia—familiar characters from Leavitt's story collections—reunite after a five-year separation. And in'The Term-Paper Artist,'a writer named David Leavitt, hiding out at his father's house in the aftermath of a publishing scandal, experiences literary rejuvenation when he agrees to write term papers for UCLA undergraduates in exchange for sex. “Confessional, audacious and outrageous... This is classic Leavitt—writing with subtlety, maturity and compassion about the complexity and fragility of human relationships.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

This comes to you courtesy of Miniature Masterpieces who have an excellent range of quality short stories from the masters of the craft. Do search for Miniature Masterpieces at any digital store for further information.This audiobook is also duplicated in print as an ebook. Same title, same words. Perhaps a different experience but with Amazon's whispersync you can pick up and put down on any device. Start on audio, continue in print and any which way after that. This, and these are, Miniature Masterpieces. Join us for the journey.M.R. JAMES – AN INTRODUCTIONMontague Rhodes James was born on 1st August 1862 and, as M.R. James, is best known to the general public as a writer of remarkable ghost stories. He was also a medievalist scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge and later of Eton College.James dismantled and did away with many of the existing concepts of ghost stories. Instead his stories were placed in a more realistic and contemporary setting. His protagonists were usually quite reserved or shy and led the reader into the horrible but exquisite agony of telling themselves – as they were drawn relentlessly in – that, there but for the grace of God…….Well, we're about to find out……

Herman Melville was one of the greatest writers during the American Renaissance. Melville's unique style helped produce classics in many different genres. This edition of The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids includes a table of contents.

Take the sumptuousness of Molly Peacock's own #1 bestselling The Paper Garden, the extraordinary creative variety of The Bedside Book of Birds, and the cat-nip-for-language-geeks appeal of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, and wrap it around tales rich with wisdom and humanity, and you get Alphabetique: the most gorgeous gift book of the season. Molly Peacock has written a new classic, a book of magical tales inspired by the lives of the letters of the alphabet. Alphabetique, or Tales from the Lives of the Letters is one-of-a-kind, but nevertheless fits perfectly with Molly Peacock's extraordinary body of work, drawing on the same wellsprings of creativity and artistry as her poetry and her nonfiction, especially The Paper Garden. These 26 charming, incisive, sensual stories of love, yearning, and self-discovery are complimented by Kara Kosaka's layered, jewel-bright collages.

Jacques Heath Futrelle was born on the 9th April 1875 in Pike County, Georgia.His early career was as a journalist. Initially he worked for the Atlanta Journal where he began their sports section. This was followed by work for the New York Herald, the Boston Post and the Boston American. At the latter, in 1905, he published the serialized version of his short story ‘The Problem of Cell 13'who's main character was Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, commonly known as ‘The Thinking Machine', a detective, who used logic to solve crimes.In 1895 he married Lily May Peel with whom he had two children.In 1906 buoyed by the success of his short stories he left the paper to write novels. Such was his success that he had a house, ‘Stepping Stones', designed and built with a harbor view at Scituate, Massachusetts, where the family would spend most of their time together.On April 15th, 1912 he was returning from Europe as a first-class passenger aboard the Titanic when it stuck an iceberg. He refused to board a lifeboat but insisted that Lily did. She acquiesced and remembered the last she saw of him he was smoking a cigarette on deck with John Jacob Astor IV. His body was never recovered.

Six has always been a number we group things around – Six of the best, six of one half a dozen of another, six feet under, six pack, six degrees of separation and a sixth sense are but a few of the ways we use this number.Such is its popularity that

The first major book from a longtime legend in underground literature; known by citation and word of mouth, but only now emerging with a work that will earn a broad audience.“Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts is why I want to read. There are few books at all that expand the exploration of family, outsider sex, animal love, therapy and surreal vision and even fewer writers who do it as well as Claire Donato. My mind and heart are thankfully changed forever.” —JAMIE STEWART of Xiu Xiu and author of Anything That Moves “Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts moves and feels like a novel of ideas, yes, but also a lookbook of Rorshachs; a concept cookbook for famished phantoms; a fragmentary tour de force a la Duras. On every page, it lines the mind with vibrant space, as extraordinary in its candor about desire, artifice, and intimacy as it is with wordplay, wit, and social theory. “Death is a mirror of time, and life is not as heavy as it seems,” Donato writes, beckoning us forward through the void of realism as might an imaginary friend we thought we'd lost—or should I say ‘guardian angel'?” —BLAKE BUTLER, author'In Claire Donato's fiction, I am both looking in and being looked at. The depths of desire are on display, laying bare the complexity and the ugliness that often comes with it.'—MOLLY SODA, artist'Claire Donato's prose is at once playful and masterful, charming and haunting—I loved these short stories with huge imaginations.'—CHELSEA HODSON, author of Tonight I'm Someone Else'Love is a source of radical questioning whose only enemy is indifference. Claire Donato's fever dream of a novel goes toe to toe with today's anomie, stretching our only resource left, language, so we can navigate a 21st century landscape of violently changing relationships, with one another, with the natural world, and with our bodies.'—JAMIESON WEBSTER, psychoanalyst and author In the disquieting stories of Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts, a fractaled Claire Donato contemplates grief and disgust in heterosexuality, deconstructing the romance myth and the illicit fantasies which reflect our haunted selves. These fictions are populated with Lynchian characters, draped in memory and the subconscious mind, who imagine their way out of the painful limits of their world: a turtle retreats into its shell and becomes a real girl. A porn addict turns into a baby boy in the arms of his barren cyber-girlfriend. And a digitally-marred depressive joins forces with the ghost of Simone Weil to kill a chicken. Donato's fictions are precise and cutting, seamlessly integrating a vast knowledge of art through sharp criticism and a history of cult traditions: Donnie Darko, Wings of Desire, Daisies, and Twin Peaks and artists including Clarice Lispector, M.F.K. Fisher, Sibylle Baier, and The Velvet Underground. Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts concludes with'Gravity and Grace, the Chicken and the Egg, or: How to Cook Everything Vegetarian', a novella-in-vignettes that frames cooking as an entrypoint to light, awareness, and connection. With associative lyricism and a preternatural ability to gaze into the void with tenderness, Donato relays an indescribably strange perception of our world, in which maniacal grief turns to a gleeful protest before becoming, against all odds, a love letter to what remains. Cover photo: Jimmy DeSana Contact Paper, 1980 Vintage C-print © the Jimmy DeSana Trust Courtesy of the Jimmy DeSana Trust and P·P·O·W, New York

Dorothy Edwards, an only child, was born on the 18th August 1902 at Ogmore Vale in Glamorgan.Her father was a headmaster and an early activist in the Independent Labour Party. At age 9 Dorothy, dressed in red, welcomed Keir Hardy on to the stage at Tonypandy during the national coal strike of 1912. She was taught that revolution was at hand, that class barriers would be a thing of the past. Dorothy won a scholarship and boarded at Howell's School for Girls in Llandaff before moving to University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire where she read Greek and philosophy.Her early hopes to be an opera singer were set to one side after graduating and the death of her father. Instead she took on part-time work to supplement her mother's pension with whom she now lived.Dorothy managed to write a number of short stories which appeared in the literary journals of the day. She spent several months with her mother in Vienna, all the time revising or writing before embarking on ‘Winter Sonata', a short novel published in 1928.Introductions to several members of the Bloomsbury Group meant a move to London and a division of her time between child-care for the family of Bloomsbury author David Garnett and the promise of an advance payment for her work on a new volume of stories.However, Dorothy's life was starting to spiral out of control; she was attracted to the Welsh nationalist movement but felt that her Welsh provincialism made her, in London at least, feel socially inferior. Leaving her mother dependent on a hired companion consumed her with guilt as did the end of an affair with a married musician.On the 5th January 1934, having spent the morning burning her papers, Dorothy Edwards threw herself in front of a train near Caerphilly railway station. Her suicide note read:'I am killing myself because I have never sincerely loved any human being all my life. I have accepted kindness and friendship and even love without gratitude, and given nothing in return.'Index of ContentsA Country House, A Garland of Earth, Mutiny, Rhapsody, The Problem of Life

Six has always been a number we group things around – Six of the best, six of one half a dozen of another, six feet under, six pack, six degrees of separation and a sixth sense are but a few of the ways we use this number.Such is its popularity that we thought it is also a very good way of challenging and investigating an author's work to give width, brevity, humour and depth across six of their very best.In this series we gather together authors whose short stories both rivet the attention and inspire the imagination to visit their gems in a series of six, to roam across an author's legacy in a few short hours and gain a greater understanding of their writing and, of course, to be lavishly entertained by their ideas, their narrative and their way with words.These stories can be surprising and sometimes at a tangent to what we expected, but each is fully formed and a marvellous adventure into the world and words of a literary master.

Dorothy Edwards, an only child, was born on the 18th August 1902 at Ogmore Vale in Glamorgan.Her father was a headmaster and an early activist in the Independent Labour Party. At age 9 Dorothy, dressed in red, welcomed Keir Hardy on to the stage at Tonypandy during the national coal strike of 1912. She was taught that revolution was at hand, that class barriers would be a thing of the past. Dorothy won a scholarship and boarded at Howell's School for Girls in Llandaff before moving to University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire where she read Greek and philosophy.Her early hopes to be an opera singer were set to one side after graduating and the death of her father. Instead she took on part-time work to supplement her mother's pension with whom she now lived.Dorothy managed to write a number of short stories which appeared in the literary journals of the day. She spent several months with her mother in Vienna, all the time revising or writing before embarking on ‘Winter Sonata', a short novel published in 1928.Introductions to several members of the Bloomsbury Group meant a move to London and a division of her time between child-care for the family of Bloomsbury author David Garnett and the promise of an advance payment for her work on a new volume of stories.However, Dorothy's life was starting to spiral out of control; she was attracted to the Welsh nationalist movement but felt that her Welsh provincialism made her, in London at least, feel socially inferior. Leaving her mother dependent on a hired companion consumed her with guilt as did the end of an affair with a married musician.On the 5th January 1934, having spent the morning burning her papers, Dorothy Edwards threw herself in front of a train near Caerphilly railway station. Her suicide note read:'I am killing myself because I have never sincerely loved any human being all my life. I have accepted kindness and friendship and even love without gratitude, and given nothing in return.'

'A terrific collection'Monica Ali, author of Brick Lane and Love Marriage A Most Anticipated Title for Oprah Daily, Essence, BuzzFeed, The Millions and Brittle Paper Full of heart and humour, Gothataone Moeng's first collection, set between the rural village of Serowe and the thrumming capital city of Gaborone, captures a chorus of voices from a country in flux. Meet a young woman who has worn the same mourning clothes for almost a year, and a teenage girl who shies away from the room where her once vibrant aunt lies dying. Elsewhere, watch as a younger sister hides her romantic exploits from her family while her older brother openly flaunts his infidelities, and a traveller returns home laden with confusion and shame. Moeng, part of a new generation of writers coming out of Africa whose work is exploding onto the literary scene, offers us an insight into communities, experiences and landscapes through these cinematic stories peopled with unforgettable female protagonists.'A good short story is a bit of alchemy, showing us so much in so few pages. Gothataone Moeng's debut collection does this over and over.'Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind

NPR Best Books of 2022The Christian Science Monitor 10 Best Books of JuneMost Anticipated Books of 2022: The Millions, Electric Literature, Brittle Paper, Open Country Magazine, Ms. MagazineWinner of the 2020 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and the 2021 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, Ethiopian American author Meron Hadero's gorgeously wrought stories in A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times offer poignant, compelling narratives of those whose lives have been marked by border crossings and the risk of displacement.Set across the U.S. and abroad, Meron Hadero's stories feature immigrants, refugees, and those on the brink of dispossession, all struggling to begin again, all fighting to belong. Moving through diverse geographies and styles, this captivating collection follows characters on the journey toward home, which they dream of, create and redefine, lose and find and make their own. Beyond migration, these stories examine themes of race, gender, class, friendship and betrayal, the despair of loss and the enduring resilience of hope.Winner of the 2021 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, “The Street Sweep” is about an enterprising young man on the verge of losing his home in Addis Ababa who pursues an improbable opportunity to turn his life around. Appearing in Best American Short Stories, “The Suitcase” follows a woman visiting her country of origin for the first time and finds that an ordinary object opens up an unexpected, complex bridge between worlds. Shortlisted for the 2019 Caine Prize, “The Wall” portrays the intergenerational friendship between two refugees living in Iowa who have connections to Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. A Best American Short Stories notable, “Mekonnen aka Mack aka Huey Freakin'Newton” is a coming-of-age tale about an Ethiopian immigrant in Brooklyn encountering nuances of race in his new country.Kaleidoscopic, powerful, and illuminative, the stories in A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times expand our understanding of the essential and universal need for connection and the vital refuge of home—and announce a major new talent in Meron Hadero.'Exquisite ….Sentences infused with attitude throw gut punches that land with enough power to bring on tears.'—Daphne Kalotay, The Washington Post“Witty and wistful, complex and heartbreaking, these stories capture lives caught between cultures and continents, past and present, truth and lies. As its displaced characters seek belonging, this collection explores the challenges of connection with empathy and nuance. A thrilling debut.”—Brit Bennett, bestselling author of The Vanishing Half and The Mothers“Debut books don't get much stronger than this. Meron Hadero's remarkable stories explore a diverse cast of people doing their best to find acceptance or at least stability…Hadero is deeply perceptive; her dialogue always rings true, and the regard she has for her characters is apparent. This isn't just an excellent first book, it's an excellent book, period.”—Michael Schaub, NPR Best Books 2022: Books We Love“This book heralds the arrival of a gifted, stunning writer. A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times held me spellbound…These stories unfold with an intensifying power, each of them a testament to what's possible when we move through this world insisting on the potential of hope, and love.”—Maaza Mengiste, author of Booker Prize finalist The Shadow King“This richly detailed, subtly impressionistic short-story collection—by the first Ethiopian-born writer to win the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing—pulls at threads of geography, language, generation, race, and gender…Hadero's page shines…expanding instead of narrowing the range and representation of

A definitive edition of the groundbreaking feminist fiction of a nineteenth century pioneerLibrary of America presents the fullest selection ever of visionary American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman: two novels, forty-four brilliant short stories, nearly two-hundred poems, and both the published and manuscript versions of the landmark story “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” The short fiction presented here showcases Gilman's mastery of ghost stories, allegorical fantasy, and social realism and includes a virtuoso series of stories written in imitation of the most acclaimed authors of her day. The utopian novels Herland and With Her in Ourland—abouta remote and isolated society of women—are pioneering works of speculative fiction and still-incisive commentaries on the politics of gender. Gilman was known to her contemporaries first and foremost as a poet, and this volume brings together her collection In This Our World with more than fifty other poems, many written in support of suffrage and other causes.

A “boisterous and high-spirited debut” (Kirkus starred review)“that enthralls the reader through their every twist and turn” (Publishers Weekly starred review), named one of the Most Anticipated Books for Brittle Paper, The Millions, and The Rumpus, penned by a finalist for the AKO Caine PrizeIn her powerful, genre-bending debut story collection, Nana Nkweti's virtuosity is on full display as she mixes deft realism with clever inversions of genre. In the Caine Prize finalist story “It Takes a Village, Some Say,” Nkweti skewers racial prejudice and the practice of international adoption, delivering a sly tale about a teenage girl who leverages her adoptive parents to fast-track her fortunes. In “The Devil Is a Liar,” a pregnant pastor's wife struggles with the collision of western Christianity and her mother's traditional Cameroonian belief system as she worries about her unborn child.In other stories, Nkweti vaults past realism, upending genre expectations in a satirical romp about a jaded PR professional trying to spin a zombie outbreak in West Africa, and in a mermaid tale about a Mami Wata who forgoes her power by remaining faithful to a fisherman she loves.

Evelyn May Clowes was born on 7th May 1872 in Cotgrave, Nottinghamshire. Growing up in genteel circumstances, her early childhood was spent at Charlton Down House near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and her teenage years near Heythrop in the Cotswolds. She was educated at home by governesses, excelling at German, Latin, Greek, shorthand, landscape painting, and fabric and wallpaper design.In 1897 she went to Mauritius as companion to her cousin Caroline and in 1898 married Maurice Wilhemn Wiehe, the owner of a sugar plantation. She gave birth to two stillborn children. After a few years of marriage, she found life difficult and returned to England. Shortly afterwards she went by herself to Australia, arriving in June 1902 and gave birth to a son a few months later. She lived in Melbourne for about eight years. To earn a living she took on a wide and varied range of jobs; she edited a woman's fashion paper, wrote short stories and articles, made blouses, designed embroideries, tilled gardens, acted as a housekeeper, and did other artistic work. Her health was not strong, but she undertook any kind of work which would provide a living for herself and her infant son. This gained her an experience of life which was readily put to use in her literary works.Her first book, ‘The Garden of Contentment', was published in 1902 under her pen-name Elinor Mordaunt. It was the first of many works that covered fiction, short stories, travel and autobiography.She changed her name by deed poll to Evelyn May Mordaunt on 1st July 1915 and gained a further reputation as a writer of short stories for magazines which display both her humour and sense of tragedy. Travel was always high on her priority and the experiences used not only for pleasure but in her writings and, as travel books, ideas in themselves. On 27 January 1933 at Tenerife, Canary Islands, she married a retired barrister from Gloucestershire. In her own words, the marriage ‘ended in tragedy.'Elinor Mordaunt died on 25th June 1942 at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford. She was 70.

Eighteen strange, whimsical, and philosophical tales by the Russian master of the weird, all now in English for the very first time.When Comrade Punt does not wake up one Moscow morning--he has died--his pants dash off to work without him. The ambitious pants soon have their own office and secretary. So begins the first of eighteen superb examples of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's philosophical and phantasmagorical stories. Where the stories included in two earlier NYRB collections (Memories of the Future and Autobiography of a Corpse) are denser and darker, the creations in Unwitting Street are on the lighter side: an ancient goblet brimful of self-replenishing wine drives its owner into the drink; a hypnotist's attempt to turn a fly into an elephant backfires; a philosopher's free-floating thought struggles against being'enlettered'in type and entombed in a book; the soul of a politician turned chess master winds up in one of his pawns; an unsentimental parrot journeys from prewar Austria to Soviet Russia.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

From the Irish bestselling author of Nine Folds Make a Paper Swancomes a short story about modern love, old-fashioned values and a new-born calf. ____________________________ While the country gears up for a referendum, a man sits waiting with a ring in his pocket... He has known his girlfriend since they were children, though they have become quite different adults. He lives in the city, she works on a farm. She's voting YES, he doesn't know what he's doing; what exactly it is he believes. But he does know that he makes her laugh and that their connection feels natural, most of the time. So surely there's a decent chance she will say YES to him too?

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865 both he and his sister were sent back to England when he was five, as was the custom of the British ruling elite in India. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple they boarded with in Portsmouth had one useful effect that Kipling himself suggested; it gave him an early impetus for a literary life.This was further enhanced by his return to India at the age of sixteen to work on a local paper. Not only did this result in him writing constantly but also gave him the opportunity to explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his many classic children's stories and a host of popular poems including ‘If….'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Part of the Gibbs Smith Women's Voices series: A collection of literary voices written by, and for, extraordinary women—to encourage, challenge, and inspire.Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) championed women's rights in her prolific fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.Discover three influential works by one of America's first feminists in their unabridged form: the short story The Yellow Wallpaper, a haunting interpretation of postpartum depression; the feminist utopian novel Herland; and Women and Economics, which when published in 1898 established Gilman as a sociologist, philosopher, ethicist, and social critic, and is considered by many to be her greatest work.Continue your journey in the Women's Voices series with Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte (ISBN: 978-1-4236-5099-7), The Feminist Papers, by Mary Wollstonecraft (ISBN: 978-1-4236-5097-3), Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, the complete poems of Emily Dickinson (ISBN: 978-1-4236-5098-0), and Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott (ISBN: 978-1-4236-5211-3).

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If…'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

What might happen when one tries to move a railway station? Do you know where Jericho is? Can someone could become rich based on knowledge of an obsolete size of paper? Ever had nightmares about a pitcher plant? In Fool's Cap and Other Stories, readers will travel to Italy, France, Germany, England, Nova Scotia, and other parts of Canada. There's a story about road hockey, two old friends discovering things over a cup of coffee, an event that leads a shadowy figure to change his life, an odd pair of vigilantes, and even a man with a coin in his mouth. From darkness and personal discovery to whimsy and just plain absurdity, Keith Weaver's second collection of short stories will delight readers yet again.