Showing results for "In Short" in Literary Fiction

In his three novellas, In Short Measures, Strong Conspirators, and Sally Forth, Michael Ruhlman delves deeply into the nuanced complexity of romantic and sexual love - and the inevitable evolution of the heart over the span of years and decades. Each novella asks questions about the nature of love in terms of loyalty and fidelity - what are one's obligations toward one's spouse, one's family, and one's heart?

This is one of the defining novels of English writer Julian Barnes. An entertaining melange of stories starting with a contemporary account of the launch of Noah's Ark takes us into unexpected areas of human foibles, activities, and tendencies.

Cold Hand in Mine stands as one of Aickman's best collections and contains eight stories that show off his powers as a 'strange story' writer to the full. The listener is introduced to a variety of characters, from a man who spends the night in a Hospice to a German aristocrat and a woman who sees an image of her own soul. There is also a nod to the conventional vampire story ("Pages from a Young Girl's Journal") but all the stories remain unconventional and inconclusive, which perhaps makes them all the more startling and intriguing.

Bukowski's mad immortal origins, surfaced from the literary underground, have addicted legions of audiences who've recognized Bukowski as one of America's greatest realist writers and poets. Audible Studios narrator and OBIE winner Will Patton ( Remember the Titans, The Good Wife, Armageddon) gives a tour de force performance of Bukowski's greatest work in his prime.

On a road trip through Africa, two English people - Bobby, a civil servant with a guilty appetite for African boys; and Linda, a supercilious "compound wife" - are driving back to their enclave after a stay in the capital. But in between lies the landscape of an unnamed country whose squalor and ethnic bloodletting suggest Idi Amin's Uganda. And the farther Naipaul's protagonists travel into it, the more they find themselves crossing the line that separates privileged outsiders from horrified victims.

All the delightful and bizarre inhabitants of Wonderland are here: the White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat, the hooka-smoking Caterpillar and the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Ugly Duchess... and, of course, Alice herself - growing alternately taller and smaller, attending demented tea parties and eccentric croquet games, and observing everything with clarity and rational amazement.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that are difficult to achieve elsewhere. The City of Lights may be one of the glories of the world but for those whose three score and ten have passed it is the final resting place for some of the very finest of literary talents.

In this captivating collection from the Shaanxi region, considered the cradle of Chinese civilization, twenty disparate and unique voices come together to show a China caught between new-world advancements and old-world traditions. From the homeland of China’s first dynasty and the world-famous terra-cotta warriors, these tales show rugged rural life colliding with fast-paced city life; hollow arranged marriages juxtaposed with torrid forbidden love affairs; and the vanity of newly minted millionaires clashing with the desperation of the poor.

We all come to the fork in the road many times every day, every week. What was your last fork and where did the road lead? Choice, Chance, and Repercussion face each of us when we decide to go left or right. Reflecting later was it a good or poor choice? Did it yield wealth or disaster? Should we have taken greater care? These 25 stories examine those possibilities in various genres: general, romance, adventure, mystery, crime, fable, and fantasy—whatever your leaning you will find something to your taste here.

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society. In this volume we offer up a small selection of talents from the literary landscape of the 18th Century and its male authors whose time has now come again.

A truly unprecedented literary achievement by author and editor Lawrence Block, this newly-commissioned anthology of 17 superbly-crafted stories, each inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper. Contributors include Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Olen Butler, Michael Connelly, Megan Abbott, Craig Ferguson, Nicholas Christopher, Jill D. Block, Joe R. Lansdale, Justin Scott, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Warren Moore, Jonathan Santlofer, Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, and Lawrence Block himself.

Inspired by the novels of D.H. Lawrence, particularly The Rainbow and Women in Love, this ambitious quartet from Booker Prize-winning novelist A.S. Byatt charts the lives of the Potter family between 1953 and 1970. Set against the changing social and political landscape of England in the '50s and '60s, it follows the heroine, Frederica, from precocious teenager to TV talk-show host and from her Yorkshire home to the heart of swinging London.

Tex Larimee is a grizzled Arizona sheriff who’s leaving the deserts of Cactus County behind, blazing a trail east to mix it up with The Slickers in the canyons of Manhattan. Tex’s welcome to New York is a rude one. Robbed of his cash, gun and badge, he’s locked in a room in back of a run-down bar. Breaking out of the bar, he goes looking for his best friend...only to find him dead, his throat cut. And the cops accuse Tex of committing the murder.

The stories of David Constantine are unlike any others. His characters possess you instantly, making you see the world as they do, sometimes as exiles, driven into isolation by convictions that even they don't fully understand; sometimes as carriers of an unspoken but unbearable weight. The things they pursue or evade are often unseen and at a distance, like the perfectly preserved body of a woman in the title story, waiting to be discovered in the receding ice of a Swiss glacier.

Robert never quite feels at home with Cassie's family, a gang of eccentrics including a reptile smuggler, a worshipper of Osiris, and an old woman who believes her photographs can see into the future. When he breaks up with Cassie, she is so upset that she gives him the most terrible thing she can offer: an envelope of her grandmother's photos, which show in detail the path that Robert's life will take. At first, this vision of the future gives him strength - but soon it becomes a prison on glossy paper.

John Barth's lively, highly original collection of short pieces is a major landmark of experimental fiction. Though many of the stories gathered here were published separately, there are several themes common to them all, giving them new meaning in the context of this collection.

Stories navigating the commplicated terrain of race in America, from acclaimed writers like Toni Morrison, E.L. Doctorow, Sandra Cisneros, Sherman Alexie, and Amy Tan The editors who brought us Unsettling America and Identity Lessons have compiled a short-story anthology that focuses on...

מורה חיילת החולמת להגשים פנטזיות חינוכיות בעיירת פיתוח ונתקלת בקבלת פנים אלימה; גבר רודף נשים שאשתו ניחנה ביכולת לעקוב אחריו מרחוק; נערה הנוסעת לסדנת כתיבה בעיר הגדולה ולומדת שם שיעור על חשיבותה של נקודת המבט; רופא חילוני המזמין אישה חרדית לשיחה על אודות בנה שהרחיקה מעליה לפני שנים.

This collection of eight stories paints a vivid image of people who don't do what you might expect them to living on the fringes in America. Not stories of triumph over adversity but something completely other. Described in language that is brilliantly sardonic, Woods' characters return repeatedly to places where they don't belong - often the places where they were born. In the background are the endless American wars and occupations and too many early deaths of friends and family. This is fiction that is fresh and of the moment, even as it is timeless.

In this long-awaited collection, Hopkinson continues to expand the boundaries of culture and imagination. Whether she is retelling The Tempest as a new Caribbean myth, filling a shopping mall with unfulfilled ghosts, or herding chickens that occasionally breathe fire, Hopkinson continues to create bold fiction that transcends boundaries and borders.