Showing results for "Stories" in Literary Fiction

The Heathcliff we know is obsessive, possessive and cruel, bound and beholden to his childhood love and would-be soulmate Catherine, and their home at Wuthering Heights. But before his descent into monstrous revenge, there were three missing years. A time of possibility, freedom and a different kind of love… With Cathy’s rejection burning hot in his ears, Heathcliff flees the moors and arrives in London, seeking distraction and oblivion...

Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, Leo Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day, death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality.

Varun is a recent engineering graduate. His hours are filled with friends, pub hopping, and stalking his love interest on Facebook. Through it all, though, Varun harbours ambitions of becoming a successful entrepreneur. Meanwhile, Varun's mother, who is disturbed by her son's lack of focus on life, enlists her good friend Anu Aunty to put him on track. The meddling Anu Aunty is more than willing to take up this assignment.

In these 12 masterly stories about the lives of Latin Americans in Europe, García Márquez conveys the peculiar amalgam of melancholy, tenacity, sorrow, and aspiration that is the émigré experience.

Form-defining short stories. First published in 1914, James Joyce defined what the short story could be with his collection The Dubliners. A mixture of prose and poetry, each story can be listened to independently, or as a collection. From childhood to maturity, we see what life - and ultimately death - can be, via an extraordinary cast of characters, all of whom experience an epiphany. There’s Father Flynn, the priest; Evelyn, the shop girl who dreams of escape; Mrs Mooney, the butcher’s daughter, who runs a boarding house.

Written with compassionate realism and wit, the stories in this mesmerizing collection depict the disparities of town and village life in South America, of the frightfully poor and outrageously rich, of memories and illusions, and of lost opportunities and present joys. Stories include "No One Writes to the Colonel", "Tuesday Siesta", "One of These Days", "There Are No Thieves in This Town", "Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon", "Montiel's Widow", "One Day After Saturday", "Artificial Roses", and "Big Mama's Funeral".

It’s tough to be a buffoon when the Age of Reason is trying to downsize your job. When the King’s Fool dies unexpectedly, a professional buffoon tries to move up the ranks and grab the top slot. But the politics involved in becoming a court jester are no laughing matter. The rules of becoming the top fool are simple: The winner is the one who performs the most outrageous act. Our buffoon and his fellows struggle for supremacy in a profession that is heading for extinction.

Like many well-to-do Upper East Siders over the age of 65, esteemed art appraiser Percival Skinner had planned to spend his retirement living off his savings. But a market correction has left him living below his prior means. One day he’s visited by a dapper fixer in search of a famous work by a Renaissance master. Skinner knows the work well: The original was owned by his ancestor, and was passed down through his family over the generations. If, as an intermediary, he can coordinate a sale, a small fortune awaits. Problem is, he might not be the only one on the make.

Told in Ruskin Bond's simple yet poignant style, the stories and poems in No Man Is an Island thoughtfully explore the many shades of friendship and camaraderie. Featuring classic tales such as 'The Woman on Platform No. 8', in which a mysterious stranger befriends a young boy, and 'The Crooked Tree', in which a writer and a hawker form an unlikely bond, this heartwarming collection is a must-listen.

It’s been 10 years since a group of college friends made a vow: that the first to get rich would rent a boat and invite the others on a cruise. Now, the friends find themselves marooned at a luxurious hotel on the Amalfi Coast in Italy. While their boat is being repaired, they can’t help but observe the daily routine of a fellow hotel guest - a mysterious, white-bearded stranger who sits on the veranda each night and smokes one cigarette, sometimes two.

Lord Arthur Saviles's Crime is a masterpiece of polished cynicism, in which poison, explosive clocks and finally murder forerun married bliss. Each of the eight stories here were published in the heyday of Wilde's career, between 1887 and 1891.

Paul was reading a newspaper. Catherine was reading a novel. So begins Room on the Sea, André Aciman's scorching and elegiac love-story about a middle-aged man and woman who meet in the bullpen of jury selection and spend a sultry summer’s week trespassing ever further into each other's hearts. What begins as a flirtation quickly evolves into something deeper, something Paul and Catherine must carry on in secret - and with the understanding that anything more than a casual crush is out of the question.

In Deep Hole, one of the world’s foremost crime novelists crafts a sweet, poignant romance novella that could only come from his perfectly calibrated sense of time and place. It incorporates fights and misunderstandings and rejection, and is set against the backdrop of a quiet surfing town in Rhode Island where everyone knows each other’s business—and pleasure.

O. Henry, the pseudonym of the American writer William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), is best known for writing stories full of wit, wordplay, and warm characterizations, and particularly for their clever twist endings. This volume contains 20 of O. Henry's best and best-loved stories. They are marked by coincidence and surprise endings as well as the compassion and high humor that have made O. Henry's stories popular for the last century.

From Steven Millhauser, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler and one of the most imaginative and essential voices of our time, comes a fable about a race of miniature people and the way of life they have come master within our own. By turns enchanting and provocative, The Little People explores the fascination and unease the little people create in us, examines our private desire to disappear into their world, and reveals what happens when our personal and romantic lives inevitably collide.

“Funny, touching and infused with wonder, as all love stories should be.”—San Francisco Examiner The iconic tale of love and loss that has touched the hearts of millions, Love Story has become one of the most adored novels of our time. It has sold more than twenty-one million copies...

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: THE NEW YORKER, NPR The first short story collection by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author and master of the form since her number one New York Times best seller Unaccustomed Earth Rome—metropolis and monument, suspended between past and future, multi-faceted...

In the bizarre world of Franz Kafka, salesmen turn into giant bugs, apes give lectures at college academies, and nightmares probe the mysteries of modern humanity’s unhappiness. More than any other modern writer in world literature, Kafka captures the loneliness and misery that fill the lives of 20th-century humanity.

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?

Rivals since childhood, Fang and Lian both leave their village in China in search of fortune and adventure. After reuniting in a factory city, when Fang’s grandmother falls ill, they hatch a plan to win the sympathies of an American online. When he replies, Lian secretly masquerades as Fang in a gripping story of friendship, love, and betrayal.