New translations of the greatest stories by the Russian master of the form
Chekhov was without doubt one of the greatest observers of human nature in all its untidy complexity. His short stories, written throughout his life and newly translated for this essential collection, are exquisite masterpieces in miniature.
Here are tales offering a glimpse of beauty, the memory of a mistaken kiss, daydreams of adultery, a lifetime of marital neglect, the frailty of life, the inevitability of death, and the hilarious pomposity of ordinary men and women. They range from the lighthearted comic tales of his early years to some of the most achingly profound stories ever composed.
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) was born in Taganrog, Russia, the son of a grocer. While training as a doctor he supported his parents and siblings with his freelance writing, working as a journalist and composing hundreds of short comic pieces under a pen name for local magazines. In his twenties he began to write major works of drama, including The Seagull, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard, but he continued to write extraordinary short stories up until his death from tuberculosis at the age of 44. Views: 523
This 1980s satirical tale of the able-disabled Pacific Northwest features friendship favorably. It stars 3 Mexican Americans, one Black middle-class heroine, one Jewish Holocaust and two Vietnam War white survivors. It also hugs a conflicted gay male character. But it's about a love triangle of 22s to 45s - with a roaring drunk Montanan! Racism is lampooned, sexism is promoted...viva endlessly.It's a rare, uniquely multicultural (white inclusive) and fetchingly gay humor novel by an experienced, published ghostwriter with 35 years in freelance writing, editing, marketing, publishing and serving others through working in-home for the Disabled. Also via Ghost Writer, Inc.: affordable book, screenplay, script, lyrics, copy, website and music ghostwriting. I'm mainly oriented towards commercial success, being an lifelong book ghostwriter and author. But I really want more distribution of the inmost concepts than I'm looking for accumulated sales of the book. The story? Well, it's a humorous ramble, kind of a smile a minute, that I'm still working on. I wanted to make sure there is a copy stored somewhere on the Internet, so you folks could review it. I also think this my universe is now evidently run by machines, not live personages. But the book is about dozens of People of Color, gay and transvestite and also white folks who congregate as extremely close friends, enemies and hot-minded lovers.They all live in the little town of Rama, WA -- as in State of Washington, not the District of Columbia. I have stayed in the Seattle area for decades, deciding to write a book about how everyone here technically lives within "the boonies" of Washington State, among plenty of giant, sprawling evergreen forests around here. Even in the City of Seattle, on the outskirts of the city proper. Beautiful deep woods you can barely view out your car windows, veering off into the far distance of a fading green light's blacker depths. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep...so far away you can only imagine touching them, or see the low-hanging silver clouds as mountains in your wildest dreams. My book is strictly fiction, a lifetime of compiled stories about imaginary people, based on real life folks I hobnobbed with, while delicately generating its material. Everything is pretty much duly tongue in cheek, without pointing the fickle index finger at your face. It salutes and taunts those who are pretentious enough to use names instead of labels, who wrote many books before me as clams who never could get that the audience does indeed have a sense of humor, whatever their "ritual politics" are (or might not be). As I sketched out the lengthy contents of this book, which after mucho y muy experience will be markedly different upon a major rewrite, I found myself dreaming a dream. It involves somehow selling the book for cheap, spreading it around through word of mouth, and many lonesome readers getting a major kick out of my book's non-racist, atypical stereo-funny contents. In Mexico, the United States, Canada and many other such places. I'm a feminist, I'll admit it, and also a sexist who rides the line. Read this book is you like such a blend! Views: 522
A gory tale of a really really bad Easter. By the author of SinEaster and Faerie Brace-Face.Awesome Beauty Truesdale managed to barely graduate high school (with no maternal encouragement). The very day she turned eighteen, she was gone.After three long and lonely years on the streets, she seeks refuge at her Grammy’s door.Will Grammy take her in? At what cost? And, will either of the two godly men that have more than noticed her, pursue her romantically, or is she doomed to a repeat of her mother’s lonely, unfulfilled, tragic life? And, frankly, what’s up with this “Jesus stuff” that Grammy is so obsessed with? Views: 521
This book contains Haiku and selected poems, some are based on direct observation of the natural world, others are philosophical and some are of a lighter nature. The author has been published a number of times in the World Haiku Review and the United Haiku and Tanka Society Journal.This book contains a selection of Haiku and other poems organised broadly by topic. Some are based on direct observation of the natural world, others are more philosophic in nature, some may be described as social commentary and some may even be described as humorous. The author was recently published in the Spring edition of the World Haiku Review. Views: 521
"Alice Adams has an inimitable 'voice'--quick, deft, brilliantly evocative and specific. There is always something special about a story of hers, like a watercolor perfectly executed." --Joyce Carol Oates Award-winning writer Alice Adams, whose major themes were the varied lives of contemporary women and the hidden workings of human relationships is equally treasured for her short stories and her novels. The stories collected here represent the full range of her career, which included 25 appearances in The New Yorker, 6 O.Henry First Prizes out of a total of 23 appearances, as well as inclusion in numerous Best American Short Stories anthologies. In story after story insight joins with grace to show us the truth about the lives of people around us. Included: "Verlie I Say Unto You," "Beautiful Girl," "The Swastika on the Door," "Greyhound People," "The Girl Across the Room," Truth or Consequences," "Separate Planes," ... Views: 520
Cristian Bianco has two things against him—he's a police officer and he's a police officer in the 18th District...meaning my dad is his boss. Growing up as the Commander's daughter and having his magnifying glass focused on everything I did was more than I could handle. Now, I'm out on my own, living by my own rules. Well, mostly. The 'job' I created for myself has me in some hot water and my exit strategy isn't exactly working out how I'd hoped. Which is why when my best friend bids on Cristian for me at a charity bachelor auction, I'm not having it. A man in blue is only going to be one thing for me—a problem. Except after his brother starts dating my best friend he becomes harder to ignore. The eight-pack abs. The sense of style only a girl like me can appreciate. The way he puts his family first. It all adds up to make him one irresistible prospect and has me wondering if he knows how to use those handcuffs... Views: 520
From the New York Times bestselling author of Royal Valentine, a second novella in the Museum of Literature romcom series, in which the only thing standing between a single-minded Classics scholar and the literary discovery of a lifetime is her heart. There is nothing Sarah Novak loves more than a literary adventure. When the director of the Museum of Literature sends Sarah to an uninhabited island in the Aegean Sea to look for a rare artifact from Ancient Greece, Sarah, an expert on the Classics, is all in. One problem. Nine other scholars are also on the hunt for the artifact, one of whom is Irishman Liam Maguire, Sarah's ex and the man she beat out for the curator position at the museum seven years ago. Liam wants to form an alliance, but Sarah refuses. He broke her heart once before; she's not giving him the chance to do it again. When a series of mysterious "accidents" befall the scholars one by one, Sarah is... Views: 519
Discworld's only demonology hacker, Eric, is about to make life very difficult for the rest of Ankh-Morpork's denizens. This would-be Faust is very bad. . . at his work, that is. All he wants is to fulfill three little wishes:to live forever, to be master of the universe, and to have a stylin' hot babe. But Eric isn't even good at getting his own way. Instead of a powerful demon, he conjures, well, Rincewind, a wizard whose incompetence is matched only by Eric's. And as if that wasn't bad enough, that lovable travel accessory the Luggage has arrived, too. Accompanied by his best friends, there's only one thing Eric wishes now -- that he'd never been born! Views: 517
When artist Kitty Sullyard draws a strange symbol in her toy panorama, she doesn’t expect it to be life threatening. Tossed into a situation she never asked for, she learns the hard way who not to trust.When artist Kitty Sullyard draws a strange symbol in her toy panorama, she doesn’t expect it to be life threatening. Tossed into a situation she never asked for, she learns the hard way who not to trust. After Kitty mysteriously disappears, Nathaniel Bexley has only a single clue with which to find her. It’s something only he would know. Will he be able to decipher the secret message she’s hidden in a drawing, or will Kitty be doomed to the hands of her kidnappers? Views: 516
The prize possession of former football hero, part-time media personality and full-time blowhard BJ Baker has been stolen from his palatial Palm Beach home. Baker has called in the Mayor, the police, the sheriff and everyone else he can co-opt into the search. But if he really wants the person who can find it, one name keeps coming up. Miami Jones. Problem is, he can't stand Jones. And the feeling is mutual.Miami takes on a jealous husband, a feisty ex-con and a police detective desperate to claim everyone else's 15 minutes of fame, and he finds that Florida is home to so many retired athletes he could start a pensioner football league. But can Miami hunt down the culprit before they graduate from theft to something far more deadly?˃˃˃ "Put Spenser and Travis McGee together, and you have Miami Jones..." - Amazon reviewer for the Miami Jones series.˃˃˃ Q&A with the Author:Q: Why a Florida mystery series? A: A lot of things came together to make the series happen. Of course I always loved Florida mystery novels, there’s a whole lineage of them. And all those crazy Florida adventures of and Mssrs Hiaasen and Dorsey and co. My family moved to the Sunshine State, and everything about the place made me want to create a bunch of fun loving characters. The kinds of people you’d love to share a beer with, in a casual place with a plate of smoked fish dip. But the kinds of folks who live by their convictions - salt of the earth you might say. There’s a lot of folks like that in Florida, along with more whack jobs per square miles than anywhere I’ve ever been.Q: Who is Miami Jones? Is he you?A: He’s not me, let’s start there. He’s got a bucket load more bravado than me. But he’s a thinker. His baseball career didn’t define him, but it did help form him, and I wanted to explore that side of it - the fact that most college sportsmen and women don’t go pro, and those that do mostly don’t last, and somehow that gets looked on as a sad thing. Miami doesn’t believe it is. Pro sports taught Miami to fake it until you make it, but at the same time to never believe your own press. Mostly he doesn’t. He’s too cheeky by half, but don’t we all like the idea of serving up a good one liner when we don’t really have the guts to do it? He’s not one of these private investigators who shoot to kill without repercussions. He feels bad when he acts bad, but it doesn’t stop him doing it if required.Q: Is he a hard boiled detective?A: I call him soft boiled. It’s what happens to normal people when left out in the Florida sun. He calls them as he sees them, but he’d never call his girlfriend a dame. She’d tear him a new one if he did.Q: There’s a sports theme in the series. Is it a men’s adventure?A: Yes and no. Lots of ladies enjoy sports so that doesn’t mean anything. But the sports are infused in Miami’s thinking, rather than being pervasive in the stories. More than half of my readers on my email list are women, so it might be a men’s adventure, but it’s not just for male readers.Q: Speaking of women, Miami’s girlfriend knows how to handle him.A: That she does. I hate those stories and movies where the 'love interest' is nothing more than someone to serve the martinis. Danielle is Miami’s equal in every way. She’ll out think him most days, and she even has his measure in most physical endeavors. But she’s still a woman, so she doesn’t see the world in the same way as Miami and 'the boys'. And that’s a good thing.Q: Will we see her in her own private eye series?A: No. For a start, she’s not a gumshoe, she’s a sheriff’s deputy. She believes in the rule of law and doing things by the book. Mostly. That creates some tension between them because Miami can be a little too keen to go off reservation. Views: 516
