This volume includes all of the writer's earliest short and medium-length fiction (including some previously unpublished stories) covering the years 1952-1955. These fascinating stories include "Beyond Lies the Wub, " "The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford, " "The Variable Man, " and twenty-two others. Stories In This VolumeStabilityRoogThe Little MovementBeyond Lies the WubThe GunThe SkullThe DefendersMr. SpaceshipPiper in the WoodsThe InfinitesThe Preserving MachineExpendableThe Variable ManThe Indefatigable FrogThe Crystal CryptThe Short Happy Life of the Brown OxfordThe BuilderMeddlerPaycheckThe Great COut in the GardenThe King of the ElvesColonyPrize ShipNanny Views: 16
Explodes the paradox of emotional isolation suffered by those living close together, the conflicting demands of family and farm, and this disruption of old ways by the new. Views: 16
SUMMARY:
Here are two holiday mysteries set in remote, snow-covered regions of Victorian Britain–where the nights are indeed silent but all is not calm, and where some will sleep in eternal peace.A CHRISTMAS BEGINNINGWhile spending Christmas on the island of Anglesey off the coast of Wales, Superintendent Runcorn of Scotland Yard, a lonely bachelor, stumbles upon the lifeless body of the vicar’s younger sister in the village churchyard. Everyone insists that only a stranger to the island could have committed the heinous crime, but the evidence proves otherwise. Intending to uncover the identity of the ruthless killer, Runcorn never dreams that the case may also, miraculously, open the door to a new future for himself.A CHRISTMAS GRACEWith Christmas just around the corner, Thomas Pitt’s sister-in-law, Emily Radley, is suddenly called from London to be with her dying aunt on the western coast of Ireland. Emily soon discovers that painful memories of an unsolved murder haunt the lonely Irish town and sets out to unmask the culprit. When a lone shipwreck survivor washes up onshore, he brings with him not only the key to solving the terrible crime but the opportunity for the townspeople to make peace with the past–and with one another. Views: 16
Amy Bloom has won a devoted readership and wide critical acclaim for fiction of rare humor, insight, grace, and eloquence, and the same qualities distinguish Normal, a provocative, intimate journey into the lives of “people who reveal, or announce, that their gender is variegated rather than monochromatic”—female-to-male transsexuals, heterosexual crossdressers, and the intersexed. We meet Lyle Monelle and his mother, Jessie, who recognized early on that her little girl was in fact a boy and used her life savings to help Lyle make the transition. On a Carnival cruise with a group of crossdressers and their spouses, we meet Peggy Rudd and her husband, “Melanie,” who devote themselves to the cause of “ordinary heterosexual men with an additional feminine dimension.” And we meet Hale Hawbecker, “a regular, middle-of-the-road, white-bread guy” with a wife, kids, and a medical condition, the standard treatment for which would have changed his life and his gender. Casting light into the dusty corners of our assumptions about sex, gender and identity, Bloom reveals new facets to the ideas of happiness, personality and character, even as she brilliantly illuminates the very concept of "normal.”** Views: 16
Spanning the length and breadth of the twentieth century, Alice Mattison's masterful In Case We're Separated looks at a family of Jewish immigrants in the 1920s and 1930s and follows the urban, emotionally turbulent lives of their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren against a backdrop of political assassination, the Vietnam War, and the AIDS epidemic. Beginning with the title story, which introduces Bobbie Kaplowitz—a single mother in 1954 Brooklyn whose lover is married and whose understanding of life is changed by a broken kitchen appliance—Mattison displays her unparalleled gift for storytelling and for creating rich, multidimensional characters, a gift that has led the Los Angeles Times to praise her as "a writer's writer." Views: 16
From the bestselling author of Latitudes of Melt and An Audience of Chairs: utterly engrossing, unsettling and beautifully written, The Birthday Lunch is the story of one pivotal week in the life of a family facing a tragic loss. Hal McNab made love to his wife for the last time the morning of the day she was killed. Joan Clark's riveting new novel opens as Lily McNab wakes up on her 58th birthday, June 30, 1981, in the quiet, picturesque town of Sussex, New Brunswick. Free-spirited Lily has always played the peacemaker between her fierce, doting sister, Laverne, and her loving, garrulous husband, Hal, as they competed for her attention, and the competition has only gotten worse since they all moved into the same big house. Today Laverne feels she's beaten Hal out for Lily's company at a birthday lunch, but it's a bittersweet and short-lived victory. When the sisters stop for celebratory ice cream cones at the town's famous... Views: 16
With his debut novel on legendary Texas outlaw John Wesley Hardin, The Pistoleer, James Carlos Blake demonstrated a rare talent for western and historical fiction. His second book, The Friends of Pancho Villa, now back in print, further proved his mastery in the genre, taking on an even mightier figure of North American legend—the most memorable leader of the Mexican Revolution. Violently waged from 1910 to 1920, the revolution profoundly transformed Mexican government and culture. And Pancho Villa was its "incarnation and its eagle of a soul"—so says Rodolfo Fierro, the novel's narrator, an ex-con, train robber, and Villa's loyal friend. Killers of men and lovers of life, the revolutionaries fought for freedom, for a new Mexico, for Villa. And in return, they shared victory and death with their country's most powerful hero. The Friends of Pancho Villa is a masterpiece of ferocious loyalty, bloody revolution, and legends that live forever. Views: 16
An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion--his sense of smell--leads to murder.In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift-an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and frest-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"--the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brillance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual... Views: 16
Haunting, uplifting, beautiful: the final work from Helen DunmoreHelen Dunmore passed away in June 2017, leaving behind this remarkable collection of short stories. With her trademark imagination and gift for making history human, she explores the fragile ties between passion, love, family, friendship and grief, often through people facing turning points in their lives:A girl alone, stretching her meagre budget to feed herself, becomes aware that the young man who has come to see her may not be as friendly as he seems.Two women from very different backgrounds enjoy an unusual night out, finding solace in laughter and an unexpected friendship.A young man picks up his infant son and goes outside into a starlit night as he makes a decision that will inform the rest of his life.A woman imprisoned for her religion examines her faith in a seemingly literal and quietly original way. This brilliant... Views: 16
