“A poignant, nostalgic collection of literary criticism by one of America’s premier authors.”
—Kirkus Reviews
In Rough Country is a sterling collection of essays, reviews, and criticism from Joyce Carol Oates that focuses on a wide array of books and writers—from Poe to Nabokov, from Flannery O’Connor to Phillip Roth. One of our foremost novelists, National Book Award and PEN/Malamud Award winner Oates demonstrates an unparalleled understanding and appreciation of great works of literature with In Rough Country, and offers unique and breathtaking insights into the writer’s art. Views: 867
In a world dominated by a theocratic regime, a revolution is about to erupt. A rebel seeks out a curator's apprentice on the run. They will soon be carried away in a mysterious place, entangled in an adventure that will reveal an earth-shattering truth. In the meantime, a strange sort of pilgrim from afar will meet with a man seeking knowledge and power, changing their world for ever.Rob Hamilton, a disaffected insurance lawyer, and Toni Haast, a quietly ambitious claims clerk, are sent to Exmouth, a small town on New Zealand's West Coast, to investigate the suspicious death of Artemis Washburn. On family holidays in Exmouth, Rob's father had filled his young son's mind with ideas of the fifth season - the time when things don't quite fit, like rain when it's sunny. As they delve into the truth behind Artemis's death and their relationship develops, Rob and Toni glimpse life in the fifth season. Meanwhile, back in Wellington, the gilded life of Andy Wu, the Dependable Insurance Company’s stellar CEO, starts to tarnish. Can his marriage to Samantha survive his jealousy of Owen Huntly, top salesman and Lothario? Against a background of modern corporate culture and a tragic death, this bitter-sweet comedy weaves stories of love and relationships, ambition and folly. Views: 864
Richard Yates, who died in 1992, is today ranked by many readers, scholars, and critics alongside such titans of modern American ficiton as Updike, Roth, Irving, Vonnegut, and Mailer.
In this work, he offers a spare and autumnal novel about a New England prep school. At once a meditation on the twilight of youth and an examination of America's entry into World War II, A Good School tells the stories of William Grove, the quiet boy who becomes an editor of the school newspaper; Jack Draper, a crippled chemistry teacher; and Edith Stone, the schoolmaster's young daughter, who falls in love with most celebrated boy in the class of 1943. Views: 864
Rife with overtones of Dostoyevsky, The Glass Cell, first published forty years ago, combines a quintessential Highsmith mystery with a penetrating critique of the psychological devastation wrought by the prison system. Falsely convicted of fraud, the easygoing but naive Philip Carter is sentenced to six lonely, drug-ravaged years in prison. Upon his release, Carter is a more suspicious and violent man. For those around him, earning back his trust can mean the difference between life and death. The Glass Cell's bleak and compelling portrait of daily prison life—and the consequences for those who live it—is, sadly, as relevant today as it was when the book was first published in 1964. Views: 864
For two years, Walter Stackhouse has been a faithful and supportive husband to his wife, Clara. She is distant and neurotic, and Walter finds himself harboring gruesome fantasies about her demise. When Clara's dead body turns up at the bottom of a cliff in a manner uncannily resembling the recent death of a woman named Helen Kimmel who was murdered by her husband, Walter finds himself under scrutiny. He commits several blunders that claim his career and his reputation, cost him his friends, and eventually threaten his life. The Blunderer examines the dark obsessions that lie beneath the surface of seemingly ordinary people. With unerring psychological insight, Patricia Highsmith portrays characters who cross the precarious line separating fantasy from reality.
NB: The title in England was changed to Lament for a Lover. Views: 862
From the author of the instant New York Times bestseller Tenth of December comes a darkly comic short story, a fable about the all too real impact that we humans have on the environment—now available for the first time as an eBook.
Fox 8 has always been known as the daydreamer in his pack, the one his fellow foxes regarded with a knowing snort and a roll of the eyes. That is, until Fox 8 develops a unique skill: He teaches himself to speak “Yuman” by hiding in the bushes outside a house and listening to children’s bedtime stories. The power of language fuels his abundant curiosity about people—even after “danjer” arrives in the form of a new shopping mall that cuts off his food supply, sending Fox 8 on a harrowing quest to help save his pack. Told with his distinctive blend of humor and pathos, Fox 8 showcases the extraordinary imaginative talents of George Saunders, whom the New York Times called “the writer for our time.”
Praise for George Saunders and *Tenth of December
“The best book you’ll read this year . . . more moving and emotionally accessible than anything that has come before.”—The New York Times Magazine
“Saunders is a complete original, unlike anyone else.”—Dave Eggers
“Affecting [and] wincingly funny . . . It’s no exaggeration to say that the short story master George Saunders helped change the trajectory of American fiction.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Subversive, hilarious, and emotionally piercing.”—Jennifer Egan
“Not since Twain has America produced a satirist this funny.”—Zadie Smith
“George Saunders makes the all-but-impossible look effortless. We’re lucky to have him.”—Jonathan Franzen
“Tenth of December* isn’t just [Saunders’s] most unexpected work yet; it’s also his best . . . as weird, scary, and devastating as America itself.”—NPR
“An astoundingly tuned voice—graceful, dark, authentic, and funny—telling just the kinds of stories we need to get us through these times.”—Thomas Pynchon
“The best short-story writer in English alive.” —Mary Karr Views: 861
Fan-compiled eBook collection of (almost) all Lovecraft stories. Views: 861
Thirteen, a long forgotten superhero, finds himself trapped in an alternate world. Trying to make the best of it, he joins an organization called the 13 Collective. Led by D-13, an retired American Spy, he and his superhero partner investigate a new string of space-time loopholes that causes a chain reaction of violence and chaos among the population.Robena takes her friend on a journey that helps her see the light of hope in her sad life through a series of guided meditations in nature. Affirmations of life. Views: 860
Adam Griffey is living two lives. By day, he teaches literature. At night, he steals it. Adam is a plagiarist, an expert reader with an eye for great works. He prowls simulated worlds perusing virtual texts, looking for the next big thing. And when he finds it, he memorizes it page by page, line by line, word for word. And then he brings it back to his world.
But what happens when these virtual worlds begin to seem more real than his own? What happens when the people within them mean more to him than flesh and blood? What happens when a living thing falls in love with someone who does not actually exist? Views: 860
Welcome to Kluskey's spacer hangout. Here, spacers swap yarns of ghost ships, space monsters, the weird and wonderful and the downright daft. In this story, spacer Biz Cooper tells of a ghostly presence on board the freighter Colestar 24. A 4,500 word story.Biz Cooper comes into Kluskey's bar with an urgent tale to tell. Two thirds of the Colestar 24's crew have left the ship as it comes into port. The second hand hatchway they had fitted three months ago has been acting up ever since it was installed. The crew of the space freighter has figured out why.The Colestar 24 will shortly be advertising vacancies for crew.You may want to hear what Biz has to say before you consider applying. Views: 859
The balance between the sun and the fog crystals has been destroyed. The ancient peace between the crystal miners and traders has been usurped by the betrayal of the fog crystal's ancient protector. His desire for power will lead the world into death through conformity. How will the spreading fog be stopped and balance returned to the world?(3,737 words)Four decades had passed since the last Relic war ravished the oppositional lands of Windpass Isles and Gaedia – a war that ceased in a bloodied truce.Drewth is a Light Elemental and Commander knight under Western Gaedia’s lordship, Syndirin - a high wizard and the king’s Arbiter. Syndirin, with questionable and unclear motive, promotes Drewth as his apprentice, and commences the personal training of Drewth in the ways of magic. Drewth then becomes the unwitting subject of Syndirin’s experimental meddle with the mythical powers of Darkened Light, despite the danger, and despite what sacrifice.Torius, a castle knight in Southern Windpass Isles kingdom and Mundane-born, is taken captive by a conspiratorial clique under Lord Syndirin, where he discovers from these captors their insidious campaign to rekindle the long dead Relic war, in pursuit of Relic’s power.Enflamed by an unforgivable betrayal of Syndirin, vengeance transforms Drewth forever within – his Element undergoes a rare alteration, he turns renegade to Gaedia, and allies with Torius, the escaped prisoner of Syndirin’s clique. Together they battle for their lives out from the now enemy territory of Gaedia.They find themselves fatefully party to a band of peasant prisoners with rare abilities invoked from the trials they face in their likewise escape from the treasonous Arbiter, Syndirin.And if odds turn to favor in their fight for survival, there is still threat to hand of a devastating magic war, a campaign in itself to acquire both kingdom’s all-powerful Relics in the wake of their mutual destruction. Views: 857
Henry James led a wandering life, which took him far from his native shores, but he continued to think of New York City, where his family had settled for several years during his childhood, as his hometown. Here Colm Tóibín, the author of the Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel The Master, a portrait of Henry James, brings together for the first time all the stories that James set in New York City. Written over the course of James’s career and ranging from the deliciously tart comedy of the early “An International Episode” to the surreal and haunted corridors of “The Jolly Corner,” and including “Washington Square,” the poignant novella considered by many (though not, as it happens, by the author himself) to be one of James’s finest achievements, the nine fictions gathered here reflect James’s varied talents and interests as well as the deep and abiding preoccupations of his imagination. And throughout the book, as Tóibín’s fascinating introduction demonstrates, we see James struggling to make sense of a city in whose rapidly changing outlines he discerned both much that he remembered and held dear as well as everything about America and its future that he dreaded most.
Stories included:
The Story of a Masterpiece
A Most Extraordinary Case
Crawford’s Consistency
An International Episode
The Impressions of a Cousin
The Jolly Corner
Washington Square
Crapy Cornelia
A Round of Visits Views: 856
We are routinely forced to examine the extinction of mankind from one cause or the other. This time it happened, but not like they told us it would. Our "end of the world" came from the most unlikely source. This vignette explores the day when civilization fell from the welcome eradication of the rat.It has been 28 years, 14 weeks and 9 days since a virus turned more than half of the world's human population into zombies. More than 95 percent of the population died within 6 months of the initial infection. Those who survived holed up wherever they could find safety. My parents found safety in the Cube, a building that was originally built as a prison for violent criminals. Mom and Dad always told me the sacrifices we made to live in the Cube were worth it because we were safe. Its been 13 days, 12 hours and 42 minutes since my parents disappeared without a trace from our apartment inside the Cube. I'm going to leave the Cube for the first time today. Maybe I'll find my parents. Maybe, I'll be eaten by the zombies. Views: 855
Voted one of the top ten Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2001 by *Cinescape Magazine.*
"The Shadow out of Time" is H. P. Lovecraft's last major story. It was first published in Astounding Stories for June 1936. And yet, this text has never been published as Lovecraft wrote it--until now. The recent discovery of Lovecraft's handwritten manuscript allows readers to appreciate this magnificently cosmic story exactly as originally written.
All previous editions of the story contain hundreds of serious errors, including errors in paragraphing, omissions and mistranscriptions of many words and passages, and erroneous punctuation. Leading Lovecraft scholars S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz have provided an exhaustive introduction and commentary on the story, elucidating names, places and other elements in this richly evocative story. A must for all devotees of Lovecraft and weird fiction! Views: 854
Story of a boy who loved rabbits.“What is your name?” It was my first question to him. I met him in a park. He was wearing blue trousers and a checked shirt of the same colour. His hairs were combed to one side. And his eyes were beautiful, blue and big. He stared me in the eyes for a few moments and after taking his time answered me “Wali”.Collateral damage is described as damage to things that are incidental to the intended target. It is story of a boy who was not on any side but his own, and story of a mother who wanted nothing but to hold her son. War takes a lot from those who are directly involved and from those who are forcefully involved. Free of age, Era, time, Zone and nations,... about relations, love and heart.Feel free to leave comments. Views: 852
