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Wonder Tales: Six Stories of Enchantment
By Marina Warner. 1994
Marina Warner has gathered together a magical collection of fairy tales by the great women storytellers of the 17th and…
18th centuries. These are passionate, extraordinary, and occasionally proto-feminist retellings of classic fairy stories by women who ingeniously used the fairy tale genre to comment on their own times and experiences. The stories are all in superb new translations by celebrated writers, including A. S. Byatt, Gilbert Adair and John Ashbery. With a brilliant intorduction by Marina Warner, recognised as one of our greatest experts on myth and fairy tale.Wrong Time, Wrong Place (Quick Reads 2013 #1)
By Simon Kernick. 2013
A gripping Quick Read from the master of the race against time thriller.Have you ever been in the wrong place…
at the wrong time?You are hiking in the Scottish highlands with three friends when you come across a girl.She is half-naked, has been badly beaten, and she can’t speak English.She is clearly running away from someone.Do you stop to help her? Even if it means putting your friends’ lives – and your own - in terrible danger?The Withered Arm and Other Stories 1874-1888
By Thomas Hardy. 1999
"See if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see…
if they look as though she had ever done housework, or are milker's hands like mine."So Rhoda Brook, the abandoned mistress of Farmer Lodge, is jealous to discover details of his new bride in 'The Withered Arm', the title story in this selection of Hardy's finest short stories. Hardy's first story, 'Destiny and a Blue Cloak' was written fresh from the success of Far From the Madding Crowd. Beautiful in their own right, these stories are also testing-grounds for the novels in their controversial sexual politics, their refusal of romance structures, and their elegiac pursuit of past, lost loves. Several of the stories in The Withered Arm were collected to form the famous volume, Wessex Tales (1888), the first time Hardy denoted 'Wessex' to describe his fictional world. The Withered Arm is the first of a new two-volume selection of Hardy's short stories, edited with an introduction and notes by Kristin Brady.The Wisdom of Father Brown (The father Brown Stories Ser. #2)
By G K Chesterton. 2014
The second volume of stories featuring the most unlikely detective in literature - now the basis for a major BBC…
TV adaptation starring Mark Williams. The ingenious amateur detective Father Brown is put to the test again in this second collection of stories, which sees him solve cases featuring bandits, traitors, voodoo and murder, wrong-footing his opponents at every turn with his characteristic blend of mischievous humour and uncanny understanding of human foibles.G. K. Chesterton was born in 1874. He attended the Slade School of Art, where he appears to have suffered a nervous breakdown, before turning his hand to journalism. A prolific writer throughout his life, his best- known books include The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1922), The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) and the Father Brown stories. Chesterton converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922 and died in 1938.Wild Places: Selected Stories
By Katherine Mansfield. 2023
A beautiful new hardback edition of Katherine Mansfield's most vivid and distinctive stories.Katherine Mansfield was the only writer Virginia Woolf…
envied. Mansfield transformed the short story genre with her work, creating stories miraculous in their intensity yet seemingly so simple. The shift of a heart, the beat of a moment, the changing of the light: in these stories emotional universes are contained within glimpses.Mansfield only lived to the age of 34 but in that time wrote stories true to her indomitable spirit. A hundred years on from her death, Mansfield's biographer, Claire Harman, has created this new selection to show us the master of the short story form in full flight.WITH A FOREWORD BY HELEN SIMPSON AND INTRODUCTION BY CLAIRE HARMAN'There is something rapturous about her work...she has the power to distil the apparently inconsequential into frozen moments laden with significance' Guardian'Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people' Katherine MansfieldWho Among Us? (Penguin Modern Classics)
By Mario Benedetti. 2019
'This novel is a jewel ... one of those books that enters the soul, which it is impossible not to…
be conquered by. It is a masterpiece like few others' Huffington PostMiguel and Alicia fall quietly in love as teenagers, walking back from school together. When Lucas - enigmatic, charismatic - arrives, everything changes, and Miguel is certain he has lost Alicia. Yet, against the odds, she marries him. Now, eleven years later, their marriage has begun to fray, and Alicia sets out to see Lucas again. As each member of this strange love triangle tells their side of what happened, an unforgettable story of desire, deception and tragic misunderstanding unfolds.The White People and Other Weird Stories (Penguin Modern Classics)
By Arthur Machen. 2011
Machen's weird tales of the creepy and fantastic finally come to Penguin Classics. With an introduction from S.T. Joshi, editor…
of American Supernatural Tales, The White People and Other Weird Stories is the perfect introduction to the father of weird fiction. The title story "The White People" is an exercise in the bizarre leaving the reader disoriented and on edge. From the first page, Machen turns even fundamental truths upside-down, as his character Ambrose explains, "there have been those who have sounded the very depths of sin, who all their lives have never done an 'ill deed'" setting the stage for a tale entirely without logic.Vathek and Other Stories
By Malcolm Jack, William Beckford. 1993
Beckford's Gothic novel Vathek, an Arabian tale, was originally written in French when the author was twenty-one. Published in English…
in 1786, it was one of the most successful of the oriental tales then in fashion. This edition makes available to a new generation of scholars and general readers, the originality of Beckford's ideas, and the excellence of his prose.Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, 1892-1895
By Anton Chekhov. 2002
These stories from the middle period of Chekhov's career show him exploring complex, ambiguous and often extreme emotions. Influenced by…
his own experiences as a doctor, 'Ward No. 6', set in a mental hospital, is a savage indictment of the medical profession. 'The Black Monk', portraying an academic who has strange hallucinations, explores ideas of genius and insanity; in 'Murder', religious fervour leads to violence; while in 'The Student', Chekhov's favourite story, a young man recounts a tale from the gospels and undergoes a spiritual epiphany. In all the stories collected here, Chekhov's characters face madness, alienation and frustration before they experience brief, ephemeral moments of insight, often earned at great cost, where they confront the reality of their existence.Candide And Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics Ser.)
By Voltaire, Roger Pearson. 2008
Candide is the most famous of Voltaire's "philosophical tales," in which he combined witty improbabilities with the sanest of good…
sense. First published in 1759, it was an instant bestseller and has come to be regarded as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment. What Candide does for chivalric romance, the other tales in this selection--Micromegas, Zadig, The Ingenu, and The White Bull--do for science fiction, the Oriental tale, the sentimental novel, and the Old Testament. The most extensive one-volume selection currently available, this new edition includes a new verse translation of the story Voltaire based on Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale: What Pleases the Ladies and opens with a revised introduction that reflects recent critical debates, including a new section on Candide.The Unspoken Truth
By Angelica Garnett. 2010
Real life and fiction meet as Angelica Garnett vividly evokes what it is to grow up in the shadow of…
artists. Her family appear in different guises in the stories, but at the centre of each one is Garnett herself. She is naïve and foolish as Bettina, desperately seeking acceptance into the grown-ups circle ('When All the Leaves Were Green, My Love'); shy and cautious, but finally disloyal, as Agnes ('Aurore'); a hesitant, uncomfortable Emily ('The Birthday Party'); and a contemplative, even witty older woman, full of appetite and guilt, as Helen ('Friendship'). Spanning an entire life, each story reveals a figure trying to understand her place not only within the polished circle of her family, but in an ever-changing world. Sharply observing a colourful social milieu and the vibrant characters that populate it, these are stories about family and friendships, yet also curdled relationships and small betrayals. A fictional counterpoint to her acclaimed memoir, Deceived with Kindness, here is a portrait of a woman seeking an understanding and acceptance of her past.Unsafe Attachments
By Caroline Oulton. 2008
Unsafe Attachments explores the relationships of a loosely interlinked group of Londoners. Caught off guard at key points, they face…
moments of sudden temptation in their busy, established lives, as well as increasingly difficult choices. Dinah, harried and pregnant, is haunted by images of death on her way to Heathrow. Abi, a senior civil servant, embarks upon an affair with a Nigerian journalist as her teenage daughter 'kind of shags' her teacher. Alex, increasingly keen to settle down, numbly accompanies his ex-girlfriend to an abortion clinic. A glance at a party turns into a fumbling grope and then a guilty hangover for Roger, whose live-in girlfriend is smugly satisfied that her life is on course. Lonely café-owner Carey spots his married shrink passionately kissing another woman in a park while Tina's desperate wish for a child jeopardises everything that is important to her. Relationships are acutely observed - the delights and tensions of living together, cheating on one another and trying to make lasting connections in this vast modern city. Love - real or imaginary - causes hearts to crack and lives to crumble but there is also hope, and sometimes there are second chances.The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works
By Thomas Nashe. 2006
Written in the late sixteenth century, at the pinnacle of the English Renaissance, the rich and ingenious works of Thomas…
Nashe uniquely reveal the ambivant nature of the Elizabethan era. Mingling the devout and the bawdy, scholarship and slang, they express throughout an irrepressible, inexhaustible wit and an astonishing command of language. This collection of Nashe's finest works includes The Unfortunate Traveller, the sharp and grotesque tale of Jack Wilton, an Englishman travelling through Europe; Pierce Penniless, a biting satire on the society of his age; Terrors of the Night; Lenten Stuff; the sensual poem The Choice of Valentines; and extracts from Christ's Tears over Jerusalem and other works. Wide-ranging in subject, all capture the unique voice and fantastic ingenuity of one of the most entertaining Elizabethan writers - a man regarded by his contemporaries as the 'English Juvenal'.Typhoon and Other Stories
By Joseph Conrad. 2007
In these four stories, written between 1900 and 1902, Joseph Conrad bid gradual farewell to his adventurous life at sea…
and began to confront the more daunting complexities of life on land in the twentieth century. In 'Typhoon' Conrad reveals, in the steadfast courage of an undemonstrative captain and the imaginative readiness of his young first mate, the differences between instinct and intelligence in a partnership vital to human survival. 'Falk', the companion sea-story, contrasts, as Conrad once put it, 'common sentimentalism with the frank standpoint of a more or less primitive man', a man with a conscience, however, about the girl he desires. In one of the 'land-stories' Conrad explores the utter isolation of an East European emigrant in England; in the other, the plight of a woman ironically trapped by the unwitting alliance of two retired widowers - each blind in his own way.*The inspiration behind Netflix's The Haunting of Bly Manor*Discover Henry James's most famous and terrifying story in an edition which…
also includes a unique selection of his best loved ghost stories. A young governess is sent to a great country house to care for two orphaned children. To begin with Flora and Miles seem to be model pupils but gradually the governess starts to suspect that something is very wrong with them. As she sets out to uncover the corrupt secrets of the house she becomes more and more convinced that something evil is watching her.'A most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale' Oscar WildeThe Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories
By Henry James. 2017
An unsettling new collection of Henry James's best short stories exploring ghosts and the uncanny'There had been a moment when…
I believed I recognised, faint and far, the cry of a child; there had been another when I found myself just consciously starting as at the passage, before my door, of a light footstep''I see ghosts everywhere', wrote Henry James, who retained a fascination with the supernatural and sensational throughout his writing career. This new collection brings together eight of James's tales exploring the uncanny, including his infamous ghost story, 'The Turn of the Screw', a work saturated with evil, in which a fraught governess becomes convinced that malicious spirits are menacing the children in her care. The other masterly works here include 'The Jolly Corner', 'Owen Wingrave' and further tales of visitations, premonitions, madness, grief and family secrets, where the living are just as mysterious and unknowable as the dead. With an introduction and notes by Susie BoytGeneral Editor Philip HorneThe Treasure Chest
By Johann Hebel, John Hibberd. 1994
Travels with a Writing Brush: Classical Japanese Travel Writing from the Manyoshu to Basho
By Meredith McKinney. 2019
A rich, exquisite and original anthology that illuminates Japanese travel writing over a thousand years'Oh journey upon journey, my life…
is a brief moment, and I cannot hope that we will meet again'Roaming over mountains and along perilous shores, this anthology illuminates over a thousand years of Japanese travel writing. It takes in songs, diaries, tales and poetry, and ranges from famous works including The Pillow Book and the works of Basho to pieces such as the diary of a young girl who longs to return to the capital and her beloved books, or the writings of travelling monks who sleep on pillows of grass. Together they illuminate a long literary tradition, with intense poetic experience at its heart. Translated and edited with an introduction by Meredith McKinneyGrandmother's Tale and Selected Stories
By R. K. Narayan. 1994
"It is not too much to compare Mr. Narayan to Chekhov." -The New York TimesThere is no better introduction to…
R.K. Narayan than this remarkable collection of stories celebrating work that spans five decades. Characters include a storyteller whose magical source of tales dries up, a love-stricken husband who is told by astrologers he must sleep with a prostitute to save his dying wife, a pampered child who discovers that his beloved uncle may be an impostor or even a murderer. Standing supreme amid this rich assortment of stories is the title novella. Told by the narrator's grandmother, the tale recounts the adventures of her mother, married at seven and then abandoned, who crosses the subcontinent to extract her husband from the hands of his new wife. Her courage is immense and her will implacable -- but once her mission is completed, her independence vanishes. Gentle irony, wryly drawn characters, and themes at once Indian and universal mark these humane stories, which firmly establish Narayan as one of the world's preeminant storytellers.Adverbs: A Novel
By Daniel Handler. 2006
Hello.I am Daniel Handler, the author of this book. Did you know that authors often write the summaries that appear…
on their book's dust jacket? You might want to think about that the next time you read something like, "A dazzling page-turner, this novel shows an internationally acclaimed storyteller at the height of his astonishing powers."Adverbs is a novel about love -- a bunch of different people, in and out of different kinds of love. At the start of the novel, Andrea is in love with David -- or maybe it's Joe -- who instead falls in love with Peter in a taxi. At the end of the novel, it's Joe who's in the taxi, falling in love with Andrea, although it might not be Andrea, or in any case it might not be the same Andrea, as Andrea is a very common name. So is Allison, who is married to Adrian in the middle of the novel, although in the middle of the ocean she considers a fling with Keith and also with Steve, whom she meets in an automobile, unless it's not the same Allison who meets the Snow Queen in a casino, or the same Steve who meets Eddie in the middle of the forest. . . . It might sound confusing, but that's love, and as the author -- me -- says, "It is not the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done." This novel is about people trying to find love in the ways it is done before the volcano erupts and the miracle ends. Yes, there's a volcano in the novel. In my opinion a volcano automatically makes a story more interesting.