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“I LOVE this book, as a reader, and I always enjoy teaching it. In the midst of current conversations and…
conflicts (Black Lives Matter and the responses to it, for example), its importance as a truly ‘American’ novel only grows.” —Anita Guynn, University of North Carolina at Pembroke This Norton Critical Edition includes: The American first edition text, plus the reinstated “raft passage” from Life on the Mississippi (1883), complete with all original illustrations by Edward Windsor Kemble and, for the raft passage, John Harley. Editorial matter by Thomas Cooley. A rich selection of contextual and source documents centered on the novel’s historical background, language, composition, and reception, four of them new to the Fourth Edition. Seventeen carefully chosen critical assessments of Mark Twain’s greatest work, ten of them new to the Fourth Edition. A chronology and a selected bibliography. About the Series Read by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format—annotated text, contexts, and criticism—helps students to better understand, analyze, and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need. “The materials and notations were excellent and useful. They often lead the students to further inquiry. It is a valuable text.” —Michael W. Carter, University of Kentucky “I have generally found the editorial annotations excellent. Overall I still find this the best critical edition of Huck Finn for my students.” —Shelly Jarenski, University of Michigan–DearbornThe Best American Essays 2019 (The Best American Series)
By Rebecca Solnit, Robert Atwan. 2019
A collection of the year&’s best essays selected by Robert Atwan and guest editor Rebecca Solnit. &“Essays are restless literature,…
trying to find out how things fit together, how we can think about two things at once, how the personal and the public can inform each other, how two overtly dissimilar things share a secret kinship,&” contends Rebecca Solnit in her introduction. From lost languages and extinct species to life-affirming cosmologies and literary myths that offer cold comfort, the personal and the public collide in The Best American Essays 2019. This searching, necessary collection grapples with what has preoccupied us in the past year—sexual politics, race, violence, invasive technologies—and yet, in reading for the book, Solnit also found &“how discovery can be a deep pleasure.&” The Best American Essays 2019 includes Michelle Alexander, Jabari Asim, Alexander Chee, Masha Gessen, Jean Guerrero, Elizabeth Kolbert, Terese Marie Mailhot, Jia Tolentino, and others.The Best American Short Stories 2013 (The Best American Series)
By Elizabeth Strout. 2013
&“As our vision becomes more global, our storytelling is stretching in many ways. Stories increasingly change point of view, switch…
location, and sometimes pack as much material as a short novel might,&” writes guest editor Elizabeth Strout. &“It&’s the variety of voices that most indicates the increasing confluence of cultures involved in making us who we are.&” The Best American Short Stories 2013 presents an impressive diversity of writers who dexterously lead us into their corners of the world. In &“Miss Lora,&” Junot Díaz masterfully puts us in the mind of a teenage boy who throws aside his better sense and pursues an intimate affair with a high school teacher. Sheila Kohler tackles innocence and abuse as a child wanders away from her mother, in thrall to a stranger she believes is the &“Magic Man.&” Kirstin Valdez Quade&’s &“Nemecia&” depicts the after-effects of a secret, violent family trauma. Joan Wickersham&’s &“The Tunnel&” is a tragic love story about a mother&’s declining health and her daughter&’s helplessness as she struggles to balance her responsibility to her mother and her own desires. New author Callan Wink&’s &“Breatharians&” unsettles the reader as a farm boy shoulders a grim chore in the wake of his parents&’ estrangement.&“Elizabeth Strout was a wonderful reader, an author who knows well that the sound of one&’s writing is just as important as and indivisible from the content,&” writes series editor Heidi Pitlor. &“Here are twenty compellingly told, powerfully felt stories about urgent matters with profound consequences.&”The Best American Short Stories 2014 (The Best American Series)
By Heidi Pitlor. 2014
“The literary ‘Oscars’ features twenty outstanding examples of the best of the best in American short stories.” — Shelf Awareness…
for ReadersThe Best American Short Stories 2014 will be selected by national best-selling author Jennifer Egan, who won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction for A Visit from the Goon Squad, heralded by Time magazine as “a new classic of American fiction.” Egan “possesses a satirist’s eye and a romance novelist’s heart” (New York Times Book Review).The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014 (The Best American Series)
By Daniel Handler. 2014
“Lively, eclectic and surprising.” — Minneapolis Star TribuneDaniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, author of the enormously popular young adult series A Series of…
Unfortunate Events, takes over as editor for this volume. He will work with the students of 826 Valencia and 826 Michigan writing labs to compile new fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics, and other category-defying gems, ensuring that “if you need to fall in love with reading again — or just want a reminder that high school students deserve a lot more than their reading lists give them — then this is the book for you” (Bust).The Best American Essays 2021 (The Best American Series)
By Robert Atwan. 2021
A collection of the year&’s best essays, selected by award-winning journalist and New Yorker staff writer Kathryn Schulz&“The world is abundant…
even in bad times,&” guest editor Kathryn Schulz writes in her introduction, &“it is lush with interestingness, and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness.&” The essays Schulz selected are a powerful time capsule of 2020, showcasing that even if our lives as we knew them stopped, the beauty to be found in them flourished. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one in the early days of the pandemic, to a masterful portrait of grieving the loss of a husband as the country grieved the loss of George Floyd, this collection brilliantly shapes the grief, hardship, and hope of a singular year.The Best American Essays 2021 includes ELIZABETH ALEXANDER • HILTON ALS • GABRIELLE HAMILTON • RUCHIR JOSHI • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD• CLAIRE MESSUD • WESLEY MORRIS • BETH NGUYEN • JESMYN WARD and othersThe Best American Essays 2020 (The Best American Series)
By André Aciman, Robert Atwan. 2020
A collection of the year&’s best essays selected by André Aciman, author of the worldwide bestseller Call Me by Your Name. &“An…
essay is the child of uncertainty,&” André Aciman contends in his introduction to The Best American Essays 2020. &“The struggle to write what one hopes is entirely true, and the long incubation every piece of writing requires of a writer who is thinking difficult thoughts, are what ultimately give the writing its depth, its magnitude, its grace.&” The essays Aciman selected center on people facing moments of deep uncertainty, searching for a greater truth. From a Black father&’s confrontation of his son&’s illness, to a divorcée&’s transcendent experience with strangers, to a bartender grieving the tragic loss of a friend, these stories are a master class not just in essay writing but in empathy, artfully imbuing moments of hardship with understanding and that elusive grace. The Best American 2020 Essays includes RABIH ALAMEDDINE • BARBARA EHRENREICH • LESLIE JAMISON JAMAICA KINCAID • ALEX MARZANO-LESNEVICH • A. O. SCOTT • JERALD WALKER • STEPHANIE POWELL WATTS and othersThe Best American Mystery Stories 2018 (The Best American Series)
By Otto Penzler, Louise Penny. 2018
#1 New York Times best-selling author of the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novels, Louise Penny brings her &“nerve and skill—as…
well as heart&” (Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post) to selecting the best short mystery and crime fiction of the year. Writing short stories takes &“Skill. Discipline. Knowledge of the form while not being formulaic,&” contends Louise Penny in her introduction. &“In a short story there is nowhere to hide. Each must be original, fresh, inspired.&” Originality is just what&’s in store for readers of the twenty clever, creative selections in The Best American Mystery Stories 2018. There&’s no hiding from a Nigerian confidence game, a drug made of dinosaur bones, a bombing at an oil company, a reluctant gunfighter in the Old West, and the many other scams, dangers, and thrills lurking in its suspenseful pages. The Best American Mystery Stories 2018 includes T. C. Boyle, James Lee Burke, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Charlaine Harris, Andrew Klavan, Martin Limón, Joyce Carol Oates, and others.Sexy Little Numbers: Best Women's Erotica from Black Lace 1
By Various. 2009
Sexy Little Numbers is the best erotica stories written by women writers from around the world. A choice cut of…
all new and original fiction and the latest addition to Black Lace's immensely popular series of erotica collections. These stories are fun, irreverent and deliciously decadent. Sexy Little Numbers combines humour and attitude with wildly imaginative stories.21 stories from the established and new names in female sexual fantasy, including Kristina Lloyd, Portia Da Costa, Janine Ashbless, Carrie Williams, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Madelynne Ellis, Justine Elyot and Charlotte Stein.Still Wild: Short Fiction of the American West, 1950 to the Present
By Larry McMurtry. 2000
Larry McMurtry, the preeminent chronicler of the American West, celebrates the best of contemporary Western short fiction, introducing a stellar…
collection of twenty stories that represent, in various ways, the coming-of-age of the legendary American frontier.Featuring a veritable Who's Who of the century's most distinctive writers, this collection effectively departs from the standard superstars of the Western genre. McMurtry has chosen a refreshing range of work that, when taken as a whole, depicts the evolution and maturation of Western writing over several decades. The featured tales are not so concerned with the American West of history and geography as they are with the American West of the imagination—one that is alternately comic, gritty, individual, searing, and complex. Including authors such as Jack Kerouac, Wallace Stegner, Raymond Carver, Annie Proulx, and Diana Ossana, this collection captures the real Western canon like no other.Lone Star Law: A Lone Star Saga (Texas Rangers Ser.)
By Louis L'Amour, Elmer Kelton. 2005
A thrilling collection of twelve powerful and action-packed stories that celebrate the legendary Texas Rangers from Louis L&’Amour, the world&’s…
greatest Western storyteller, Rod Miller, and many more. Explore the proud heritage of the elite Texas Rangers in these exhilarating, white-knuckled stories. From historical tales of outlaws and rustlers to modern thrillers of tracking serial killers with the latest technology, Lone Star Law is an outstanding collection of stories about delivering justice the Texan way.The Best American Mystery Stories 2015 (The Best American Series)
By James Patterson. 2015
This anthology of 20 short stories features some of today&’s best mystery authors—from Lee Child to Jeffrey Deaver and Joyce…
Carol Oates.For the 2015 edition of The Best American Mystery Stories, guest editor James Patterson presents twenty tales with all the tension, drama, and visceral emotion of Oscar-worthy cinema. These stories features characters who must make desperate choices: an imaginative bank-robbing couple, a vengeful high school shooter, a lovesick heiress who will do anything for her man, and many others. In one standout entry, Michael Connelly and Dennis Lehane team up to send legendary detective Harry Bosch after a child abductor. The Best American Mystery Stories, 2015 includes Tomiko M. Breland, Brendan DuBois, Janette Turner Hospital, Theresa E. Lehr, Doug Allyn, Andrew Bourelle, Joseph D&’Agnese, Scott Grand, John M. Floyd, Steven Heighton, Richard Lange, Theresa E. Lehr, Lee Martin, and others.&“These edgy tales strike hard and fast but Leave vivid memories behind.&”—KirkusHurricanes in Perfect Power: Tales of Modern Motherhood
By Various. 2009
A stunning new collection of short stories about motherhood, selected and introduced by Candice Brathwaite.______________'To describe my mother would be…
to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colours of a rainbow' MAYA ANGELOUThe story of motherhood is an endlessly rich one: it's one of love - and all the highs and lows that come with that world-turning emotion - and, in the purest sense, of life itself. Within these pages, some of the finest writers in the world explore motherhood in wildly varying modes, from single parenthood to sisters coparenting, from the deepest hardships to the biggest celebrations.Selected and introduced by Candice Brathwaite, author of I Am Not Your Baby Mother.Stories by Lydia Davis, Anita Desai, Mary Gaitskill, Tessa Hadley, Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Morrison, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Irenosen Okojie, Casey Plett, Tabitha Siklos, Helen Simpson, Ali SmithTable for One: Stories (Weatherhead Books on Asia)
By Ko-Eun Yun. 2024
An office worker who has no one to eat lunch with enrolls in a course that builds confidence about eating…
alone. A man with a pathological fear of bedbugs offers up his body to save his building from infestation. A time capsule in Seoul is dug up hundreds of years before it was intended to be unearthed. A vending machine repairman finds himself trapped in a shrinking motel during a never-ending snowstorm.In these and other indelible short stories, contemporary South Korean author Yun Ko-eun conjures up slightly off-kilter worlds tucked away in the corners of everyday life. Her fiction is bursting with images that toe the line between realism and the fantastic. Throughout Table for One, comedy and an element of the surreal are interwoven with the hopelessness and loneliness that pervades the protagonists’ decidedly mundane lives. Yun’s stories focus on solitary city dwellers, and her eccentric, often dreamlike humor highlights their sense of isolation. Mixing quirky and melancholy commentary on densely packed urban life, she calls attention to the toll of rapid industrialization and the displacement of traditional culture. Acquainting the English-speaking audience with one of South Korea’s breakout young writers, Table for One presents a parade of misfortunes that speak to all readers in their unconventional universality.Three British Mystery Novels
By Thomas Brown, David Stuart Davies, Nikki Dudley. 2018
Three authors, three mysteries. Lynnwood, by Thomas Brown, was a finalist in the People’s Book PrizeThe unthinkable is happening in…
Lynnwood ‒ a village with centuries of guilt on its conscience.Who wouldn’t want to live in an idyllic village in the English countryside like Lynnwood? With its charming pub, old dairy, friendly vicar, gurgling brooks, and old paths with memories of simpler times.A Taste for Blood, by David Stuart DaviesTwo plots running parallel... you won’t see what’s comingTwo laser-sharp detectives, two thought-provoking cases and two skilful plots.Featuring private investigator Johnny (One Eye) Hawke, and his one-time colleague in the police force Detective David Llewellyn. Llewellyn is investigating the chilling crimes of a top psychiatrist and his scheming patient who the doctor believes has knuckled under his authority. Hawke is on the case of a mysterious suicide in Edgware Road... soon discovered as not your average suicide.The guts and insight of the two investigators bring both cases to a head ‒ though you won’t even begin to see how until you have turned the last pages.Ellipsis, by Nikki Dudley”Right on time,” Daniel Mansen mouths to Alice as she pushes him to his death. Haunted by these words, Alice becomes obsessed with discovering how a man she didn’t know could predict her actions. On the day of the funeral, Daniel’s cousin, Thom, finds a piece of paper in Daniel’s room detailing the exact time and place of his death.As Thom and Alice both search for answers, they become knotted together in a story of obsession, hidden truths and the gaps in everyday life that can destroy or save a person.Ellipsis is a thriller stemming from what is left unsaid, what bounces around in the mind and evaporates when trying to remember. Can there be a conclusion when no-one seems to know the truth?Reviews of the three titles are available on individual title pagesA Different Sound: Stories by Mid-Century Women Writers (Pushkin Press Classics)
By Elizabeth Bowen, Daphne Du Maurier, Elizabeth Taylor. 2023
Elegant, timeless, and riveting: an exciting anthology of short stories by mid-century women writers from Britain and Ireland—many being published…
in America for the first timeThese remarkable short stories from the 1940s and 50s depict women and men caught between the pull of personal desires and profound social change. From a remote peninsula in Cornwall to the drawing rooms of the British Raj, domestic arrangements are rewritten, social customs are revoked and new freedoms are embraced.Selected and introduced by writer and critic Lucy Scholes, Senior Editor at McNally Editions, this collection places works from renowned women writers alongside recently rediscovered voices.Contains:&“The Cut Finger&” by Frances Bellerby &“Summer Night&” by Elizabeth Bowen &“The Birds&” by Daphne du Maurier &“The Land Girl&” by Diana Gardner&“Listen to the Magnolias&” by Stella Gibbons&“Shocking Weather, Isn&”t It?&” by Inez Holden&“The First Party&” by Attia Hosain&“Three Miles Up&” by Elizabeth Jane Howard &“The Skylight&” by Penelope Mortimer&“The Thames Spread Out&” by Elizabeth Taylor&“Scorched Earth Policy&” by Sylvia Townsend WarnerSuffused with tension and longing, the captivating stories collected here from acclaimed as well as lesser-known women writers form a window onto a remarkable era of writing.Stories from Quarantine: 29 New Stories from the Pandemic
By The New York Times. 2020
A stunning collection ofnew fiction previously published as The Decameron Project and originally commissioned by The New York Times Magazine…
as the COVID-19 pandemic firstspread acrossthe world, from twenty-nine authors including Margaret Atwood, Tommy Orange, Edwidge Danticat, Rachel Kushner, Colm Tóibín, Charles Yu, and more.When reality is surreal, only fiction can make sense of it... In 1353, Giovanni Boccaccio wrote The Decameron: one hundred nested tales told by a group of young men and women passing the time at a villa outside Florence while waiting out the gruesome Black Death, a plague that killed more than 25 million people. Some of the stories are silly, some are bawdy, some are like fables. In March 2020, the editors of The New York Times Magazine worked to create a collection of stories written just as the pandemic first swept the globe. How might new fiction from some of today&’s finest writers help us memorialize and understand the unimaginable? And what could be learned about how this crisis will affect the art of fiction? These Stories from Quarantine by twenty-nine authors vary widely in texture and tone. The work is a historical tribute to a moment unlike any other in our lifetimes, offering perspective and solace to the reader now and in the uncertain future. With stories from: Caitlin Roper • Rivka Galchen • Victor LaValle • Mona Awad • Kamila Shamsie • Colm Tóibín • Liz Moore • Tommy Orange • Leila Slimani • Margaret Atwood • Yiyun Li • Etgar Keret • Andrew O&’Hagan • Rachel Kushner • Téa Obreht • Alejandro Zambra • Dinaw Mengestu • Karen Russell • David Mitchell • Charles Yu • Paolo Giordano • Mia Couto • Uzodinma Iweala • Rivers Solomon • Laila Lalami • Julián Fuks • Dina Nayeri • Matthew Baker • Esi Edugyan • John Wray • Edwidge DanticatThe World's Finest Mystery and Crime Stories: First Annual Collection (World's Finest Mystery & Crime Stories #1)
By Doug Allyn, Lawrence Block, Jeffery Deaver. 2000
In the tradition of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and The Year's Best Science Fiction, The World's Finest Crime…
and Mystery Stories, First Annual Edition finally fills the void for those with a hunger for the best mystery and suspense stories of the past year.Including such bestselling authors as Jeffrey Deaver, Elizabeth George, Faye Kellerman, Jonathan Kellerman, Ed McBain, Anne Perry, and Ruth Rendell, plus many, many others, this volume will positively blow the competition away. For, unlike the other various mystery anthologies, The World's Finest Crime and Mystery Stories collects stories from writers around the globe, including Britain's Silver Dagger short-fiction award winners. It will also be almost twice as big, weighing in at more than 200,000 words, and will arrive two months before the competition.This comprehensive anthology promises to be the definitive annual collection of the very best mystery and suspense stories the world over.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.The World's Finest Mystery & Crime Stories, Second Annual Collection: Second Annual Collection (World's Finest Mystery & Crime Stories #2)
By Lawrence Block, Jan Burke, Dorothy Cannell. 2001
It's not easy to collect, in a single volume, the finest mystery and suspense fiction the world has to offer,…
but The World's Finest Mystery and Crime Stories: Second Annual Collection rises to that challenge, inviting you to discover what Kirkus Reviews dubs " . . . the year's anthology of choice."In his Second Annual collection, Ed Gorman once again brings together the year's most powerful fiction by such outstanding authors as Lawrence Block, Stuart M. Kaminsky, Ed McBain, Joyce Carol Oates, Ian Rankin, and Donald E. Westlake. The volume also abounds with fresh new stories by newer authors, from U. S. publications, and also from sources on other shores, including England, Germany, and the Netherlands.Ed Gorman set benchmark for great mystery and suspense fiction with the First Annual Collection. Overflowing with award-winning authors and terrific stories, The World's Finest Mystery and Crime Stories: Second Annual Collection also promises to be a treasure for anyone who loves a mystery.More than 200,000 words of superlative mystery and suspense fiction from around the world, with stories by:Lawrence BlockJan BurkeDorothy CannellClark HowardPeter LoveseyJoyce Carol OatesNancy PickardBill PronziniIan RankinAnd many othersA Banquet of Mystery and Crime FictionFor those who love outstanding mystery and crime reading, award-winning author and editor, Ed Gorman, has once again collected the best stories of the year from around the world. Immerse yourself in stories that baffle, tantalize, and delight, by the following authors:Miguel AgustíDoug AllynNoreen AyresRobert BarnardLawrence BlockJan BurkeDorothy CannellStanley CohenMat CowardPeter CrowtherBrendan DuBoisJurgen EhlersPete HamillJoseph HansenEdward D. HochClark HowardStuart M. KaminskyRichard LaymonGillian LinscottPeter LoveseyJohn LutzChristine MatthewsEd McBainBob MendesDenise MinaJoyce Carol OatesGary PhillipsNancy PickardBill PronziniRobert J. RandisiIan RankinLes RobertsPeter RobinsonS. J. RozanKristine Kathryn RuschDonald E. WestlakeAt the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.Small Pleasures: A Novel
By Clare Chambers. 2021
In the best tradition of Tessa Hadley, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ann Patchett—an astonishing, keenly observed period piece about an ordinary…
British woman in the 1950s whose dutiful life takes a sudden turn into a pitched battle between propriety and unexpected passion."With wit and dry humor...quietly affecting in unexpected ways. Chambers' language is beautiful, achieving what only the most skilled writers can: big pleasure wrought from small details."--The New York TimesLONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION1957: Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper in the southeast suburbs of London. Clever but with limited career opportunities and on the brink of forty, Jean lives a dreary existence that includes caring for her demanding widowed mother, who rarely leaves the house. It’s a small life with little joy and no likelihood of escape.That all changes when a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth. Jean seizes onto the bizarre story and sets out to discover whether Gretchen is a miracle or a fraud. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys, including Gretchen’s gentle and thoughtful husband Howard, who mostly believes his wife, and their quirky and charming daughter Margaret, who becomes a sort of surrogate child for Jean. Gretchen, too, becomes a much-needed friend in an otherwise empty social life.Jean cannot bring herself to discard what seems like her one chance at happiness, even as the story that she is researching starts to send dark ripples across all their lives…with unimaginable consequences.Both a mystery and a love story, Small Pleasures is a literary tour-de-force in the style of The Remains of the Day, about conflict between personal fulfillment and duty; a novel that celebrates the beauty and potential for joy in all things plain and unfashionable.