31 results for "Short Stories"

Cheerful-By Request

Edna Ferber
Collection of stories Bio Edna Ferber (August 15, 1885 - April 16, 1968) was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels include the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big (1924), Show Boat (1926; made into the celebrated 1927 musical), Cimarron (1930; adapted into the 1931 film which won the Academy Award for Best Picture), Giant (1952; made into the 1956 film of the same name) and Ice Palace (1958), which also received a film adaptation in 1960. Ferber's novels generally featured strong female protagonists, along with a rich and diverse collection of supporting characters. She usually highlighted at least one strong secondary character who faced discrimination, ethnic or otherwise. Ferber's works often concerned small subsets of American culture, and sometimes took place in exotic locations she had visited but was not intimately familiar with, such as Texas or Alaska. She thus helped to highlight the diversity of American culture to those who did not have the opportunity to experience it. Some novels are set in places she had not visited. (wikipedia.org)
Bibliotech Press 2023-01-06 206 pages

Neither Man Nor Dog (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

Gerald Kersh
This collection of 37 stories by a master of the form features tales that are sometimes funny, sometimes violent, and sometimes weird and nightmarish: in short, it is quintessential Gerald Kersh. Kersh (1911-1968) published more than thirty books, including the noir classic Night and the City (1938) and Fowlers End (1957), which Anthony Burgess called "one of the great comic novels of the century," as well as hundreds of short stories which were once ubiquitous in British and American magazines. But though he has been championed by Angela Carter, Harlan Ellison, Ian Fleming, Michael Moorcock and others, Kersh has undeservedly fallen into neglect since his death. This is the first-ever reprint of Neither Man Nor Dog (1946), one of the author's scarcest volumes. Kersh's novels Fowlers End and The Great Wash and the short story collections Nightshade and Damnations , On an Odd Note , and Clock Without Hands are also available from Valancourt. "[B]rutal but highly talented ... at least one [story] is ... a little masterpiece, and all of them possess the virtue of being highly readable." - J.D. Beresford, The Guardian "[E]xplosive with violence . . . The best of them are very good. The unfailing fertility of his imagination is indeed to be wondered at . . . For entertainment of a strong kind, Mr. Kersh would be hard to beat." - Times Literary Supplement "Kersh tells a story, as such, rather better than anybody else." - Pamela Hansford Johnson, Daily Telegraph
Valancourt Books 2015-04-14 208 pages

Clock Without Hands (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

Gerald Kersh
"How easy Mr. Kersh makes it all seem! How admirably he sets the scene, the atmosphere . . . very neatly done." - The Observer "Three short, rough novels, hard-hitting, battering the emotions without compunction . . . Kersh tells a story, as such, rather better than anybody else." - Pamela Hansford Johnson, Daily Telegraph Best known for his gritty novels of London life and his weird and often horrific short fiction, in Clock Without Hands (1949) Gerald Kersh delivers three novellas, each very different but all showcasing the virtuosity of his storytelling. Clock Without Hands relates the unexpected and macabre impact of a sordid murder on the mild-mannered neighbour who witnesses the crime. In Flight to the World's End , a desperate boy flees his cruel life at an orphanage, only to discover a harsh truth about the world outside. And in Fairy Gold , a clerk plays a malicious practical joke on his impoverished co-worker, with unpredictable and startling consequences. Gerald Kersh (1911-1968) published more than thirty books, including the noir classic Night and the City (1938) and Fowlers End (1957), which Anthony Burgess called "one of the great comic novels of the century," as well as hundreds of short stories which were once ubiquitous in British and American magazines. But though he has been championed by Angela Carter, Harlan Ellison, Ian Fleming, Michael Moorcock and others, Kersh has undeservedly fallen into neglect since his death. This edition of one of his lesser-known books is the first-ever reprint and includes a new introduction by Thomas Pluck.
Valancourt Books 2015-02-10 218 pages

On an Odd Note (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

Gerald Kersh
The discovery of piles of bones seeming to belong to a previously unknown species of monster will help to unfold a macabre and grisly tale. - A lady is found dead in her bed, the apparent victim of a murder the coroner proves could not possibly have occurred. - A merman found by fishermen off the coast of Brighton in 1745 will reveal the truth behind one of the most terrible events of the 20th century. - A desperate man makes a bad bargain with a man in black; an extraordinarily horrible dummy exercises a frightful control over his terrified ventriloquist; a condemned murderer lives again through the eyes of an innocent child . . . These are the plots of just a few of the brilliant tales you will find in this volume as you enter the bizarre world of master storyteller Gerald Kersh. With a focus on Kersh's science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories, On an Odd Note (1958) contains thirteen of his best. This first-ever reprint features a new introduction by Nick Mamatas. Contains: Seed of Destruction, Frozen Beauty, Reflections in a Tablespoon, The Crewel Needle, The Sympathetic Souse, The Queen of Pig Island, Prophet Without Honor, The Beggars' Stone, The Extraordinarily Horrible Dummy, The Brighton Monster, Fantasy of a Hunted Man, The Gentleman All in Black, and The Eye. "Gerald Kersh had a wild imagination matched by a vivid, near-hallucinatory style. Many of his concepts are so original that they blur the distinction between fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and horror, but the cumulative impact of his short stories is horrific in the extreme." - Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural "Kersh tells a story, as such, rather better than anybody else." - Pamela Hansford Johnson, Daily Telegraph "Gerald Kersh has a strange, perverted sort of genius. And how he can write!" - Virginia Kirkus
Valancourt Books 2014-11-04 138 pages

Ghetto Tragedies

Israel Zangwill
Ghetto Tragedies (1899) is a collection of stories by Israel Zangwill. Raised in London by parents from Latvia and Poland, Zangwill understood the plight of the city's Jewish community firsthand. Having risen through poverty to become an educator and author, he dedicated his career to the voiceless, the oppressed, and the needy, advocating for their rights and bearing witness to their suffering in some of the most powerful novels and stories of the Victorian era. "People who have been living in a Ghetto for a couple of centuries, are not able to step outside merely because the gates are thrown down, nor to efface the brands on their souls by putting off the yellow badges. The isolation imposed from without will have come to seem the law of their being." As a Jewish immigrant who grew up in poverty in London, Israel Zangwill knows that the condition of life in the ghetto changes not just lives, but mentalities. In the fourth installment of his Ghetto series, Zangwill imagines the lives of everyday Jewish people. Zillah and Jossel, successful boot makers; Daniel Peyser, a father of seven daughters; Isaac Levinsky, the son of a pious Rabbi. These are the lives so lovingly shaped in the author's skillful hands, people whose experiences with love, loss, doubt, and faith are not so different from our own. The tales of Jewish life in Ghetto Tragedies earned Zangwill comparisons to Dickens upon publication and helped to establish him as an author with a gift for intensive character study and a passion for political themes. This edition of Israel Zangwill's Ghetto Tragedies is a classic of British literature reimagined for modern readers. Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book. With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.
West Margin Press 2021-10-12 272 pages

Ghetto Comedies

Israel Zangwill
Ghetto Comedies (1907) is a collection of stories by Israel Zangwill. Raised in London by parents from Latvia and Poland, Zangwill understood the plight of the city's Jewish community firsthand. Having risen through poverty to become an educator and author, he dedicated his career to the voiceless, the oppressed, and the needy, advocating for their rights and bearing witness to their suffering in some of the most powerful novels and stories of the Victorian era. "People who have been living in a Ghetto for a couple of centuries, are not able to step outside merely because the gates are thrown down, nor to efface the brands on their souls by putting off the yellow badges. The isolation imposed from without will have come to seem the law of their being." As a Jewish immigrant who grew up in poverty in London, Israel Zangwill knows that the condition of life in the ghetto changes not just lives, but mentalities. In the fifth and final installment of his Ghetto series, Zangwill imagines the lives of everyday Jewish people. A German painter searches for a Jewish model for his painting of Jesus Christ; Solomon Cohen, or S. Cohn, rises to prominence as a Town Councillor in Sudminster while suppressing his Jewish heritage; Bloomah Beckenstein, a young Jewish girl, is blamed for spreading smallpox at her school in London. These are the lives that take shape in the author's skillful hands, people whose experiences with love, loss, doubt, and faith are not so different from our own. The tales of Jewish life in Ghetto Comedies earned Zangwill comparisons to Dickens upon publication and helped to establish him as an author with a gift for intensive character study and a passion for political themes. This edition of Israel Zangwill's Ghetto Comedies is a classic of British literature reimagined for modern readers. Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book. With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.
West Margin Press 2021-10-12 266 pages

Dawn Ginsbergh's Revenge

Perelman, S.J.
Before he became one of America’s most celebrated humorists, S.J. Perelman unleashed his razor-sharp wit in Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge, a dazzling debut filled with linguistic acrobatics, absurdist storytelling, and sheer comic genius. Overflowing with rapid-fire puns, genre-bending satire, and wordplay that bends the English language to his will, Perelman’s first collection of sketches captures the youthful energy and anarchic spirit that would later influence the Marx Brothers. Whether lampooning pulp fiction, skewering popular culture, or crafting surreal scenarios where no paragraph ends where you expect, this book is a wild ride through the mind of a master humorist in the making. For fans of clever comedy, literary playfulness, and vintage satire, Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge is a rare and delightful glimpse into the early brilliance of a writer who redefined American humor.
Independently published 2025-05-26 159 pages