Esther Friesner offers a collection of 12 of her best pieces of short fiction including brand new story, "Ilion", as well as two Nebula award-winning stories. Contents: All Vows (1992) True Believer (1997) "White!" Said Fred (1993) A Birthday (1995) A Pig's Tale (1995) Love, Crystal and Stone (1999) In the Realm of Dragons (1998) Jesus at the Bat (1994) Chanoyu (1999) Ilion (2002) How to Make Unicorn Pie (1999) Death and the Librarian (1994)

"I have long admired the things Dick Lupoff can do in the way of atmosphere and characterization in any sort of story-dark or light."-ROGER ZELAZNY "His books and stories, I can testify, having read a great many of them and published some myself, almost unfailingly display not only his intelligence and perceptivity, but also the grace and charm of his wit, the skill of his narrative technique, and the exemplary individuality of his ideas."-ROBERT SILVERBERG DREAMS marks the long-awaited completion of Richard A. Lupoff's epic trio of collections, following TERRORS and VISIONS. The stories range from Lovecraftian horror to Holmesian detection, from hard science fiction to whimsy, from semi-autobiographical recreations of past decades to images of the distant future, culminating in the stunning mini-trilogy of "Dreemz.biz," "Wyshes.com," and "Heaven.god." Whatever the genre or mood, these stories never cease to startle, delight, amaze, and-occasionally-terrify!

"Tales in a Minor Key" is a collection of short stories, about twentieth century Central European Jews coping with the trials and aftereffects of the two world wars and of the twin evils of fascism and communism. The narrator of "Dachau Idyll," a Romanian Jew, and her physician husband Gabriel, settle in Dachau after the war and try to pass as Catholics there. Before long, to sustain this lie, they go as far as pretending that Gabriel had served in Africa under Rommel. Living in constant fear of being exposed seriously affects the narrator's own sense of identity. In "Feeding the Piranhas," on the pier of Lisbon harbor, after the fall of Berlin, two Romanian Jews who had managed to weather the war in neutral Portugal, buy passage to Brazil for Nazis fleeing Europe. The payment is made in suitcases stuffed with German stocks, which after a thorough laundering in a Zurich bank, establish the two Jews as millionaires, while also leading to severe unintended consequences. The narrator in "The Treasure Hunters' Burdens" returns to his native Romania after the fall of communism to search for the ring and the manuscript of a nineteenth century ancestor. In this search he is helped by his childhood friends and has to confront some of the agents of the deposed communist regime. In the process, connections between his friends and the communist authorities get revealed and the question of just what qualifies as honorable behavior in a totalitarian society assumes a central role. In "A Stabbing Pain" a physician in Romania is called to attend to a patient who claims to be on the run from the communist secret police, but who may himself be a member of that very police force, sent to entrap the doctor. The physician faces the choice of denouncing his patient to the authorities, or of remaining silent. If however the patient is a police agent, not reporting him, the doctor would be signing his own and his young wife's arrest warrants. These sad stories deal with deep moral issues, and at the same time are infused with a powerful sense of humor.

Product description INCLUDES 23 STORIES WRITTEN BETWEEN 1954 AND 1984. HIGHLY AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL, THE STORIES ARE ALL ABOUT A MAN IN VARIOUS STAGES OF LIFE FROM BOYHOOD TO TH E RCAF IN WORLD WAR 2, RAISING A FAMILY OF DAUGHTERS IN ENGLAND, TO BECOMING A SUCCESSFUL WRITER. THE CHRONOLOGICAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE STORIES IS SUCH THAT THEY READ LIKE A NOVEL. From Publishers Weekly The son of Polish Jews who emigrated to Canada, Levine grew up in Ottawa, joined the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II and thereafter lived in England for 31 years, where he wrote, married and raised a family. A good number of the 23 stories in this exceptional collection were written between 1958 and 1978 and are clearly autobiographical, centering on a Canadian writer living in England who relives his youth through trips back to Canada and visits from Canadian relatives. The narrator of Levine's stories recalls his past effortlesslyfamily relationships, lost loves, old friendships. And with pleasure the reader participates in these journeys, sharing Levine's experiences of fulfillment, disappointment and nostalgia. One doesn't easily leave Levine's tales behind, for as the narrator of the title story says in the volume's concluding line: "I would carry that sound with me long after I left." NovemberCopyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The characters in these stories are not prone to philosophical musings, inchoate longings, or gender identity issues.Whether they be a tomb-painter in ancient Egypt or an astronaut returned from a long voyage, a waiter in a Three-Star restaurant or a soldier in the trenches of World War I, they each know exactly what they want, and they are hell-bent to get it. In their struggles they display the same vanity, perfidy, mendacity and saintly aspirations found somewhere among all peoples, in all cultures and in all ages.

The book you hold in your hands is a ticket to the exotic shores of British Hidalgo, a tiny Central American land of jungles and coral reefs, wonderful people and strange customs, strong rum and sunny skies. Collected here for the first time, Avram Davidson's six Jack Limekiller stories create a rich and colorful world where the magical and inexplicable coexist with the outboard motor and the escalation of the American war in Vietnam. British Hidalgo is "a place that you can put your arms around," welcoming and friendly to the visitor, but uncanny beings dwell in the bush and roam along its coast. Afloat and ashore, Jack Limekiller, master of the working sailboat Saccharissa, encounters ghosts of the colonial past and monsters far older. The tropical paradise where Avram Davidson lived and wrote in the 1960s no longer exists in our world, but, as Lucius Shepard writes in his introduction, "That place and time resides here in this little book, complete with dialects, recipes, shanties, magic, duppies, pirates, drunkards, tapirs, manatees, pretty girls, a hero or two, and, of course, ghosts. Open its covers and a mist will boil forth, swirling, many-colored, to surround you -- a mist rife with a myriad distinct voices, bursts of idiosyncratic speech, fragments of all-but-forgotten lore, a strange druggy perfume compounded of the smells of shandygaff, jacaranda, brine, palm oil, gasoline fumes, creosote, orange groves..." Book jacket.

In this unforgettable book, Arthur Waley brings together a number of his articles, poems and translations. Included in this collection are pieces on the eighth-century Chinese poet Ts'�n Sh�n and the great Chinese prose writer, Han Y�, as well as some of Waley's original poems and stories. But the most compelling is 'The Secret History of the Mongols', consisting of long extracts from a thirteenth-century Chinese saga. Written in vivid, elegant prose, it recounts fantastic tales of epic battles; of betrayal and love; of tyrants and prisoners. Suffused with symbolism and folklore, it is a masterpiece of storytelling which will appeal to the scholar and the ordinary reader alike.

Hayim Greenberg was more than just a leader of the American Labor Zionist movement. He was a "Zionist theoretician, socialist thinker, writer on ethical and philosophical problems, and political spokesman" who influenced widely spread circles within the Jewish and non-Jewish world. "He was a paradoxical, ambivalent figure ... many-faceted, sensitive.... He had that rare combination of poetry and lucidity which makes a great essayist and a great teacher." In this collection some of his best essays offer his thoughts on religion and ethics, Jews and Zionism, socialism and communism, and the broader aspects of life in general. Penetrating, lucid, profound, they were written originally in different languages, some in English, which was the last of many languages Hayim Greenberg mastered. The depth and range of these essays makes this collection a significant contribution to the discussion of the Jewish condition as part of the human condition.

Armchair fiction presents extra large editions of the best in classic science fiction novels and short stories. Here's a top-of-the-line novel by one of sci-fi's most heralded authors, Robert Silverberg. Against the night sky, the nearly completed World's Fair Satellite gleamed like a shiny new penny. You could see it even with low-powered field glasses as it moved in its stately orbit around the Earth: a giant copper-hued globe, the biggest space satellite ever constructed. The Fair's opening day?October 12, 1992?was only some six weeks away. And in very much less time than that, Bill Hastings was going to be up there to begin his year in space. From every loudspeaker in Denver Spaceport came the booming message: ?Attention, passengers for Flight 100 Special Transit to the World's Fair. Boarding has now begun? Don't miss this tremendous sequel to ?Regan's Planet.'

In the 80s, writer/wiseman Richard A. Lupoff came out with two volumes of what was to be a series: the WHAT IF? books. Each volume took a half-dozen or so years from the 60s and 70s and discussed, with Richard's 20-20 hindsight, the state of SFdom during those years. To illustrate his many points, he provided us with brilliant short stories by the best writers of the period in question, stories that DIDN'T win the Hugo that year, but maybe should have. As we know, because of politics and other often irrelevant things, the best works don't always end up winning. That's the sort of thing that is discussed in Richard's text for each year. The first two volumes were published in the 80s to great acclaim but due to some politics (or something) the third volume was never published, even though it was finalized. Fast forward to 2013 when Richard A. Lupoff, the major domo of Surinam Turtle Press, can ignore petty politics and pretty much publish what he damn well pleases. And it pleases him immensely to see WHAT IF? #3 finally see the light of day. These are the stories and authors featured in this volume. Read it and salivate. 1966 - Light of Other Days - Bob Shaw 1967 - The Star-Pit - Samuel R. Delany 1968 - The Barbarian - Joanna Russ 1969 - Sundance - Robert Silverberg 1970 - The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories - Gene Wolfe 1971 - Vaster Than Empires and More Slow - Ursula K. Le Guin 1972 - Painwise - James Tiptree, Jr. 1973 - My Brother Leopold - Edgar Pangborn

A collection of interrelated short stories centering on the author's Egyptian family and ancestors exiled from Castile.

Gathers poems and short stories by contemporary American writers

We're living a national ideology that's invisible to us because we're inside it." "We're living a national ideology that's invisible to us because we're inside it." At the outset of his career E. L. Doctorow told Paul Levine, "History written by historians is clearly insufficient." Doctorow's novels carry out that conviction by imagining the great moments of American history--the Old West, the gilded age, the Depression, the cold war--as backdrops for tales of excruciating moral pain and injustice in America. In Conversations with E. L. Doctorow Christopher D. Morris has gathered over twenty of the most revelatory interviews with the acclaimed author of Ragtime, World's Fair, Billy Bathgate, The Book of Daniel, and other novels, plays, and short stories. Whatever the setting or time period, Doctorow's characters spark an unparalleled urgency in the novelist's recreations of history. In his work the American dream and the values his characters try to live by turn to madness and ashes. Within this collection Doctorow explores the themes of his work not only in the contexts of national and literary history but also in terms of disturbing trends in contemporary American culture. Talking about style, Doctorow discusses his experiments with shifting points of view and unreliable narrators as part of the modernist heritage to which readers have become accustomed. But he stresses that these techniques are always subordinate to the telling of a good story and the creation of memorable characters. "My portrait of J. P. Morgan in Ragtime is truer to the man's soul and the substance of his life than his authorized biography," he says. Doctorow's critical and popular success comes from the creation and re-creation of such great characters and the telling of captivating stories in which the writer serves as an independent witness to both the ideals and the corruptions that have driven our history. Christopher D. Morris has been the Charles A. Dana Professor of English at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont, since 1996. He is also the author of Models of Misrepresentation: On the Fiction of E. L. Doctorow and regularly publishes in journals like The Ohio Review, Critique, and Film Criticism.

A septuagenarian contract killer, a chronic hypochondriac, two zombie-creating comedians, a good Samaritan and a man called Barnaby whose holiday takes an unexpected turn. In these sleek and witty tales, described by Loaded as 'an excellent collection of dark, funny and bizarre short stories', Alexei Sayle's characters are vividly, wryly - and occasionally disturbingly - portrayed. Their voices, and the stories they have to tell will remain in the mind for a long, long time.

In June, 2006, Picador launch "Picador Shots", a new series of pocket-sized books priced at GBP1. The "Shots" aim to promote the short story as well as the work of some Picador's greatest authors. They will be contemporarily packaged but ultimately disposable books that are the ideal literary alternative to a magazine. Matthew Kneale's "Powder" is to be one of the first "Picador Shots".One of the stories from his recent collection, "Small Crimes In An Age of Abundance", "Powder" is an effecting, darkly funny story about Peter, a middle of the road, solicitor, who lives in a suburban street in London. His kids are leaving home and he is finding it hard to keep up with the neighbours and his colleagues at work, until, one day on his local common he discovers a large bag with a mobile phone and hundreds of plastic bags full of cocaine inside. What Peter decides to do with this bag, a decision he makes in a split second, will change his life for ever. In "Powder" Matthew Kneale has vividly captured the life on an ordinary person as he struggles to survive and do the 'right thing', and, in the end, managing neither.

Five short stories which describe what it was like to grow up in Jerusalem in the first half of the twentieth century.

Outrageous Behavior.

Albert the mouse finds the perfect clubhouse for his playroom--a human shoe--but first he must measure it and avoid Groucho the cat.