1119 results for "Short Stories"

The Ascent of Eli Israel and Other Stories

Jon Papernick,Jonathan Papernick
A profoundly unsettling collection of tales of Americans caught up in the ethnic, religious, social, economic, and political conflicts of modern day Israel, by an astonishing new voice. In a land where sudden death is an everyday fact of life, a boy dodges bullets and searches through rubble for news of his soldier father. An aging rabbi?s faith is tested by a crippling, seemingly supernatural affliction. A middle-aged man comforts his Holocaust-survivor mother as she faces senility, convinced that Nazis are conspiring against her. And the mysterious biblical red heifer makes a startling appearance in the midst of a decidedly contemporary struggle. In these unsettling tales, the remarkable Jon Papernick transports us to modern-day Israel, a country torn by war, strife, and controversy throughout the history of its statehood. Giving voice to striking characters--Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans; Arabs, Christians, and Jews--caught in the ethnic, religious, social, and political conflicts of a dangerous region, Papernick brings the images we glimpse from afar, in newspapers and on television, chillingly to life. By turns starkly realistic and allegorically fantastic, these tales chronicle the conflict from the inside and illuminate the suffering and anger experienced by those on all sides. In?An Unwelcome Guest,? a young Jewish settler from New York plays a deadly game of backgammon with a ghostly old Arab while his pregnant wife sleeps unaware. In?The King of the King of Falafel,? a restaurant rivalry ends in apocalyptic violence. In "Lucky Eighteen," two young Americans living in Jerusalem as the Oslo accords collapse juggle political activism and a devastating love triangle--under the dark specter of suicide bombings. And in the brilliant, horrifying title story, a lonely shepherd wanders a broken no-man's-land, carrying with him the burden of an unspeakable act. In these haunting and strangely beautiful stories, the tragic carnage of the Middle East is rendered in unforgettable form. Suffused with rage, violence, humor, magic, and religion, this gripping collection leaves a profound impact. Evenhanded yet passionate, shocking yet hopeful, The Ascent of Eli Israelheralds the arrival of a masterful storyteller. Please visit.
Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 2011-05 208 pages

Rough Beasts Seventeen Stories Written Before I Got Up To Speed

Harlan Ellison
This anthology assembles seventeen never-before-collected pulp stories from the 1950s. Includes-for the first time since its original publication in the April 1957 issue of SUPER-SCIENCE FICTION-"Invulnerable," which STEPHEN KING described as "...one of my favorite stories..." when it nearly appeared in Ellison's 1982 collection, STALKING THE NIGHTMARE. It's taken 30 years, but "Invulnerable" is finally available again. Every story has been revised by the author specifically for this collection. Stories include: "Invulnerable" (1957), "Like Father, Like Son" (1957), "Walk the Ceiling" (1957), "The Kissing Dead" (1956, written with Henry Slesar), "Across the Silent Days" (1958), "Star Route" (1955), "Backlash " (1956), "Machine Silent, Machine Yearning" (1957), "Way of an Assassin" (1958), "Fool's Mate" (1958), "The Untouchable Adolescents" (1956), "The Little Boy Who Loves Cats" (1954), "Parasite" (1955), "Up the Down Escalator" (1955), "Glug" (1958), "Hit-Skip" (1957), and "Why Did Wallace Crack?" (1956).
Edgeworks Abbey 2013-11-13 202 pages

Lives of the Poets Six Stories and a Novella

E. L. Doctorow
A son is set the task of concealing his father's death; a drowned child is callously handled by rescuers; a lonely schoolteacher is shot by a hunter; a boy witnesses his mother's act of infidelity; a car explosion kills a foreign schoolgirl; and the middle-aged author of these tales depicts his own consciousness. In a perceptive work about a writer of stories, acclaimed author E.L. Doctorow opens to the reader the creative imagination of a writer.
Plume 1997 145 pages

Shooting Script and Other Mysteries

William Link,Richard Levinson
Connoisseurs of fictional murder and intrigue will rejoice in Shooting Script and Other Mysteries by William Link and Richard Levinson. Spanning the years 1954 to 1966, this collection shows the young writers exploring terrain that would later make them world famous as co-creators of a certain raincoat-clad LAPD detective and a mystery novelist from Cabot Cove, Maine. These compelling stories range from a small town in Colorado to a military base in Germany; from the hot, flat roads of Nevada to the steel-and-glass canyons of New York City. Never before collected in one volume, they share a common denominator: suspense of the most delicious variety. Shooting Script is edited by Edgar Award-winning playwright Joseph Goodrich and features a foreword by Tom Straw, author of the New York Times best-selling Richard Castle novels.
Crippen & Landru Publishers 2021-10-08 194 pages

Geometries of Belonging

R. B. Lemberg
Nebula and Locus award finalist Lemberg returns us to the Birdverse with this powerful collection of poems and stories. "In the Birdverse, a magic loosely based in geometry is a source of craftsmanship, art, protection and healing. Multiple cultures and countries engage in trade relationships and political alliances. Cultures make use of magic according to their own traditions and rules, and worship the deity Bird, in whichever feathered from Bird takes. And within these countries and cultures, individuals hurt and are hurt, heal and are healed." - Bookslut
Fairwood Press LLC 2022-11-29 268 pages

Tesseracts (Tesseracts (Paperback))

Merril, Judith
Product Description Each year Tesseract Books chooses a team of editors from among the best of Canada’s writers, publishers and critics to select innovative and futuristic fiction and poetry from the leaders and emerging voices in Canadian speculative fiction. This is the anthology that started it all! Featuring fiction by Élisabeth Vonarburg and Hugo and Nebula award winning authors Spider Robinson, and William Gibson. Review "The reader who ventures into Tesseracts territory is assured of meeting some of our most able and gifted writers in surroundings that are at once wholly strange, and wholly familiar." - The Globe and Mail -"This anthology merits inclusion in any comprehensive collection, and it rewards the curiosity of the casual reader as well." - Locus Magazine - From the Author Hi, I'm Rhea Rose, one of the author's in this collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories. My story is called "Chronos' Christmas" and you can find that science fiction story here. If you google you can find the story available on other sites,too. My story was nominated for the Aurora Award (Canadian award) the year this collection was published, but I lost to Judith Merril who was also nominated and won for this collection. I was happy to see her get it! After all she did select my story for this, the first book in the Tesseracts legacy. Over the years my stories have appeared in many other of the Tesseracts collections. I'm hoping I can get Amazon to post the cover copy here, as they have for this one. About the Author The late Judith Merril is considered one of the most prolific authors and editors in the field of Science Fiction. Born in New York in 1923, she founded the Futurians, a group of SF writers and editors. Her first SF story, ‘That Only a Mother,’ was published in 1948. Judith edited numerous SF anthologies including Dell’s Year’s Best SF from 1956-1967, and was the ‘Books’ columnist for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1965-69.
EDGE Science Fiction & Fantasy 2002-11-27 292 pages

Again, Honorable Whoredom at a Penny a Word

Harlan Ellison
You will not find "'Repent, Harlequin ' Said the Ticktockman" in this book. Nor will you find "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream," "A Boy and His Dog," or "The Deathbird," or any of Harlan Ellison's myriad masterpieces. What will you find herein? The front cover might give you a nasty clue: stories of crime and amorality, of sex and violence. What the cover might not have conveyed was that the award-winning tales enumerated above were forged in an imagination stoked for the preceding decade by the need to trade tales to the pulps and slick men's magazine to make the rent ($7 a week). You hold in your hands the work of a writer painfully crawling forward, tale by tale, honing his craft in an industry where every word counted...of course, you knew all that; you got it from the title. AGAIN, HONORABLE WHOREDOM AT A PENNY A WORD kicks off with "Typewriters & Pipe Lighters," a collection of anecdotes from Ellison recalling the writing of these stories, which span his first full year as a professional writer (1956) to 1968, when he still dashed off the occasional thriller while making his name with the iconic fantasies listed above. A further essay-"Naked Deranged Psycho Thrill-Demon Or, Bitch-Slut Gun-Crazy Homicidal Rat" (1996)-discusses pulp editor W.W. Scott's propensity for re-titling Ellison's works for publication in such publications as Guilty and Trapped. Most of the stories are straight-forward thrillers never-before collected in an Ellison anthology: "Her Name Was Death" (1957), "Thirty Miles to Death Junction" (1957), "The Teaser with a Knife" (1967), "Don't Mind the Maid" (1957), "The Girl in the Red Room" (1964), "Hunchback" (1957), "Goodbye, Eadie" (1956), "The Clean Break" (1956), "Boss of the Big House"(1957), "Drive a Girl to Kill" (1957), "Hell's Holocaust" (1957), "Willie Just Won't Kick Off" (1968), "Mad Dog " (written with Henry Slesar, 1957), "The Women in the House" (1957), "Taxi Dancer"(1967). "The Music of Our Affair"(1963) features the author experimenting with style, to cacophonous effect. "Find One Cuckaboo" (1960) is a never-before reprinted novelette originally included in the paperback anthology THE SAINT MYSTERY LIBRARY, No. 11. "Clobber Me, Moogoo " (1956) and "McManus's Mental Mistress" (1968) exhibit a fantasy-tinged approach to stories of sex. "Only Death Can Stop It" (1960) compelled Harlan to add a disclaimer to the table of the contents. "The Final Push" (1957) is one of the author's three Westerns. While "Saddle Tramp" (collected in HONORABLE WHOREDOM AT A PENNY A WORD) was more tramp than saddle, this story has more in common with "The End of the Time of Leinard" in its evocation of a genre Ellison adores. "Night on the Mug Beat" is a never-before published cop story, appearing herein for the first time. The main body of the collection closes with "The Steep Road to the Gutter" (1965), an overlooked masterpiece of early Ellisonia that the editor is overjoyed to expose to a wider audience. But wait, there's more In preparing AGAIN, HONORABLE WHOREDOM AT A PENNY A WORD for publication, the editor stumbled across a file headed A WOMAN NAMED MIDNIGHT. After confirming that "A Girl Named Poison" (found in the author's 2013 collection PULLING A TRAIN) hadn't changed her name upon reaching maturity, the editor brought the forty-page typescript for an unfinished novel-credited to "Ellis Daye" on the first page, and written while Ellison lived in the treehouse on Bushrod Lane-to its author. Harlan read the story but had no recollection of writing it, nor why it had never been completed and published, but nevertheless gave his blessing for it to make its debut herein.
Edgeworks Abbey 2014-09-29 256 pages

Goings In Thirteen Sittings

Gordon Lish
Widely acknowledged as one of the most influential editors of our era, Gordon Lish has quite simply changed the face of American literature. The stunning list of writers with whom he has worked closely includes Harold Brodkey, Sam Lipsyte, Ben Marcus, Anne Carson, Cynthia Ozick, Raymond Carver, Will Eno, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel and many more. But it is in his own writing that his genius is made manifest. There, his quick wit and black humor are on full display, as well as a merciless intellect that skewers no one so thoroughly as, and more often than, a narrator most often known as "Gordon." In the stories in Goings, Lish wrestles with memory; self-knowledge (the lack and the impossibility thereof); friendship; mothers, sons and lovers. More than that, the language here is a collective paradigm of Lishian prose: a great writer's attempt to leap off the page.
OR 2013 139 pages

Private Lies

Warren Adler
Warren Adler is the acclaimed author of 25 novels, published in 30 languages. Two of his books, "The War of the Roses" and "Random Hearts" were made into major motion pictures. He lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and New York City. Ken and Sheila Kramer have a comfortable life and loving marriage. But when Ken is introduced to Carol, the wife of his wife's major client, we discover that she is Ken's old flame, the love of his life and the object of his sexual obsession as a young man. Carol has totally reinvented herself and married a rich husband who has no knowledge of her early life. While unbeknownst to Ken, his wife is carrying on a steamy affair with her client, Carol's husband. When love and sexual obsession again bursts into flames between Ken and Carol, the plot of this masterful black comedy thickens as both couples embark on an African Safari with startling and tragic results. The author of The War of the Roses surpasses himself with this powerful novel of love and betrayal, sexual passion and emotional obsession. It is storytelling at its dramatic best and once again shows Warren Adler's indisputable mastery of contemporary marital relationships. "A masterpiece of gallows humor." .New York Daily News "Warren Adler does for infidelity and betrayal what his The War of the Roses did for incompatibility and greed. He has with delicious tension, carved out the state of matrimony as his exclusive theater of war." .Fred Mustard Stewart, author of The Glitter and the Gold "Adler at his steamy, schemey best if you enjoyed the nice nastiness of The War of the Roses, this is right up your dastardly alley. .Palm Springs Desert Sun
Stonehouse Press 2001-03-01 348 pages