In this sensational collection of supernatural short stories, Sophie Hannah takes the comforting scenes of everyday life and imbues them with a frisson of fear, then a gust of terror. Why is a young woman so unnerved by the presence of a visitors book in her boyfriend’s inner-city home? And whose spidery handwriting is it that fills the pages? Who is the strangely courteous boy still lingering at a child’s tenth birthday party when all the parents have gathered their children and left? And why does the presence of a perfectly ordinary woman in a post office line leave another customer sweating with fear? Read on to find out—but beware . . .

The struggle to write with deep emotion is the subject of this extraordinary book, the previously unpublished credo of one of America's greatest 20th-century writers. "You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich," writes Nelson Algren in his only longer work of nonfiction, adding: "A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery." Nonconformity is about 20th-century America: "Never on the earth of man has he lived so tidily as here amidst such psychological disorder." And it is about the trouble writers ask for when they try to describe America: "Our myths are so many, our vision so dim, our self-deception so deep and our smugness so gross that scarcely any way now remains of reporting the American Century except from behind the billboards . . . [where there] are still . . . defeats in which everything is lost [and] victories that fall close enough to the heart to afford living hope." In Nonconformity, Algren identifies the essential nature of the writer's relation to society, drawing examples from Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Twain, and Fitzgerald, as well as utility infielder Leo Durocher and legendary barkeep Martin Dooley. He shares his deepest beliefs about the state of literature and its role in society, along the way painting a chilling portrait of the early 1950s, Joe McCarthy's heyday, when many American writers were blacklisted and ruined for saying similar things to what Algren is saying here.

XYXX is a limited-edition anthology of erotic short fiction by acclaimed short story writer, Jonathan Papernick. The five stories in this collection are shot through with lust, adultery, desire, sex and all of the struggles and complications of eros in the modern world. Author Steve almond once wrote, "Papernick writes with tremendous passion about the downside of love, sex..." Papernick brings that passion to the page with the stories "We Were One," "What Is It Then, Between Us?" "In Flagrante Delicto," "The Cinq a Sept Girl," and the deeply personal lament, "Saudade." This collection features artwork by Aubrey Beardsley, Egon Scheile, and Max Ernst.

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

From the pulitzer prize-winning American novelist, Edna Ferber. Who was heralded as the greatest female author of the 1920s and 1930s and among the best-read authors of her nation.

"A collection of twenty five short stories about the children of Holocaust survivors and the conflicts between homosexuality and traditional Judaism"--Provided by publisher.

“The ideal science-fiction short story should amaze as well as delight,” says Robert Silverberg in the Introduction to his latest volume of short stories. And indeed that is just what America’s master of imaginative fiction does in this collection of stories written between 1980 and 1982 for such magazines as Omni, Playboy, Twilight Zone, Beyond, Penthouse, and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. In sixteen brilliantly executed works of the imagination, Robert Silverberg makes fantasy as real and accessible as the mundane world of mortals. With boldly inventive plots, he creates characters as moving as those of any superlative fiction writer. From time travelers who sightsee at history’s debacles, to research chimps who imitate their keepers to the point of inventing religion, complete with the sacrifice of their peers, let Robert Silverberg lead you into his gripping, stirring universe.

A one-man think-tank for the New Left, Paul Goodman wrote over thirty books, most of them before his decade of fame as a social critic in the Sixties. A Paul Goodman Reader that does him justice must be a compendious volume, with excerpts not only from best-sellers like Growing Up Absurd, but also from his landmark books on education, community planning, anarchism, psychotherapy, language theory, and poetics. Samples as well from The Empire City, a comic novel reviewers compared to Don Quixote, prize-winning short stories, and scores of poems that led America's most respected poetry reviewer, Hayden Carruth, to exclaim, "Not one dull page. It's almost unbelievable." Goodman called himself as an old-fashioned man of letters, which meant that all these various disciplines and occasions added up to a single abiding concern for the human plight in perilous times, and for human promise and achieved grandeur, love and hope.

Isaiah Spiegel was an inmate of the Lodz Ghetto from its inception in 1940 until its liquidation in 1944. While there, he wrote short stories depicting Jewish life in the ghetto and managed to hide them before he was deported to Auschwitz. After being freed, he returned to Lodz to retrieve and publish his stories. The stories examine the relationship between inmates and their families, their friends, their Christian former neighbors, the German soldiers, and, ultimately, the world of hopelessness and desperation that surrounded them. In using his creative powers to transform the suffering and death of his people into stories that preserve their memory, Spiegel succeeds in affirming the humanity and dignity the Germans were so intent on destroying. Originally published as Malchut geto (Malkhes geto) in Yiddish.

A rediscovered gem from the Roaring Twenties, "Cutie: A Warm Mamma" offers a biting satire of social reformers and urban life in Chicago. Co-authored by Ben Hecht and Maxwell Bodenheim, this collection of short stories delivers sharp social commentary through humorous and literary fiction. Exploring themes of city life and societal change, the book provides a unique snapshot of the era. Readers will find insightful, and often droll, observations on human nature and the complexities of social interaction. "Cutie: A Warm Mamma" remains a relevant and engaging exploration of the tensions between idealism and reality, rendered with a distinctive voice from a pivotal moment in American history. Its enduring appeal lies in its ability to provoke thought and laughter, making it a timeless reflection on society and its discontents. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Although known primarily as a poet, Howard Nemerov has distinguished himself as a critic, short story writer, novelist, and poet. With nearly four dozen poems including two that have not yet been collected, eight stories, fourteen essays, and one complete novel, A Howard Nemerov Reader represents the career of one of America's most distinguished men of letters.

From the Publisher: New Directions has long published poet William Carlos Williams' entire body of short fiction as The Farmers' Daughters (1961). This new edition of The Collected Stories of William Carlos Williams contains all fifty-two stories combining the early collections The Knife of the Times (1932), Life Along the Possaic (1938) with the later collection Make Light of It (1950) and the great long story, "The Farmers' Daughters" (1956). When these stories first appeared, their vitality and immediacy shocked many readers, as did the blunt, idiosyncratic speech of Williams' immigrant and working-class characters. But the passage of time has silenced the detractors, and what shines in the best of these stories is the unflinching honesty and deep humanity of Williams' portraits, burnished by the seeming artlessness which only the greatest masters command.

Featuring an international constellation of notable authors, this anthology explores and celebrates childhood with tales touching on abuse and rejection, loneliness and love, the joys of friendship and discovery, and the first confused inklings of adolescent love. Participants in the project include acclaimed and award-winning authors such as David Almond, Margaret Atwood, Andre Brink, Melvin Burgess, Junot Diaz, Nadine Gordimer, Eva Hoffman, Alberto Manguel, Meg Rosoff, Nicholas Shakespeare, Ali Smith and Richard Zimler. Some of the 26 stories are new, while others are difficult to find in print-yet each offers a moving, disturbing, surprising, or mysterious glimpse into the fragile and precious lives of children around the world.

Eight short stories, each featuring a child hero, present the dilemma of anti-Semitism through the ages. Each tale confronts Jewish identity in a different historical period. Each chapter is followed by modern commentary from Albert Vorspan.

'Stories of Happy People' is a collection of ten short fictions that maps the range of contentment, from inner joy to the edges of despair

A collection of stories finds its main characters in unlikely places and situations, from an affluent Jewish American who returns to Germany to a homosexual restauranteur who gets the chance to cook another meal for his first lover

"With Death and So Forth, esteemed writer and editor Gordon Lish returns with a new book of scintillating short fiction. With his trademark precision, wit, and wiliness, Lish writes outside the margins and around the edges of the death, loss, and the fractiousness and fragmentation of language"--Provided by publisher.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice All the characters in Evgenia Citkowitz's first collection of short fiction are connected by the quest for identity—some are poised at crossroads, while others teeter on the edge of a moral precipice. In "Leavers' Events," a teenage girl awaits exam results and has a sexual encounter with a teacher that she hopes will define her. In "Sunday's Child," a middle-aged actress evicts a homeless woman from her garden, precipitating a crisis of conscience. And in the title novella, "Ether," a blocked writer plagiarizes his own life with devastating consequences. Unexpected and startlingly original, Citkowitz depicts her characters with a mordant humor and tenderness that never diminishes their complexity.

A collection of Algren’s lost and unfinished writings, including his last novel and several stories considered to be among his masterpieces, with a new introduction by Algren's biographer Colin Asher. "You should not read [Algren] if you can’t take a punch. Mr. Algren can hit with both hands and move around and he will kill you if you are not awfully careful." —Ernest Hemingway Nelson Algren sought humanity in the urban wilderness of postwar America, where his powerful voice rose from behind the billboards and down tin-can alleys, from among the marginalized and ignored, the outcasts and scapegoats, the punks and junkies, the sex workers and down-on-their luck gamblers, the punch-drunk boxers and skid-row drunkies and kids who knew they'd never reach the age of twenty-one. Algren admired them all for their vitality and no-bullshit forthrightness, their insistence on living, their self-awareness, and their ability to find a laugh and a dream in the unlikeliest places. Entrapment and Other Writings contains his unfinished last novel, previously unpublished or uncollected stories and poems, and reportage. Algren speaks to our time as few of his American contemporaries of the 1940s and ’50s do, in part because he was always the outsider.