The imagination in David Biespiel's Shatterin Air is as luminous as the hear is generous.--Stanley Plumly

Robert Rosenthal was a “Renaissance man,” a person who excelled at a diverse number of activities and interests: architect, designer of medical office buildings, sculptor, film-maker, scuba diver, surfer, swimmer, world traveler, history buff, classical music aficionado, chef, gardener, businessman, fisherman, ardent reader of books, yoga enthusiast, family-man extraordinaire, and a writer of essays, political diatribes, and short stories. He would often wake up in the middle of the night and eagerly jot down a story idea. This book is a compilation of many of those stories, intended to be a legacy for his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Among other qualities such as insatiable optimism, Bob will be remembered by family and friends for his unending generosity. Bob departed this world too soon at the age of 91 in 2023. He had many projects underway that he had hoped to complete.

In 2006, 22-year-old James Goldberg moved to Utah, dreaming of possibilities for Mormon artistic community. Though the ride was often rough, he spent the next five years feeling his way forward, finding a voice to speak the language of the tradition in his own distinct register. The twelve essays and short stories in Remember the Revolution chronicle those experiments, giving voice to the idealism, anxiety, and insight of a young Mormon writer. Whether imagining the experience of a Mormon Bollywood playback singer, giving the German Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin a seat in primary, telling the story of the early Restoration through an imagined sequence of Joseph Smith's anxious dreams, or writing an inverted theology in the form of spam emails, Goldberg grapples with ways Mormon thought can engage with the cultures around it and speak to the pressing questions simmering beneath the surface of the modern world. At turns sincere, satirical, surreal, and somber, Remember the Revolution is vital reading for anyone interested in the potential of a distinctly Mormon literature.

A moving work of fiction from one of the most important writers of postwar Austrian and German literature. Born in 1921 to a Jewish mother, Ilse Aichinger (1921-2016) survived World War II in Vienna, while her twin sister Helga escaped with one of the last Kindertransporte to England in 1938. Many of their relatives were deported and murdered. Those losses make themselves felt throughout Aichinger's writing, which since her first and only novel, The Greater Hope , in 1948, has highlighted displacement, estrangement, and a sharp skepticism toward language. By 1976, when she published Bad Words in German, her writing had become powerfully poetic, dense, and experimental. This volume presents the whole of the original Bad Words in English for the first time, along with a selection of Aichinger's other short stories of the period; together, they demonstrate her courageous effort to create and deploy a language unmarred by misleading certainties, preconceived rules, or implicit ideologies.

"[A] hilariously satirical debut novel. Miller, Lawrence, and Genet stop by like proud ancestors... But it's a more recent generation of mischievous deviant writers (Nicholson Baker, Mary Gaitskill) that truly looms large — Erotomania's closest predecessor might be Baker's The Fermata. [An] ambitious book... [A] biting satire." —Zach Baron, Village Voice "Sex is familiar, but it's perennial, and Levy makes it fresh." —Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times Book Review "Levy seems to have an eye for detail for all that is absurd, commonly human, and uniquely American." —Beth Harrington, Bookslut "It's a great book, written with flawless verve by a tremendous fictioneer and thinker, and it deserves glory. A classic." —Andre Codrescu, Exquisite Corpse "[Erotomania] can just as easily be a bookend to the beautifully nuanced prose of Milan Kundera as it can be a long-version story for a nudie mag minus the accompanying photographs. It's all in the context — as it is with most relationships." —Quarterly Conversation "Erotomania wields a comedic punch that makes it, above all, a fun novel to read." —Nerve.com Erotomania is an absurdist portrait of a modern-day romance. It follows James and Monica from their early days as couple that is forced to move into a nuclear fall-out bunker so their explosive sex life doesn’t physically harm their neighbors, down the long journey to marriage counseling. Francis Levy’s short stories, criticism, humor, and poetry have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Village Voice, and The Quarterly.

This lively second collection from a young, much-travelled writer, falls into two parts. ‘Transit’ includes poems of abroad, especially Japan, where Tobias Hill lived for two years. ‘Back to the City’ is about London, from hangover to Underground; Hiroshima; and the `City of Clocks’, a fusion of cities and ages. They are poems crammed with a young man’s curiosity and eye for detail, and show his great ability for story-telling. Tobias Hill lives in London, and besides writing (his short stories and novels are published by Faber) he reviews and edits several new magazines. “Hill’s special territory, in poetry and prose, is the ‘urban-pastoral’ … his native North London is transformed, with many deftly dark touches, into an uneasy realm of the imagination. Hill clearly appreciated Simon Armitage’s storytelling persona; he also drew upon observation of the natural world in ways associated with Ted Hughes. Much of his imagery is by turns delicately ‘Japanese’, or reminiscent of the heyday of Craig Raine’s ‘Martian’ style. Hill has a romantic dimension in his work that is all his own. As a young man with an intense curiosity about the world, his work is full of sensual images, vignettes of city life – and romance … these are poems of flirtation and desire.”—contemporarywriters.co.uk“The closeup detail taken directly from nature, then skewed through 90° to give the reader something completely new, even unique … with this third collection, Hill promises to be a real force in poetry, displaying an utterly contemporary understanding of how nature continues to work.”—Poetry Review“There is a fin de siècle decadence about them … not least in their brightly coloured diction, their luxuriant descriptiveness, their louche postures.”—Poetry Wales“Superb conjurations of place.”—Adam Mars Jones“Compassionate and intelligent … so full of action and interest and that brings alive such an array of people and places, that it is difficult to believe they sprang from the pen of one writer.”—Rachel Cusk

Robert Menasse, who was born into a Jewish family in Vienna in 1954, speaks with the voice of the generation known as Nachgeborene ("those born after"). Although fortunate to have escaped the persecution and exile his parents endured, Menasse's stories constantly refract the suffering of the past through the ironic distance of a feeling observer. His critically humorous voice uncovers surprising truths about himself and the past. As the author of over twenty books, which include critical essays on contemporary cultural topics as well as novels and short stories, Menasse's fame as a major figure in contemporary Austrian literature is firmly established. He has received many prestigious literary prizes and divides his time between Vienna and Amsterdam.

VISIONS by Richard A. Lupoff is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories selected from decades of writing. The author consistently shows himself to be a master storyteller, and these short stories are fine examples, containing psychic detective tales, stories of Lovecraftian horror, and other fantasy and horror tales.

Product Description Welcome to Mark Leyner’s America, where you can order gallium arsenide sushi at a roadside diner, get loaded on a cocktail of growth hormones and anabolic steroids, and support your habit by appearing on TV game shows. Welcome to a wildly post-Einsteinian fictional universe where the locals include a speech pathologist with a waterbug fetish, a kamikaze airline pilot, and the lead singer for Brazil’s most notoriously nihilistic samba band. From Publishers Weekly These 17 loosely linked short stories are intelligent, funny and incredibly bizarre. Though not all are science fiction, each displays a supercharged cyberpunk writing style jam-packed with elements of tabloid journalism, bits of advertising slogans, references to kung fu films, literary allusions, television trivia, deadpan non sequiturs, puns and poetry. The fiercely imaginative Leyner ( I Smell Esther Williams ) announces: "Dad was in the basement centrifuging mouse spleen hybridoma, when I informed him that I'd enrolled at the Wilford Military Academy of Beauty." He also discusses the difficulty of finding a haberdashery near the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard and speculates on a televised encounter between Tennessee's youngest member of the House of Representatives and 17th-century metaphysician Baruch Spinoza. Squads of displaced, armed and dangerous combatants inhabit a young boy's bedroom in the marvelous "In the Kingdom of Boredom, I Wear the Royal Sweatpants." It's an exuberant, adventurous and audacious collection. Some of the pieces were originally published in Esquire, Harper's and Fiction International , among other magazines. Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review "I really, really liked it. It's like nothing else. I laughed out loud in the bathroom." -- David Byrne Welcome to Mark Leyner's America, where you can order gallium arsenide sushi at a roadside diner, get loaded on a cocktail of growth hormones and steroids, and support your habit by appearing on TV game shows. Welcome to a wildly post-Einsteinian fictional universe where the locals include a speech pathologist with a waterbug fetish, a kamikaze airline pilot, and the lead singer for Brazil's most notoriously nihilistic samba band. My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist is fiction the brain can dance to, by one of the funniest and most subversive young writers of this or any other decade. "Most current fiction is as well made and exciting as floral wallpaper; but here is a writer willing to decorate the room with the contents of his own dynamited head." -- Entertainment Weekly "Reading this is like fishing in some hallucinated lake of the subconscious. No telling what term, idea, or thing you'll pull up next." -- Houston Post From the Back Cover This book is fiction the brain can dance to, by one of the funniest and most subversive young writers of this or any other decade. About the Author Mark Leyner is the author of two novels, Et Tu, Babe and The Tetherballs of Bougainville; two collections of stories , I Smell Esther Williams and Other Stories and My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist; and a collection of fiction, plays, and journalism, Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, The New Republic, George, and Harper’s.

The fact that there are nine other counties named Hamilton in these United States besides the one in Iowa where MacKinlay Kantor was born simply provides a frame for this many-dimensioned, nostalgic portrait of an American way of life which some think is rapidly disappearing. Tim Kantor's photographs from all ten counties provide stunning evidence that certain truths, worth preserving, are still to be found. Ranging as far northeast as the Adirondacks, as far west as the Texas plains, as far south as Florida, and into six neighboring mid-western states, the Hamilton counties form a cross section of the America MacKinlay Kantor knows well. They provide scenes and subjects which call upon his richest veins of memory and imagination. A sweeping mid-western landscape, for example, recalls the voices of pioneers which even the trail of a jet stream in the sky does not diminish. An old lady sitting alone on her porch brings to mind the mysterious Miss Hattie and her antic poltergeist; sturdy farm scenes inspire a moving story of a man's love for his land. Eight new short stories of American life by the prize-winning novelist, sketches, anecdotes, reportage, historical summation and more than one hundred eloquent photographs move together through these pages to make Mamilton County a beautiful and unique book.

"This first collection of 14 short stories set in Mexico and the Southwest takes the reader to a place where miracles flower in neglected courtyards, and where Alcalá's characters access the magic inherent in the landscape and in themselves. If you like the magic-realism novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or of Isabelle Allende or Jane Bowles, you need to read this stunning short-story collection."-- Provided by Publisher.

With the intelligent, surreal humour we might expect from a member of THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN, NEVER TRUST A RABBIT breathes new life into the drama of the ordinary urban thirty-something, in a series of modern morality tales about enchantment in everyday life' THE TIMES Unsettling premonitions, fortune-telling cashpoints and disappearing mazes all converge in Jeremy Dyson's first book - a collection of short stories that established him as a formidable storyteller on original publication. Reissued in Abacus with a new introduction by the author, NEVER TRUST A RABBIT has already become a cult favourite.

Mountains of the Mind - A Polack Retrospective contains never before published early work from Dr Polack, prizewinning published pieces and brand new short stories written especially for this book. It will surprise and delight fans of her previous 6 novels and non fiction publications, and introduce new readers to the complexities and subtleties of Dr Polack's short stories. Traversing the mountains and valleys, and following the twists and turns in time and place you will return again and again to the stories in this book. The paths to the top of these mountains are many, and the views from there are spectacular.

Humanity has been manipulated by shadowy, inhuman beings throughout history. Secret wars have been waged to settle vampires' disputes. Cultures have been created to advance mages' visions of Ascension. Enemies of the Earth have been defeated by werewolves as they prepare for their Apocalypse. This is the World of Darkness, a place where one's fears may become reality. Dark Destiny features short stories by Robert Bloch, Rick Hautala, Nancy A. Collins, Robert Weinberg and others.

I want my ears back! What's next, my nose? When you call someone and they put you "on hold," they are in control of you. Maybe it's because I was raised in "the land of the free" that this irks everything irkable in me. Would you allow a clerk in a store to grab you by the ears as soon as you walked in and hold you in place until they were ready to talk to you? While they talked to someone else? At the very least, that might be temporary involuntary imprisonment, or some kind of mild kidnapping. I think you could almost go to jail for that. Why then, do we allow, indeed, make it legal, on the phone? As angry as I got, I couldn't continue yelling at innocent furniture while I was "on hold." I'm sure it's bad for me, and it can't be good for my furniture. In an effort to turn my aggravating conundrum into something possibly positive, I conducted, and funded with loose change, an independent experimental stress- release study. When I was put "on hold," I would write. Whatever came to mind. Just let my head roam range-free. Short stories that I might come back to, quick thoughts, poems, blurps, ideas, frustrations -- whatever popped into my head was in-bounds. My phone and my computer would become my laboratory. My pants would remain my pants. Therefore, this book is a diary, if you will, of my time spent "on hold" during Phase One of my amateur mental-health experiment, designed to turn frustrating hostility into an unfettered, rumpled voice. A little taste of ON HOLD: It was 892 and everyone was playing "Smack The Lout" invented by Dylan Puddler. "Tag, Your It" was his. So was "Ring Around The Rosey." His unsuccessful efforts include "Lick the Oaf and Make Him Cry," Hide The Fish" and "No, You Kiss It."

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ Tennessee's Partner; Issue 3 Of Western Classics Bret Harte null P. Elder and Company, 1907 Games; Gambling; General; California; Feature films; Fiction / Short Stories; Film adaptations; Friendship; Gambling; Games / Gambling / General; Man-woman relationships; Performing Arts / Film & Video / General; Western films

CONTENTS: ~ ~ NOVELETTES: Roofs of Silver [Gordon R. Dickson]; Senhor Zumbeira's Leg [Felix Marti-Ibañez]; SHORT STORIES: The Notary and the Conspiracy [Henri Damonti]; Ad Infinitum [Sasha Gilien]; Behind the Stumps [Russell Kirk]; The Depths [Jim Harmon]; ARTICLES: On Binary Digits and Human Habits [Frederik Pohl]; One, Ten, Buckle My Shoe [Isaac Asimov]

A collection of fourteen short science fiction stories.

Cult figure Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire is back with his first major short story collection. Includes all his major Sesqua Valley stories as well as "Songs of Sesqua Valley," the complete sonnet cycle.

Product Description Marcus Brennan is a successful small-town lawyer on the verge of a breakdown. His wife, Schelle, thinks it’s post-traumatic stress disorder from his years as a POW in Vietnam. Planning the dedication of a memorial for Vietnam soldiers, she asks Marcus to say a few words at the ceremony, hoping the experience will help to exorcise his demons. But after agreeing to defend Estella Pritchett, a social worker accused of murdering her lover, Marcus begins a downward spiral into the murky depths of his own past–where sex is violent, where love means betrayal, and where his own memories have the power to destroy him. . . . From Publishers Weekly The author of Harry and Catherine and Absent Friends , among other distinguished literary works, Busch has reached a new level of achievement with this taut and gripping novel. Former Marine Phantom pilot Mark Brennan is a small-town attorney in upstate New York. He has a devoted wife who was active as an anti-war demonstrator, a high-school-age son who seems to be on the edge of big trouble, a daughter in New York who may have made a fatal romantic liaison, and his own demons--memories of Vietnam. Code-named Goblin, Brennan was shot down and captured by the Viet Cong. After several soul-crushing months enduring diabolical torture, he managed a bloody escape. Uncomfortable with his local-hero status and his wife's determination to perpetuate it, Brennan has an uneasy and distant relationship with his family; he lives inside his head most of the time, trying to suppress almost hallucinatory flashbacks to his desolate childhood and his later torments as a POW. But when he takes a pro bono murder case, defending a woman accused of killing her lover during rough sex, the past starts to intrude. Layer upon layer of lies and unbearable truths are peeled away as the trial progresses and Brennan succumbs to his own despair. In his disturbing, thrilling, imaginative exploration of some of the darkest sides of human experience, Busch has deftly transmuted rage and anguish into an extraordinary novel, one that packs a visceral wallop. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Mark Brennan was a Marine pilot who became a prisoner of the Vietcong. Now a lawyer in upstate New York, he confronts a failing marriage, a troubled son, and a dangerously seductive client on trial for murdering her lover in a motel bed. Both attorney and client suffer a dark legacy of past violence, and in both cases post-traumatic stress disorder leads to further destruction. As first-person narrator, Brennan observes that "the best defense is a good story," and his carefully wrought closing argument becomes a moving apology for his own life. Although the subplot involving Brennan's daughter (whom we encounter only via long-distance telephone) is not entirely convincing, the central narrative remains powerful. Busch's two previous works are Harry and Catherine (LJ 3/1/90) and Absent Friends (LJ 4/1/89), a collection of short stories. - Al bert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technologi cal Univ., Cookeville Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews ``The best defense is a good story,'' Vietnam vet/lawyer hero Mark Brennan obsessively tells himself. The disintegration of Brennan's own ``story'' through his involvement with a sex killing makes a painfully focused one for Busch (Harry and Catherine, 1990, etc.). Brennan's client, tiny Estella Pritchett, is accused of strangling almost-divorced radio-station owner Larry Ziegler during a bout of rough sex. Brennan plans to defend Estella by arguing that Ziegler's abusive behavior caused her to flash back to her abused childhood and strike out to defend herself. But he knows that Estella wasn't really defending herself: she'd already tied Ziegler to the bed at the Stone's Throw Motel--the same bed she's begun to use for her increasingly dangerous liaisons with Brennan. Drawn as he is to Estella, Brennan--already