A well-formatted easy to read edition.On arriving at a rural monastery, the monk Ambrosius meets a young girl, Benedicta. She is shunned by the local community for being the daughter of the local hangman, but Ambrosius is drawn into a dangerous sympathy with her, and in defiance of the community and his superiors, he starts spending time alone with her. But when her virtue is corrupted by an impetuous young man, the stage is set for a battle between heart, mind, body, spirit, the sins of the past, and redemption. Allegedly a rewriting from a lost German original, Ambrose Bierce's 1892 novel reads as a seamless, almost folktale-like masterpiece.

The five short novellas which comprise this anthology were written between 1890 and World War I. All share a common setting-the Eastern European Jewish town or shtetl, and all deal in different ways with a single topic-the Jewish confrontation with modernity. The authors of these novellas are among the greatest masters of Yiddish prose. In their work, today's reader will discover a literary tradition of considerable scope, energy, and variety and will come face to face with an exceptionally memorable cast of characters and with a human community now irrevocably lost.In her general introduction, Professor Wisse traces the development of modern Yiddish literature in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and describes the many shifts that took place between the Yiddish writers and the world about which they wrote. She also furnishes a brief introduction for each novella, giving the historical and biographical background and offering a critical interpretation of the work.

After being asked to investigate the charges against a white nationalist accused of treason and murder, Joe King Oliver, with help from bodyguard and mercenary Oliya Ruez, embarks on a winding quest to expose the truth.

'A page-turner full of historical intelligence, wit and heart' DAN JONES Sir Tony Robinson - actor, presenter, historical expert and star of Blackadder and Time Team - makes his adult fiction debut with this earthy, entertaining and gloriously witty recreation of the Anglo-Saxons, Alfred the Great, and the making of England. 'Brings the Anglo-Saxon world riotously to life' S.J PARRIS 'A thrilling tale of ambition, betrayal and power' ALICE LOXTON 'Entirely brilliant, a story and world vividly evoked' KATE WILLIAMS 'Every bit and wise, witty and entertaining as you would expect from one of our greatest storytellers' MARK BILLINGHAM ______ Rome Father Asser is waiting to die. His idealism has landed him in a papal prison on trumped-up charges of heresy, until salvation arrives in an unexpected form. Cardinal Balotelli also dreams of a better world, free from the ravages of the Norlanders. He has a vital job for Asser, one that could shape the future of Europe. Wessex King Aethelwolf's power is fading, but none of his feckless children are fit to rule. His eldest sons would rather fight each other than the blood-thirsty Norland invaders. His daughter, Swift, is clever and cunning, but often blinded by her ambition. Finally there's Alfred, his once-promising younger son, whom nobody has seen in years. Then Wolf meets a young priest with a proposition from Rome that could change everything. Lindisfarne Rhiannon is a slave with a profound hatred for her Saxon captors. When she meets Guthrum, a Norlander hell-bent on wiping Wessex from the map, they set out on a journey of destruction. So begins an epic struggle between greed and idealism, ambition and betrayal, freedom and tyranny. Because change always meets with resistance and, on the path to power, nobody can be trusted.

Returning to his hometown to find that all has changed, Nathan Zuckerman - incontinent and impotent - comes back to New York, the city he left eleven years before. Walking the streets he quickly makes several connections that explode his carefully protected solitude. In a rash moment, he offers to swap homes with a young couple. And from the moment he meets them, Zuckerman wants to exchange his solitude for the erotic allure of the young woman Jamie, who draws him back to all that he thought he had left behind: intimacy, and the play of heart and body. Suddenly involved, as he never wanted or intended to be involved again, with love, mourning, desire and animosity, Zuckerman plays out an interior drama of vivid and poignant possibilities.

When Dr. Mark Sloan wakes up in his own hospital's I.C.U., he doesn't remember how he got there-or anything from the last two years of his life, including a wife he doesn't recognize, and grandkids he never knew existed. He learns that he was run down in the street while investigating a series of mysterious deaths, all of whom were patients recently recovered from life-threatening illnesses and accidents. Mark resumes his investigation, only to realize that his "accident" was no accident, and that there is little time left to prevent another murder-his own.

"Maria Callas, called La Divina, is widely recognized as the greatest diva who ever lived. Jerome Charyn's Callas springs to life as the headstrong, mercurial, and charismatic artist who captivated generations of fans, thrilling audiences with her brilliant performances and defiant personality. Unlike any other diva who achieved world renown, Callas came from an impoverished background. As an outsider, she was shunned by the Italian opera houses, but through sheer force of will and the power and range of her voice, she broke through the invisible wall to sing at La Scala and headline at the Metropolitan Opera, forging an unforgettable career. Adored by celebrities and statesmen, the notable and notorious alike, her every movement was shadowed by both music critics and gossip columnists-until, having lost her voice, she died alone in an opulent, mausoleum-like Paris apartment. In Charyn's inimitable style, Maria La Divina humanizes the celebrated diva, revealing the mythical artist as a woman who survived hunger, war, and loneliness to reach the heights of acclaim"--

" What if time could be taken from us-the minutes, the hours, the years of our lives, extracted like organs taken for transplant? What would it mean for the world? And what would it do to the person from whom it's taken? Grace Berney is a mid-level bureaucrat in the Food and Drug Administration, a woman who once brimmed with purpose but somehow turned into a middle-aged single mom with a dull government job and a melancholy sense that life has passed her by. Until the night a strange photo comes across her desk, of a young woman in a hospital bed who has been subjected to a mysterious procedure. Against orders and against common sense, Grace sets out to bring the girl to safety, and finds herself risking her job, her future, and her life on whether she can find the missing girl before an obsessive and violent mercenary who's also looking. Big Time is a fast-paced thriller and a metaphysical mystery about the very nature of our lives." -- Amazon.

New York Times bestsellers Ed McBain, Walter Mosely, and Donald Westlake each provided a brand-new, never-before-published tale for this unique collection of stories edited by bestselling author and mystery legend Ed McBain. "Merely Hate" by Ed McBain: When a string of Muslim cabdrivers are killed, and the evidence points to another ethnic group, the detectives of the 87th Precinct must hunt down a killer before the city explodes in violence. "Archibald Lawless, Anarchist at Large: Walking the Line" by Walter Mosley: Felix Orlean is a New York City journalism student who needs a job to cover his rent. An ad in the paper leads him to Archibald Lawless, and a descent into a shadow world where no one and nothing is as it first seems. "Walking Around Money" by Donald E. Westlake: The master of the comic mystery is back with an all-new novella featuring hapless crook John Dortmunder, who gets involved in a crime that supposedly no one will ever know happened. Naturally, when something it too good to be true, it usually is, and Dortmunder is going to get to the bottom of this caper before he's left holding the bag.

From one of Brazil's rising literary stars, an acclaimed novella about the violation of a woman and a city, based on true events. It is 2014. There is euphoria in Brazil, especially in Rio de Janeiro. The World Cup is about to take place and the Olympics are in sight. It is a time of hope and frenzied construction. Júlia is a partner with an architectural firm working on the future Olympic village. During a break from a meeting at the town hall, she goes for a run in the hillside neighbourhood of Alto da Boa Vista. There, a man puts a revolver to her head, takes her to a secluded spot, and rapes her. Left abandoned in the woods, she drags herself home, where her boyfriend and family members are waiting for her. Vista Chinesabrings light and shadow to a city whose stunning beauty cannot conceal the most serious human and political problems, and gives voice to a story that is tragically not uncommon.

A young man named Henry sits down with his grandmother, a genial lady still called Baby by everyone, in her Manhattan townhouse where he has lived all his life, to record the history of a spiritual movement that has woven itself into the fabric of their family's lives for four generations. What unfolds is a mesmerizing family saga: the imperious great-grandmother Elsa and her husband, an Indian poet, whose marriage is as unconventional as the movement they help to found; Baby, their cheerfully pragmatic daughter, married to the aloof English diplomat Graeme; bemused and brooding Renata, Baby and Graeme's daughter, married to an idle dreamer; and finally Henry, Renata's son, who in many ways bears the legacy of all that has gone before. Their lives--and that of the movement's elusive yet ineluctable founder, known only as the Master--intertwine, diverge, and collide with each other in a masterfully orchestrated story spanning the twentieth century and several continents. By turns brilliantly satiric, insightful, and profoundly moving, Shards Of Memory is a beautifully wrought tale of love and devotion, of family and faith, and of the complex nature of memory itself--a literary tour de force from one of the most distinguished novelists of our time.

In an Earth far into the future, the human race has reverted to a rigid Guild system where every citizen is classified according to function and mandated to strictly abide by the Guild's set of rules. Those who are Guildless are not considered men; they are at the lowest rung of the social ladder and shunned by all. In this universe of specialized citizens, genetic engineering had been done to those who needed special attributes; Fliers had wings and Watchers had the ability to use their minds to scan the outer space for invaders. When a Flier, a Watcher, and a Guildless man decide to travel together, they witness the end of an era as the invasion of enemies from the stars begins. This Hugo-award winning novella, "Nightwings," is only one of the five award contenders included in this new collection of Robert Silverberg's stories. Full of lyricism and melancholic descriptions of the Earth as it was and the Earth as it had been, "Nightwings" had captivated readers when it was first published in the late 1960s and continues to captivate new readers until the present. Those who have read it could not easily forget the images and the emotions evoked by the characters that Silverberg so expertly created. The other stories in this collection--nominated for a Hugo, a Nebula, and Locus awards--highlight the author's mastery of the language and his capacity to engage the reader fully in worlds of his own making. We get to see the irony of the characters' experiences in "When We Went to See the End of the World," sympathize and feel proud of the time traveler in "House of Bones," and quietly applaud the gumption and cleverness of the young girl in "Amanda and the Alien." Like "Nightwings," the story "Beauty in the Night" also haunts with its brutal portrayal of a child's life at a time when the aliens arrived and took over the Earth. Rich in detail and waxing lyrical at some point, it is a quintessential Silverberg story--full of drama of human failures and yet replete as well with instances of great courage that enable the people in his worlds to transcend their fate.

THE LIFE EXPECTANCY OF A NEW ARRIVAL ON OMEGA AVERAGED THREE EARTH YEARS Barrent had been tried, convicted, and memory-washed on Earth - an Earth strangely altered and stratified by fear of the radical and non-conformist. Now he was serving his sentence on Omega - a prison planet walled by a ring of hovering guard-ships from which there was no escape. Omega was a world of horror, a savage, ruthless way of life. But it was only a momentary ordeal, a prelude to a return to Earth and the subtle terrors of its own status civilization. Robert Sheckley was a Hugo and Nebula-nominated American author. He was first published in science fiction magazines of the 1950's. His numerous quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist and comical. Sheckley was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001.

In this stunning debut novella, Rebecca Walker turns her attention to the power of love and the limitations of the human heart. When Farida, a sophisticated college student, falls in love with Adé, a young Swahili man living on an idyllic island off the coast of Kenya, the two plan to marry and envision a simple life together--free of worldly possessions and concerns. But when Farida contracts malaria and finds herself caught in the middle of a civil war, reality crashes in around them. The lovers' solitude is interrupted by a world in the throes of massive upheaval that threatens to tear them apart, along with all they cherish. Haunting, exquisite, and certain to become a classic, Adé will stay with you long after you put it down. This is a timeless love story set perfectly, heartbreakingly, in our time.

From the editor of the award-winning anthology Unfettered comes the newest installment in the science fiction and fantasy series, Unfettered III. Lacking health insurance when he was diagnosed with cancer, Shawn Speakman asked friends in the science fiction and fantasy writing community to donate short stories he could use to counter mounting medical debt. The result was Unfettered, an anthology offering tales from some of the best authors working today. Now, in Unfettered III, Speakman continues to pay forward the aid he received, raising money to combat medical debt for SF&F artists and authors. He has gathered together a great mix of new and favorite writers--free to write what they like--the result a powerful new anthology perfect for all readers. Be haunted by the chilling ghost story of Megan Lindholm. Revisit the Magicians world with Lev Grossman. Return to Osten Ard in an epic first look at Tad Williams's Empire of Grass. Callie Bates shares a heartfelt story of loss and gain. Cross the sands of the desert planet Dune with Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. Travel the Ways in a new Wheel of Time novella with Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson. And many more stories, all wondrous alongside beautiful art by Todd Lockwood! Katherine Arden Callie Bates Terry Brooks Delilah S. Dawson Jason Denzel David Anthony Durham Lev Grossman John Gwynne Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson Mark Lawrence Megan Lindholm (Robin Hobb) Seanan McGuire Naomi Novik Peter Orullian Cat Rambo Robert V.S. Redick Ken Scholes Scott Sigler Anna Smith Spark Shawn Speakman Anna Stephens Patrick Swenson Ramon Terrell Marc Turner Carrie Vaughn Tad Williams Deborah A. Wolf Unfettered III is sure to astound with the magic bound within its pages. All the while raising money for a charitable cause. Because protecting our artists and authors is as important as the stories they tell.

A Two-time Edgar Award NomineeHarvey Mapes is a twenty-nine-year-old security guard who spends his nights in a guard shack outside a gated community in Southern California, reading detective novels, watching TVLand reruns, and waiting for his life to finally start . . . which happens when Cyril Parkus, one of the wealthy residents, asks Harvey to follow his beautiful wife. The lowly security guard jumps at the chance to fulfill his private eye fantasies . . .Available only in Mystery 5.

In honor of Harlan Ellison's eightieth birthday, Susan Ellison-his wife of thirty years, the Electric Baby-has scoured raw eight (8) decades of his written output (from his 1949 serialized stories in The Cleveland News to as-yet unpublished tales fresh from his Olympia Manual typewriter) to present one artifact from each calendar decade. Where possible, the eight stories herein have been reproduced from Ellison's original typescripts, as preserved in his meticulous archives. In some cases, they may differ from the preferred texts established over years of revisions and reprints. From the 1940s: "The Sword of Parmagon," a five-part serial inspired by the works of Sir Walter Scott. Originally published in the Cleveland News when the author was fifteen years old, this story has been re-set with the original illustrations for this printing. From the 1950s: "Nedra at f:5.6," Ellison's homage to Fritz Leiber, reprinted from the revised typescript. From the 1960s: "The Resurgence of Miss Ankle-Strap Wedgie," a novella of Hollywood written as a showpiece for Ellison's first hardback collection. Reprinted from the original typescript with the author's handwritten corrections. From the 1970s: "The Diagnosis of Dr. D'arqueAngel," a fantasy written from a concept generated before an audience of California high school students by the author, Ray Bradbury, and Frank Herbert. Reprinted from the original typescript. From the 1980s: "She's a Young Thing and Cannot Leave Her Mother," the story Ellison was writing while attending the Scottish convention where he met the future Susan Ellison (and Neil Gaiman). Reprinted from the original typescript. From the 1990s: "Scartaris, June 28th," the story that--according to Susan Ellison--crystallized a new auctorial voice for her husband, the one that would go on to appear in THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES with "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" (available in HARLAN 101: ENCOUNTERING ELLISON). Reprinted from the original typescript. From the 2000s: "Incognita, Inc.," the story that explores the source of all those maps to buried treasure and magical lands. Reprinted from the original typescript, it makes its first appearance in an Ellison collection here. From the 2010s: "Weariness," inspired by a random piece of art, was first published in an anthology dedicated to the late Ray Bradbury. Reprinted from the original typescript, it makes its first appearance in an Ellison collection here.

Based on the Sherlock Holmes film: Ellery Queen matches wits with the Baker Street sleuth to unmask Jack the Ripper. Ellery Queen is struggling over his latest book when a friend brings him a mystery. It is a journal, written by a Victorian doctor, of reports on the remarkable adventures of his close friend, a brilliant detective named Sherlock Holmes. Queen's surprise turns to amazement as he turns its pages and discovers the lost story of Sherlock Holmes's greatest case: the pursuit of Jack the Ripper. From the brothels and back alleys of fog-choked Whitechapel to the manor of one of England's greatest families, Holmes and Dr. Watson chase history's most fearsome killer. But it will take the brilliance of Ellery Queen to solve the case once and for all. Based on the Sherlock Holmes film A Study in Terror , this collaboration between two of the world's greatest detectives is one of the most original mystery novels of all time.

'One of the best novels of recent years, a complete success'- Le Monde (France) Following years of unrequited love, an out-of-work school teacher takes matters into his own hands, triggering a chain of events neither he nor his psychiatrist could have anticipated. At once a psychological thriller and a social critique, Seven Types of Ambiguity is a story of obsessive love in an age of obsessive materialism.