With a Little Help is my first serious experiment in self-publishing. I’ve published many novels, short story collections, books of essays and so on with publishers, and it’s all been very good and satisfying and educational and so on, but it seems like it’s time to try something new. You see, I’ve always released my work under open licenses from the Creative Commons project, so that my readers could share and remix my works. A good number of these readers wanted to know why I didn’t distribute the physical book as well, and see what a writer working on his own could do. So here we have it. With a Little Help, consists of 12 stories, all reprints except for “Epoch,” which was commissioned by the Ubuntu project‘s Mark Shuttleworth for $10,000 (this being the most expensive option for buying the book — don’t worry, there are cheaper editions).

In this hilarious collection, a Thurber Prize winner who is "one of the funniest writers in America" chronicles the absurdity of fame and the humanity of failure in a world dominated by social media stars ( Daily Beast ). Simon Rich is an award-winning humorist who draws comparisons to Douglas Adams (the New York Times Book Review ), James Thurber, and P.G. Wodehouse (the Guardian ). With Hits and Misses , he's back with a hilarious collection of stories about dreaming big and falling flat, about ordinary people desperate for stardom and the stars who are bored by having it all. Inspired by Rich's real experiences in Hollywood, Hits and Misses chronicles all the absurdity of fame and success alongside the heartbreaking humanity of failure. From a bitter tell-all by Paul Revere's horse to a gushing magazine profile of World War II's most infamous dictator, these stories roam across time and space to skewer our obsession with making it big -- from the days of ancient Babylon to the age of TMZ.

With The World Is the Home of Love and Death, Harold Brodkey completes the extraordinary literary voyage that began with the publication of his first short story in The New Yorker in 1952. During the past four decades, Brodkey established himself as a modern master of short fiction. In The World Is the Home of Love and Death, Brodkey returns to themes he has treated so memorably in the past--the conformity and stupefying monotony of suburbia, the malevolence of cocktail-party conversation--bringing to them a new refinement and compression. In all of these stories, Brodkey proves that there has never been a more acute translator of the language of power, coercion, and, ultimately, love. It is altogether appropriate that Brodkey's final return to fiction should be to the short story, a form that he has influenced so profoundly.

A selection of twelve stories about aliens, a community pool filled with bullies, a surprising start to the Fourth of July fireworks, and other peculiar things, with comic-book style illustrations.

Crime is common ground for the twenty-one women writers in this extraordinary collection of contemporary mystery fiction, introduced and edited by Sara Paretsky The voices here include professional crime solvers who take you from the mean streets of V.I. Warshawski’s Chicago in a case of music and murder . . . to the California freeway where Kinsey Millhone's beloved VW skids into a shooting . . . to the gang-held turf of Sharon McCone’s San Francisco, where an eye witness to a slaying says mum’s the word. And then there are mothers, grandmothers, battered wives, and social workers—ordinary women in extraordinary situations whose voices reveal contemporary life as seen through a woman’s eye. From the opening tale of a girl down-and-out in London and what she steals from a corpse . . . to the final story of a summer vacation in the Berkshires, complete with romance and sudden death . . . this unique collection brings us great mystery writing that engages both our intellects and our hearts. This collection features stories from twenty-one authors, including: Sara Paretsky • Sue Grafton • Marica Muller • Susan Dunlap • Carolyn Hart • Antonia Fraser • Dorothy Salisbury Davis • Amanda Cross • Nancy Pickard • Dorothy B. Hughes • Faye Kellerman • Julie Smith • Barbara Wilson • Mary Wings • and more!

A collection of new and previously published stories and poems about unicorns by Jane Yolen.

A hilarious collection of the many articles written by Stephen Fry for magazines, newspapers and radio. It includes selected wireless essays of Donald Trefusis, the ageing professor of philology brought to life in Fry's novel The Liar , and the best of Fry's weekly column for the Daily Telegraph . Perfect to dip into but just as enjoyable to read cover to cover, this book, perhaps more than any other, shows the breadth of Fry's interests and the depth of his insight. He remains a hilarious writer on whatever topic he puts his mind to.

"One of the funniest books you'll read this year."--Publishers Weekly Love can be messy, painful, and even tragic. When seen through the eyes of Simon Rich it can also be hilarious. In thirty short, sharp, ingenious stories, Rich conjures up some unforgettable romances: An unused prophylactic describes life inside a teenage boy's wallet; God juggles the demands of his needy girlfriend with the looming deadline for earth's creation; and a lovestruck Sherlock Holmes ignores all the clues that his girlfriend's been cheating on him. As enchanting, sweet, and absurd as love itself, these stories are Simon Rich's Valentine to readers, an irresistible collection of delights. All that's missing is the heart-shaped box.

Babbage Press, 2001. Trade paperback, reprints the 1976 Avon paperback original. Collection of science fiction stories from the author of "The Game of Thrones."

Masterly collection of short stories by an American novelist at the height of her powers. It is the stories upon which Cynthia Ozick's literary reputation rests. She writes about bitterness, cruelty and compulsion with brutal acuity and tenderness. She has created a timeless collection in which Greek mythology, superstition and the religious and cultural experience of the Jewish diaspora in America collide. The Pagan Rabbi is seduced by a tree sprite after seeing his daughter rescued from drowning by a water sprite. Such ecstasy is not permitted to mortals and so the scholar must die. He hangs himself with his prayer shawl as he watches the strangely beautiful nymph decay. In Envy, a Yiddish poet who watches the success of a contemporary, becomes very like a character in an I.B. Singer story entrapped by his anguish and haunted by the memory of a child. In the Doctor's Wife, the most gentle of the stories, a poor doctor not unlike Chekhov endures family life in which he is adored by his three sisters and oppressed by his family obligations. In these stories, we see Ozick defining herself and her literary territory. The stories may be read purely as evocations of Jewish experience, where time seems to have by-passed these characters. In the Butterfly and the Traffic Light, Jerusalem is seen upon a hill as only it can be in legend, and America is said not to have cities scarred by battles. This is a dazzling collection of short stories by an internationally celebrated novelist.

"In 1936, a 20-year-old artist using the name Willis B. Rensie jump-started the comic-book medium. Writing and illustrating an action-packed weekly serial called Hawks of the Seas-- a pirate adventure series set in the 18th-century Caribbean-- the artist created one dynamic strip after another, honing his storytelling craft and shaping the comics medium with each one. That artist was none other than comics grand master Will Eisner From 1936 to 1938, Eisner's Hawks of the Seas weekly stories were translated into several different languages and distributed all over the world, and now they're collected here in this handsome hardcover edition"--Goodreads.com.

Always exploring the boundaries of race, identity, politics, memory, sexuality, and love with fearless insight and deep compassion, Nadine Gordimer has produced another masterpiece of short fiction. From a former anti-apartheid activist’s search for his own racial identity by tracing his great-grandfather’s part in South Africa’s diamond industry to a parrot that scandalizes people with repetitions of their quarrels and clandestine love-talk, this new collection of stories eloquently probes how people are never free from their past nor spared from loss.

Martha was the youngest of sixteen, handpicked reporters who filed accurate, confidential reports on the human stories behind the statistics of the Depression directly to Roosevelt's White House. From these pages, we understand the real cost of sudden destitution on a vast scale. We taste the dust in the mouth, smell the disease and feel the hopelessness and the despair. And here, too, we can hear the earliest cadences of a writer who went on to become, arguably, the greatest female war reporter of the 20th century.

"This volume showcases the nuanced, playful, ever-expanding definitions of the genre and celebrates its current renaissance." --Washington Post Science fiction and fantasy can encompass so much, from far-future deep-space sagas to quiet contemporary tales to unreal kingdoms and beasts. But what the best of these stories do is the same across the genres--they illuminate the whole gamut of the human experience, interrogating our hopes and our fears. With a diverse selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor Charles Yu, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 continues to explore the ever-expanding and changing world of SFF today, with Yu bringing his unique view--literary, meta, and adventurous--to the series' third edition.

From a writer whose every book is a literary event, a superbly accomplished work of fiction. "Last Night is a spellbinding collection of stories about passion-by turns fiery and subdued, destructive and redemptive, alluring and devastating. In ten powerful stories, Salter portrays men and women in their most intimate moments. A book dealer faces the truth about his life-as it is and never will be again-when he is visited unexpectedly by his brash former girlfriend. A lonely married woman, after a disturbing encounter with a drunken poet at a dinner party, finds herself irresistibly drawn to his animal surrogate, a huge tawny-eyed dog. A lover of poetry must come to terms with his wife's request to give up what may be his most treasured relationship. And in the title story, already hailed by Frank Conroy as "a masterpiece, clearly and without question," a translator, tormented by an agonizing sense of inevitability, assists in his wife's suicide even as he performs a last betrayal. A haunting symphony of desire, memory, and loss-from a writer whose assured style and emotional insight make him one of our most compelling voices at work today.

Harlan Ellison is probably best known as a script writer for sci-fi and fantasy movies and TV series such as the original Outer Limits, The Hunger, Logan's Run, and Babylon Five. But his range is much broader than that, encompassing stories, novels, essays, reviews, reminiscences, plays, even fake autobiographies. Essential Ellison includes contains 74 unabridged works, including such classics as "A Boy and His Dog," "Xenogenesis," and "Mefisto in Onyx." Includes black-and-white photos.

Five years in the making, the Edgeworks Abbey Archive represents Harlan Ellison's last word on his written legacy. Researched and edited by the author's long-time associate, Jason Davis, under the supervision of Harlan and Susan Ellison, this collection assembles the preferred texts of each story and essay along with previously uncollected and unpublished material to create the definitive edition.A FEW (AMONG THE MANY) QUESTIONS THIS BOOK ANSWERS: What stopped Attila the Hun from sacking the Holy City of Rome in the year 452 when it lay defenseless before him? Where is the sunken continent of Atlantis and what will happen if it rises? Has anyone ever made an interesting case for the merits of waging war, and how does war benefit the human race? What happened When Santa Claus attacked Ronald Reagan in the men's toilet of the abandoned Camarillo State Mental Institution? Is it true that Jesus had a homosexual liaison with Prometheus? Does the Abominable Snowman exist, and what's his sex life like? What's the worst thing that can happen to those who do too much bad dope? How do you identify and survive the attentions of emotional vampires? Are you listening? Why are the bizarre stories of Harlan Ellison so damned popular, translated into thirteen languages, and made into movies; why do they influence a whole generation of younger writers, provoke lynch mobs, and win this Ellison person such an unconscionable array of literary awards? ASK NOT FOR WHOM THIS BOOK TOILS. IT TOILS FUR THEE, KIDDO.

The sixteen stories collected here are spread over the farthest stretches of time and space, but even the bleakest of them is warmed by a passionate faith in the endurance of life and its ultimate possibilities. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Written between 1980 and 1986, the stories in The Lute and the Scars were transcribed from the manuscripts left by Danilo Kis following his death in 1989. Many are autobiographical. Others resurrect protagonists belonging to Kis's fellow Central European novelists.

In this sequel to "Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned", Socrates Fortlow is back in Watts, trying to leave prison in his past, and confronting the most dangerous emotion of all: hope.