282 results for "Short Stories"

From the land of fear

Ellison, Harlan
A mind bending voyage into the reaches of the imagination. Winner of The Hugo & Nebula awards. In Praise of His Spirits Noble & Otherwise by Roger Zelazny Where the Stray Dreams Go contains 3 unfinished stories: The/One/Word/People, Moth on the Moon & Snake in the Mind The Sky Is Burning/If Aug ’58 My Brother Paulie/Satellite Dec ’58 The Time of the Eye/The Saint Detective Magazine May ’59 Life Hutch [Kyben]/If Apr ’56 Battle Without Banners/Taboo, New Classics House, 1964 Back to the Drawing Boards/Fantastic Universe Aug ’58 A Friend to Man/Fantastic Universe Oct ’59 We Mourn for Anyone [Mourners for Hire]/Fantastic May ’57 The Voice in the Garden/Lighthouse Jun ’67 Soldier [Soldier from Tomorrow]/Fantastic Universe Oct ’57 Soldier [tv script]/American Broadcasting Corporation Sep ’64
Belmont Tower Books 1973 176 pages

Spadework for a palace: entering the madness of others

Krasznahorkai, László
"Spadework for a Palace bears the subtitle "Entering the Madness of Others" and offers an epigraph: "Reality is no obstacle." Indeed. This high-octane obsessive rant vaults over all obstacles, fueled by the idées fixe of a "gray little librarian" with fallen arches whose name-mr herman melvill-is merely one of the coincidences binding him to his lodestar Herman Melville ("I too resided on East 26th Street...I, too, had worked for a while at the Customs Office"), which itself is just one aspect of his also being "constantly conscious of his connectedness" to Lebbeus Woods, to the rock that is Manhattan, to the "drunkard Cowley" and his Lunar Caustic, to Bartok. And with this consciousness of connection he is not only gaining true knowledge of Melville but also tracing the paths to "a Serene Paradise of Knowledge." Driven to save that palace (a higher library he also serves), he loses his job and his wife leaves him, but "people must be told the truth": THERE IS NO DUALISM IN EXISTENCE. And his dream, in fact, will be "realized, for I am not giving up: I am merely a day-laborer, a spade-worker on this dream, a herman melvill, a librarian from the lending desk, currently an inmate at Bellevue, but at the same time-may I say this?-actually a Keeper of the Palace.""--
New Directions Publishing 2022 96 pages

Invasions: stories

Gimpelevich, Calvin
Fiction. LGBTQIA Studies. 2019 Lambda Literary Award finalist for Transgender Fiction. A body-swapping personal trainer and her trans girlfriend turn to a life of crime. A man mourning his dead lover becomes trapped in the mind of the leader of a bathhouse raid. A trans man, recovering from top surgery paid for with a stolen credit card, finds strange connection and condemnation among his fellow patients. The fifteen stories in this debut fiction collection from author Calvin Gimpelevich move in the borderlands between realism and surrealism, investigating gender, class, relationships, and the powers we still hold within spaces of powerlessness. They articulate the invasions we commit, the invitations we receive to cross over into another person's world. "INVASIONS blew my mind. Flipping between speculative worlds deeply rooted in realness and emotion and more familiar landscapes that tip on the edges of personal apocalypses, Gimpelevich's writing is strong and sure, taking us places we really haven't been. I'm hooked."--Michelle Tea "In INVASIONS, Calvin Gimpelevich writes fearlessly about trans and queer bodies, sex, and the possibilities of gender. In these edgy, strange stories, characters transform, transition, and transgress to discover themselves and, sometimes, each other."--Carter Sickels "Gimpelevich's stories are so firmly controlled, immaculate lakes with roiling depths that unapologetically probe interlocking webs of queerness, class, protection, disability, transness, addiction, race, and love. This is one of the most gripping, crisp, and moving collections of short fiction I have read in a long time."--Casey Plett "INVASIONS flows from experiences that border on the divergent and taboo--polyamory, secret queer encounters--into the surreal, the unreal, the fluidity of moving from body to body. Gimpelevich writes with a rhythm that sings like a rock ballad; we have no idea where he might take us next and we don't much care as long as we get to come along."--Afrose Fatima Ahmed, City Arts
Instar Books 2018 176 pages

Scouting for the Reaper: stories

Appel, Jacob M.
Fiction. Named one of Kirkus Reviews' Best Fiction Books of 2014. Each of the characters in SCOUTING FOR THE REAPER faces an unanticipated challenge: transporting a truckload of penguins across the country, arranging a proper Jewish burial for the remains of Gregor Samsa, and selling tombstones dressed as a Girl Scout. These stories explore the domestic and professional adventures of people in over their heads, while leavening their struggles with humor. "Jacob Appel's stories echo with secrets. There are the secrets we keep from those closest to us, of course. Our parents, our doctors, our clergy, our ex-wives and unrequited loves. Any run of the mill story has those. Good stories traffic in the kind of secrets we keep from ourselves. Why, for instance, what and who we love are so close in content and character to what we can't abide. Appel's that kind of trafficker. Even better, throughout this fine collection, he is most concerned with still another kind of secret: that which, when revealed, doesn't solve anything. Like the very best stories, they carry the mystery forward. Revelation, in the end, isn't an end at all. It's a beginning. SCOUTING FOR THE REAPER is full of such revelations. Here's hoping it signals the beginning of a long string of books penned by this talented polymath."--TJ Beitelman
Black Lawrence Press 2014 185 pages

Things that cause inappropriate happiness: short stories

Botha, Danila
"Things That Cause Inappropriate Happiness is Danila Botha's third collection of short fiction. In these thirteen brilliant stories, she observes with her signature vulnerability and humour what it's like not to fit in. From a photographer teaching English in the Middle East ("Sometimes I Like to Shoot Kids") to a chalk eating South African immigrant teen, who struggles to fit in ("Nothing My Parents Taught me Turned Out to be True") to a neurodiverse travel agent who is tired of pretending to be like everyone else ("Congratulations on Everything") to a woman who fakes a pregnancy ("All Good Things Take Time") and an artist with a desperate need to communicate during the pandemic ("There's Something I've Been Meaning To Say To You"), these stories pulse with the empathy and originality Botha has become known for. As in her previous collection, the Trillium and Vine nominated For All the Men (and Some of the Women) I've Known, Things That Cause Inappropriate Happiness will make you laugh, and cry but above all, it will make you feel less alone"--
Guernica Editions 2024 231 pages

Great Short Stories of the World (3 Vol)

Barrett H. Clark,Maxim Lieber
The present collection marks an attempt to bring together outstanding examples of the Short Story as it has been practiced by writers of almost every race, from the earliest days of civilization down to the present century. Its purpose is not to show, by a series of texts chosen on academic grounds, how the form developed, but to bring together the best examples of every form by which men have endeavoured to entertain and instruct their fellows. No art is more spontaneous than that of the short story, also it is certain that stories of some sort were told as soon as man became articulate. The period covered in the present collection embraces nearly five thousand years, but there can be no reasonable doubt that the Egyptian tales that open the volume, the first of their kind known to us, are the finished products of an art that was practised thousands of years before these were written. And since the beginning of civilization as we know it, there has been no break in the tradition of tale-telling: the demand for stories is as strong and insatiable in man today as it was before he discovered how to make stone weapons. The editors of this collection have approached their task of selection with open minds: they have not allowed themselves to be influenced by any theory of what a short story should be, except that which requires that it be interesting of its kind. So, without confining themselves to any theory of classification, the editors have chosen a wide variety of stories designed to appeal to the general reader and perhaps to the student as well, in the belief that what has delighted the Indians and Chinese from time immemorial, the ancient Egyptians, the Jewish shepherds and warriors of Biblical times, the Greeks of Homer`s days and the Romans of Caesar`s, will appeal with equal force to the inhabitants of the civilized world of today. These stories were written not for critics and historians, editors of anthologies and specialists, but for all mankind. They have tried to bear in mind that the Short Story is a tale which 'holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney corner.'
Aryan Books International 2006-02-01 1120 pages

The liars' asylum: stories

Appel, Jacob M.
"Jacob Appel's acrobatic imagination is always a thrill to watch in action. These stories fly through the air and grip your heart. Appel's naturalness as a storyteller makes The Liars' Asylum a total pleasure, a collection in a league of its own. Each story-- there are no duds here-- engages and entertains. Each is beautifully measured and composed, populated by characters I worried for, crushed on, and hoped with."-- Kelly Luce "In this excellent collection of stories, Jacob Appel mines everything for what it is and what it might be: the ordinary, the bizarre, the poignant. The voice, regardless of the narrator, is always crisp and exuberant, in ways subtle and fresh. I could say he is a writer to watch, but actually he is publishing well and frequently. He's a writer to read."-- Fred Leebron "While the plants and ponds might be aggressively artificial in Jacob Appel's newest collection of stories, there's not a single false note when it comes to Appel's characters and their intertwined lives. Romance blooms despite vast differences in ages and circumstance, and near connections plunge into a unique melancholy optimism that will propel readers from one story to the next."-- Suzanne Greenberg "Jacob M. Appel's brilliant new story collection manages to pull off the rarest of literary feats-- delivering eight fantastic stories, each as entertaining as it is philosophically rich. A book of laugh-out-loud wit braided with intellectual fearlessness, The Liars' Asylum offers delights for the mind on every page. Best of all, these irreverent, lovingly subversive stories upend dusty assumptions about what it means to be alive and allow the reader to experience her own existence with a fresh eye. A stunning book that will remain with you long after the last page is turned."-- Alethea Black "Across eight compelling stories, Jacob Appel offers us glimpses into the lives of people keeping secrets, broaching taboos, and testing the limits of their relationships. From a former teacher's suicide to an epidemic of storms that forces those caught in them to tell the truth, The Liars' Asylum beautifully and artfully exposes the mysteries and longings of the human heart."-- Anne Valente "Jacob M. Appel new collection, The Liars' Asylum , confirms his status as one of our most skillful, and appealing, practitioners of short fiction. Indeed, Appel is one of those blessed and nimble writers who, like Chekhov, can find a story anywhere. On ample display are his trademark first-person narrators (often young women), his deliciously light touch, his mastery of the 'reversal of fortune' moment. His new cast of characters includes a girl tasked with ensuring her aunt a 'beau, ' an immigrant Finn who teaches us the meaning of endurance, and a ER psychiatrist dealing with a mass hysteria of truth-telling. Appel's fiction is a brilliant and reassuring example of Horace's maxim: The role of the artist is to inform and delight."-- Catherine Browder
Black Lawrence Press 2017 168 pages

Einstein's beach house: stories

Appel, Jacob M.
"A couple adopts a depressed hedgehog; a stranger shows up, claiming to be the father of a girl's imaginary friend; a woman kidnaps her ex-husband's turtle; a family is evicted from their home, but was it ever really theirs? Heartbreaking and hilarious, the eight stories of Einstein's Beach House examine how we deceive ourselves and others, all to arrive at something far more real."-- back cover.
Pressgang 2014 179 pages

In a yellow wood: selected stories and essays

Ozick, Cynthia
"Selected by Cynthia Ozick from a dozen books written across more than fifty years, the essays and short stories gathered here constitute a summing-up of her remarkable literary career. In such classic essays as 'Who Owns Anne Frank?,' 'What Helen Keller Saw,' 'Dostoevsky's Unabomber,' and 'Transcending the Kafkaesque,' Ozick examines some of the world's most illustrious writers and their work, tackles compelling contemporary literary and moral issues, and looks into the wellsprings of her own lifelong engagement with literature. In her short stories, including 'A Hebrew Sibyl,' 'What Happened to the Baby?,' 'Dictation,' 'The Biographer's Hat,' and 'The Conversion of the Jews,' Ozick demonstrates again and again her stylistic brilliance and the originality of her distinctive interweaving of the strands of history and myth." -
Alfred A. Knopf 2025-03-11 672 pages

The neon wilderness

Algren, Nelson
"Algren's classic 1947 short story collection is the pure vein Algren would mine for all his subsequent novels and stories. The stories in this collection are literary triumphs that "don't fade away." Among the stories included here are "A Bottle of Milk for Mother," about a Chicago youth being cornered for a murder, and "The Face on the Barrome Floor," in which a legless man pummels another man nearly to death-the seeds that would grow into the novel Never Come Morning. Algren's World War II stories whose final expression would be in the novel The Man with the Golden Arm are also part of this collection. "So Help Me," Algren's first published work, is here. Other stories include, "The Captain Has Bad Dreams," in which Algren first introduced the character of the blameless captain who feels such a heavy burden of guilt and wonders why the criminal offenders he sees seem to feel no guilt at all. And then there is "Design for Departure," in which a young woman drifting into hooking and addiction sees her own dreaminess outlasting her hopes"--
Seven Stories Press 2023-10-10 320 pages