The first collection of Fonseca's short stories to appear in English, ranging across his oeuvre, exploring the sights and sounds of Rio de Janeiro. Fonseca's Rio is a city at war, where vast disparities, in wealth, social standing and prestige are untenable. Rich and poor live in an uneasy equilibrium, where only overwhelming force can maintain order and violence and deception are the essential tools of survival. From the tale of the businessman who rans over pedestrians to let off steam to a serial killer being pushed to kill more by his lover, this collection is a true gem.
Rudyard Kipling, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1907, has long been considered an important and vibrant, even controversial, storyteller and poet. The Wish House and Other Stories is a collection of Kipling’s finest works, including the stories “In the House of Suddhoo,” “The Disturber of Traffic,” and “The Eye of Allah,” the poems “The Runners,” “The Return of the Children,” and “The Last Ode,” and his famous story about Afghanistan, “The Man Who Would Be King.” Each piece was selected by poet and scholar Craig Raine, who writes in his Preface, “We need to think about Kipling. He is our greatest short-story writer, but one whose achievement is more complex and surprising than even his admirers recognize.”
With two parts and seventeen stories, Stephen Crane’s The Open Boat and Other Stories is an eclectic collection that stuns with its use of naturalism and angst. In the first part, titled Minor Conflicts, Crane shares eight works of short fiction. Among these is The Bride Comes to the Yellow Sky, a tense drama that explores themes of change with the portrayal of a Texas marshal who is saved from gunfight by his bride. Death and the Child follows a journalist who, after becoming sympathetic to the Greeks as he acts as a correspondent for the war, decides to join them in their fight. Also featured in part one of The Open Boat and Other Stories is the title work. The Open Boat follows the emotional journey of four men who have survived a shipwreck as they wrestle with the realization that nature is apathetic to their fate. Titled Midnight Sketches, the second part of The Open Boat and Other Stories pays special attention to the class struggles of American Society. An Experiment in Misery features the wrenching story of a young man who wanders the streets of New York, enduring taunts and cruelty as he searches for affordable food and living accommodations. Similarly, An Ominous Baby is a brief, symbolic tale of socioeconomics as it follows a young child exploring a rich neighborhood, becoming fixated on a rich kid’s toy. With themes of romance and coming-of-age, The Pace of Youth depicts a young couple who, despite the disapproval of the girl’s father, decides to indulge in their love and elope. With dramatic and wrenching prose, Stephen Crane’s The Open Boat and Other Stories examines universal topics and themes that are still relevant to contemporary society. While depicting a vivid variety of settings, including both exotic and American landscapes, and with the depiction of complex protagonists ranging from innocent children, to journalist-turned soldiers, The Open Boat and Other Stories celebrates and features some of Stephen Crane’s best work. Now presented in an easy-to-read font and redesigned with an eye-catching cover, this edition of The Open Boat and Other Stories by Stephen Crane is catered to a modern audience.
10 new and original stories with painted illustrations by Nadia Ilchuk. Imaginative stories of day-to-day adventures with human and animal characters that teach a life lesson. The story-telling is in the style of classics like The Adventures of Peter Rabbit, The Wind in the Willows or Winnie the Pooh in which animal characters have normal yet imaginative adventures, providing a vehicle for learning about community, compassion and collaboration. The elements used to craft the stories are: • normal, every-day activities into which is woven a challenge or a difficult situation. • talking animal characters engaged with human characters, involved in adventures. • lessons relating to teamwork, safety, helping others and kindness. About 2000 words per story.
The second volume of short stories featuring the adventures of crime fiction’s most hardboiled sleuth: the Continental Op Dan Rathbone locks the bonds in the company safe, fully aware that $100,000 is a deadly temptation. He’s about to embark on a business trip, and he tells his partner that he only wants to be sure the papers are safe. But when Rathbone goes missing, his partner discovers that the funds have vanished along with him. Has Rathbone skipped town with the bonds, or has he been murdered? The Continental Op will find out the truth—and in Dashiell Hammett’s San Francisco, the truth is always a thorny proposition. The Continental Op cut a bloody swath across the pages of Black Mask, dealing cool reckoning to anyone who threatened him in his pursuit of the truth. In “It,” “Bodies Piled Up,” and “The Tenth Clew,” the infamous Op dispenses his particular brand of two-fisted justice in the hardboiled style that made Dashiell Hammett a legend.