This volume contains three short stories of speculative fiction - "Real Life Fiction," "In The Heavens As On Earth" and "Press The Record Button." Each story explores possibilities at the end of our known world. Time travel, manipulation of reality, nuclear war, reincarnation, chance, and a host of other ideas are woven through the various stories.
MASTER SPY OF THE RED PLANET Jery Delvin had a most unusual talent. He could detect the flaws in any scheme almost on sight—even where they had eluded the best brains in the ad agency where he worked. So when the Chief of World Security told him that he had been selected as the answer to the Solar System's greatest mystery, Jery assumed that it was because of his mental agility. But when he got to Mars to find out why fifteen boys had vanished from a spaceship in mid-space, he found out that even his quick mind needed time to pierce the maze of out-of-this-world double-dealing. For Jery had become a walking bomb, and when he set himself off, it would be the end of the whole puzzle of THE SECRET MARTIANS—with Jery as the first to go! Jack Sharkey decided to be a writer nineteen years ago, in the Fourth Grade, when he realized all at once that "someone wrote all those stories in the textbooks." While everyone else looked forward variously to becoming firemen, cowboys, and trapeze artists, Jack was devouring every book he could get his hands on, figuring that "if I put enough literature into my head, some of it might overflow and come out." After sixteen years of education, Jack found himself teaching high school English in Chicago, a worthwhile career, but "not what one would call zesty." After a two-year Army hitch, and a year in advertising "sublimating my urge to write things for cash," Jack moved to New York, determined to make a career of full-time fiction-writing. Oddly enough, it worked out, and he now does nothing else. He says, "I'd like to say I do this for fulfillment, or for cash, or because it's my destiny; however, the real reason (same as that expressed by Jean Kerr) is that this kind of stay-at-home self-employment lets me sleep late in the morning."
Ulysses, Dante, and Other Stories presents a unique form of creative scholarship. It employs Dante’s late medieval take on Ulysses and his tragic pursuit of ‘virtue and knowledge’ as a prism that refracts an ancient myth of journey and return into a modern story of discovery and nostalgia. Working notes, fragments from Ulysses’ many stories, personal memories, illuminations, and rewritings combine to form a new chain of narratives about the desire to create, the art of travelling, and the will of self-reinvention.
A major literary figure and frequent contributor to the Yiddish-language newspaper Forverts from the 1920s to the mid-1930s, Jonah Rosenfeld was recognized during and after his lifetime as an explorer of human psychology. His work foregrounds loneliness, social anxiety, and people’s frustrated longing for meaningful relationships—themes just as relevant to today’s Western society as they were during his era. The Rivals and Other Stories introduces nineteen of Rosenfeld’s short stories to an English-reading audience for the first time. Unlike much of Yiddish literature that offers a sentimentalized view of the tight knit communities of early twentieth-century Jewish life, Rosenfeld’s stories portray an entirely different view of pre-war Jewish families. His stories are urban, domestic dramas that probe the often painful disjunctions between men and women, parents and children, rich and poor, Jews and Gentiles, self and society. They explore eroticism and family dysfunction in narratives that were often shocking to readers at the time they were published. Following the Modernist tradition, Rosenfeld rejected many established norms, such as religion and the assumption of absolute truth. Rather, his work is rooted in psychological realism, portraying the inner lives of alienated individuals who struggle to construct a world in which they can live. These deeply moving, empathetic stories provide a counterbalance to the prevailing idealized portrait of shtetl life and enrich our understanding of Yiddish literature.
Handsomely equipped with a comprehensive introductory historical essay, editor's notes and selected bibliography, this distinguished anthology is a model of genre research. These previously untranslated stories, published from 1871 onward, offer reading virtually unknown to most American (and many German) readers. Some authors combine scientific and philosophical issues, like Kurd Lasswitz in his witty tale "To the Absolute Zero of Existence: A Story from 2371, " while others, as in Erik Simon's 1983 title story, pose psychological puzzles involving alien phenomena. Though the earlier stories in particular demand painstaking reading, all of them repay it with rewarding insights into German and Austrian culture and the many possible uses and misuses of science.
No home library is complete without the classics! The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Other Stories brings together the essential works from Arthur Conan Doyle in an elegant, leather-bound, omnibus edition—a keepsake to be read and treasured. There is one literary detective who stands above all others, whose powers of deduction are known the world over, whose influence can still be felt in today's most modern whodunits. Who is it, you ask? Why, it's elementary! Sherlock Holmes, the famous gumshoe of 221B Baker Street. And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle--the man who made him famous in such tales as The Hound of the Baskervilles and A Study in Scarlet--changed the world of mysteries, inspiring legions of devoted fans. Whether you're a devotee or you've yet to be awed by Holmes's powers of deduction, you'll love this Canterbury Classics edition of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous works, including The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of Four, The Valley of Fear, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, and The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes. A classic keepsake for fans of detective novels, as well as all great literature, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Other Stories is the perfect addition to any library.
