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Short Stories
The elegant short fictions gathered hereabout the love of science and the science of love are often set against the backdrop of the nineteenth century. Interweaving historical and fictional characters, they encompass both past and present as they negotiate the complex territory of ambition, failure, achievement, and shattered dreams. In Ship Fever, the title novella, a young Canadian doctor finds himself at the center of one of history's most tragic epidemics. In The English Pupil, Linnaeus, in old age, watches as the world he organized within his head slowly drifts beyond his reach. And in The Littoral Zone, two marine biologists wonder whether their life-altering affair finally was worth it. In the tradition of Alice Munro and William Trevor, these exquisitely rendered fictions encompass whole lives in a brief space. As they move between interior and exterior journeys, science is transformed from hard and known fact into malleable, strange and thrilling fictional material (Boston Globe).
ONE OF BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR - LIBRARY JOURNAL A collection of short stories of rural Ireland in the classic Irish mode: full of love (and sex), melancholy and magic, bedecked in some of the most gorgeous prose being written today--from the author of the wildly acclaimed Night Boat to Tangier.
With three novels and two short story collections published, Kevin Barry has steadily established his stature as one of the finest writers not just in Ireland but in the English language. All of his prodigious gifts of language, character, and setting in these eleven exquisite stories transport the reader to an Ireland both timeless and recognizably modern. Shot through with dark humor and the uncanny power of the primal and unchanging Irish landscape, the stories in That Old Country Music represent some of the finest fiction being written today.
With three novels and two short story collections published, Kevin Barry has steadily established his stature as one of the finest writers not just in Ireland but in the English language. All of his prodigious gifts of language, character, and setting in these eleven exquisite stories transport the reader to an Ireland both timeless and recognizably modern. Shot through with dark humor and the uncanny power of the primal and unchanging Irish landscape, the stories in That Old Country Music represent some of the finest fiction being written today.
"Ann Beattie at her most magnificent...Her first new collection in ten years...These tales explore the range of emotional states the author is famous for: longing, disaffection, ambivalence, love, regret. It's nice to hear her voice again" (People). "A peerless, contemplative page-turner" (Vanity Fair), The State We're In is about how we live in the places we have chosen--or been chosen by. It's about the stories we tell our families, our friends, and ourselves, the truths we may or may not see, how our affinities unite or repel us, and where we look for love. Many of these stories are set in Maine, but The State We're In is about more than geographical location. Some characters have arrived in Maine by accident, others are trying to escape. The collection is woven around Jocelyn, a wry, disaffected teenager living with her aunt and uncle while attending summer school. As in life, the narratives of other characters interrupt Jocelyn's, sometimes challenging, sometimes embellishing her view. "Ann Beattie slips into a short story as flawlessly as Audrey Hepburn wore a Givenchy gown: an iconic presentation, each line and fold falling into place but allowing room for surprise" (O, The Oprah Magazine). "Splendid...memorable...every page...fitted out with the blessed finery of hypnotic storytelling" (The Washington Post), these stories describe a state of mind, a manner of being. The State We're In explores, through women's voices, the unexpected moments and glancing epiphanies of daily life.
The teen publishers of Bookstore1Sarasota made a zine! Issue one is all about nature.
A ravishing, luminous selection of short stories from the prize-winning imagination of A. S. Byatt, a storyteller who could keep a sultan on the edge of his throne for a thousand and one nights (The New York Times Book Review). With an introduction by David Mitchell, best-selling author of Cloud Atlas Includes the story "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye"--the basis for the George Miller film Three Thousand Years of Longing starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton Mirrors shatter at the hairdresser's when a middle-aged client explodes in rage. Snow dusts the warm body of a princess, honing it into something sharp and frosted. Summer sunshine flickers on the face of a smiling child who may or may not be real. Medusa's Ankles celebrates the very best of A. S. Byatt's short fiction, carefully selected from a lifetime of writing. Peopled by artists, poets, and fabulous creatures, the stories blaze with creativity and color. From ancient myth to a British candy factory, from a Chinese restaurant to a Mediterranean swimming pool, from a Turkish bazaar to a fairy-tale palace, Byatt transports her readers beyond the veneer of the ordinary--even beyond the gloss of the fantastical--to places rich and strange and wholly unforgettable.
With this, his first collection of stories, Raymond Carver breathed new life into the American short story. Carver shows us the humor and tragedy that dwell in the hearts of ordinary people; his stories are the classics of our time.
[Carver's stories] can ... be counted among the masterpieces of American Literature. --The New York Times Book Review One of the great short story writers of our time--of any time. --The Philadelhpia Inquirer The whole collection is a knock out. Few wriers can match Raymond Carver's entiwining style and language. --The Dallas Morning News
In 1949, Jean Cocteau spent twenty days in New York, and began composing on the plane ride home this essay filled with the vivid impressions of his trip. With his unmistakable prose and graceful wit, he compares and contrasts French and American culture: the different values they place on art, literature, liberty, psychology, and dreams. Cocteau sees the incredibly buoyant hopes in America's promise, while at the same time warning of the many ills that the nation will have to confront--its hypocrisy, sexism, racism, and hegemonic aspirations--in order to realize this potential. Never before translated into English, Letter to the Americans remains as timely and urgent as when it was first published in France over seventy years ago.