Anthologies featuring bestselling authors alongside rising stars. Short story collections from some of our beloved authors with Roald Dahl, Raymond Carver and Anita Desai among the better known
Anthologies & Short Stories
Penguin Books Ltd The Steppe and Other Stories 188791
Book SynopsisThe Steppe and Other Stories 1887-91 is a collection that reveals Anton Chekhov''s evolution from a novice writer to a master of short narrative form. This Penguin Classics edition is translated by Ronald Wilks with an introduction by Donald Rayfield.This collection of Chekhov''s finest early writing is headlined by ''The Steppe'', which established his reputation, telling the unforgettable tale of a boy''s journey to a new school in Kiev, travelling through majestic landscapes towards an unknown destiny. ''Gusev'' depicts an ocean voyage, where the sea takes on a terrifying, primeval power; ''The Kiss'' portrays a shy soldier''s failed romantic encounter; and in ''The Duel'' two men''s enmity ends in farce. Haunting and highly atmospheric, all the stories in this volume show a writer emerging from the shadow of his masters - great Russian writers such as Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev and Nikolai Gogol - and discovering his own voice. They also illustrate Chekhov''s geni
£11.69
Penguin Books Ltd Ward No. 6 and Other Stories 18921895
Book SynopsisTales of madness, alienation, and insight from a master of the short storyWard No. 6 and Other Stories 1892-1895 collects stories which show Anton Chekhov beginning to confront complex, ambiguous and often extreme emotions in his short fiction. These stories from the middle period of Chekhov''s career include - influenced by his own experiences as a doctor - ''Ward No. 6'', a savage indictment of the medical profession set in a mental hospital; ''The Black Monk'', portraying an academic who has strange hallucinations, explores ideas of genius and insanity; ''Murder'', in which religious fervour leads to violence; while in ''The Student'', Chekhov''s favourite story, a young man recounts a tale from the gospels and undergoes a spiritual epiphany. In all the stories collected here, Chekhov''s characters face madness, alienation and frustration before they experience brief, ephemeral moments of insight, often earned at great cost, where they confront the reality of tTable of ContentsWard No. 6 and Other Stories, 1892-1895IntroductionFurther ReadingChronologyNote on TextPatronymicsThe GrasshopperWard No. 6AriadnaThe Black MonkMurderA Woman's KingdomThe Two VolodyasThree YearsThe StudentPublishing History and Notes
£10.44
Penguin Books Ltd Three Tales Penguin Classics
Book SynopsisThree stories by a French masterFirst published in 1877, these three stories are dominated by questions of doubt, love, loneliness, and religious experience—together they confirm Flaubert as a master of the short story. “A Simple Heart” relates the story of Félicité, an uneducated serving-woman who retains her Catholic faith despite a life of desolation and loss. “The Legend of Saint Julian Hospitator,” inspired by a stained-glass window in Rouen cathedral, describes the fate of a sadistic hunter destined to murder his own parents. The blend of faith and cruelty that dominates this story may also be found in “Herodias,” a reworking of the tale of Salome and John the Baptist.This new edition is a completely new translation with a new introduction by Geoffrey Wall, Flaubert's acclaimed biographer. It features a chronology, further reading, and explanantory notes.For more than seventy years, Penguin has
£8.54
Penguin Books Ltd A Parisian Affair and Other Stories Penguin
Book SynopsisSet in the Paris of society women, prostitutes and small-minded bourgeousie, and the isolated villages of rural Normandy that de Maupassant knew as a child, the thirty-three tales in this volume are among the most darkly humorous and brilliant short stories in nineteenth-century literature. They focus on the relationships between men and women, as in the poignant fantasy of 'A Parisian Affair', between brothers and sisters, and between masters and servants. Through these relationships, Maupassant explores the dualistic nature of the human character and his stories reveal both nobility, civility and generosity, and, in stories such as 'At Sea' and 'Boule de Suif', vanity, greed and hypocrisy. Maupassant's stories repeatedly lay humanity bare with deft wit and devastating honesty.Siân Miles's vibrant new translation is accompanied by an Introduction discussing Maupassant's stpries as a reflection of the rapidly changing beliefs of his society. This edition includes the famo
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Penguin Books Ltd Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida
Book SynopsisFrom the reign of the Tsars in the early nineteenth century to the collapse of the Soviet Union and beyond, the short story has long occupied a central place in Russian culture. Included here are pieces from many of the acknowledged masters of Russian literature—including Pushkin, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Solzhenitsyn—alongside tales by long-suppressed figures such as the subversive Kryzhanowsky and the surrealist Shalamov. Whether written in reaction to the cruelty of the bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy of communism, or the torture of the prison camps, they offer a wonderfully wide-ranging and exciting representation of one of the most vital and enduring forms of Russian literature.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. ReaderTrade Review“A smartly executed bid . . . to broaden our view of Russian literature and life.” —The Independent“As one might expect from one of UK’s leading translators, [Chandler’s] translations . . . are both accurate and highly readable.” —The East-West Journal“[An] entirely authoritative and marvellous collection.” —The Guardian
£11.69
Penguin Books Ltd The Cossacks and Other Stories Penguin Classics
Book SynopsisTolstoy's powerful semiautobiographical stories based on his time spent in the Russian army, part of our series of fresh new Tolstoy translations In 1851, at the age of twenty-two, Tolstoy joined the Russian army. The four years he spent as a soldier were among the most significant in his life and inspired the tales collected here. In The Cossacks, Tolstoy tells the story of Olenin, a cultured Russian whose experiences among the Cossack warriors of Central Asia leave him searching for a more authentic life. The Sevastopol Sketches bring into stark relief the realities of military life during the Crimean War. And Hadji Murat paints a portrait of a great leader torn apart by divided loyalties. In writing about individuals and societies in conflict, Tolstoy has penned some of the most brilliant stories about the nature of war.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700Table of ContentsThe Cossacks and Other StoriesChronologyIntroductionA Note on the TextsMapsThe CossacksSevastopol StoriesSevastopol in DecemberSevastopol in MaySevastopol in August 1855Hadji MuratNotesGlossary
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Penguin Books Ltd The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories
Book SynopsisA collection of some of Tolstoy''s most powerful powerful storiesThe violent spiritual crisis in Tolstoy''s life that inspired his last period of creativity produced the stories in this compelling and startling collection. They portray the multifaceted nature of desire, from idealistic romance to sexual jealousy, from desperate lust to relentless longing. The K reutzer Sonata caused a public sensation with its indictment of so-called Christian marriage, a theme echoed in Family Happiness. In The Devil, a young man finds it impossible to resist a beautiful peasant woman with whom he had an affair before his marriage. And Father Sergius shows a man going to increasingly desperate ends in order to avoid the temptations of the flesh.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and
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Penguin Books Ltd Selected Short Stories
Book SynopsisPoet, novelist, painter and musician, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) is the grand master of Bengali culture. Written during the 1890s, the stories in this selection brilliantly recreate vivid images of Bengali life and landscapes in their depiction of peasantry and gentry, casteism, corrupt officialdom and dehumanizing poverty. Yet Tagore is first and foremost India''s supreme Romantic poet, and in these stories he can be seen reaching beyond mere documentary realism towards his own profoundly original vision.
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Penguin Books Ltd Red Cavalry and Other Stories
Book SynopsisThroughout his life Isaac Babel was torn by opposing forces, by the desire both to remain faithful to his Jewish roots and yet to be free of them. This duality of vision infuses his work with a powerful energy from the earliest tales including ''Old Shloyme'' and ''Childhood'', which affirm his Russian-Jewish childhood, to the relatively non-Jewish world of his collection of stories entitled ''Red Cavalry''. Babel''s masterpiece, ''Red Cavalry'' is the most dramatic expression of his dualism and in his simultaneous acceptance and rejection of his heritage heralds the great American-Jewish writers from Henry Roth to Saul Bellow and Philip Roth.
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Penguin Books Ltd The Pancatantra
Book SynopsisFirst recorded 1500 years ago, but taking its origins from a far earlier oral tradition, the Pancatantra is ascribed by legend to the celebrated, half-mythical teacher Visnu Sarma. Asked by a great king to awaken the dulled intelligence of his three idle sons, the aging Sarma is said to have composed the great work as a series of entertaining and edifying fables narrated by a wide range of humans and animals, and together intended to provide the young princes with vital guidance for life. Since first leaving India before AD 570, the Pancatantra has been widely translated and has influenced a cast number of works in India, the Arab world and Europe, including the Arabian Nights, the Canterbury Tales and the Fables of La Fontaine. Enduring and profound, it is among the earliest and most popular of all books of fables.
£13.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Collected Stories Giftset
Book SynopsisThe Collected Stories Giftset - two exquisite volumes of William Trevor''s remarkable short stories William Trevor is described as ''the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language'' by the New Yorker and acclaimed for his haunting and profound insights into the human heart. Here is the ultimate collection of his short fiction, with dozens of tales spanning his career and ranging from the moving to the macabre, the humorous to the haunting. From the penetrating ''Memories of Youghal'' to the bittersweet ''Bodily Secrets'' and the elegiac ''Two More Gallants'', here are masterpieces of insight, depth, drama and humanity, acutely rendered by a modern master.''A textbook for anyone who ever wanted to write a story, and a treasure for anyone who loves to read them'' Madison Smartt Bell''Extraordinary... Mr. Trevor''s sheer intensity of entry into the lives of his people...proceeds to uncover new layers of yearning and pain, new a
£48.00
Penguin Books Ltd The Dunwich Horror
Book SynopsisDeadly forces are about to be awakened In the degenerate, unliked backwater of Dunwich, Wilbur Whately, a most unusual child, is born. Of unnatural parentage, he grows at an uncanny pace to an unsettling height, but the boy's arrival simply precedes that of a true horror: one of the Old Ones, that forces the people of the town to hole up by night, fearful for their lives, by day able only to trace the wreckage wrought by the gigantic, unseen monster.In this and other tales of the macabre, H. P. Lovecraft weaves unearthly fantasies of creatures beyond conception existing between the spaces of the dimensions we know.
£7.59
Penguin Books Ltd The Empty Family
Book SynopsisIn the captivating stories that make up The Empty Family Colm Tóibín delineates with a tender and unique sensibility lives of unspoken or unconscious longing, of individuals, often willingly, cast adrift from their history. ''I imagined lamplight, shadows, soft voices, clothes put away, the low sound of late news on the radio. And I thought as I crossed the bridge at Baggot Street to face the last stretch of my own journey home that no matter what I had done, I had not done that.''From the young Pakistani immigrant who seeks some kind of permanence in a strange town to the Irish woman reluctantly returning to Dublin and discovering a city that refuses to acknowledge her long absence each of Tóibín''s stories manage to contain whole worlds: stories of fleeing the past and returning home, of family threads lost and ultimately regained.''Exquisite . . . The chief reason to read these stories is the peculiar power of Colm Tóibín''s prose'' TelegrTrade ReviewColm Tóibín's new collection is the work of an author at the peak of his writing powers * The Times *Always deeply moving, the stories here - like the surf-washed pebbles on that Wexford beach - will be read for meaning and enjoyed for their shape and sound for ages to come * Tribune *It's a collection that will only further fuel Tóibín's ascent through English fiction * Independent on Sunday *Exquisite . . . The chief reason to read these stories is the peculiar power of Colm Tóibín's prose * Telegraph *Astonishingly precise, depicting complex and conflicted states of mind with rare clarity * Observer *Beautifully observed * Sunday Times *Tóibín's deceptively straightforward style continues to manage somehow to encompass both lucidity and ambiguity, precision and poetry * Irish Times *Exquisite * Metro, Fiction of the Week *These stories are always intensely interesting and sometimes profoundly provocative * Irish Independent *Perfect; and as good as the best of William Trevor, than which there can be no higher praise * Scotsman *
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Penguin Books Ltd Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters Seymour an Introduction
Book SynopsisA haunting and deeply personal portrait of family tragedy from the much-loved author of The Catcher in the RyeBuddy Glass is the second-eldest son in the eccentric and enchanting Glass family. He is on leave from the army during World War II, attending the wedding of his eldest brother, Seymour. But the wedding is not a happy one: it is overcast by a sense of strange suspense. Perhaps everyone is aware, on some level, of what is to come. And in the years after the tragedy, Buddy is haunted by memories of Seymour, turning over in his mind everything that came to pass with his deeply complex and unhappy older brother.With painful tenderness and great subtlety, Salinger unfolds a story of family tragedy from the point of view of a character - Buddy - who has long been suspected to be a portrait of the author himself.
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Penguin Publishing Group The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
Book SynopsisA definitive collection of stories from the unrivaled master of twentieth-century horrorI think it is beyond doubt that H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale. -Stephen KingFrequently imitated and widely influential, Howard Philips Lovecraft reinvented the horror genre in the 1920s, discarding ghosts and witches and instead envisioning mankind as a tiny outpost of dwindling sanity in a chaotic and malevolent universe. S. T. Joshi, Lovecraft's preeminent interpreter, presents a selection of the master's fiction, from the early tales of nightmares and madness such as The Outsider to the overpowering cosmic terror of The Call of Cthulhu. More than just a collection of terrifying tales, this volume reveals the development of Lovecraft's mesmerizing narrative style and establishes him as a canonical- and visionary-American writer.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leadiTable of ContentsThe Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird StoriesIntroductionSuggestions for Further ReadingA Note on the TextDagonThe Statement of Randolph CarterFacts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His FamilyCelephaisNyarlathotepThe Picture in the HouseThe OutsiderHerbert West - ReanimatorThe HoundThe Rats in the WallsThe FestivalHeCool AirThe Call of CthulhuThe Colour Out of SpaceThe Whisperer in DarknessThe Shadow Over InnsmouthThe Haunter of the DarkExplanatory Notes
£12.83
Penguin Books Ltd Dubliners
Book SynopsisJames Joyce (1882-1941) was born and educated in Dublin. Although he spent most of his adult life outside Ireland, Joyce's psychological and fictional universe is firmly rooted in his native Dublin, the city which provides the settings and much of the subject matter for all his fiction. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses (1922) and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake (1939), as well as the short story collection Dubliners (1914) and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916).
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Penguin Books Ltd The Collected Dorothy Parker
Book SynopsisDorothy Parker, more than any of her contemporaries, captured the spirit of the Jazz Age in her poetry and prose, and The Collected Dorothy Parker includes an introduction by Brendan Gill in Penguin Modern Classics.Dorothy Parker was the most talked-about woman of her day, notorious as the hard-drinking bad girl with a talent for stinging repartee and endlessly quotable one-liners. The decadent 1920s and 1930s in New York were a time of great experiment and daring for women. For the rich, life seemed a continual party, but the excesses took their emotional toll. In the bitingly witty poems and stories collected here, along with her articles and reviews, she brilliantly captures the spirit of the decadent Jazz Age in New York, exposing both the dazzle and the darkness. But beneath the sharp perceptions and acidic humour, much of her work poignantly expresses the deep vulnerability of a troubled, self-destructive woman who, in the words of philosopher Irwin Edman, was '
£11.69
Penguin Books Ltd Delta of Venus
Book SynopsisAs influential and revelatory in its day as Fifty Shades of Grey is now, Anaïs Nin''s Delta of Venus is a groundbreaking anthology of erotic short stories, published in Penguin Modern ClassicsIn Delta of Venus Anaïs Nin conjures up a glittering cascade of sexual encounters. Creating her own ''language of the senses'', she explores an area that was previously the domain of male writers and brings to it her own unique perceptions. Her vibrant and impassioned prose evokes the essence of female sexuality in a world where only love has meaning.This edition includes a preface adapted from Anaïs Nin''s diary that establishes a context for the work''s gestation, and a postscript to her diary entries in which she explains her desire to use ''women''s language, seeing sexual experience from a woman''s point of view''.Anaïs Nin (1903-1977), born in Paris, was the daughter of a Franco-Danish singer and a Cuban pianist. Her first book - a defence of D
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Penguin Books Ltd Collected Stories Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisA man at his desk is interrupted by the appearance of a woodland elf in his room; the piano maestro Bachmann ends his career; a barber shaves the face of a man who once tortured him; a shy dreamer makes a deal with the Devil. In these sixty-five stories of magic and melancholy, Nabokov displays an astonishing range of inventiveness, with dazzling sleight of hand, fantastical fairy tales, intellectual games and enchanting glimpses into lives of ambiguity and loss.The collection displays Nabokov''s astonishing range of technical and formal inventiveness: the dazzling sleight of hand, fanciful fairy tales, ingenious puzzles, enchanting vignettes and haunting melancholic narratives full of disturbing ambiguities.
£14.39
Penguin Books Ltd The Ballad of the Sad Café
Book Synopsis''Brilliant ... a panorama of a remarkable talent ... McCullers''s finest stories'' The New York TimesFew writers have expressed loneliness, the need for human understanding and the search for love with such power and poetic sensibility as the American writer Carson McCullers, and The Ballad of the Sad Café collects her best-loved novella together with six short stories, published in Penguin Modern Classics.Miss Amelia Evans, tall, strong and nobody''s fool, runs a small-town store. Except for a disastrous marriage that lasted just ten days, she has always lived alone. Then Cousin Lymon appears from nowhere, a strutting hunchback who steals Miss Amelia''s heart. Together they transform the store into a lively, popular café where the locals come to drink and gossip. But when her rejected and dangerous ex-husband Marvin Macy returns, the result is a bizarre love triangle that brings with it violence, hatred and betrayal. Among other fine works, the collection also includes ''Wunderkind'', McCullers''s first published story written when she was only seventeen, about a musical prodigy who suddenly realizes she will not go on to become a great pianist.Trade ReviewBrilliant ... a panorama of a remarkable talent ... McCullers's finest stories * The New York Times *Unexpectedly moving, grimly amusing, intensely atmospheric * The Times *The greatest prose writer that the South produced ... She has examined the heart of man with an understanding that no other writer can hope to surpass -- Tennessee WilliamsOf all the Southern writers, she is the most apt to endure -- Gore Vidal
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Penguin Books Ltd The Book of Sand and Shakespeares Memory
Book SynopsisOne of the most remarkable artists of our age.'' MARIO VARGAS LLOSA THE BOOK OF SAND was the last of Borges'' major collections to be published. The stories are, in his words, ''variations on favourite themes... combining a plain and at times almost colloquial style with a fantastic plot''. It includes such marvellous tales as ''The Congress'', ''Undr'' and ''The Mirror and the Mask''. Also included are the handful of stories written right at the end of Borges'' life - ''August 25, 1983'', ''Blue Tigers'', ''The Rose of Paracelsus'' and ''Shakespeare''s Memory.
£10.44
Penguin Books Ltd The Aleph
Book SynopsisBorges'' stories have a deceptively simple, almost laconic style. In maddeningly ingenious stories that play with the very form of the short story, Borges returns again and again to his themes: dreams, labyrinths, mirrors, infinite libraries, the manipulations of chance, gaucho knife-fighters, transparent tigers and the elusive nature of identity itself.
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Penguin Books Ltd Fictions
Book SynopsisThe most popular anthology of Jorge Luis Borges''s short stories, Fictions is a wildly original and influential collection of fantastic tales, translated from the Spanish with an afterword by Andrew Hurley in Penguin Modern Classics.Jorge Luis Borges''s Fictions introduced an entirely new voice into world literature. It is here that we find the astonishing accounts of ''Funes the Memorious'', the man who can forget nothing; ''Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote'', who recreates Miguel de Cervantes''s epic word-for-word; a society run on the basis of an all-encompassing game of chance in ''The Lottery in Babylon''; the mysterious world of ''Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius'' which seems to be supplanting our own ; and the ''Library of Babel'', which contains every possible book in the whole universe. Here too are the philosophical detective stories and the haunting tales of Irish revolutionaries, gaucho knife fights and dreams within dreams which proved
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Penguin Books Ltd A Universal History of Iniquity
Book SynopsisBorges'' first collection of stories (1935). In his writing, Borges always combined high seriousness with a wicked sense of fun. Here he reveals his delight in re-creating (or making up) colorful stories from the Orient, the Islamic world, and the Wild West, as well as his horrified fascination with knife fights, political and personal betrayal, and bloodthirsty revenge. Spark-ling with the sheer exuberant pleasure of story-telling, this collection marked the emergence of an utterly distinctive literary voice.
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Penguin Books Ltd Brodies Report Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisThe art of writing is mysterious; the opinions we hold are ephemeral. In these eleven short stories the quality of his inspiration is unmistakable. With their deceptively simple, almost laconic style, they achieve a magical impression that is unrivalled in modern writing.
£11.40
Penguin Books Ltd Work Suspended and Other Stories
Book SynopsisThese pieces show the range of Waugh''s skills: Mr Loveday''s Little Outing; Cruise; Period Piece; On Guard; An Englishman''s Home; Excursion in Reality; Bella Fleace Gave a Party; Winner Takes All; Work Suspended; Scott-King''s Modern Europe; Basil Seal Rides Again; and Charles Ryder''s Schooldays.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Pastures of Heaven Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisEach of these delightful interconnected tales is devoted to a family living in a fertile valley on the outskirts of Monterey, California, and the effects that one particular family has on them all. Steinbeck tackles two important literary traditions here; American naturalism, with its focus on the conflict between natural instincts and the demand to conform to society''s norms, and the short story cycle. Set in the heart of ''Steinbeck land'', the lush Californian valleys.
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Penguin Books Ltd Selected Stories
Book SynopsisAlthough he is best known for his exquisite novels, E.M. Forster also wrote remarkable short stories. He referred to his stories as fantasies' and his attraction to myth and magic is apparent in many of them. Like his novels, the stories whether they are set in Italy, Greece, India, and other places Forster visited, or in England itself contrast the freedom of paganism with the restraints of English civilization, the personal, sensual delights of the body with the impersonal, inhibiting rules imposed by society. Rich in irony and alive with sharp observations on the surprises life holds, the stories often feature violent events, discomforting coincidences, and other disruptive happenings that throw the characters' perceptions and beliefs off balance. This volume includes all twelve stories published during Forster's lifetime.Table of ContentsIntroduction by David Leavitt and Mark MitchellSuggestions for Further ReadingA Note on the TextSELECTED STORIESThe Story of a PanicThe Other Side of the HedgeThe Celestial OmnibusOther KingdomThe Curate's FriendThe Road from ColonusThe Machine StopsThe Point of ItMr AndrewsCo-ordinationThe Story of the SirenThe Eternal MomentExplanatory Notes
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Penguin Books Ltd Moments of Reprieve Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisPrimo Levi was one of the most astonishing voices to emerge from the twentieth century: a man who survived one of the ugliest times in history, yet who was able to describe his own Auschwitz experience with an unaffected tenderness.Levi was a master storyteller but he did not write fairytales. These stories are an elegy to the human figures who stood out against the tragic background of Auschwitz, ''the ones in whom I had recognized the will and capacity to react, and hence a rudiment of virtue''. Each centres on an individual who - whether it be through a juggling trick, a slice of apple or a letter - discovers one of the ''bizarre, marginal moments of reprieve''.
£11.69
Penguin Books Ltd My Oedipus Complex
Book SynopsisThe story of the title deals with a little boy named Larry and his feelings towards his father. When his father returns home from World War II, Larry is resentful and jealous of losing his mother''s undivided attention, and finds himself in a constant struggle to win back her affections.
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Penguin Books Ltd The Complete Stories
Book SynopsisReynolds Price is James B. Duke Professor of English at Duke University and the disinguished author of more than twenty-five books of fiction, poetry, drama and essays. He lives in North Carolina.
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Penguin Books Ltd Guys and Dolls
Book SynopsisSlick, upbeat and funny, these stories inspired the popular musical and film Guys and Dolls.''Of all the high players this country ever sees, there is no doubt but that the guy they call the Sky is the highest.. He will bet all he has, and nobody can bet any more than this''.
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Penguin Books Ltd Dont Look Now and Other Stories
Book SynopsisCollecting five stories of suspense, mystery and slow, creeping horror, Daphne Du Maurier''s Don''t Look Now and Other Stories includes an introduction by Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black, in Penguin Modern Classics.John and Laura have come to Venice to try and escape the pain of their young daughter''s death. But when they encounter two old women who claim to have second sight, they find that instead of laying their ghosts to rest they become caught up in a train of increasingly strange and violent events. The four other haunting, evocative stories in this volume also explore deep fears and longings, secrets and desires: ''Not After Midnight'', in which a lonely teacher investigates a mysterious American couple; ''A Border Line Case'', in which a young woman confronts her father''s past and his associations with the IRA; ''The Way of the Cross'', in which a party of pilgrims to Jerusalem encounter strange phenomena in the Garden of Gethsemane; and ''Th
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Penguin Books Ltd Collected Stories Bellow Saul Penguin Modern
Book SynopsisThis is the definitive collection of short stories by Saul Bellow. Abundant, precise, various, rich and exuberant, the stories display the stylistic and emotional brilliance which characterizes this master of prose. Some stories recount the events of a single day, some are contained in a wider frame; each story is a characteristic combination of observation and a celebration of humanity.
£15.29
Penguin Books Ltd A Tranquil Star
Book SynopsisPrimo Levi was one of the most astonishing voices to emerge from the twentieth century. This landmark selection of his short stories opens up a world of wonder, love, cruelty and curious twists of fate, where nothing is as it seems. In ''The Fugitive'' an office worker composes the most beautiful poem ever with unforeseen consequences, while ''Magic Paint'' sees a group of researchers develop a paint that mysteriously protects them from misfortune. ''Gladiators'' and ''The Knall'' are chilling explorations of mass violence, and in ''The Tranquil Star'' a simple story of stargazing becomes a meditation on language, imagination and infinity.
£10.44
Penguin Books Ltd Love in a Fallen City
Book SynopsisEileen Chang is one of the great writers of twentieth-century China, where she enjoys a passionate following both on the mainland and in Taiwan. At the heart of Chang''s achievement is her short fictiontales of love, longing, and the shifting and endlessly treacherous shoals of family life. Written when she was still in her twenties, these extraordinary stories combine an unsettled, probing, utterly contemporary sensibility, keenly alert to sexual politics and psychological ambiguity, with an intense lyricism that echoes the classics of Chinese literature. Love in a Fallen City, the first collection in English of this dazzling body of work, introduces readers to the stark and glamorous vision of a modern master.
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Penguin Books Ltd Complete Short Stories
Book SynopsisA collection of stories.
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Penguin Books Ltd The Complete Cosmicomics
Book SynopsisItalo Calvino''s enchanting stories about the evolution of the universe, with characters that are fashioned from mathematical formulae and cellular structures, The Complete Cosmicomics is translated by Martin McLaughlin, Tim Parks and William Weaver in Penguin Modern Classics.''Naturally, we were all there, - dld Qfwfq said, - where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?'' The Cosmicomics tell the story of the history of the universe, from the big bang, through millennia and across galaxies. It is witnessed through the eyes of ''cosmic know-it-all'' Qfwfq, an exuberant, chameleon-like figure, who takes the shape of a dinosaur, a mollusc, a steamer captain and a moon milk gatherer, among others. This is the first complete edition in English of Italo Calvino''s funny, whimsical and delightful stories, which blend scientific fact, flights of fancy, parody and wordplay to show the strangeness and the wonders of the world. Italo Calvino (1923-1985), one of Italy''s finest postwar writers, has delighted readers around the world with his deceptively simple, fable-like stories. Calvino was born in Cuba and raised in San Remo, Italy; he fought for the Italian Resistance from 1943-45. Among his other works published in Penguin Modern Classics are Italian Folktales, Hermit in Paris, Into the War, The Path to the Spiders'' Nests, Numbers in the Dark, Six Memos for the Next Millennium and Why Read the Classics?If you liked The Complete Cosmicomics, you might enjoy Jorge Luis Borges'' Fictions, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.''The complete and definitive collection ... a masterpiece'' Gilbert Adair, Evening Standard''Dazzling ... a book of revelation'' Tim Adams, Observer ''If you have never read Cosmicomics, you have before you the most joyful reading experience of your life'' Salman Rushdie''A landmark in fiction, the work of a master'' Ursula K Le Guin, GuardianTrade ReviewCalvino was ahead of his time in so many ways that only now is his work widely perceived not as marginal because it is fantasy, but as a landmark in fiction, the work of a master . . . It's a joy to have all the Cosmicomics within one cover, and a handsome cover it is ... Martin McLaughlin's introduction couldn't be better as a guide to these dazzlingly idiosyncratic tales -- Ursula K Le Guin * Guardian *If you have never read Cosmicomics, you have before you the most joyful reading experience of your life -- Salman RushdieThis is classic Calvino, making you think and laugh at the same time -- John Self
£9.99
Penguin Books Ltd Numbers in the Dark
Book SynopsisNumbers in the Dark is a collection of short stories covering the length of Italo Calvino''s extraordinary writing career, from when he was a teenager to shortly before his death. They include witty allegories and wise fables; a town where everything has been forbidden apart from the game of tip-cat; a pitiable tribe watching the flight paths of guided missiles from outside their mud huts; a computer programmer considering the possible sequence of a series of brutal acts; and dialogues with Henry Ford, a Neanderthal and the gloomy, overthrown Montezuma ...Trade Review'The author's command of detail and his fine, inventive imagination, his ability to turn ideas upside down and inside out, his awareness of the comic capacity of everyday life, are always ready to surprise and delight.' Literary Review
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Fantastic Tales
Book SynopsisFrom fabulous enchantments and supernatural horrors to subtler, more psychological terrors, the best of nineteenth-century fantastic literature is collected here by Italo Calvino. These mysterious and macabre tales include Hoffmann''s nightmarish ''The Sandman'', Poe''s terrifying ''The Tell-Tale Heart'' and Dickens''s chilling ghost story ''The Signal-Man'', and relatively unknown works from celebrated writers including Honoré de Balzac, Henry James, Sir Walter Scott, Guy de Maupassant and Robert Louis Stevenson, alongside lesser-known contributors. Each story comes with a fascinating introduction by Calvino.Trade Review'Describes imaginary worlds with the most extraordinary precision and beauty' - Gore Vidal 'One of the most playful, intelligent and inventive minds in the whole of European fiction' - Philip Hensher, Mail on Sunday
£11.69
Penguin Books Ltd Poe E Pit and the Pendulum
Book SynopsisThis selection of Poe''s critical writings, short fiction and poetry demonstrates an intense interest in aesthetic issues and the astonishing power and imagination with which he probed the darkest corners of the human mind. The Fall of the House of Usher describes the final hours of a family tormented by tragedy and the legacy of the past. In The Tell Tale Heart, a murderer''s insane delusions threaten to betray him, while stories such as The Pit and the Pendulum and The Cask of Amontillado explore extreme states of decadence, fear and hate.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Tales from the Decameron Penguin Classics
Book SynopsisBawdy and moving, hilarious and reflective: these stories offer the very best of Boccaccio’s Decameron—an inspiration for the Netflix dark comedy The Decameron—in a brilliant, playful new translation. “The Decameron reads in some ways as a guide to social distancing and self-isolation.” —The New York TimesIn the early summer of the year 1348, as a terrible plague ravages the city, ten charming young Florentines take refuge in country villas to tell each other stories—one hundred stories of love, adventure, and surprising twists of fortune that later inspired Chaucer, Keats, and Shakespeare. Now, this hugely enjoyable volume collects the best stories of Boccaccio's masterwork in a fresh, accessible new translation by Peter Hainsworth. It includes such celebrated, thought-provoking tales as Isabella and the Pot of Basil (famously adapted by Keats) and PatTrade Review“The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375), made a great impression on me. . . . Ten youths—seven women and three men—take turns telling stories for 10 days. At around the age of 16, I found it reassuring that Boccaccio, in conceiving his narrators, had made most of them women. Here was a great writer, the father of the modern story, presenting seven great female narrators. There was something to hope for. . . . The seven female narrators of the Decameron should never again need to rely on the great Giovanni Boccaccio to express themselves. . . . The female story, told with increasing skill, increasingly widespread and unapologetic, is what must now assume power.” —Elena Ferrante, The New York Times
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Penguin Books Ltd Collected Stories
Book SynopsisIn these hauntingly beautiful stories of abandonment and vengeance, extreme situations lead to disturbing conclusions. A missionary is sent to a place so distant he finds his God has no power there; a husband abandons his wife as they honeymoon in the South American jungle; a splash of water triggers an explosion of violence; and a boy''s drug-induced transformation leads to cruelty enjoyed and suffered.Masterfully written, these are chilling tales from sun-drenched and brutal climes.
£13.50
Penguin Books Ltd Flappers and Philosophers The Collected Short
Book SynopsisF. Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in St Paul, Minnesota, and went to Princeton University which he left in 1917 to join the army. Fitzgerald was said to have epitomised the Jazz Age, an age inhabited by a generation he defined as 'grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken'. In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre. Their destructive relationship and her subsequent mental breakdowns became a major influence on his writing. Among his publications were five novels, This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender is the Night and The Love of the Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald died suddenly in 1940.
£11.69
Penguin Books Ltd The Elephant
Book SynopsisThe Elephant (1957) is Slawomir Mrozek''s award-winning collection of hilarious and unnerving short stories, satirising life in Poland under a totalitarian regime. The family of a wealthy lawyer keep a ''tamed progressive'' as a pet; a zoo saves money for the workers by fashioning their elephant from rubber; a swan is dismissed from the municipal park for public drunkenness; and under the Writers'' Association, literary critics are banished to the salt mines. In these tales of bureaucrats, officials and artists, Mrozek conjures perfectly a life of imagined crimes and absurd authority.Trade ReviewExtraordinary . . . Mrozek's brief fables are something like Kafka's stories, but they're funnier * Spectator *The satiric intent is unambiguous, and offers hope to the oppressed mind...so deft and so piercing -- Nicholas Lezard * Guardian *[The series] sheds remarkable light on the literature, culture and politics of the region...anyone coming fresh to the field will be captivated by the richness, variety, humour and pathos of a classic literature that, through a shared historical experience, transcends national and linguistic boundaries. -- CJ Schüler * Independent on Sunday *This [series] is a wonderful idea ... They are absurdist parables, by turns hilarious, unsettling and enigmatic. -- Nicholas Lezard * Guardian *I urge you to go and read them. -- Adam Thirlwell * New Statesman *This new series of Central European Classics is important well beyond simply providing 'good reads'. -- Stephen Vizinczey * Daily Telegraph *
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Complete Short Stories Penguin Modern
Book SynopsisIn this unique collection of short stories composed between 1910-62, Evelyn Waugh''s early juvenilia are brought together with later pieces, some of which became the inspirations for his novels. ''Mr Loveday''s Little Outing'' is a blackly comic tale of a mental asylum and its favourite resident; ''Cruise'' sees a hilarious series of letters from a naïve young woman as she travels with her family; ''A House of Gentlefolks'' observes a group of elderly eccentric aristocrats and their young heir; and in ''The Sympathetic Passenger'' a radio-loathing retiree picks up exactly the wrong hitchhiker. These witty and immaculately crafted stories display the finest writing of a master of satire and comic twists.
£13.49
Penguin Books Ltd The New Penguin Book of American Short Stories
Book SynopsisThe short story is one of the most varied and exciting genres in American literature. This collection brings together many of its finest examples from the early nineteenth century to the present. It contains a richly diverse cast of characters, including convicts, artists, farm labourers, slaves, soldiers and salesmen, witches and ghosts, families and lovers. Their stories are told by some of America''s most celebrated writers (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edith Wharton, Raymond Carver) and a few, like Fanny Fern or Charles W. Chestnutt, who may be less familiar. The collection offers a stimulating combination of acknowledged classics, including Mark Twain''s hilarious ''Jim Smiley''s Jumping Frog'' and Edgar Allan Poe''s chilling ''The Tell-Tale Heart'', and some remarkable pieces that deserve a wider audience, such as Ernest Hemingway''s story of miscommunication, ''Out of Season'', or Lorrie Moore''s tale of modern love and wit, ''Starving Again''.Kasia Boddy''s introduction trac
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Complete Stories
Book SynopsisThe short stories of Kingsley Amis - the great master of post-war comic prose - are dark, playful, moving, surprising and extremely funny. This definitive collection gathers all Amis''s short fiction in a single volume for the first time and encompasses five decades of storytelling. In ''The 2003 Claret'', written in 1958, a time machine is invented for the weighty task of sending a man to 2010 to discover what the booze will taste like. In ''Boris and the Colonel'' a Cambridge spy is unearthed in the sleepy English countryside with the help of a plucky horse, while In ''Mason''s Life'' two men meet inside their respective dreams. The collection spans many genres, offering ingenious alternative histories, mystery and horror, satirical reflections and a devilishly funny attacks. Amis''s stories reveal the scope of his imagination and the warmth beneath his acerbic humour, and they all share the unmistakable style and wit of one of Britain''s best loved writers.Kingsley Amis''Trade ReviewA key figure in postwar British culture, whose importance and influence cannot be measured ... distinctive and original -- David Lodge'Among the English comic masters of the twentieth century' * Guardian *A ceaselessly fresh and adorable body of work ... exasperation made poetry -- Julie BurchillKingsley Amis was a big, humane novelist, interested in all manner of people very unlike himself -- Philip Hensher
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