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 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.
£14.24
Penguin Putnam Inc Sixty Stories
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£16.15
Penguin Books Ltd In the Land of Time
Book SynopsisA new edition of the Fantasy Tales that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft A pioneer in the realm of imaginative literature, Lord Dunsany has gained a cult following for his influence on modern fantasy literature, including such authors as J.R.R. Tolkien and H. P. Lovecraft. This unique collection of short stories ranges over five decades of work. Liberal selections of earlier tales—including the entire Gods of Pegana as well as such notable works as Idle Days of the Yann and The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth—are followed by memorable later tales, including several about the garrulous traveler Joseph Jorkens and the outrageous murder tale The Two Bottles of Relish. Throughout, the stories are united by Dunsany's cosmic vision, his impeccable and mellifluous prose, and his distinctively Irish sense of whimsy.Here published for the first time by Penguin Classics, this edition is the only annotated version of DunsanTrade Review"Dunsany's best stories remain unique: nobody else has ever been able to capture his visions....S.T. Joshi, a biographer of Dunsany and an expert in the Weird, has given us an excellent introduction and notes." —Ursula K. Le Guin, Los Angeles Times Book ReviewTable of ContentsIntroductionSuggestions for Further ReadingA Note on the TextI. Pegana and EnvironsThe Gods of PeganaTime and the GodsA Legend of the DawnIn the Land of TimeThe Relenting of SardinacThe Fall of BabbulkundII. Tales of Wonder The Sword of WelleranThe Kith of the Elf-FolkThe GhostsThe Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for SacnothBlagdarossIdle Days on the YannA Shop in Go-by StreetThe Avenger of PerdónarisThe Bride of the Man-HorseIII. Prose PoemsWhere the Tides Ebb and FlowThe Raft-BuildersThe Prayer of the FlowersThe WorkmanCharonCarcassonneRosesThe CityIV. Fantasy and RealityThe Wonderful WindowThe Coronation of Mr. Thomas ShapThe City on Mallington MoorThe Bureau d'Echange de MauxThe Exile's ClubThirteen at TableThe Last Dream of Bwona KhublaV. JorkensThe Tale of the Abu LaheebOur Distant CousinsThe Walk to LinghamThe Development of the Rillswood EstateA Life's WorkVI. Some Late TalesThe Policeman's ProphecyThe Two Bottles of RelishThe CutPoseidonHelping the FairiesThe Romance of His LifeThe Pirate of the Round PondExplanatory Notes
£13.71
Penguin Putnam Inc All That Is Gone
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£13.50
Penguin Putnam Inc The Book of Sand and Shakespeares Memory
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£13.60
Penguin Putnam Inc Presence Collected Stories
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£26.25
Penguin Putnam Inc Death at Sea
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£12.40
Penguin Putnam Inc Pilgrims
Book SynopsisThe debut by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love, Big Magic and City of Girls; a PEN/Hemingway Award finalist and New York Times Notable BookWhen it appeared in 1997, Elizabeth Gilbert’s story collection, Pilgrims, immediately announced her compelling voice, her comic touch, and her amazing ear for dialogue. “The heroes of Pilgrims . . . are everyday seekers” (Harper’s Bazaar)—brave and unforgettable, they are sure to strike a chord with fans old and new.
£14.45
Penguin Putnam Inc Presence
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£12.60
Penguin Putnam Inc There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her
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£15.30
Penguin Putnam Inc When Watched Stories
Book SynopsisA National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 HonoreeWhiting Award WinnerPEN/Hemingway Award FinalistLambda Literary Award FinalistLonglisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction & The Story Prize“Core captures a precious slice of what it is to be human. . . . She reaches moments of extraordinary grace.” —The New York Times Book Review“Pick up this book and prepare to face sublime recognition.” —Rookie “Full of dazzling insight and empathy.” —Refinery 29Refreshing, witty, and absolutely close to the heart, Core’s twenty stories, set in and around New York City, have an other-worldly quality along with a deep seriousness—even a moral seriousness. What we know of identity is smashed and in its place, true individuals emerge, each bri
£13.60
Penguin Putnam Inc Days of Awe Stories
Book Synopsis“With dark humor and sharp dialogue, Homes plumbs the depths of everyday American anxieties.” —TimeA razor-sharp story collection from the furiously good A.M. Homes, author of the forthcoming novel The Unfolding (Zadie Smith, bestselling author of Swing Time).With her signature humor and compassion, A.M. Homes exposes the heart of an uneasy America in her new collection - exploring our attachments to each other through characters who aren't quite who they hoped to become, though there is no one else they can be.In A Prize for Every Player, a man is nominated to run for president by the customers of a big box store, while he and his family do their weekly shopping. At a conference on genocide(s) in the title story, old friends rediscover themselves and one another - finding spiritual and physical comfort in ancient traditions. And in Hello Everybody and She Got Away, Homes revisits a Los Angeles f
£14.45
Penguin Publishing Group My Documents
Book SynopsisThe landmark first story collection from internationally acclaimed author Alejandro Zambra, now featuring five additional stories and an introduction by his longtime collaborator, Megan McDowellAn early desktop computer becomes the third partner in a doomed relationship; an older brother figure whose father lives in exile imparts hilarious life lessons to his young protégé. A man attempts to quit smoking despite the fact that he?s very good at it; another masquerades as the family man he''ll never be. Throughout, Pinochet?s dictatorship casts a long shadow, and men in relationships exhibit their profound capacity for both love and harm.In these unforgettable stories?which span religion, romance, technology, soccer, solitude, and more?Alejandro Zambra unfolds a radical literary reflection on life, relationships, and the tender and brutal dimensions of masculinity in Chile from the 1980s to the present. Intimate and playful, provocative and profound,and brilliantly rendered by National Book Award winning translator Megan McDowell, My Documents a testament to the necessity of literature even?and especially?in times of political and personal crisis.
£999.99
Hamish Hamilton Born With A Tooth
Book SynopsisBefore internationally acclaimed author Joseph Boyden penned his bestselling novel Three Day Road and his Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning novel, Through Black Spruce, he published a powerful collection of thirteen stories about modern Aboriginal life that made readers and reviewers take notice. These stories of love, loss, rage and resilience match virtuosic style with clever wit to turn stereotypes on their head and reveal the traditions and grace of our First Peoples. Readers come to know a butterfly-costumed boy fascinated by the world of professional wrestling, a young woman who falls in love with a wolf, to the leader of an all-girl Native punk band and Painted Tongue, the unforgettable character from Through Black Spruce. Though each story is told in a different and distinct voice, they are all united by their captivating vitality, nuanced perceptions and vigorous prose.
£14.45
Penguin Random House India Collected Short Stories Book
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£14.20
Penguin Putnam Inc The Witch
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£13.49
Elsevier Australia Pale Horse Pale Rider
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£16.99
University of Chicago Press The Past Leads a Life of Its Own Phoenix Fiction
Book SynopsisThis is a collection of 16 stories based on one boy's childhood in the rural American midwest in the 1950s, telling of his love of nature, his family and their often nomadic existence.
£999.99
Penguin Publishing Group The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories From Hans
Book SynopsisThe ultimate festive anthology of the best Christmas stories of all time, selected from around the worldA Penguin Classics HardcoverThis is a collection of the most magical, moving, chilling and surprising Christmas stories from around the world, taking us from frozen Nordic woods to glittering Paris, a New York speakeasy to an English country house, bustling Lagos to midnight mass in Rio, and even outer space.Here are classic tales from writers including Truman Capote, Shirley Jackson, Dylan Thomas, Saki and Chekhov, as well as little-known treasures such as Italo Calvino's wry sideways look at Christmas consumerism, Wolfdietrich Schnurre's story of festive ingenuity in Berlin, Selma Lagerlof's enchanted forest in Sweden, and Irène Nemerovsky's dark family portrait. Featuring santas, ghosts, trolls, unexpected guests, curmudgeons and miracles, here is Christmas as imagined by some of the greatest short story writers of all time.
£19.00
MIT Press Ltd Robotics Through Science Fiction Artificial
Book SynopsisSix classic science fiction stories and commentary that illustrate and explain key algorithms or principles of artificial intelligence.This book presents six classic science fiction stories and commentary that illustrate and explain key algorithms or principles of artificial intelligence. Even though all the stories were originally published before 1973, they help readers grapple with two questions that stir debate even today: how are intelligent robots programmed? and what are the limits of autonomous robots? The stories—by Isaac Asimov, Vernor Vinge, Brian Aldiss, and Philip K. Dick—cover telepresence, behavior-based robotics, deliberation, testing, human-robot interaction, the “uncanny valley,” natural language understanding, machine learning, and ethics. Each story is preceded by an introductory note, “As You Read the Story,” and followed by a discussion of its implications, “After You Have Read the Story.” Together with the
£26.17
MIT Press Ltd Contemplation in a World of Action Second Edition
Book SynopsisScience fiction authors offer original tales of relationships in a future world of evolving technology.In a future world dominated by the technological, people will still be entangled in relationships—in romances, friendships, and families. This volume in the Twelve Tomorrows series considers the effects that scientific and technological discoveries will have on the emotional bonds that hold us together. The strange new worlds in these stories feature AI family therapy, floating fungitecture, and a futuristic love potion. A co-op of mothers attempts to raise a child together, lovers try to resolve their differences by employing a therapeutic sexbot, and a robot helps a woman dealing with Parkinson's disease. Contributions include Xia Jia's novelette set in a Buddhist monastery, translated by the Hugo Award-winning writer Ken Liu; a story by Nancy Kress, winner of six Hugos and two Nebulas; and a profile of Kress by Lisa Yaszek, Professor of Science Fiction Studie
£16.19
University of Washington Press Purple Flat Top
Book SynopsisVivid, engaging, and subtly humorous stories evoke the essence of placeTrade Review"At once wry and compassionate, these crisply written vignettes impart a spirited, substantial nourishment as they describe a particular American landscape." * Booklist *"A fine, gracefully written combination of bird-watching, people-watching, and regional history." * Kirkus *"Purple Flat Top may sharpen our sense of wonder and respect for the wide open spaces east of here and the people who inhabit them." -- Mike Dillon * City Living *"Nesbit writes in a simple and clear voice, but also with a powerful gift for observation and reflection. . . . Purple Flat Top is worth revisiting if it has been read before or experiencing fully anew if it has not." -- Roni K. Devlin * Shelf Awareness *"With humor and poignancy, Purple Flat Top is a fine assortment, very much recommended for any literary short fiction collection." * Midwest Book Review *Table of ContentsPreface to the 2011 Edition Acknowledgements Puple Flat Top Milk Run Fourth of July The Lord's Work Carousel Sportin' Life Eagle Mine Raven Talk Sky People Fossil Bowl Sign Cloudburst Listening Dance The Opportunist Earth People
£24.23
Random House USA Inc Collected Stories of Roald Dahl
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£28.00
Random House USA Inc Christmas Stories
Book SynopsisNow joining Everyman’s Library—the most extensive and distinguished collectible library of the world’s greatest works—is an appealing new collection in a small Pocket Classics format, perfect for gift giving and reading pleasure.Christmas Stories is a treasury of short fiction by great writers of the past two centuries. As a literary subject, Christmas has inspired everything from intimate domestic dramas to fanciful flights of the imagination, and the full range of its expression is represented in this wonderfully engaging anthology.Goblins frolic in the graveyard of an early Dickens tale and a love-struck ghost disrupts a country estate in Elizabeth Bowen’s “Green Holly.” The plight of the less fortunate haunts Chekhov’s “Vanka” and Willa Cather’s “The Burglar’s Christmas” but takes a boisterously comic turn in Damon Runyon’s “Dancing Dan’s Christmas” and in John Cheever’s “Christmas Is a Sad Season for the Poor.” From Vladimir Nabokov’s intensely moving story of a father’s grief in “Christmas” to Truman Capote’s hilarious yet heartbreaking “A Christmas Memory,” from Grace Paley’s Jewish girl starring in the Christmas pageant in “The Loudest Voice” to the dysfunctional family ski holiday in Richard Ford’s “Crèche”—each of the stories gathered here is imbued with Christmas spirit (of one kind or another), and all are richly and indelibly entertaining.
£19.80
Random House USA Inc Stories
Book SynopsisThis wide-ranging collection of the stories by the renowned Nobel Laureate—spanning more than two decades of her astonishing career—highlights her singular gifts for portraying the complex lives of men and women in a modern, often alienating world. Included are seminal stories like “To Room Nineteen,” in which a woman reacts against the oppression of her banal marriage with dreadful results; “One off the Short List,” which traces the surprising conclusion to a seduction gone awry; “The Habit of Loving,” in which a lonely older man who takes a vivacious, young wife witnesses an unexpected reversal of intimacy. Here are two classic novellas as well: The Temptation of Jack Orkney and The Other Woman, which exemplify Lessing’s grasp of the most essential human psychology. Rich and various in mood and background—the settings range across England and France—these stories powerfully
£25.60
Random House USA Inc Emerald City
Book SynopsisA collection of masterful stories from the bestselling, award-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad: “Boldly modulated tales of displacement and blazing moments of truth.... Riveting, vaguely Hitchcockian.... Piercingly tender.... Outstanding (The New York Times Book Review).These elegant and poignant stories—Egan's first collection—deal with loneliness and longing, regret and desire. Egan’s characters—models and housewives, bankers and schoolgirls—are united by their search for something outside their own realm of experience. They set out from locations as exotic as China and Bora Bora, as cosmopolitan as downtown Manhattan, or as familiar as suburban Illinois to seek their own transformations. The stories in Emerald City are seamless evocations of self-discovery.
£14.36
Random House USA Inc What Becomes
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£13.50
Random House USA Inc Dimanche and Other Stories
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£13.50
Random House USA Inc Cat Stories
Book SynopsisTwo centuries of literary homages to the fascinating feline: stories by writers of every stripe—from P.G. Wodehouse to Doris Lessing, from Damon Runyon to Steven Millhauser.The essential unknowableness of cats has inspired many flights of fancy: Italo Calvino’s secret city of cats in “The Garden of Stubborn Cats,” the disappearing feline in Ursula K. Le Guin’s mind-twisting “Schrödinger’s Cat,” the cartoon rodent and his cartoon nemesis in Steven Millhauser’s “Cat ’n’ Mouse.” Cats flaunt their superiority in Angela Carter’s bawdy retelling of “Puss-in-Boots” and in Stephen Vincent Benét’s “The King of the Cats,” in which two impossibly suave foreigners are revealed as even more exotic than they pretend to be. In “The Islands” by Alice Adams and “I See You, Bianca” by Maeve Brennan we see how much cats can mean to their humans. And the inimitable Saki lets us hear what cats really think of us in “Tobermory,” his tale of a tactless talking animal.In these and other stories, this delightful book offers cat lovers a many- faceted tribute to the beguilingly mysterious objects of their affection.
£20.00
Random House USA Inc InFlight Entertainment
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£13.50
Random House USA Inc The Color Master
Book SynopsisA New York Times Notable Book of 2013A traumatic event unfolds when a girl with hair the color of golden wheat appears in an apple orchard; a woman plays out a fantasy with her husband and finds she cannot go back to her old sex life; an ugly woman marries an ogre and struggles to decide if she should stay with him after he mistakenly eats their children; and two sisters travel deep into Malaysia, where one learns the art of mending tigers who have been ripped to shreds. In each of The Color Master's fifteen remarkable stories, Aimee Bender holds a funhouse mirror up to reality, proving, once again, that she is one of the most intelligent and imaginative writers of our time.
£999.99
Random House USA Inc Sorry Please Thank You
Book SynopsisFrom the National Book Award–winning author of Interior Chinatown, comes a hilarious, heartbreaking, and utterly original collection of short stories.A big-box store employee is confronted by a zombie during the graveyard shift, a problem that pales in comparison to his inability to ask a coworker out on a date . . . A fighter leads his band of virtual warriors, thieves, and wizards across a deadly computer-generated landscape, but does he have what it takes to be a hero? . . . A company outsources grief for profit, its slogan: “Don’t feel like having a bad day? Let someone else have it for you.” Drawing from both pop culture and science, Charles Yu is a brilliant observer of contemporary society, and in Sorry Please Thank You he fills his stories with equal parts laugh-out-loud humor and piercing insight into the human condition. He has already garnered comparisons to such masters as Kurt Vonnegut and Dou
£13.29
Vintage Espanol Historia Universal de la infamia A Universal
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£14.36
Vintage Espanol Cuando fui mortal When I Was Immortal
Book SynopsisEn los cuentos de Cuando fui mortal se halla, como señaló en su día la crítica, “la oportunidad de abrir la puerta para vislumbrar el universo único de uno de los mejores novelistas contemporáneos”. Por aquí se pasea toda una serie de personajes turbadores: un médico español que visita de noche las casas parisinas de mujeres casadas; un guardaespaldas aficionado al hipódromo que deseará que haya muerto el hombre a quien protege; una aspirante a actriz porno que aguarda la sesión de rodaje junto a su compañero de reparto, al que no conoce; un fantasma que padece la maldición máxima de saber ahora cuanto ocurrió en su vida; un hombre y una mujer muertos por una lanza africana en Madrid; una señorita de compañía que lee libros en voz alta a un fantasma al que ama y muchos otros personajes salidos directamente de Coraz&oac
£13.50
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group Stories of Motherhood
Book SynopsisNow joining Everyman’s Library—the most extensive and distinguished collectible library of the world’s greatest works—is an appealing new collection in a small Pocket Classics format, perfect for gift giving and reading pleasure. _________________________ Stories of Motherhood gathers more than a century of literary celebrations of mothers of all ages. These short stories by a wide range of great writers illuminate the many facets of our most elemental human relationship, from birth to death and everything in between. Lydia Davis and Harold Brodkey explore dizzying encounters between young mothers and their newborn babies, while Colm Tóibín and Lorrie Moore portray adult children grieving for their lost mothers. Ron Carlson probes the forging of a bond with an adopted infant, Barbara Kingsolver gives us a sparring mother-and-daughter pair whose overlapping pregnancies lead them to common ground, and Aimee Be
£21.22
Random House USA Inc The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain
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£28.50
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group Novels Tales Journeys
Book SynopsisFrom the award-winning translators: the complete prose narratives of the most acclaimed Russian writer of the Romantic era and one of the world's greatest storytellers. The father of Russian literature, Pushkin is beloved not only for his poetry but also for his brilliant stories, which range from dramatic tales of love, obsession, and betrayal to dark fables and sparkling comic masterpieces, from satirical epistolary tales and romantic adventures in the manner of Sir Walter Scott to imaginative historical fiction and the haunting dreamworld of The Queen of Spades. The five short stories of The Late Tales of Ivan Petrovich Belkin are lightly humorous and yet reveal astonishing human depths, and his short novel, The Captain's Daughter, has been called the most perfect book in Russian literature.
£26.25
St Martin's Press The Dark Descent
Book SynopsisWinner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology. A gigantic, superlatively edited historical overview of horror fiction. Chicago Sun-Times In The Dark Descent, hailed as one of the most important anthologies ever to examine horror fiction, editor David G. Hartwell traces the complex history of horror in literature back to the earliest short stories. The Dark Descent showcases the finest of these ever written--from the time-honored classics of masters of the form.
£36.54
Little Brown and Company Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk
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£18.69
Little, Brown & Company Astray
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£13.50
Little, Brown & Company The Water Museum
Book SynopsisA new short story collection from Luis Alberto Urrea, bestselling author of The Hummingbird's Daughter and The Devil's Highway.
£12.34
Back Bay Books Spoiled Brats Including the Story That Inspired
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£16.14
Little Brown and Company Last One Out Shut Off the Lights
Book Synopsis A lightning bolt of a literary debut. ---Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize winner Enchanting and so neatly planed they feel made by time, these stories mark the debut of a writer to watch. ---John Freeman, Literary Hub Last One Out Shut Off the Lights is an evocative portrait of the last-chance towns of southwest Louisiana, where oil development, industrial pollution, dying wetlands, and the ever-present threat of devastating hurricanes have eroded their inhabitants'' sense of home. These eleven piercing stories feature indelible characters struggling to find a foothold in a world that is forever washing out from under them, people who must reckon with their ambivalence about belonging to a place so continually in flux. In a collection whose resonant echoes abound, we meet a reluctant teenage mother who stows her baby in a closet to steal a night out; a s
£20.80
Back Bay Books Night Train
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£15.29
Little, Brown & Company Hits and Misses
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£14.39
Back Bay Books A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth
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£17.09
Little, Brown & Company How Long Til Black Future Month
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£23.40
Mulholland Books Owning Up
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£22.40
