Virgin and Other Stories

Virgin and Other Stories PDF Author: April Ayers Lawson
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0865478708
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book Here

Book Description
A confident and mesmerizing fiction debut, from the winner of the Plimpton Prize Set in the South, at the crossroads of a world that is both secular and devoutly Christian, April Ayers Lawson's stories evoke the inner lives of young women and men navigating sexual, emotional, and spiritual awakenings. In "The Negative Effects of Homeschooling," Conner, sixteen, accompanies his grieving mother to the funeral of her best friend, Charlene, a woman who was once a man. In "The Way You Must Play Always," Gretchen, who looks young even for thirteen, heads into her weekly piano lesson in nervous anticipation of her next illicit meeting with her teacher's brother, Wesley. Thin and sickly, wasting from a brain tumor, Wesley spends his days watching pornography and smoking pot, and yet Gretchen can only interpret his advances as the first budding of love. And in the title story, Jake grapples with the growing chasm between him and his wife, Sheila, who was still a virgin when they wed. At a cocktail party thrown by a wealthy donor to his hospital, he ponders the intertwining imperatives of marriage--sex and love, violation and trust, spirituality and desire--even as he finds himself succumbing to the temptations of his host. Self-assured and sensual, Virgin and Other Stories is the first work of a young writer of unusual mastery.

Virgin and Other Stories

Virgin and Other Stories PDF Author: April Ayers Lawson
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0865478708
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book Here

Book Description
A confident and mesmerizing fiction debut, from the winner of the Plimpton Prize Set in the South, at the crossroads of a world that is both secular and devoutly Christian, April Ayers Lawson's stories evoke the inner lives of young women and men navigating sexual, emotional, and spiritual awakenings. In "The Negative Effects of Homeschooling," Conner, sixteen, accompanies his grieving mother to the funeral of her best friend, Charlene, a woman who was once a man. In "The Way You Must Play Always," Gretchen, who looks young even for thirteen, heads into her weekly piano lesson in nervous anticipation of her next illicit meeting with her teacher's brother, Wesley. Thin and sickly, wasting from a brain tumor, Wesley spends his days watching pornography and smoking pot, and yet Gretchen can only interpret his advances as the first budding of love. And in the title story, Jake grapples with the growing chasm between him and his wife, Sheila, who was still a virgin when they wed. At a cocktail party thrown by a wealthy donor to his hospital, he ponders the intertwining imperatives of marriage--sex and love, violation and trust, spirituality and desire--even as he finds himself succumbing to the temptations of his host. Self-assured and sensual, Virgin and Other Stories is the first work of a young writer of unusual mastery.

One More Thing

One More Thing PDF Author: B. J. Novak
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385351844
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Get Book Here

Book Description
New York Times Bestseller A startlingly original debut from the actor, writer, director, and executive producer hailed as “a gifted observer of the human condition and a very funny writer capable of winning that rare thing: unselfconscious, insuppressible laughter” (The Washington Post). A boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes—only to discover that claiming the winnings might unravel his family. A woman sets out to seduce motivational speaker Tony Robbins—turning for help to the famed motivator himself. A new arrival in Heaven, overwhelmed with options, procrastinates over a long-ago promise to visit his grandmother. We meet Sophia, the first artificially intelligent being capable of love, who falls for a man who might not be ready for it himself; a vengeance-minded hare, obsessed with scoring a rematch against the tortoise who ruined his life; and post-college friends who try to figure out how to host an intervention in the era of Facebook. Along the way, we learn why wearing a red T-shirt every day is the key to finding love, how February got its name, and why the stock market is sometimes just . . . down. Finding inspiration in questions from the nature of perfection to the icing on carrot cake, One More Thing has at its heart the most human of phenomena: love, fear, hope, ambition, and the inner stirring for the one elusive element just that might make a person complete. Across a dazzling range of subjects, themes, tones, and narrative voices, the many pieces in this collection are like nothing else, but they have one thing in common: they share the playful humor, deep heart, sharp eye, inquisitive mind, and altogether electrifying spirit of a writer with a fierce devotion to the entertainment of the reader.

I Kissed Dating Goodbye

I Kissed Dating Goodbye PDF Author: Joshua Harris
Publisher: Multnomah
ISBN: 1588601579
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
Joshua Harris's first book, written when he was only 21, turned the Christian singles scene upside down...and people are still talking. More than 800,000 copies later, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, with its inspiring call to sincere love, real purity, and purposeful singleness, remains the benchmark for books on Christian dating. Now, for the first time since its release, the national #1 bestseller has been expanded with new content and updated for new readers. Honest and practical, it challenges cultural assumptions about relationships and provides solid, biblical alternatives to society's norm.Clear, stylish typeset, with user-friendly links to referenced Scripture.

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke And Other Misfortunes

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke And Other Misfortunes PDF Author: Eric LaRocca
Publisher: Titan Books (US, CA)
ISBN: 1803361506
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Amongst the Top 50 Horror Books of All Time" - Cosmopolitan Three dark and disturbing horror stories from an astonishing new voice, including the viral-sensation tale of obsession, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. For fans of Kathe Koja, Clive Barker and Stephen Graham Jones. Winner of the Splatterpunk Award for Best Novella. A whirlpool of darkness churns at the heart of a macabre ballet between two lonely young women in an internet chat room in the early 2000s—a darkness that threatens to forever transform them once they finally succumb to their most horrific desires. A couple isolate themselves on a remote island in an attempt to recover from their teenage son’s death, when a mysterious young man knocks on their door during a storm… And a man confronts his neighbour when he discovers a strange object in his back yard, only to be drawn into an ever-more dangerous game. Three devastating, beautifully written horror stories from one of the genre’s most cutting-edge voices. What have you done today to deserve your eyes?

Ten Things My Father Never Taught Me and Other Stories

Ten Things My Father Never Taught Me and Other Stories PDF Author: Cyril Wong
Publisher: Epigram Books
ISBN: 9814615099
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 146

Get Book Here

Book Description
Recommended by the National Library Board, Singapore and Ministry of Communications and Information A woman learns of a friend’s illness and wonders if she ever truly knew him. A boy who sees ghosts heeds the advice of a fortune-teller, with surprising consequences. A girl wakes up and realises everybody in her Bedok neighbourhood has vanished. From Cyril Wong, award-winning author of The Last Lesson of Mrs de Souza, comes another beautiful book about characters in crisis, with two stories crossing intriguingly into creative autobiography.

Things by the ir Right Names, and Other Stories, Fables, and Moral Pieces, in Prose and Verse

Things by the ir Right Names, and Other Stories, Fables, and Moral Pieces, in Prose and Verse PDF Author: Sarah Josepha Buell Hale
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3385136482
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Get Book Here

Book Description
Reprint of the original, first published in 1840.

These Foolish Things & Other Stories

These Foolish Things & Other Stories PDF Author: Yeo Wei Wei
Publisher: Ethos Books
ISBN: 9811414955
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 126

Get Book Here

Book Description
This debut collection by Yeo Wei Wei explores the realms between private selves, past and present, through vivid and haunting motifs—a singing bird, a lost soul in a yellow umbrella, an ivory carving, the diary of an ex-boyfriend's father. Revealing the regrets, obsessions, loss and sorrow of events in everyday life, These Foolish Things &Other Stories is a compelling piece of work ready to haunt, delight and touch its readers. A wife returns home to find that her husband has remarried ... An old woman in a nursing home is visited by a mynah that sings a Beatles song ... An artist remembers the time he was harangued by rambutans, magoes and other fruits in his studio ... “No word is out of place in Yeo Wei Wei’s exacting prose. The reader’s expectations and positions of empathy are put to the test in ways that both delight and shatter the heart.” -Cyril Wong, author of Tilting Our Plates to Catch the Light and The Dictator's Eyebrow “Yeo Wei Wei weaves a purgatorial web of men and women caught between guilt, loss and unbearable longing. Her stories are intelligent, haunting, carefully composed yet deeply felt.” -Clarissa Oon, arts editor, The Straits Times “Yeo Wei Wei is set on uncovering whole realms between private past and present and between private selves; in the process, she justifies the incidence of art. Let each tale here walk your mind as though it were a painting -Gwee Li Sui, literary critic, graphic artist and author of One Thousand and One Nights: Love Poems

Things Look Different in the Light & Other Stories

Things Look Different in the Light & Other Stories PDF Author: Medardo Fraile
Publisher: Pushkin Collection
ISBN: 1908968184
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book Here

Book Description
Medardo Fraile, born in Madrid in 1925, is considered to be one of Spain's finest short-story writers. The collection Cuentos de verdad (on which this anthology is based), won him the 1965 Premio Nacional de la Crítica. While his stories have appeared in translation in other story collections, this is the first complete anthology of his work to appear in English Like Anton Chekhov and Katherine Mansfield, Medardo Fraile is a chronicler of the minor tragedies and triumphs of ordinary life, and each short tale opens up an entire exquisite world. Pushkin Collection editions feature a spare, elegant series style and superior, durable components. The Collection is typeset in Monotype Baskerville, litho-printed on Munken Premium White Paper and notch-bound by the independently owned printer TJ International in Padstow. The covers, with French flaps, are printed on Colorplan Pristine White Paper. Both paper and cover board are acid-free and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified.

The Devil's Church and Other Stories

The Devil's Church and Other Stories PDF Author: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292786336
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 167

Get Book Here

Book Description
The modem Brazilian short story begins with the mature work of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), acclaimed almost unanimously as Brazil's greatest writer. Collectively, these nineteen stories are representative of Machado's unique style and world view, and this translation doubles the number of his stories previously available in English. The stories in this volume reflect Machado's post-1880 emphasis on social satire and experimentation in psychological realism. If he had continued to produce the moralistic love stories and parlor intrigues of his earlier fiction, Machado's legacy would have been an entertaining but inconsequent body of work. However, by 1880 he had begun a devastating satirical assault on society through his fiction. In spite of his ruthlessness, Machado does at times reveal an ironic sympathy for his characters. He is not indifferent to human conflict but uses humor and irony to stress the absurdity of these conflicts, acted out against the backdrop of an indifferent universe. Such a spectacle creates a sense of helplessness that can only inspire wistful amusement. In his technical mastery of the short story. Machado was decades ahead of his contemporaries and can still be considered more modern than most of the modernists themselves. That his stories elicit such strong and diverse reactions today is a tribute to their richness, complexity, and significance.

RIVER OF FIRE AND OTHER STORIES

RIVER OF FIRE AND OTHER STORIES PDF Author: Ed Robison
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1462887163
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247

Get Book Here

Book Description
As he demonstrated in The Fox and Other Stories, (Turtle Press - 1996) and The Man Who Saw Himself (Xlibris -2002), Ed Robison continues to watch and listen closely to the world around him. This new collection reveals fresh poignancies and acutely observed quotidian mini-dramas that can easily burn into the consciousness of those willing to pause and listen. The River of Fire, the key story, is another unforgettable look at the horror of war. “It wouldn’t be entirely out of line to characterize Ed Robison as a Damon Runyon of the resorts, retirement communities, logging towns and ... porch swings of the Northwest.” —Jim Nisbet Author of Prelude to a Scream.