Last Stories and Other Stories

Last Stories and Other Stories PDF Author: William T. Vollmann
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 014312756X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 706

Get Book Here

Book Description
Supernaturally tinged stories from William T. Vollmann, author of the National Book Award winner Europe Central Watch for Vollmann’s new work of nonfiction, No Immediate Danger, coming in April of 2018 In this magnificent new work of fiction, his first in nine years, celebrated author William T. Vollmann offers a collection of ghost stories linked by themes of love, death, and the erotic. A Bohemian farmer’s dead wife returns to him, and their love endures, but at a gruesome price. A geisha prolongs her life by turning into a cherry tree. A journalist, haunted by the half-forgotten killing of a Bosnian couple, watches their story, and his own wartime tragedy, slip away from him. A dying American romances the ghost of his high school sweetheart while a homeless salaryman in Tokyo animates paper cutouts of ancient heroes. Are ghosts memories, fantasies, or monsters? Is there life in death? Vollmann has always operated in the shadowy borderland between categories, and these eerie tales, however far-flung their settings, all focus on the attempts of the living to avoid, control, or even seduce death. Vollmann’s stories will transport readers to a fantastical world where love and lust make anything possible.

Last Stories and Other Stories

Last Stories and Other Stories PDF Author: William T. Vollmann
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 014312756X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 706

Get Book Here

Book Description
Supernaturally tinged stories from William T. Vollmann, author of the National Book Award winner Europe Central Watch for Vollmann’s new work of nonfiction, No Immediate Danger, coming in April of 2018 In this magnificent new work of fiction, his first in nine years, celebrated author William T. Vollmann offers a collection of ghost stories linked by themes of love, death, and the erotic. A Bohemian farmer’s dead wife returns to him, and their love endures, but at a gruesome price. A geisha prolongs her life by turning into a cherry tree. A journalist, haunted by the half-forgotten killing of a Bosnian couple, watches their story, and his own wartime tragedy, slip away from him. A dying American romances the ghost of his high school sweetheart while a homeless salaryman in Tokyo animates paper cutouts of ancient heroes. Are ghosts memories, fantasies, or monsters? Is there life in death? Vollmann has always operated in the shadowy borderland between categories, and these eerie tales, however far-flung their settings, all focus on the attempts of the living to avoid, control, or even seduce death. Vollmann’s stories will transport readers to a fantastical world where love and lust make anything possible.

The Last Tortilla

The Last Tortilla PDF Author: Sergio Troncoso
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 081653215X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Get Book Here

Book Description
"She asked me if I liked them. And what could I say? They were wonderful." From the very beginning of Sergio Troncoso's celebrated story "Angie Luna," we know we are in the hands of a gifted storyteller. Born of Mexican immigrants, raised in El Paso, and now living in New York City, Troncoso has a rare knack for celebrating life. Writing in a straightforward, light-handed style reminiscent of Grace Paley and Raymond Carver, he spins charming tales that reflect his experiences in two worlds. Troncoso's El Paso is a normal town where common people who happen to be Mexican eat, sleep, fall in love, and undergo epiphanies just like everyone else. His tales are coming-of-age stories from the Mexican-American border, stories of the working class, stories of those coping with the trials of growing old in a rapidly changing society. He also explores New York with vignettes of life in the big city, capturing its loneliness and danger. Beginning with Troncoso's widely acclaimed story "Angie Luna," the tale of a feverish love affair in which a young man rediscovers his Mexican heritage and learns how much love can hurt, these stories delve into the many dimensions of the human condition. We watch boys playing a game that begins innocently but takes a dangerous turn. We see an old Anglo woman befriending her Mexican gardener because both are lonely. We witness a man terrorized in his New York apartment, taking solace in memories of lost love. Two new stories will be welcomed by Troncoso's readers. "My Life in the City" relates a transplanted Texan's yearning for companionship in New York, while "The Last Tortilla" returns to the Southwest to explore family strains after a mother's death—and the secret behind that death. Each reflects an insight about the human heart that has already established the author's work in literary circles. Troncoso sets aside the polemics about social discomfort sometimes found in contemporary Chicano writing and focuses instead on the moral and intellectual lives of his characters. The twelve stories gathered here form a richly textured tapestry that adds to our understanding of what it is to be human.

Lust

Lust PDF Author: Susan Minot
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453202986
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 105

Get Book Here

Book Description
DIV DIVDIVTwelve stories of women caught in the emotional turbulence of romance in Manhattan/divDIV /div/divDIVFor the twelve narrators of Susan Minot’s breathtaking collection—artists and lawyers, teenagers and thirty-somethings—love in New York doesn’t come easy. And as they struggle to reconcile their yearnings for romance with their needs for independence, they face resistance to emotional commitment at every turn. /divDIV /divDIVIn intense snapshots of these women’s most intimate moments, Minot brings to life their dreams and disappointments, hopes and heartbreaks, and highlights the emotional fissures that divide women and men./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features a new illustrated biography of Susan Minot, including artwork by the author and rare documents and photos from her personal collection./div /div

A Book that was Lost and Other Stories

A Book that was Lost and Other Stories PDF Author: Shmuel Yosef Agnon
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 9780805210668
Category : Hebrew fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
This broad selection of the short stories of SY Agnon winner of the 1966 Nobel prize for literature presents a panoramic and probing vision of the writer as chronicler of the lost world of Eastern European Jewry and the emergent society of modern Israel.

How They Met and Other Stories

How They Met and Other Stories PDF Author: David Levithan
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0375849424
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book Here

Book Description
Just in time for Valentine’s Day comes a confection from David Levithan that is sure to have fans of Boy Meets Boy eager to devour it. Here are 18 stories, all about love, all kinds of love. From the aching for the one you pine for, to standing up and speaking up for the one you love, to pure joy and happiness, these love stories run the gamut of that emotion that at some point has turned every one of us inside out and upside down. What is love? With this original story collection, David Levithan proves that love is a many splendored thing, a varied, complicated, addictive, wonderful thing.

The Long Past & Other Stories

The Long Past & Other Stories PDF Author: Ginn Hale
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781935560517
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
1858 âe"Warring mages open up a vast inland sea that splits the United States in two. With the floodwaters come creatures from a long distant past. What seems like the End Times forges a new era of heroes and heroines who challenge tradition, law, and even death as they transform the old west into a new world.In the heart of dinosaur country a laconic trapper and a veteran mage risk treason to undertake a secret mission.A brilliant magician and her beautiful assistant light up stages with the latest automaton, but the secrets both of them are hiding test their trust in each other and pit them against one of the most powerful men in the world. At the wild edge of the Inland Sea, amidst crocodiles and triceratops, an impoverished young man and a Pinkerton Detective must join forces to outmaneuver a corrupt judge and his gunmen.

Last Stories

Last Stories PDF Author: William Trevor
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241337798
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
*A Sunday Times Top 10 Bestseller* 'What a writer he was; he could flip over a sentence so gently, and showthe underbelly in a heartbeat. His work is always quietly compassionate' Elizabeth Strout In this final collection of ten exquisite, perceptive and profound stories, William Trevor probes into the depths of the human spirit. Here we encounter a tutor and his pupil, whose lives are thrown into turmoil when they meet again years later; a young girl who discovers the mother she believed dead is alive and well; and a piano-teacher who accepts her pupil's theft in exchange for his beautiful music. These gorgeous stories - the last that Trevor wrote before his death - affirm his place as one of the world's greatest storytellers. 'Trevor is a master of both language and storytelling' Hilary Mantel 'He is one of the great short-story writers, at his best the equal of Chekhov' John Banville 'The greatest living writer of short stories in the English language' New Yorker

The Last Free Man and Other Stories

The Last Free Man and Other Stories PDF Author: Lewis Woolston
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1925536882
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 174

Get Book Here

Book Description
"A spectacularly understated page-turner. Each story enters a world apart, often spoken with a poetic dry wit, sometimes acerbic to the point of controversial, honest to the point of brutal. Some people and situations are so funny you'll wish you'd been there. Many times you wonder how some have survived - some don't. From Ceduna, Madura, Mundrabilla, Kimba, and Yalata near the dog fence, Lewis has met, worked, and lived with the creme-de-la-creme of drifters and transients, as well as the fourth and fifth generational outback station owners. In the great Australian outback - among the dry red soil, the mulga and saltbushes, where the kestrels observe and keep their secrets - beware who you're talking to." Helen Travers, author of 'A Little Lower Than Angels'

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.

The Truth and Other Stories

The Truth and Other Stories PDF Author: Stanislaw Lem
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262366657
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book Here

Book Description
Twelve stories by science fiction master Stanisław Lem, nine of them never before published in English. Of these twelve short stories by science fiction master Stanisław Lem, only three have previously appeared in English, making this the first "new" book of fiction by Lem since the late 1980s. The stories display the full range of Lem's intense curiosity about scientific ideas as well as his sardonic approach to human nature, presenting as multifarious a collection of mad scientists as any reader could wish for. Many of these stories feature artificial intelligences or artificial life forms, long a Lem preoccupation; some feature quite insane theories of cosmology or evolution. All are thought provoking and scathingly funny. Written from 1956 to 1993, the stories are arranged in chronological order. In the title story, "The Truth," a scientist in an insane asylum theorizes that the sun is alive; "The Journal" appears to be an account by an omnipotent being describing the creation of infinite universes--until, in a classic Lem twist, it turns out to be no such thing; in "An Enigma," beings debate whether offspring can be created without advanced degrees and design templates. Other stories feature a computer that can predict the future by 137 seconds, matter-destroying spores, a hunt in which the prey is a robot, and an electronic brain eager to go on the lam. These stories are peak Lem, exploring ideas and themes that resonate throughout his writing.