Author: J. D. Salinger
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1925095541
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 62

Get Book Here

Book Description
Three formative short stories by one of the most significant American writers of the twentieth century. A cocktail party conversation is most revealing in what is left unsaid. Tensions between a brother and sister escalate to violent threats. A soldier heading off to war is torn between duty to his country and to his family. These stories, first published in magazines in the 1940s and long out of print, showcase the formidable talent that would blossom in The Catcher in the Rye. The first book by J. D. Salinger to be published in fifty years, Three Early Stories is a crucial addition to the shelves of Salinger fans and newcomers to his work alike. Jerome David Salinger published just one novel and three short story collections in his lifetime, but is regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the twentieth century. His books - The Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction - were published between 1951 and 1963, and Salinger lived most of his later life out of the public eye. J. D. Salinger died in 2010.

Author: Philip K Dick
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1473200016
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 483

Get Book Here

Book Description
At the beginning of his career, Philip K. Dick, whose later work won him widespread acclaim as the world's greatest science fiction writer, wrote a number of short novels which were published as paperback originals back-to-back in dual volumes with works by writers who were then more famous. Considerably more straightforward than his later novels, these stories are nevertheless unmistakably the work of the author of DO ANDOIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? and UBIK in their quirky exuberance and originality. THE MAN WHO JAPED: Following a devastating nuclear war, the Moral Reclamation government took over the world and forced its citizens to live by strictly puritanical rules - no premarital sex, drunkenness, or displaying of neon signs - all of which are reinforced through a constant barrage of messaging to the public. The chief purveyor of these messages is Alan Purcell, next in line to become head of the propaganda bureau. But there is just one problem: a statue of the government's founder has been vandalized and the head is hidden in Purcell's closet. VULCAN'S HAMMER: After the 20th century's devastating series of wars, the world's governments banded together into one globe-spanning entity, committed to peace at all costs. Ensuring that peace is the Vulcan supercomputer, responsible for all major decisions. But some people don't like being taken out of the equation. And others resent the idea that the Vulcan is taking the place of God. As the world grows ever closer to all-out war, one functionary frantically tries to prevent it. But the Vulcan computer has its own plans, plans that might not include humanity at all. DR. FUTURITY: When Dr Jim Parsons wakes up from a car accident, he finds himself in a future populated almost entirely by the young. But to keep the world run by the young, death is fetishized, and those who survive to old age are put down. In such a world, Parsons - with his innate desire to save lives - is a criminal and outcast. But for one revolutionary group, he may be just the saviour they need to heal and revive their cryogenically frozen leader. And when he and the group journey to 1500s California, what they find causes them to question what they know about history and the underpinnings of their society.

Author: Christopher Pearse Cranch
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820337048
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Get Book Here

Book Description
In his day, Christopher Pearse Cranch (1813-1892) was a well-known figure in American arts and letters, with close ties to the New England Transcendentalists. Though Cranch made his mark in fields ranging from poetry and journalism to caricature and oil painting, his most enduring achievements are his novels for children. Collected here for the first time in one volume, these three works - The Last of the Huggermuggers, Kobboltozo: A Sequel to the Last of the Huggermuggers, and The Legend of Dr. Theophilus; or, The Enchanted Clothes - establish Cranch as a pioneer in American fantasy fiction. Until now, these texts have been largely inaccessible. Huggermuggers (1866) and Kobboltozo (1867) went through several printings during the last half of the nineteenth century but have not been reissued since 1901. The manuscript of Cranch's third and last novel, The Legend of Dr. Theophilus, disappeared around 1870 and did not resurface until the 1980s. It has never before been published. As the editors explain in their introduction, Cranch was the first American author to write novel-length works solely for children, and to fuse elements of fantasy and adventure. In an era when most juvenile books emphasized moral rectitude and acquiescence to adult authority, Cranch put a higher premium on humor and the imaginative aspects of storytelling. Huggermuggers and Kobboltozo relate the still-entertaining escapades of a shipwrecked American boy, Jacky Cable, and the gentle giants and evil dwarfs who inhabit the unknown island on which he is marooned. In Dr. Theophilus Cranch takes children to a faraway place where the sun cannot penetrate the fog and where a suit of enchanted clothes can cause mayhem and grief. True to the novel's closing lines - "For the young, a magic story. For the old, an allegory" - Cranch also satirizes the medical profession and his society's stunting reverence for the past. The editors note superficial parallels between Cranch's novels and Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, and the English "Jack Tales," but they believe that Cranch's stories actually belong more to the tradition of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, earlier masters at combining elements of fantasy and adventure. They also detect in Cranch's heroes a thoroughly American self-reliance and resourcefulness. Written during an important transition in the history of American children's literature, these three novels are of special interest to scholars of American Romanticism. Perhaps most important of all they have not lost their attraction for young readers. The presence in this volume of eleven of Cranch's original illustrations for Huggermuggers and Kobboltozo only enhances the stories' imaginative appeal.

Author: Félix Fénéon
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 9781590172308
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book Here

Book Description
A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS ORIGINAL Novels in Three Lines collects more than a thousand items that appeared anonymously in the French newspaper Le Matin in 1906—true stories of murder, mayhem, and everyday life presented with a ruthless economy that provokes laughter even as it shocks. This extraordinary trove, undiscovered until the 1940s and here translated for the first time into English, is the work of the mysterious Félix Fénéon. Dandy, anarchist, and critic of genius, the discoverer of Georges Seurat and the first French publisher of James Joyce, Fénéon carefully maintained his own anonymity, toiling for years as an obscure clerk in the French War Department. Novels in Three Lines is his secret chef-d’oeuvre, a work of strange and singular art that brings back the long-ago year of 1906 with the haunting immediacy of a photograph while looking forward to such disparate works as Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and the Death and Disaster series of Andy Warhol.

Author: Gene Brewer
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1477179577
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 473

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ralphy is the story of a typical Midwestern U.S. family into whose lives is thrust a misfit, a boy who was born flat and resembles a fish. Ralphy is a throwback to the time when human beings made a wrong turn and separated themselves from the other animals. In Breakthrough, Arthur M. Raintree, Ph.D., achieves his lifelong desire to become a research scientist, but discovers that his work is of far less importance than living in peace and love with his family. In the year 2020, the government has become a wasteland of military and religious righteousness. There is only one person who can save us from self-destruction before it is too late, a genius who is prepared to die in order to accomplish this revolution.

Author: William Trevor
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504058100
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
A London boarding-house becomes a battle ground in this “dazzling display of character-led fiction” from the award-winning author of The Old Boys (The Independent). William Wagner Bird spent his life collecting lost souls—dispossessed immigrants, lonely old ladies, and the simply half-mad—to live in his London boarding-house. But when he dies, the true intent of his work is revealed in his diary. Bird had been watching them all closely, keeping notes on their sad and peculiar circumstances. And then there’s the matter of his will, in which he leaves the house to the two tenants who most despise each other, the petty thief Mr. Studdy and the equally nasty Nurse Clock. In this “rhapsody to misanthropy” Whitbread Award winner William Trevor paints a fascinating group portrait of society’s outcasts, each of whom sees their small life unravel “in a manner somewhere between Dubliners and Grimm’s fairy tales” (The New York Times).

Author: Stephen King
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780307292056
Category : Horror tales
Languages : en
Pages : 1096

Get Book Here

Book Description

Author: William Faulkner
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307791971
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Get Book Here

Book Description
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” —William Faulkner These short works offer three different approaches to Faulkner, each representative of his work as a whole. Spotted Horses is a hilarious account of a horse auction, and pits the “cold practicality” of women against the boyish folly of men. Old Man is something of an adventure story. When a flood ravages the countryside of the lower Mississippi, a convict finds himself adrift with a pregnant woman. And The Bear, perhaps his best known shorter work, is the story of a boy’s coming to terms wit the adult world. By learning how to hunt, the boy is taught the real meaning of pride, humility, and courage.

Author: Colin Dexter
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 1447245202
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 822

Get Book Here

Book Description
Featuring the first three books in Colin Dexter's classic crime series starring Inspector Morse: Last Bus to Woodstock, Last Seen Wearing and The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn. Last Bus to Woodstock: The death of Sylvia Kaye figured dramatically in Thursday afternoon's edition of the Oxford Mail. By Friday evening Inspector Morse had informed the nation that the police were looking for a dangerous man – facing charges of wilful murder, sexual assault and rape. But as the obvious leads fade into twilight and darkness, Morse becomes more and more convinced that passion holds the key . . . Last Seen Wearing: Morse was beset by a nagging feeling. Most of his fanciful notions about the Taylor girl had evaporated and he had begun to suspect that further investigation into Valerie’s disappearance would involve little more than sober and tedious routine . . . The statements before Inspector Morse appeared to confirm the bald, simple truth. After leaving home to return to school, teenager Valerie Taylor had completely vanished, and the trail had gone cold. Until two years, three months and two days after Valerie’s disappearance, somebody decides to supply some surprising new evidence for the case . . . The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn: Morse had never ceased to wonder why, with the staggering advances in medical science, all pronouncements concerning times of death seemed so disconcertingly vague. The newly appointed member of the Oxford Examinations Syndicate was deaf, provincial and gifted. Now he is dead . . . And his murder, in his north Oxford home, proves to be the start of a formidably labyrinthine case for Chief Inspector Morse, as he tries to track down the killer through the insular and bitchy world of the Oxford Colleges . . .

Author: John Crowley
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061966029
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 564

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Deep In a twilight land, two warring powers -- the Reds and the Blacks -- play out an ancient game of murder and betrayal. Then a Visitor from beyond the sky arrives to play a part in this dark and bloody pageant. From the moment he is found by two women who tend to the dead in the wake of battles, it is clear that the great game is to change at last. Beasts It is the day after tomorrow, and society has been altered dramatically by experimentation that enables scientists to combine the genetic material of different species, mixing DNA of humans with animals. Loren Casaubon is an ethologist drawn into the political and social vortex that results with Leo -- a creature both man and lion -- at its center. Engine Summer A young man named Rush That Speaks is growing up in a far distant world -- one that only dimly remembers our own age, the wondrous age of the Angels, when men could fly. Now it is the "engine summer of the world," and Rush goes in search of the Saints who can teach him to speak truthfully, and be immortal in the stories he tells. The immortality that awaits him, though, is one he could not have imagined.