Category: Short Stories

By Daniel Curley

Publish yr note: First released in 1985
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In Daniel Curley's tales, passionate rage and funky, transparent hatred regulate the phrases of even the main uncomplicated human relationships, etching extraordinary styles at the floor of the normal world--a guy applies the tools of Mata-Hari to the duty of keeping an eye on his ex-wife; the sufferer of a pickpocket plots mental revenge at the felony inhabitants of a Mexico urban bus line; a spurned lover summons all his power and braveness to disencumber a roomful of snakes held captive through his rival.For the main half, the figures within the panorama of those tales are women and men appearing the rituals that bring about and clear of marriage.

In The First Baseman, a guy within the strategy of getting a divorce falls in love with a participant on a woman's softball crew, yet their dialog by no means is going some distance past the topic of her batting normal. In "Trinity," an estranged couple introduced jointly back by means of the dying in their daughter unearths that they can not recreate both their love or their baby. And in Wild Geese, a man's dream approximately his youth, whilst flocks of ducks patterned the sky, is interrupted and eventually shot-through by way of fevered pictures of a tedious dinner party.

Nature exists as a safe haven in those tales, however it is a safe haven commonly to be present in the shadow of the terror of loss of life; within the recesses of reminiscence; past the bars that isolate zoo animals from an unruly international. Demonically sincere and infrequently violently humorous, Living with Snakes tells of an international the place love is at most sensible a touch-and-go type of factor, the place occasionally women and men are sure jointly no longer a lot through affection as by means of mutual loss, mutual pain.

Literary Awards
Flannery O'Connor Award for brief Fiction (1985)

By M. R. James

This paintings comprises sixteen ghost tales through one of many nice twentieth century English brief tale writers, selected and brought by way of Penelope Fitzgerald.

From the mythical literary grasp, winner of the nationwide publication Award and New York Times bestselling writer Joyce Carol Oates, a set of 13 enthralling tales that maps the eerie darkness inside of us all.

Insightful, worrying, inventive, and breathtaking of their lyrical precision, the tales in Lovely, darkish, Deep exhibit Joyce Carol Oates’s excellent skill to make visceral the fear, harm, and uncertainty that lurks on the edges of normal lives.

In “Mastiff,” a girl and a guy are joined in an erotic bond solid out of terror and gratitude. “Sex with Camel” explores how a sixteen-year-old boy realizes the intensity of his love for his grandmother—and how weak these emotions make him. apprehensive that that her husband is “disappearing” from their existence, a girl turns into enthusiastic about retaining him in her sight in “The Disappearing.” “A ebook of Martyrs” unearths how the top of a being pregnant brings with it the tip of a courting. And within the name tale, the aged Robert Frost is visited via an interviewer, an unsettling younger lady, who turns out to grasp a whole lot extra approximately his lifestyles than she should.

A piercing and evocative assortment, Lovely, darkish, Deep unearths an artist on the peak of her artistic power.

By Angela Carter

From primary fairy stories and legends – pink driving Hood, Bluebeard, Puss-in-Boots, attractiveness and the Beast, vampires, werewolves – Angela Carter has created an soaking up selection of darkish, sensual, fabulous tales.

By Isaac Bashevis Singer

'I, a demon, undergo witness that there are not any extra demons left. Why demons, while guy himself is a demon? Why convince to evil a person who's already confident? i'm the final of the persuaders'. Isaac Bashevis Singer, who gained the Nobel Prize in 1978, is best-remembered for his humane and relocating brief tales, which drew comparability with these of Maupassant and Chekhov. the 3 gathered the following, a few lady who pretends to be a guy with a purpose to learn the Torah, a annoyed demon, and a author attempting to comprehend the confusion of a holocaust survivor, remove darkness from the nice issues of human soreness with supernal grace. This ebook contains "The final Demon", "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy" and "The Cafeteria".

By Keith Laumer

From a titan of technological know-how fiction experience and the writer of the mythical Bolo sequence, an action-packed quantity containing a full-length novel and a bunch of brief novels and stories.

From a titan of technology fiction event and the writer of the mythical Bolo sequence, an action-packed quantity containing a full-length novel and a bunch of brief novels and stories.

A wry imaginative and prescient of a destiny packed with remarkable develeopments–but a destiny the place previous difficulties get back to hang-out humanity in unusual new ways.

First, Mal heads throughout an the USA ravaged by means of all over the world earthquakes whilst he runs right into a demise stranger who speaks darkly of assembly males who were not really males. The stranger has an strange gold coin in his pocket–and quickly Mal discovers that a few thing wants that coin again, and should cease at not anything to get it. 

Next: Steve Dravek awakes in a nightmarish urban and instantly needs to struggle for his lifestyles opposed to ruthless organ-stealing gangs. His final stories are of a vanished time from a century in the past. Now, as Steve attempts to stick alive lengthy sufficient to orient himself, he discovers that somebody is looking him in the course of the darkish urban, an individual who turns out to grasp him greater than he understands himself.

Plus: The commander of the spaceship fleet that simply annihilated the enemy armada comes to a decision to turn into global dictator –that is, until his moment in command can cease him. And a countrywide try condemns a guy to a lifetime of unskilled hard work, until he can be able round the system.

Praise for Keith Laumer:
"Spare, fresh prose variety and muscular storytelling procedure . . . the reader comes away with either a feeling crowning glory and a hope for the story to move on ... endlessly, if possible." –David Weber

"You're approximately to have fun." –David Drake

"One of the most efficient and well known writers of technology fiction." –Ben Bova

"... experience stories which are brisk, mild and sardonic ..." –Publishers Weekly

"Laumer is a grasp. . . ." –Seattle Times
"Tautly written and unending suspense ... very good ..." –VOYA

By Thomas Ligotti

This is often first time the simplest works of grasp horror author Thomas Ligotti were introduced jointly in one quantity. The name tale "The Shadow on the backside of the area" is the story of a small city that's gripped by way of a type of existential darkness. Ligotti avoids the specific violence universal in a few modern fiction, who prefer in its place to set up an intensely disquieting surroundings by using subtlety and repetition. frequently in comparison favourably with Edgar Allan Poe, Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka and H.P. Lovecraft, the "New York instances publication overview" wrote "If there have been a literary style referred to as 'philosophical horror' Thomas Ligotti may simply healthy inside of it".

By Alfred Bester

"Dazzlement and attraction are Bester's tools. His tales by no means stand nonetheless a moment."
—Damon Knight, writer of Why Do Birds

Alfred Bester took technology fiction into hyperdrive, endowing it with a wit, velocity, and narrative inventiveness that experience encouraged generations of writers. And nowhere is Bester funnier, swifter, or extra audacious than in those seventeen brief stories—two of them formerly unpublished—that have now been introduced jointly in one quantity for the 1st time.

Read concerning the sweet-natured younger guy whose out of the ordinary sturdy good fortune seems to be disastrous for the remainder of humanity. discover why travelers are flocking to a hellish little city in a post-nuclear Kansas. Meet a warlock who practices on Park road and whose potions conform to the natural foodstuff and Drug Act. Make a take care of the Devil—but now not with out calling your agent. staggering, bubbling, horny, and sardonic, digital Unrealities is a old assortment from considered one of technology fiction's actual pathbreakers.

"Alfred Bester was once one of many handful of writers who invented sleek technological know-how fiction. "
—Harry Harrison

By Angela Knight, Nalini Singh, Virginia Kantra, Meljean Brook

Carry those 4 authors jointly and it's bound to ignite a spark...

Angela Knight pairs a vampire warrior and his seductive captor in a conflict opposed to demonic predators.

Nalini Singh returns to the realm of her Psy-Changeling sequence as a lady in deadly probability unearths an not going protector—and lover.

Virginia Kantra keeps the haunting stories of the kids of the ocean in her tale of a wounded soldier rescued via an enigmatic younger woman.

Meljean Brook launches a daring new steampunk sequence a few lady who moves a provocative—and terrifying—bargain for freedom.

By Nancy Zafris