Collected Stories of Colette


Book Description

100 stories dating from 1908 to 1945.




Secrets of the Flesh


Book Description

A scandalously talented stage performer, a practiced seductress of both men and women, and the flamboyant author of some of the greatest works of twentieth-century literature, Colette was our first true superstar. Now, in Judith Thurman's Secrets of the Flesh, Colette at last has a biography worthy of her dazzling reputation. Having spent her childhood in the shadow of an overpowering mother, Colette escaped at age twenty into a turbulent marriage with the sexy, unscrupulous Willy--a literary charlatan who took credit for her bestselling Claudine novels. Weary of Willy's sexual domination, Colette pursued an extremely public lesbian love affair with a niece of Napoleon's. At forty, she gave birth to a daughter who bored her, at forty-seven she seduced her teenage stepson, and in her seventies she flirted with the Nazi occupiers of Paris, even though her beloved third husband, a Jew, had been arrested by the Gestapo. And all the while, this incomparable woman poured forth a torrent of masterpieces, including Gigi, Sido, Cheri, and Break of Day. Judith Thurman, author of the National Book Award-winning biography of Isak Dinesen, portrays Colette as a thoroughly modern woman: frank in her desires, fierce in her passions, forever reinventing herself. Rich with delicious gossip and intimate revelations, shimmering with grace and intelligence, Secrets of the Flesh is one of the great biographies of our time. NOTE: This edition does not include a photo insert.




Once Removed


Book Description

The women in the linked short story collection Once Removed carry the burdens imposed in the name of intimacy--the secrets kept, the lies told, the disputes initiated--as well as the joy that can still manage to triumph. A singer with a damaged voice and an assumed identity befriends a silent, troubled child; an infertile law professor covets a tenant's daughterly affection; a new mother tries to shield her infant from her estranged mother's surprise Easter visit; an aging shopkeeper hides her husband's decline and a decades-old lie to keep her best friends from moving away. With depth and an acute sense of the fragility of intimate connection, Colette Sartor creates stories of women that resonate with emotional complexity. Some of these women possess the fierce natures and long, vengeful memories of expert grudge holders. Others avoid conflict at every turn, or so they tell themselves. For all of them, grief lies at the core of love.







The Vagabond


Book Description

First published in 1799, George Walker's The Vagabond was an immediate popular success. Offering a vitriolic critique of post-Bastille Jacobinism and sansculotte-style mob rule, its true-to-life satirical portraits of many of the radical men and women who fought in the forefront of the "British Revolution" are nonetheless full of playful banter and farce. With swipes at Hume, Rousseau, Godwin, Wollstonecraft, and Paine; the French Revolution; and the ideas of the noble savage, natural virtue, liberty, equality, and romantic primitivism, The Vagabond offers a unique cross-section of 1790s radicalism. This Broadview edition contains a critical introduction and a wide selection of primary source materials that situate the novel in the context of the revolutionary debate of the 1790s. Appendices include contemporary reviews of the novel and excerpts from the writings of a variety of radicals and reactionaries engaged in the debate, such as Hume, Rousseau, Paine, Thelwall, Wollstonecraft, Godwin, Burke, Playfair, Malthus, and Cobbett, among many others.




Rebel Roommate


Book Description

Growing up, I had one rule: stay away from my brother’s best friend. It was easy to follow. I spent my years avoiding the boys on the baseball team, studying hard, and saving every dime I could. When I was accepted to transfer into UC Berkeley, I needed a place to live, and my brother had a free room off-campus. Win-win, right? Except that best friend I was determined to stay away from is now my new roommate. My very naughty, very rebellious roommate, Wesley Knight. The boy who was once the bane of my existence with his constant teasing is now a drop-dead gorgeous athlete. He’s the life of the party, but I can’t have fun. According to Wes, no guys are allowed to talk to me. Well, two can play at this game. If I can’t date, then neither can he. It starts off as innocent fun. Some half-naked yoga or a little flirting until an interrupted moment of self-gratification turns things dangerous … for my body and my heart. Living with my brother and his best friend has me breaking all the rules. I just have to decide if the consequences are worth the reward.




Gigi, Julie de Carneilhan, and Chance Acquaintances


Book Description

"Gigi" is the story of a young girl being raised in a household more concerned with success and money than with the desires of the heart. But Gigi is uninterested in the dishonest society life she observes all around her and remains exasperatingly Gigi ... "Julie de Carneilhan," focuses on a contest of wills between Julie, an elegant woman of forty, and her ex-husband. "Chance Acquaintances," a novella, involves an invalid wife, her philandering husband, and a music-hall dancer whose odd meeting at a French spa affects and indelibly marks each one of their lives.-Back cover.




Collected Stories


Book Description

Collected Stories includes both volumes of the National Book Award–winning author Shirley Hazzard’s short-story collections—Cliffs of Fall and People in Glass Houses—alongside uncollected works and two previously unpublished stories Shirley Hazzard's Collected Stories is a work of staggering breadth and accomplishment. Taken together, these twenty-eight short stories are masterworks in telescoping focus, ranging from quotidian struggles between beauty and pragmatism to satirical send-ups of international bureaucracy, from the Italian countryside to suburban Connecticut. Hazzard's heroes are high-minded romantics who attempt to fit their feelings into the twentieth-century world of office jobs and dreary marriages. After all, as she writes in "The Picnic," "It was tempting to confine oneself to what one could cope with. And one couldn't cope with love." And yet it is the comedy, the tragedy, and the splendor of love, the pursuit and the absence of it, that animates Hazzard's stories and provides the truth and beauty that her protagonists seek. Hazzard once said, "The idea that somebody has expressed something, in a supreme way, that it can be expressed; this is, I think, an enormous feature of literature." Her stories themselves are a supreme evocation of writing at its very best: probing, uncompromising, and deeply felt.




Chatte


Book Description

In these two stories, Colette reveals her grasp of the politics of love. Gigi is being educated in the skills of the courtesan. However, when it comes to the question of Gaston Lachaille, she does not want to obey the rules. This translation originally published: London: Secker & Warburg, 1953.




The Claudine Novels


Book Description

Claudine fills a diary with her experiences growing up in France.