Variety Tales


Book Description




Varieties of Disturbance


Book Description

Lydia Davis has been called "one of the quiet giants in the world of American fiction" (Los Angeles Times), "an American virtuoso of the short story form" (Salon), an innovator who attempts "to remake the model of the modern short story" (The New York Times Book Review). Her admirers include Grace Paley, Jonathan Franzen, and Zadie Smith; as Time magazine observed, her stories are "moving . . . and somehow inevitable, as if she has written what we were all on the verge of thinking." In Varieties of Disturbance, her fourth collection, Davis extends her reach as never before in stories that take every form from sociological studies to concise poems. Her subjects include the five senses, fourth-graders, good taste, and tropical storms. She offers a reinterpretation of insomnia and re-creates the ordeals of Kafka in the kitchen. She questions the lengths to which one should go to save the life of a caterpillar, proposes a clear account of the sexual act, rides the bus, probes the limits of marital fidelity, and unlocks the secret to a long and happy life. No two of these fictions are alike. And yet in each, Davis rearranges our view of the world by looking beyond our preconceptions to a bizarre truth, a source of delight and surprise. Varieties of Disturbance is a 2007 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.




A Hundred and One Nights


Book Description

A luminous translation of Arabic tales of enchantment and wonder Translated into English for the very first time, A Hundred and One Nights is a marvelous example of the rich tradition of popular Arabic storytelling. Like the celebrated Thousand and One Nights, this collection opens with the frame story of Scheherazade, the vizier’s gifted daughter who recounts imaginative tales night after night in an effort to distract the murderous king from taking her life. A Hundred and One Nights features an almost entirely different set of stories, however, each one more thrilling, amusing, and disturbing than the last. Here, we encounter tales of epic warriors, buried treasure, disappearing brides, cannibal demon-women, fatal shipwrecks, and clever ruses, where human strength and ingenuity play out against a backdrop of inexorable, inscrutable fate. Distinctly rooted in Arabic literary culture and the Islamic tradition, these tales draw on motifs and story elements that circulated across cultures, including Indian and Chinese antecedents, and features a frame story possibly older than its more famous sibling. This vibrant translation of A Hundred and One Nights promises to transport readers, new and veteran alike, into its fantastical realms of magic and wonder. An English-only edition.




The Machineries of Joy


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From fantastical tales of Ireland to film studios, from monsters to the American countryside, THE MACHINERIES OF JOY explores Ray Bradbury's secret countries. Sometimes tender, sometimes harder than diamonds, his writing covers all seasons and emotions, and shows time after time why Harper's called him: 'America's finest living fantasist'.
















THE COLLECTED WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING (Illustrated Edition)


Book Description

This carefully edited collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Table of Contents: Novels: The Light That Failed Captain Courageous: A Story of the Grand Banks Kim The Naulahka: A Story of West and East Stalky and Co. Short Story Collections: The City of Dreadful Night Plain Tales from the Hills Soldier's Three (The Story of the Gadsbys) Soldier's Three - Part II The Phantom 'Rickshaw and Other Ghost Stories Under the Deodars Wee Willie Winkie Life's Handicap Many Inventions The Jungle Book The Second Jungle Book The Day's Work Just So Stories Traffics and Discoveries Puck of Pook's Hill Actions and Reactions Abaft the Funnel Rewards and Fairies The Eyes of Asia A Diversity of Creatures Poetry Collections: Departmental Ditties Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads The Seven Seas An Almanac of Twelve Sports The Five Nations Songs from Books The Years Between How Shakespeare Came to Write the 'Tempest' Military Collections: A Fleet in Being France at War The New Army in Training Sea Warfare The War in the Mountains The Graves of the Fallen Travel Collections American Notes From Sea to Sea Letters of Travel: 1892 - 1913 Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He wrote tales and poems of British soldiers in India and stories for children. He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story; his children's books are classics of children's literature; and one critic described his work as exhibiting "a versatile and luminous narrative gift".




The Essential Writings of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated Edition)


Book Description

This carefully edited Rudyard Kipling collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Table of Contents: Novels: The Light That Failed Captain Courageous: A Story of the Grand Banks Kim The Naulahka: A Story of West and East Stalky and Co. Short Story Collections: The City of Dreadful Night Plain Tales from the Hills Soldier's Three (The Story of the Gadsbys) Soldier's Three - Part II The Phantom 'Rickshaw and Other Ghost Stories Under the Deodars Wee Willie Winkie Life's Handicap Many Inventions The Jungle Book The Second Jungle Book The Day's Work Just So Stories Traffics and Discoveries Puck of Pook's Hill Actions and Reactions Abaft the Funnel Rewards and Fairies The Eyes of Asia A Diversity of Creatures Poetry Collections: Departmental Ditties Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads The Seven Seas An Almanac of Twelve Sports The Five Nations Songs from Books The Years Between How Shakespeare Came to Write the 'Tempest' Military Collections: A Fleet in Being France at War The New Army in Training Sea Warfare The War in the Mountains The Graves of the Fallen Travel Collections American Notes From Sea to Sea Letters of Travel: 1892 - 1913