Anthologies

Harper & Row, 1974, first edition. STORIES: On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi (1974) by William Tenn; The Golem (1955) by Avram Davidson; Unto the Fourth Generation (1959) by Isaac Asimov; Look, You Think You've Got Troubles (1969) by Carol Carr; Goslin Day (1970) by Avram Davidson; The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV (1974) by Robert Silverberg; Trouble with Water (1939) by H. L. Gold; Gather Blue Roses (1972) by Pamela Sargent; The Jewbird (1963) by Bernard Malamud; Paradise Last (1974) by George Alec Effinger; Street of Dreams, Feet of Clay (1967) by Robert Sheckley; Jachid and Jachidah (1961) by Isaac Bashevis Singer; I'm Looking for Kadak (1974) by Harlan Ellison. FEATURES: Why Me? (essay) by Isaac Asimov; Ellison's Grammatical Guide and Glossary for Goyim (1974) essay by Harlan Ellison. Interior artwork by Tim Kirk.

The stories of magic and transformation that we call fairy tales are among the oldest known forms of literature, and many the most popular. "Jack and the Beanstalk," "Sleeping Beauty," "Little Red Ridinghood"--these ageless tales seem to have been written an almost magically long time ago. Yet fairy tales are still being created to this very day. And while they are principally directed to children and have child protagonists, these modern fairy tales, like the classics, have messages to those of all ages. In The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales , Alison Lurie has collected forty tales that date from the late nineteenth century up to the present. Here are trolls and princesses, magic and mayhem, morals to be told and lessons to be learned--all the elements of the classic fairy tale, in new and fantastical trappings. In Charles Dickens's "The Magic Fishbone," we find an unusually pragmatic princess who uses her one wish only after she has tried to solve her family's problems through hard work. Angela Carter's "The Courtship of Mr. Lyon" is a "Beauty and the Beast" tale with a contemporary twist, in which Beauty leaves Beast to live the high life, becoming a society brat who "smiled at herself in mirrors too much." And in T.H. White's "The Troll," we find out how his father killed the troll that tried to eat him. In these enchanting pages we also see how modern writers have taken the classic fairy tale and adapted it to their times in a variety of ways. Francis Browne, for example, takes a poke at Victorian standards of beauty in "The Story of Fairyfoot," about a young prince who is cast out of the kingdom of Stumpinghame because, unlike the fashion of the town, his feet are too small. Some writers, such as Ursula Le Guin, have taken familiar myths and turned them upside down. In Le Guin's "The Wife's Story," a mother sees the horrible transformation of her husband into "the hateful one", and then watches her sister and neighbors mob and kill this "creature whose hair had begun to come away all over his body...the eyes gone blue...staring at me out of that flat, soft, white face." And L.F. Baum's "The Queen of Quok," contains a castle and royal characters in a kingdom run by common sense and small-town American values. At one point the boy king of Quok has to borrow a dime from his counsellor to buy a ham sandwich, and greed transforms his young queen-to-be into a haggard old woman. With tales from the likes of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oscar Wilde, Carl Sandburg, James Thurber, Donald Barthelme, Louise Erdrich, and many more, The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales brings us through the modern-day world of the supernatural, the mystical, the moral, and reminds us that fairy tales are still very much alive.

In Florida Stories, Tales from the Tropics by Elmore Leonard, Cabeza de Vaca, Tennessee Williams, Damon Runyon, Joan Didion, John D. McDonald, Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Hemingway, and John Sayles, you will be drawn into an alluring collection of stories, essays and poems reflecting tropical Florida - a tropical paradise where everything happens all the time.

A compilation of the debut published stories of some of the twentieth century's finest writers features the work of Ernest Hemingway, Eudora Welty, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Anne Tyler, John Updike, James Baldwin, and others

As a genre, children's ghost writing is a relative newcomer to the literary field. While children's literature has flourished for over 200 years, supernatural fiction for the young has really only come into its own in the twentieth century. Dread and Delight , a spine-tingling collection of 40 ghost stories written for children over the course of the present century, charts its development from its roots in the writings of authors such as M. R. James, A. C. Benson and Walter de la Mare, to renowned modern authors including Isaac Bashevis Singer, Jan Mark, Leon Garfield, and Penelope Lively. Compiled by the award-winning novelist Phillipa Pearce, author of the classic children's book Tom's Midnight Garden , these stories will captivate adults and children alike. Pearce includes two previously unpublished stories by Lucy Boston and Robert Westall, and a full introduction and lively notes on the authors. The collected stories represent an engaging variety--drawn from all over the English-speaking world, including America, India, and the Caribbean as well as Great Britain. Treating the supernatural with humor and whimsy, as well as with a proper respect, the tales all succeed brilliantly in creating an atmosphere of suspense or unease in order to produce the pleasurable tingle of anticipation that children relish as much as adults. As Phillip Pearce writes in her introduction, "fear becomes awe and wonder...the delight is in the dread."

From Washington Irving to Zora Neale Hurston, Edgar Allan Poe to Allen Ginsberg, more than one hundred writers of the twentieth century pay testament to the unique charms and foibles of Manhattan, in an annotated hundredth-anniversary anthology.

New York City is not only The New Yorker magazine's place of origin and its sensibility's lifeblood, it is the heart of American literary culture. Wonderful Town, an anthology of superb short fiction by many of the magazine's most accomplished contributors, celebrates the seventy-five-year marriage between a preeminent publication and its preeminent context with this collection of forty-four of its best stories from (so to speak) home. East Side? Philip Roth's chronically tormented alter ego Nathan Zuckerman has just moved there, in "Smart Money." West Side? Isaac Bashevis Singer's narrator mingles with the customers in "The Cafeteria" (who debate politics and culture in four or five different languages) and becomes embroiled in an obsessional romance. And downtown, John Updike's Maples have begun their courtship of marital disaster, in "Snowing in Greenwich Village." Wonderful Town touches on some of the city's famous places and stops at some of its more obscure corners, but the real guidebook in and between its lines is to the hearts and the minds of those who populate the metropolis built by its pages. Like all good fiction, these stories take particular places, particular people, and particular events and turn them into dramas of universal enlightenment and emotional impact. Each life in it, and each life in Wonderful Town , is the life of us all. Including these stories from the magazine's most iconic writers: “The Five-Fourty-Eight” by John Cheever “Distant Music” by Ann Beattle “Sailor off the Bremen” by Irwin Shaw “Physics” by Tama Janowitz “The Whore of Mensa” by Woody Allen “What it was Like, Seeing Chris” by Deborah Eisenberg “Drawing Room B” by John O’Hara “A Sentimental Journey” by Peter Taylor “The Balloon” by Donald Barthelme “Another Marvellous Thing” by Laurie Colwin “The Failure” by Jonathan Franzen “Apartment Hotel” by Sally Benson “Midair” by Frank Conroy “The Catbird Seat” by James Thurber “I See You, Bianca” by Maeve Brennan “You’re Ugly, Too” by Lorrie Moore “Signs and Symbols” by Vladimir Nabokov “Poor Visitor” by Jamaica Kincaid “In Greenwich, There Are Many Gravelled Walks” by Hortense Calisher “Some Nights When Nothing Happens Are the Best Nights in this Place” by John McNulty “Slight Rebellion Off Madison” by J. D. Salinger “Brownstone” by Renata Adler “Partners” by Veronica Geng “The Evolution of Knowledge” by Niccolo Tucci “The Way We Live Now” by Susan Sontag “Do the Windows Open?” by Julie Hecht “The Mentocrats” by Edward Newhouse “The Treatment” by Daniel Menaker “Arrangement in Black and White” by Dorothy Parker “Carlyle Tries Polygamy” by William Melvin Kelley “Children Are Bored on Sunday” by Jean Stafford “Notes from a Bottle” by James Stevenson “Man in the Middle of the Ocean” by Daniel Fuchs “Me Spoulets of the Splendide” by Ludwig Bemelmans “Over by the River” by William Maxwell “Baster” by Jeffrey Eugenides “The Second Tree from the Corner” by E. B. White “Rembrandt’s Hat” by Bernard Malamud “Shot: A New York Story” by Elizabeth Hardwick “A Father-To-Be” by Saul Bellow “Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer” by S. J. Perelman “Water Child” by Edwidge Danticat “The Smoker” by David Schickler

John Updike has selected enduring stories from the eighty-four annual volumes of THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, and the result is a "spectacular tapestry of fictional achievement" (Entertainment Weekly). Volume 1 of the audio edition features a wide variety of contemporary writers reading classics of the genre, along with authors reading from their own work. "America and the 20th century -- at its best" (Wall Street Journal). Contents: The Other Woman by Sherwood Anderson, read by John Updike. Theft by Katherine Anne Porter, read by Jill McCorkle. Crazy Sunday by F. Scott Fitzgerald, read by George Plimpton. The Interior Castle by Jean Stafford, read by Mary Gordon. Gold Coast by James Alan McPherson, read by James Alan McPherson. The German Refugee by Bernard Malamud, read by Alan Cheuse. The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick, read by Cynthia Ozick. How to Win by Rosellen Brown, read by Rosellen Brown. I Want to Live! by Thom Jones, read by Thom Jones. Birthmates by Gish Jen, read by Gish Jen.

For over three decades, Parabola has used story and symbol, myth, ritual, and sacred teachings to give insight to those for whom religion is a path of discovery and questioning. Following its popular books on the Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu spiritual traditions, The Inner Journey: Views from the Jewish Tradition presents a thoughtful composite picture of this ancient belief system. Here are some of the best writings on the subject, featuring works from a wide range of genres that delve into the spiritual byways of Judaism. Isaac Bashevis Singer, Martin Buber, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, and other important thinkers in the field take on such topics as Kabbalah, the search for self, and divine and worldly works. Featuring beautifully reproduced color artwork, this book is a chorus of passionate voices that explore both the Torah and the Zohar of enduring Jewish mystic thought.