Faber Stories Books

"A Good Man Is Hard to Find" is Flannery O'Connor's most famous and most discussed story. O'Connor herself singled it out by making it the title piece of her first collection and the story she most often chose for readings or talks to students. It is an unforgettable tale, both riveting and comic, of the confrontation of a family with violence and sudden death. More than anything else O'Connor ever wrote, this story mixes the comedy, violence, and religious concerns that characterize her fiction. This casebook for the story includes an introduction by the editor, a chronology of the author's life, the authoritative text of the story itself, comments and letters by O'Connor about the story, critical essays, and a bibliography. The critical essays span more than twenty years of commentary and suggest several approaches to the story--formalistic, thematic, deconstructionist-- all within the grasp of the undergraduate, while the introduction also points interested students toward still other resources. Useful for both beginning and advanced students, this casebook provides an in-depth introduction to one of America's most gifted modern writers.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. In perhaps the most magnificent of what he called his 'strange stories', Robert Aickman blurs the lines between memory, premonition and the hallucinated life. Lene, a woman now recovering from the losses of the Second World War, recalls a gothic dolls' house of her childhood and the way in which its uncanny inhabitants entered her dreams. Most chillingly, the geometries of the house didn't add up; there had to be a secret room inside it. Years later, she comes across a life-size version in a wood not marked on any map . . .

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. Her story was this: she had been an orphan, her mother probably a whore. Brought up by nuns, she had lost her faith, found another, fought for it and been imprisoned. This was inexact but serviceable. On the twelfth day of her hunger strike, Maggy is unable to tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined. That's true of what brought her here too: was she IRA, or did she just take risks for the sake of a friend? Julia O'Faolain paints a portrait of young Irish girls and their unseverable connection, showing solidarity in places politics cannot reach.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. This heart is sore and sad. Crossed in love? The manuscript of 'Giacomo Joyce', written in James Joyce's best handwriting and folded between the covers of a school notebook, was discovered in Trieste. Most likely written in 1914, some of it served as a rehearsal for passages in Ulysses . Had Joyce meant to pillage it or publish it? Either way, this fragmented evocation of unrequited desire is, in the words of Joyce's biographer Richard Ellmann, a work of 'small, fragile, enduring perfection'. With a new introduction by Colm Tóibín.

“Extraordinarily fine. Kingsolver has a Chekhovian tenderness toward her characters. . . . The title story is pure poetry.” —Russell Banks, New York Times Book Review With the same wit and sensitivity that have come to characterize her highly praised and beloved novels, acclaimed author Barbara Kingsolver, recipient of numerous literary awards including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Humanities Medal, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguish Contribution to American Letters, gives us a rich and emotionally resonant collection of short stories. Spreading her memorable characters over landscapes ranging from Northern California to the hills of eastern Kentucky and the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, Kingsolver tells stories of hope, momentary joy, and powerful endurance. In every setting, her distinctive voice— at times comic, but often heartrending—rings true as she explores the twin themes of family ties and the life choices one must ultimately make alone. Homeland and Other Stories creates a world of love and possibility that readers will want to take as their own.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. Who was she? Where was she going? Why did she return? It is 1945, and twenty-year-old Shiv, grieving his identical twin brother, retreats to a small town in Uttar Pradesh. He is preparing to jump onto the train tracks when he is stopped by the sight of a woman. Shanti's husband is a fighter pilot missing in Burma. For the past three years she has travelled the country in search of him. In every military hospital she visits she hears a new story, and every time she passes through Leharia she tells one to Shiv. Through stories within stories Chandra tells a spiralling tale of loss, and of two wounded people becoming something new. Borrowing a structure from the Mahabharata, Vikram Chandra tells a spiralling story of loss, and of two wounded people becoming something new.

The author's world encompasses dilapidated fight arenas, state mental hospitals & chaotic emergency rooms. The inhabitants are his brilliantly etched characters, who battle desperately against fate in a game of life they cannot win but dare not lose. As we approach the end of the century & the millennium, no one writes better or more vividly than Jones does about the personal, private apocalypses we all face in our darkest moments. In one story, a Vietnam vet, a Recon Marine, swims alone across the English Channel, the Straits of Gibraltar, & the Bosporus to maintain "the edge" that kept him alive in wartime - & that is all he now has left. In another, a brilliant doctor verges on a breakdown. In the title story, a young amateur fighter stoically endures repetitive beatings because he knows the world of boxing shields & protects him from the even crueler world outside of the ring. A number of these stories have appeared in different forms in the New Yorker, Playboy, & Esquire.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. The government has cleaned up Harare for the Queen of England's visit. 'The townships are too full of people, they said, gather them up and put them in the places the Queen will not see.' Four waves of people have settled on Easterly Farm since then, living on the margins in homes that will soon be destroyed. Among them is Martha Mupengo. She has lost her wits, and gained a pregnancy. Who could be the baby's father, and what fate awaits mothers and children in this temporary, poverty-stricken town?

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. Thinking Betty was in the bath Graham was watching a late-night programme on Channel 4 called Footballers with Their Shirts Off when she unexpectedly came in on the trail of the hairdryer. 'I didn't know you were interested in football,' said Betty. No one must ever find out that Graham is 'not the marrying sort'. Certainly not his wife, or his mother. As sex, blackmail and fanatical tidiness take over the West Yorkshire parish of Alwoodley, an unlikely caper unfolds.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You drive her to work. You quote Neruda ... You try it all, but one day she will simply sit up in bed and say, No more . In Yunior, a Dominican-American writer and Harvard professor, Junot Díaz has created an irresistibly erratic protagonist, who sweeps you up in the poetic energy of his speech as he rehearses a broad repertoire of bad behaviour. Originally the climactic tale in the chain-linked This is How You Lose Her , 'The Cheater's Guide to Love' is a superb standalone song of decadence and experience.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. Of course, of everybody of whom this particular hero was suspicious, he was most suspicious of femme fatale, of this woman he was in love with. Even before he discovered she had a spell on her he was distrustful of her. He didn’t want to be, but that’s just how it goes. Written by Anna Burns before she completed her dazzling Man Booker-winning novel Milkman , ‘Mostly Hero’ is the hilarious, hell-raising descendant of Quentin Tarantino and the Brothers Grimm. Originally self-published online, it is available here in print for the first time. Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all. Years ago, Sukie moved in with Nathan because her mother was dead and her father was difficult, and she had nowhere else to go. Now they are on the brink of the inevitable. Sally Rooney is one of the most acclaimed young talents of recent years. With her minute attention to the power dynamics in everyday speech, she builds up sexual tension and throws a deceptively low-key glance at love and death. Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. When Ray turns up to visit his old university friends Charlie and Emily, he’s given a special task: to be so much his useless self that he makes Charlie look good by comparison. But Ray has his own buried feelings to contend with. Decades earlier, he and Emily would listen to jazz when they were alone, and now, as Sarah Vaughan sings through the speakers, he struggles to control everything the sound brings with it. In Kazuo Ishiguro’s hands, a snapshot of domestic realism becomes a miniature masterpiece of memory and forgetting. Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. On the whole, it was easier than I had expected. Only once did I feel myself at risk. That was when the Inspector suddenly intervened. He said in a harsh voice: “He married your wife, didn’t he? Took her away from you some people might say. Nice piece of goods, too, by the look of her. Didn’t you feel any grievance?” I had been expecting this question. I knew exactly what I would say. The late, great P. D. James takes us inside the mind of a murderer. Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. Well, thought Belacqua, it's a quick death, God help us all. It is not. 'Dante and the Lobster' is the first of the linked short stories in Samuel Beckett's first book, More Pricks Than Kicks . Published in 1934, its style was recognisably indebted to that of his mentor, James Joyce, and crammed with linguistic texture and allusion that Beckett later shed. The book baffled many critics and sold so few copies that several batches were pulped. Decades later, this story was hailed as the Nobel Prize-winner's earliest important work.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. 'The taboo-breaking, the fabulous prose - there's no one like Edna.' Anne Enright 'Surprising and beautiful and courageous .. A beacon.' Megan Nolan 'Brilliant and brave.' Ann Patchett 'Glittering energy.' Colm Tóibín An unnamed protagonist is on holiday with her new, much-married lover, in the company of the monstrously rich. 'How long would she last? It would be uppermost in all their minds.' Each day, while the others are out at sea, she is taught to swim. Eventually, she will be expected to perform. The pressure mounts; it is only a matter of time before she snaps. Edna O'Brien crafts a quietly horrifying scene of eroticism and insecurity, and makes one woman's near-fatal discomfort stand for society's larger trap. Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. As he stood up, he suddenly felt aroused by Mrs Shaw’s large breasts, boy’s haircut, and little-girl sneakers. Even her nostrils suggested a frank sexuality. Gopal wanted to put his hands on her waist and pull her toward him. And then he realized that he had. Gopal Maurya’s wife has left him, preferring to seek enlightenment in an ashram in India. But when his neighbour comes to borrow his lawnmower, Gopal thinks he might find something similar right here in New Jersey. Armed with Cosmopolitan magazine as his bible, he embarks on a quest for suburban romance. Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. 'I have quite changed my mind. I am going to run away and become a boy.' In these three stories, written by Djuna Barnes under the pseudonym Lydia Steptoe, three characters find themselves on the brink of a sexual awakening - accompanied by guns, whips, and worldly innuendo. A fourteen-year-old girl plans to become 'a virago', until her mother intercepts her first tryst by dressing up as her male lover. A boy of the same age is lured into the forest by his father's mistress. A woman of forty falls in love and longs to kill herself, so unbearable is the return of the youth she thought she wanted. 'Alice', she tells herself, 'be a man.' Barnes makes gender and desire seem slippery and joyful - and makes the fictional Lydia Steptoe seem like a writer for our time.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. Adrienne is living in a puritanical age, when the best compliment a childless woman can get is: 'You'd make a terrific mother'. That's when she goes to her friends' Labor Day picnic and accidentally kills their baby. The shock of this scene is expertly packed into two brief paragraphs. What follows is Adrienne's retreat from life and her attempt to return to it. Her sharp scepticism about the people around her is achingly funny. Yet beyond derision there is forgiveness and something along the lines of love.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. 'My only concern', John McGahern once said, 'is that I get the sentence right and describe my world clearly and deeply.' 'The Country Funeral' witnesses three brothers, John, Philly and Fonsie Ryan, as they travel west from Dublin to Gloria Bog - the heart of the territory where so many of McGahern's stories take place - to attend the funeral of their uncle. Depicting the customs and rituals of the day, McGahern exquisitely traces how the brothers react to the area in unexpected and tender ways, and face their own feelings about the transience of life.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. The evening is fine. In the sky a few early stars are shining of their own accord. She watches the dog licking the bowl clean. This dog will break her daughter's heart, she's sure of it. Claire Keegan's mesmeric story takes us into the heart of the Wicklow countryside, and of the farming family of Victor Deegan, with his 'three teenagers, the milking and the mortgage'. When Deegan finds a gun dog and gives it as a present to his only daughter, his wife is filled with foreboding at this seeming act of kindness. As the seasons pass, long-buried family secrets threaten to emerge.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. Brian Aldiss, who died in 2017, was best known for his science fiction - and in particular for a short story optioned by Stanley Kubrick, which would, under the direction of Steven Spielberg, become the film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Aldiss's first book was published by Faber in 1955. This brief, late trilogy contains much of his lively humour, one improbable invention, and a pervasive sense of loneliness and longing. 'Sadness is just happiness in reverse,' says someone in a story within the story, 'We humans have to put up with it.'

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. In his masterful story 'A River in Egypt', David Means paints a portrait of a moment. Cavanaugh and his young son are suspended; trapped in what a nurse calls 'the sweat chamber', where the boy will be tested for cystic fibrosis. Cavanaugh has brought distractions - spasmodic action figures, malformed toy trucks - but they do little to alter the frustration of the sick child screaming, or to alleviate the anxiety of the time spent waiting for 'some exactitude in the form of a diagnosis'.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. A wily cat, a strange romance, detestable daughters: the great American poet Marianne Moore retells three stories originally written by Charles Perrault to amuse the niece of Louis XIV. Modern readers may be surprised to find that the prince does not wake Sleeping Beauty with a kiss - the more he cares, the less willing he is to intrude - and that his mother is descended from ogres. Characterised by vivid imagery, uncluttered prose, inventive alliteration and a sly sceptic's wit, Moore's versions do more than tell a tale: 'Having seen a problem solved,' she writes, each one leaves 'a pattern of order in the mind.'

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. 'Be sure you don't answer the door to anyone you don't know.' A little Patricia Highsmith, a touch of Shirley Jackson: the long-neglected Celia Fremlin wrote short, sharp stories that threw women's lives into shiver-inducing relief. In each of these twinned tales, a mother and daughter meet again, and an ordinary home becomes the setting for a return of the repressed.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. Between his second and third tours of duty, a soldier returns home. To his former home, that is, using an old key while the new tenant is at work. Is he re-entering his old life or borrowing someone else’s? Where is the line he will not cross? Each day is the same: he exists in a state of suspension, barely knowing how he passes the time – until someone else intrudes on the intruder. Adrian Tomine, graphic master of alienation and regret, expertly expands the form to express the unsaid and the unbearable in this unforgettable evocation of a post-traumatic life. Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.