Showing titles in Short Stories

In the title story, a fatal accident on Mulholland Drive turns out to be part of an ingenious plot - but is it too ingenious? In Two Bagger, a dedicated cop working for the Gang Intelligence Unit finally gets the payoff he's worked so hard for - but it's not what he's expecting. In Cahoots, a...

The first ever collection of Iain Banks's short fiction, this volume includes the acclaimed novella, The State of the Art. This is a striking addition to the growing body of Culture lore, and adds definition and scale to the previous works by using the Earth of 1977 as contrast. The other stories in the collection range from science fiction to horror, dark-coated fantasy to morality tale. All bear the indefinable stamp of Iain Banks's staggering talent.

The best of cult author Bruno Schulz's captivatingly strange and beautiful short stories. The stories in this collection are rich, tangled, and suffused with mystery and wonder. In the narrowing, winding city streets, strange figures roam. Great flocks of birds soar over rooftops, obscuring the sun. Cockroaches appear through cracks and scuttle across floorboards. Individuals careen from university buildings to dimly lit parlour rooms, through strange shops and endless storms.

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler collects more than 50 of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories - many of which are difficult or nearly impossible to find anywhere else. From classic Victorian tales by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy, to contemporary stories by Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain, this collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant. 

The Books of Blood combine the ordinary with the extraordinary while radiating the eroticism that has become Barker's signature. Weaving tales of the everyday world transformed into an unrecognizable place, where reason no longer exists and logic ceases to explain the workings of the universe, Clive Barker provides the stuff of nightmares in packages too tantalizing to resist.

This is a reissue of National Book Award finalist Mary Gaitskill's debut collection, Bad Behavior - powerful stories about dislocation, longing, and desire that depict a disenchanted and rebellious urban-fringe generation as it searches for human connection. Now a classic, Bad Behavior made critical waves when it was first published, heralding Gaitskill's arrival on the literary scene and her establishment as a sharp, erotically charged, and audaciously funny writer of contemporary literature.

Derelictions are horror stories told in ways you may not have encountered before. Something is missing from the silent places and worlds inside these stories. Something has been removed, taken flight, or been destroyed. Us. Derelictions are weird tales that tell of aftermaths and of new and liminal places. Each location has witnessed catastrophe, infernal visitations, or unearthly transformations. But across these landscapes of murder, genocide and invasion, crucial evidence remains.

I've been taught to hate the Valentino family since I could walk. I know they killed my grandfather. But no one warned me that the real monster of the bunch was Luca Valentino. They didn't tell me I'd find myself imprisoned in his bed, either. Or that I'd be so reluctant to leave it. But that's precisely what happened. Little by little, he's slipping beneath my defenses and making me feel things I shouldn't.

Opening with the iconic story 'The Destructors', in which a gang of schoolboys destroys a house that has survived the Blitz, Greene offers us deliciously satisfying glimpses into 21 worlds, with each piece written as masterfully as his novels. From the chilling climax of a children's birthday party, to a man whose youthful indiscretions come back to haunt him, these are the unmistakable work of one of the 20th century's greatest and most adored storytellers.

Brought to you by Penguin. 'I need a man good-looking enough to pick up a dame who has a sense of class, but he's got to be tough enough to swap punches with a power shovel.' In the first of the four cases in Trouble is My Business, Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is offered a job that leaves a...

The eight masterly stories in this new collection are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From nostalgic memories of youth, meditations on music and an ardent love of baseball to dreamlike scenarios, an encounter with a talking monkey and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world. Occasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Murakami himself is present. Is it memoir or fiction? The listener decides.

Elizabeth Bennet's tolerance for her mother's poor behavior has reached its peak. When Mrs. Bennet enumerates the benefits of her second daughter marrying Mr. Collins, Elizabeth confronts her, declaring a disinclination for the match and pleading with her mother to show sense. Unsurprisingly, Mrs. Bennet does not comply, and the pair go their separate ways for the rest of the evening. Resolved to face the matter on the morrow, Elizabeth is shocked to awaken in the mistress's chambers—trapped in her mother's body!

Hasty for the Dark is the second short story collection from the award-winning and widely appreciated British writer of horror fiction, Adam L. G. Nevill. The author's best horror stories from 2009 to 2015 are collected here for the first time.

Have you ever wanted to kayak down a gorge in New Zealand? Or run night-time marathons through the Californian desert? How about rollerblading 100 miles around Amsterdam? You have? Then pour yourself a cup of cocoa, get those jim-jams on, and prepare to escape into a world of adventure with this collection of life-affirming short stories from award-winning adventurer Anna McNuff.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the highly acclaimed translators of War and Peace, Doctor Zhivago, and Anna Karenina, which was an Oprah Book Club pick and million-copy bestseller, bring their unmatched talents to The Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov, a collection of thirty of...

Hastur was not a creation of H.P. Lovecraft but an adaptation of concepts created by Ambrose Bierce and Robert W. Chambers. Nevertheless, Hastur, AKA The King in Yellow, has since gone on to become one of the most iconic Great Old Ones. Whether the mysterious Lord of Leng in the Dreamlands or Cthulhu’s alleged half-brother, he is a figure who haunts the dreams of those mortals who touch upon even the barest knowledge of his existence.

Outer Space, Inner Lands includes many of the best known Ursula K. Le Guin nonrealistic stories (such as "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," "Semley' s Necklace," and "She Unnames Them") which have shaped the way many listeners see the world. She gives voice to the voiceless, hope to the outsider, and speaks truth to power - all the time maintaining her independence and sense of humor.

In this masterpiece of nature writing, beautifully narrated by Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape.

Ready for her big break after publishing her first novel, Lila Everwood has two fresh book ideas and dreams of quitting her barista job. She’s hopeful about her future—until her writing catches her literary idol’s attention in all the wrong ways. Elizabeth Lancaster, the queen of regency romance, hasn’t written a word in three years. Her publisher’s solution? A ghostwriter. Specifically, her favorite coffee server. It’s either brilliance or madness—and her literary agent son Grady thinks it’s definitely the latter.

“I’m a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can’t and then tries the short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing that, only then does he take up novel writing.” —William Faulkner Winner of the National Book Award Forty-two...