Best Short Stories Anthologies

The entire book, with its unconventional page arrangement and eclectic, frenetic mix of text and pictures, is a spoof on the art of book design and the art of the fairy tale. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales retells--and wreaks havoc on--the allegories we all thought we knew by heart.

These are just some of the tales Tom Hanks tells in this first collection of his short stories. They move in period, location and manner, but all demonstrate a joy in writing, a pleasure in communicating an intensely American sense of atmosphere, friendship, life and family that is every bit as smart, engaging and humane as the man himself. Tom Hanks sees inside people – a wary divorcee, a billionaire trading desire for disaster, a boy witnessing his father’s infidelity, a motley crew shooting for the moon – with such acute empathy and good humour we’d follow him anywhere. Only one of the stories in Hanks' debut features an actor: it's a sharp satire with priceless insider details about a handsome dope on a press junket in Europe. — you will enjoy Uncommon Type .”. —AM New York. “In Uncommon Type , Hanks proves his bona fides as a serious scribe, producing a collection of 17 short stories so accomplished and delightful he can rest assured he has a great fallback plan should that acting thing, you know, not work out… Terrific, Tom.”. —USA Today. “There is often a powerful sense of other lives imagined at a level that goes deeper than writerly research.”. —The Guardian. “Enjoyable..."The Past Is Important to Us” employs a sharp, unexpected conclusion to elevate a story of time travel and romance at the 1939 World’s Fair." These pieces, some of which feature recurring characters and many of which explore the classic American short story territory of small-town life, have the authentic, worn-in feel of a favourite pair of jeans.”. —Metro. “The great strengths of this collection are decency and sentimentality.”. —Sunday Times. “Playful, perceptive and rewarding.”. —Sunday Express. “An entertaining collection.”. —Mail on Sunday. “impressive.”. —The Sun. “There always comes a slight wariness when we discover that someone who is generally renowned for one thing turns out to be very good at something else... —Daily Telegraph. “Tom Hanks is a natural born storyteller… He Belongs to a tradition of American storytellers that includes Mark Twain or O Henry although there is a range of work in Uncommon Type that defies such a catch-all definition.”. —The Herald.

In Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems fans may indulge in all of Poe's most imaginative short-stories, including The Fall of the House of Usher, The Murders in Rue Morgue, The Tell-Tale Heart, Ligeia and Ms. Poe's life was not far removed from the drama of his fiction.

At last, a single volume that gathers together all of the short stories featuring Agatha Christie's most famous creation, Hercule Poirot.

Written between the years 1917 and 1935, this collection features Lovecraft's trademark fantastical creatures and supernatural thrills, as well as many horrific and cautionary science-fiction themes, that have influenced some of today's writers and filmmakers, including Stephen King, Alan Moore, F. Paul Wilson, Guillermo del Toro, and Neil Gaiman. Howard Phillips "H. P." Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American author who achieved posthumous fame through his influential works of horror fiction.

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove returns with a dazzling, profound novel about a small town with a big dream—and the price required to make it come true. Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain. “Lest readers think hockey is the star here, it’s Backman’s rich characters that steal the show, and his deft handling of tragedy and its effects on an insular town. While the story is dark at times, love, sacrifice, and the bonds of friendship and family shine through ultimately offering hope and even redemption.” ( Publishers Weekly ). “The sentimentally savvy Backman...takes a sobering and solemn look at the ways alienation and acceptance, ethics and emotions nearly destroy a small town and young people.” ( Booklist ). Backman cements his standing as a writer of astonishing depth and proves that he also has very broad range plus the remarkable ability to make you understand the feelings of each of a dozen different characters. The story is fully packed with wise insights into the human experience causing characters and readers to ponder life’s great question of who we are, what we hope to be and how we should lead our lives.” ( The Washington Times ).

Night Shift —Stephen King’s first collection of stories—is an early showcase of the depths that King’s wicked imagination could plumb. [King] will catch you in his web and reach you at an elemental level where there is no defense.” — The Cincinnati Enquirer. “Stephen King has built a literary genre of putting ordinary people in the most terrifying situations. he’s the author who can always make the improbable so scary you'll feel compelled to check the locks on the front door.” — The Boston Globe “Peerless imagination.” — The Observer (London).

-Mark Draper [TOP 10 AMAZON REVIEWER]. _____________________________________________________ BOOK DESCRIPTION: David Simpson's bestselling and award-winning Post-Human science fiction adventure series has been downloaded on the Kindle over one million times in the last three years, delighting readers with a blend of thought-provoking philosophy, cutting edge and speculative science fiction, and high-octane, action-packed suspense, mystery, and adventure. Readers have compared it most often with the works of science fiction master Isaac Asimov and have delighted in turning pages filled to the brim with all the best that science fiction and cyberpunk have to offer, like nanobots, A.I., androids, post-humans, cyborgs, and a cast of likeable characters, suspense, and star-crossed love that you won't be able to resist. ". I read through the books, feeling a strong connection to the characters, wishing at times some of the tech were real, and at others being very thankful that humanity is not quite there." "A thought-provoking, energetic sci-fi book, with a robust dose of high-octane exploits." CONTAINS: SUB-HUMAN ( BOOK 1 ) POST-HUMAN ( BOOK 2 ) TRANS-HUMAN ( BOOK 3 ) HUMAN PLUS ( BOOK 4 ).

Jack and Annie are whisked back in time to the Age of Dinosaurs, a medieval castle, ancient pyramids, and treasure-seeking pirates. Books in this set include: Dinosaurs Before Dark (#1), The Knight at Dawn (#2), Mummies in the Morning (#3), and Pirates Past Noon (#4). MARY POPE OSBORNE is the author of the New York Times number one bestselling Magic Tree House series as well as coauthor of the Magic Tree House Fact Tracker series, along with her husband, Will, and her sister Natalie Pope Boyce.

VISION IN WHITE Wedding photographer Mackensie “Mac” Elliot is most at home behind the camera for Vows, but her focus is shattered moments before an important wedding rehearsal when she bumps into Carter Maguire—the bride-to-be's brother—in an encounter that has them both seeing stars. “Funny sparks fly...[Roberts’] gentle humor and likable cast will immediately endear this series to readers.”— Publishers Weekly.

It includes Thumbelina, a little girl no more than a thumb-joint high, The Emperor's New Clothes, the tale of a man who cares only for his appearance and The Little Mermaid, who longs to one day marry a human prince. Hans Christian Andersen (1805-75) was born in Odense, Denmark, the son of a poor shoemaker and a washerwoman.

But Oscar may never get what he wants. A book that decisively establishes [Díaz] as one of contemporary fiction's most distinctive and irresistible new voices." He cuts his barn-burning comic-book plots (escape, ruin, redemption) with honest, messy realism, and his narrator speaks in a dazzling hash of Spanish, English, slang, literary flourishes, and pure virginal dorkiness." His narration is a triumph of style and wit, moving along Oscar de Leon's story with cracking, down-low humor, and at times expertly stunning us with heart-stabbing sentences. That Díaz's novel is also full of ideas, that [the narrator's] brilliant talking rivals the monologues of Roth's Zuckerman — in short, that what he has produced is a kick-ass (and truly, that is just the word for it) work of modern fiction — all make The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao something exceedingly rare: a book in which a new America can recognize itself, but so can everyone else." a mixture of straight-up English, Dominican Spanish, and hieratic nerdspeak crowded with references to Tolkien, DC Comics, role-playing games, and classic science fiction. The great achievement of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is Díaz's ability to balance an intimate multigenerational story of familial tragedy. It's Dominican and American, not about immigration but diaspora, in which one family's dramas are entwined with a nation's, not about history as information but as dark-force destroyer. In Díaz's landscape we are all the same, victims of a history and a present that doesn't just bleed together but stew. ". The Dominican Republic [Díaz] portrays in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a wild, beautiful, dangerous, and contradictory place, both hopelessly impoverished and impossibly rich. Not so different, perhaps, from anyone else's ancestral homeland, but Díaz's weirdly wonderful novel illustrates the island's uniquely powerful hold on Dominicans wherever they may wander. "Now that Díaz's second book, a novel called The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao , has finally arrived, younger writers will find that the bar. Oscar Wao shows a novelist engaged with the culture, high and low, and its polyglot language. If Donald Barthelme had lived to read Díaz, he surely would have been delighted to discover an intellectual and linguistic omnivore who could have taught even him a move or two." — Newsweek "Few books require a 'highly flammable' warning, but The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz's long-awaited first novel, will burn its way into your heart and sizzle your senses. Díaz's novel is drenched in the heated rhythms of the real world as much as it is laced with magical realism and classic fantasy stories." this fierce, funny, tragic book is just what a reader would have hoped for in a novel by Junot Díaz."

One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. It is typical of Gabriel García Márquez that it will be many pages before his narrative circles back to the ice, and many chapters before the hero of One Hundred Years of Solitude , Buendía, stands before the firing squad. A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread. The story follows 100 years in the life of Macondo, a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and occupied by descendants all sporting variations on their progenitor's name: his sons, José Arcadio and Aureliano, and grandsons, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo.