A dazzling collection of short fictionZadie Smith has established herself as one of the most iconic, critically respected, and popular writers of her generation. In her first short story collection, she combines her power of observation and her inimitable voice to mine the fraught and complex experience of life in the modern world. Interleaving ten completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from The New Yorker and elsewhere, Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction. Moving exhilaratingly across genres and perspectives, from the historic to the vividly current to the slyly dystopian, Grand Union is a sharply alert and prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us. Nothing is off limits, and everything—when captured by Smith's brilliant gaze—feels fresh and...

The publication of this extraordinary volume firmly established Flannery O'Connor's monumental contribution to American fiction. There are thirty-one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime—Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find. O'Connor published her first story, "The Geranium," in 1946, while she was working on her master's degree at the University of Iowa. Arranged chronologically, this collection shows that her last story, "Judgement Day"—sent to her publisher shortly before her death—is a brilliantly rewritten and transfigured version of "The Geranium." Taken together, these stories reveal a lively, penetrating talent that has given us some of the most powerful and disturbing fiction of the twentieth century. Also included is an introduction by O'Connor's longtime editor and friend, Robert Giroux.

To this tantalizing nonfiction collection Martin Amis brings the same megawatt wit, wickedly acute perception, and ebullient wordplay that characterize his novels. He encompasses the full range of contemporary politics and culture (high and low) while also traveling to China for soccer with Elton John and to London's darts-crazy pubs in search of the perfect throw. Throughout, he offers razor-sharp takes on such subjects as:American politics: "If history is a nightmare from which we are trying to awake, then the Reagan era can be seen as an eight-year blackout. Numb, pale, unhealthily dreamless: eight years of Do Not Disturb."Chess: "Nowhere in sport, perhaps in human activity, is the gap between the tryer and the expert so astronomical.... My chances of a chess brilliancy are the 'chances' of a lab chimp and a type writer producing King Lear."From the Trade Paperback edition.

It is 1992 and the sky over Makesicko City is black with oily, carboniferous rain. Here there are 28 million people and 128 million rats. Gangs of homeless youths speaking Spanglish - or Anglatl - roam the chaotic, violent streets... Observing all this, commenting and reflecting, is Christopher, still unborn in his mother's womb. His parents have conceived him so that he can be entered for the great Christopher Columbus prize, being the first child born on 12 October 1992, 500 years after the discovery of the New World...

First published in 1955, The Violent Bear It Away is now a landmark in American literature. It is a dark and absorbing example of the Gothic sensibility and bracing satirical voice that are united in Flannery O'Conner's work. In it, the orphaned Francis Marion Tarwater and his cousins, the schoolteacher Rayber, defy the prophecy of their dead uncle--that Tarwater will become a prophet and will baptize Rayber's young son, Bishop. A series of struggles ensues: Tarwater fights an internal battle against his innate faith and the voices calling him to be a prophet while Rayber tries to draw Tarwater into a more "reasonable" modern world. Both wrestle with the legacy of their dead relatives and lay claim to Bishop's soul.O'Connor observes all this with an astonishing combination of irony and compassion, humor and pathos. The result is a novel whose range and depth reveal a brilliant and innovative writers acutely alert to where the sacred lives and to where it does...

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A Queen. A Harem of Kings. Can Shay really do this? Does she even have a choice in the matter?Warning: This book is a Slow Burn Reverse Harem with a Cliffhanger ending.My name is Shay. I'm nineteen years old.Every Fader in the country is after me.I know what you’re thinking. That I either did something horrible or that I'm a criminal.None of those things are true.No.The only crime I committed was to be born a female with the wolf's god symbol on my skin.We've been running.Running for nineteen years. They knew, my parents knew, and my mother's last dying wish was for my father to protect me. To run.So my father packed up his newborn twins, kissed his dying wife on the cheek and ran.We've been running for nineteen years because of me.My brother hasn't had a normal life, because of me.My father took his last breath of air five days ago because of me.Because we've been running for nineteen years.No more. 

At the age of ten, when Martin Amis spent a year in Princeton, New Jersey, he was excited and frightened by America. As an adult he has approached that confusing country from many arresting angles, and interviewed its literati, filmmakers, thinkers, opinion makers, leaders and crackpots with characteristic discernment and wit.Included in a gallery of Great American Novelists are Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Joseph Heller, William Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, Paul Theroux, Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. Amis also takes us to Dallas, where presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is attempting to liaise with born-again Christians. We glimpse the beau monde of Palm Beach, where each couple tries to out-Gatsby the other, and examine the case of Claus von Bulow. Steven Spielberg gets a visit, as does Brian de Palma, whom Amis asks why his films make no sense, and Hugh Hefner's sybaritic fortress and sanitised image are penetrated. There can be little...

Hanumān, the red-faced monkey chief and ninth grammarian of Hindu mythology, is the protagonist of this dazzling narrative--a mind-journey to the temple city of Galta in India and the occasion for Octavio Paz, the celebrated Mexican poet and essayist, to explore the origin of language, the nature of naming and knowing, time and reality, and fixity and decay. *Selected Review:The very concept of grammar - a system in which language can be fixed, structured and therefore transformed - is one of the great achievements of Indian culture. In the past 50 years philosophers and linguists have devoted enormous intellectual energies to the investigation of how the concept was developed among the thinkers of ancient India, for whom the idea became a central problem in their philosophical tradition. Was language, our faculty for naming objects, given by God or did man invent it, either on his own or with powers borrowed from the divine realm? Through a species of time-space journey akin to Hanuman's, Octavio Paz explores this dilemma: ''What is language made of,'' he asks, ''and most important of all, is it already made, or is it something that is perpetually in the making?'' (New York Times)*About the Author:Octavio Paz (1914-1998) was born in Mexico City. He wrote many volumes of poetry, as well as a prolific body of remarkable works of nonfiction on subjects as varied as poetics, literary and art criticism, politics, culture, and Mexican history. He was awarded the Jerusalem Prize in 1977, the Cervantes Prize in 1981, and the Neustadt Prize in 1982. He received the German Peace Prize for his political work, and finally, the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990.About the Translator:Helen Lane was the preeminent translator of French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian fiction. Among the long list of authors she translated are Augusto Roa Bastos, Jorge Amado, Luisa Valenzuela, Mario Vargas Llosa, Marguerite Duras, Nélinda Piñon, and Curzio Malaparte.

Harcourt is proud to introduce new annotated editions of three Virginia Woolf classics, ideal for the college classroom and beyond. For the first time, students reading these books will have the resources at hand to help them understand the text as well as the reasons and methods behind Woolf's writing. We've commissioned the best-known Woolf scholars in the field to provide invaluable introductions, editing, critical analysis, and suggestions for further reading. These much-awaited volumes are the first of many annotated Woolf editions Harcourt plans on publishing in the coming years.This brilliant novel explores the hidden springs of thought and action in one day of a woman's life. Direct and vivid in her account of the details of Clarissa Dalloway's preparations for a party she is to give that evening,Woolf ultimately managed to reveal much more; for it is the feeling behind these daily events that gives Mrs. Dalloway its texture and richness and makes it so...

In this comic novel of political intrigue, Adam Gorozpe, a respected businessman in Mexico, has a life so perfect that he might as well be his namesake in the Garden of Eden—but there are snakes in this Eden too. For one thing, Adam's wife Priscila has fallen in love with the brash director of national security—also named Adam—who uses violence against token victims to hide the fact that he's letting drug runners, murderers, and kidnappers go free. Another unlikely snake is the little Boy-God who's started preaching in the street wearing a white tunic and stick-on wings, inspiring Adam's brother-in-law to give up his job writing soap operas to follow this junior deity and implore Adam to do the same. Even Elle, Adam's mistress, thinks the boy is important to their salvation—especially now that it seems the other Adam has put out a contract on Adam Gorozpe. To save his relationship, his marriage, his life, and the soul of his country, perhaps Adam will...

It’s coming up on the Fourth of July in tiny Park County, Tennessee, and Sheriff Tony Abernathy must deal with not just the heat and increased traffic, but a sudden wave of crime. Someone is going around assaulting people in an attempt to find "Bob." A man is found impaled on a tree, and a woman is murdered–by sunlight! Good thing the sheriff’s wife Theo runs the local quilting shop, where she can catch the gossip while a charity quilt is being made.

Get down and naughty with this HOT standalone Older Man Younger Woman Taboo Romance between a BBW and her Dad's Sexy Best Friend.Zoe goes back home for the weekend, angry and hurt after walking in on her boyfriend cheating on her. She is pleasantly surprised when she finds her dad’s sexy best friend staying at the house. Zoe has had a crush on Evan since her teenage years, and what starts out as an innocent comfort turns into so much more…Evan couldn’t have been more surprised when Zoe comes home out of the blue. He’s dog sitting for her dad, but finds himself thrilled to get her alone. He knows she’s hurting but he’s ready to show her what it’s like to be with a real man.What will happen when they two of them, yearning for more than just a family friendship, are left alone while Zoe’s dad is out of town? Warning: contains mature themes and language. Intended for 18+ readers only.Standalone. No Cliffhangers.

Autumn brings cooler temperatures to the Smoky Mountains. The weather may be cooling down in tiny Park County, Tennessee, but crime is heating up. Weevil Beasley, the county's loan shark, dies and the body count begins. Sheriff Tony Abernathy is soon up to the top of his bald head in murder and mayhem.Tony's wife, Theo, is in the thick of it. Not even the members of her quilting group are immune when she leads them on a thread-filled retreat up at The Lodge. Arriving early for one of the upcoming weddings, a member of their group is murdered. While dealing with cranky quilters, distraught hotel keepers and unfinished projects, Theo has to keep track of gossip for her husband and barely has time to hand out the pattern for her new mystery quilt.