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In LEVIATHAN BEACH the thin veil between fantasy and reality ceases to exist. Thomas’ concerns with war, labor, sex and the shared prospects of biological life on this planet depict human beings as minimum wage plovers in the title story, whereas disgruntled green anoles become a child’s potential salvation in “Cold War Kirby.”

Decades after her divorce, a lady returns to the village of her tumultuous marriage. A railway carriage hosts a charged schoolboy encounter. A murder raises fears of blackmail. A woman waits anxiously in a café before eloping to Paris. Another steals a friend's kitchen knife. In these bittersweet tales, the author of Lolly Willowes reveals her mastery of the short story, celebrated by the New Yorker for decades. Sylvia Townsend Warner is a tragicomic chronicler of the heart's entanglements.

Full of glimpses into gleaming worlds and fairy tales with teeth, Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories is a collection of acclaimed and awarded work from Amal El-Mohtar. With confidence and style, El-Mohtar guides us through exquisitely told and sharply observed tales about life as it is, was, and could be. Like miscellany from other worlds, these stories are told in letters, diary entries, reference materials, folktales, and lyrical prose.

Felix Renn is a private investigator in a supernatural world, an alternate reality where a dark dimension called The Black Lands co-exists alongside our own. Travelling to and from The Black Lands is dangerous–and illegal–but that doesn’t stop some of the creatures that reside there from crossing over into our world from time to time.

Whether they are Americans, Brits, or a stubborn and suicidally moral Dutchman, Norman Rush’s whites are not sure why they are in Botswana. Their uncertainty makes them do odd things. Driven half-mad by the barking of his neighbor’s dogs, Carl dips timidly into native witchcraft—only to jump back out at the worst possible moment. Ione briskly pursues a career as a “seducer” (“A seductress was merely someone who was seductive and who might or might not be awarded a victory. But a seducer was a professional”), while her dentist husband fends off the generous advances of an African cook.

When the narrator of House of Day, House of Night arrives with her husband in a village in remote southwest Poland, she knows no one. Before long, though, she discovers that everyone--and everything—there has a story. With the help of her neighbor, the eccentric Marta, she pieces together the fragments of the living and the dead. There’s the drunk Marek Marek, who discovers he shares his body with a bird, and Franz Frost, whose nightmares come to him from a newly discovered planet.

Spanning multiple locales and epochs, and rendered in fine detail and vivid color, this transportive collection shows what it means to live as human inhabitants on our one miraculous planet. Lyrical, at times hilarious, and always heartfelt, each of these ten stories is a reflection of individual choice in the face of man-made apocalypse: in a near-future Seoul, where air pollution has become so fatal that the city has been encased in a translucent biodome, a civil engineer charged with its upkeep contemplates an arranged marriage.

“Night was best, for, as everyone knows, but does not tell, the sobbing of the earth is most audible at night.” “Men are but unconscious machines and they perform their cruelties so effortlessly.” “Caring was a power she’d once possessed but had given up freely.” The sentences of Joy Williams are like no other—the coiled wit, the sense of a confused and ruined landscape, even the slight chortle of hope that lurks between the words—for the scrupulous effort of telling, in these eleven stories, has a ravishing beauty that belies their substance.

From internationally renowned, award-winning author Salman Rushdie, an inventive collection of fiction that explores life, death, and what comes into focus at the proverbial eleventh hour of life.

A wonderful collection of stories from the author of My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell, one of Britain's best loved authors and pioneering naturalists.

Shelli has been planning her wedding to Aiden in her scrapbook since she was old enough to wield a glue stick. And now that day has finally arrived. Sure, it's over the top, but what else would you expect from the firstborn daughter of hockey royalty?

Harper Lee remains a landmark figure in the American canon—thanks to Scout, Jem, Atticus, and the other indelible characters in To Kill a Mockingbird; as well as for the darker, late-’50s version of small-town Alabama that emerged in Go Set a Watchman, her only other novel, published in 2015 after its rediscovery. Less remembered, until now, however, is Harper Lee the dogged young writer, who crafted stories in hopes of magazine publication; Lee the lively New Yorker, Alabamian, and friend to Truman Capote; and the Lee who peppered the pages of McCall’s and Vogue with thoughtful essays.

Harper Lee remains a landmark figure in the American canon – thanks to Scout, Jem, Atticus, and the other indelible characters in her Pulitzer-winning debut, To Kill a Mockingbird; as well as for the darker, late-’50s version of small-town Alabama that emerged in Go Set a Watchman, her only other novel, published in 2015 after its rediscovery. The Land of Sweet Forever combines Lee’s early short fiction and later nonfiction in a volume offering an unprecedented look at the development of her inimitable voice.

The characters in Dominic Hoffman's tales of Late Rehearsals are familiar. Their choices are recognizable, and the people are far from perfect. Humor is a constant. However, their most significant commonality is the sense that every day is a rehearsal for the next. In this compilation of narratives, contemporary fables and intimate accounts, we travel cultures and cities, contemplate life and death to discover that our lives can be justified, vilified or distanced by the simple act of viewing the lives of others.

Set in Taiwan and the Silicon Valley, a collection of linked stories that explore the meaning of success and the purpose of existence, centered on the short life and long shadow of an engineering genius who descends deeper into despair while rising higher on the professional ladder.

Daphne du Maurier is best known for Rebecca, “one of the most influential novels of the 20th century” (Sarah Waters) and basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic film adaptation. More than thirty-five years after her death, du Maurier is celebrated for her gothic genius and stunning psychological insight by authors such as Ottessa Moshfegh, Maggie O’Farrell, Lucy Foley, Gillian Flynn, Jennifer Egan, and others, including Stephen King and Joe Hill. After Midnight brings together some of du Maurier’s darkest, most haunting stories, ranging from sophisticated literary thriller to twisted love story.

―――【収録作品】「国民的未亡人」誰もが知るスター俳優であった夫を亡くした私は、一般人にして有名「未亡人」となった。

Reimagining each of the traditional carol's gifts, and written in tribute to Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer, The Twelve Days of Christmas is a collection of festive tales filled with seasonal cheer and heart-warming characters. Will the challenges and mysteries that the Viscount’s guests encounter be resolved by the night of the ball?

This dazzling, genre-defying collection from Jonathan Lethem features seven major stories published since his last collection, along with his best work spanning more than three decades. A major new story, “The Red Sun School of Thoughts,” never published elsewhere, follows a teenaged boy coming to terms with figures of authority and power—those both in his own biological family and in the family he creates for himself.

Once a decade a story collection rips a hole in the sky and we remember how it feels to have a spell cast upon us. From Jamaica Kincaid’s At the Bottom of the River to Denis Johnson’s Jesus’s Son to the earthquake stories of Haruki Murakami, these books are often short, but unforgettable. Samanta Schweblin’s Good and Evil is such a book. Sculpted and lucid, strange and uncanny, here is a masterpiece of suggestiveness. Step by step these six stories lure us into the shadows to confront the monsters of everyday life—ourselves.