Selected Stories gathers together some of the best examples of Benedict Kiely's work - a true and gifted man of letters. Edited by Ben Forkner, founder of The Journal of the Short Story. From 'Soldier, Red Soldier' and 'A Ball of Malt and Madame Butterfly' to 'A Letter to Peachtree', these stories sing in the unforgettable voice of an Irish master who inspired, and will continue to inspire, generations of readers and writers alike. These stories have a great deal taken from Ben's own experiences both abroad and at home in Ireland. Kiely captures various moments in Irish and American culture, many heavily influenced by his time as a lecturer in Georgia, writer-in-residence in Virginia, and as a reporter for the Irish Press. "Ben Kiely was - and therefore is - one of the great voices of 20th century literature, not just in Ireland but all over the world. That his stories survive, and indeed thrive, is a tribute to the power of literature. When it comes to storytelling there is really no such thing as an end, because the stories keep unfolding and influencing. Put him up there on the shelf alongside Joyce, Beckett, McGahern, O'Brien. With this version of Selected Stories, watch him develop a whole new readership." - Colum McCann.

Elizabeth Wassell's fifth novel Sustenance is an opulent tale of food and love. Who is Lily Murphy? She has platinum-blonde hair but dark eyes; she was born in New York to the daughter of a ballet dancer, but educated in England, and now she is a restaurant critic in Dublin. In Sustenance, we journey into Lily's world of sumptuous meals, but also into her troubled past, where the dinner table was heavy with menace. We also meet Nicholas Savage, the brilliant chef with whom she falls in love, but who, like Lily, harbors a dark secret. In scenes from Dublin to Belfast, Paris to Nice, and London to New York, Lily's world of restaurants, and her milieu of eccentric friends, lovers and the occasional enemy, is vividly portrayed. This mouth-watering novel - full of passion, pathos and startling descriptions of food - explores the mysterious realms of the heart and mind.

A year to the day after the death of their son, Moss Quinn's wife Eva Marie has been abducted. He is Dublin's star detective; investigating the disappearance of five women and the murder of another the year before. Moss's number-one suspect walks free from the subsequent trial amidst allegations of police brutality meted out by Quinn's partner, Joe Doyle - an old-school cop. Quinn's world is in turmoil, his marriage is a mess, his reputation after the trial is in tatters - and now his wife has been abducted. Somewhere out there, she is lying bound, gagged and left to die of thirst. Within 72 hours she will be in a coma or dead. A voice on the phone tells Quinn the clock is ticking and the clues to his wife's whereabouts are in his past. Building to a heart-stopping finale, with a cast of credible and colourful characters from the criminal underworld and police ranks alike, The Gathering of Souls is an authentic, dark tale of obsession, revenge and redemption. A touch Denis Lehane meets Joseph Wambaugh, this suspenseful, contemporary Irish thriller looks set to join John Connolly and Alex Barclay's book as an international bestseller.

Surrounded by the beauty of her native Mayo, eighteen-year-old Lily dreams of being a famous singer on the London stage – but her parents have planned a more normal life for her, pursuing a degree in UCD. However, leaving home also means leaving a passionate romance with a handsome, visiting American named Theo. Once in Dublin, secrets and betrayal abound when Lily's sister Moyra begins a relationship with Theo and Lily's Aunt Terry, a nun, appears to be harboring a hidden past. As Moyra's relationship with Theo turns grim, she desperately needs her sister's support to keep tragedy at bay. But, still longing to perform, Lily finds herself at a crossroads in life. Disturbing yet heart-warming, critical yet nostalgic, Carmen Cullen delivers a convincing portrayal of both the warmth and the wrath of 1940s Ireland. Never flinching from the savage social impact of the Church's power, Cullen's writing also conveys the charming and simplistic quality of the time, as reflected in the lines of classic Irish ballads, particularly those by the author's iconic aunt, Delia Murphy. This heartfelt and bittersweet story is a stirring evocation of a bygone era.

In this new series from Paul Charles, formerly retired policeman Brendy McCusker is forced to return to work following his wife's flight to America with their nest-egg. On his first major case in Belfast he partners with DI Lily O'Carroll to locate the two missing sons of a wealthy businessman. But before that case is resolved, an American banker working in Belfast is brutally murdered down on leafy Cyprus Avenue and McCusker and O'Carroll are put on the case. While the list of suspects grows ever longer, McCusker find himself juggling his move to Belfast, O'Carroll's frequent blind dates, his status as a hired-back rent-a-cop, and being a single man while trying hard not to have his head turned by Belfast's beautiful women - one mysterious one in particular. There is no relief when McCusker and O'Carroll eventually find a suspect with an air-tight alibi , which only one of the detectives believes is genuine... "Continuously absorbing, with a nice rapport between the hero and heroine." - Kirkus Reviews "Introducing a new lead character and a new setting gives the book a real sense of freshness. Readers will definitely want to see more of Brendy McCusker." - Booklist "Charles launches his new Brendy McCusker series with this twist-filled tale of betrayal and revenge." - Publishers Weekly "Charles has created an endearing character in his new novel." - NY Journal of Books

For Jill, a young American living in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, life is in “a holding pattern” of long days in a restrictive place-“sandlocked nowhere,” as another expat calls it. Others don't know how to leave, and try to adopt the country as their own. And to those who were born there, the changes seem to come at warp speed: Thurayya, the daughter of a Bedouin chief, later finds herself living in a Riyadh high-rise where, she says, there are “worlds wound together with years. ” The characters in the linked stories in Triple Time are living an uneasy mesh of two divergent cultures, in a place where tradition and progress are continually in flux. These are tales of confliction-of old and new, rich and poor, sexual repression and personal freedom. We experience a barren yet strangely beautiful landscape jolted by sleek glass apartment towers and opulent fountains. On the fringes of urbanity, Bedouins traverse the desert in search of the next watering hole. Beneath a surface of cultural upheaval, the stories hold deeper, more personal meanings. They tell of yearnings-for a time lost, for a homeland, for belonging, and for love. Anne Sanow reveals much about the culture, psyche, and essence of life in modern Saudi Arabia, where Saudis struggle to keep their traditions and foreigners muddle through in search of a quick buck or a last chance at making a life for themselves in a world that is quickly running out of hiding places.

Why have authors from the safe, social welfare state Sweden captivated the minds of the crime fiction readers across the globe? Kerstin Bergman suggests that killer marketing and a widespread curiosità about the “exotic” Nordic welfare states, their waste landscapes and alleged gender equality, has propelled these authors and novels into the international spotlight. Bergman uses this innovative angle to retell the recent history of crime fiction in Sweden, exploring central themes and selecting key authors that have garnered national and international acclaim for their lethal plots. Swedish Crime Fiction: The Making of Nordic Noir contextualizes the explosive recent history of the genre, offering newcomers and aficionados insights into the minds of protagonista and their literary creators. This is the first research-based and exhaustive presentation of Swedish crime fiction and its Nordic “neighbours” to an international audience.

Selections from the Syriac romance about the evils of Julian the Apostate, made into a reading for students with complete glossary.

In the early years of this century, miners from nearly every country in Europe and Asia Minor migrated to West Virginia to seek employment in its great collieries. With them they brought many folktales and legends of then homelands. Ruth Ann Musick has collected some of the best and most representative of these stories -- never before published in book form -- in The Green Hills of Magic. In many instances, these tales were first related in family circles in the native languages of the tellers, later to be translated by their younger English-speaking descendants. Entertaining in themselves, the stories are also excellent examples of the diverse folk beliefs and cultural patterns of the national and ethnic immigrant groups. The tales are attractively illustrated with more than twenty black-and-white drawings.

The last of four novels that preceded Machado de Assis's famous trilogy of realistic masterpieces, Iaiá Garcia belongs to what critics have called the Brazilian author's "romantic" phase. But it is far more than that implies. Like his other early works, Iaiá Garcia foreshadows the themes and characters of Assis's most masterful novels. Iaiá Garcia intertwines the lives of three characters in a subtly and wryly developing relationship. While the youthful Iaiá is growing into womanhood, a tentative love affair occurs between the aristocratic Jorge and the prideful Estela. This affair is afflicted by ironic shifts of fortune and in time the maturing Iaiá becomes a rival for Jorge's attentions. Assis's portrayal of the relationship among these three characters is a perceptive study of uncompromising pride, thwarted love, jealousy, misunderstanding, bewilderment, and attainment.As the translator, Albert I. Bagby, Jr., contends, the story of Iaiá, Jorge, and Estela reflects the formula that Assis saw as fundamental to human life: "Will and ambition, when they truly dominate, can struggle with other feelings, but they are the weapons of the strong, and victory belongs to the strong." In Assis's view success comes to the strong and failure to the weak. But both inhabit a world that is neutral-neither helping one nor hindering the other. The outcome of events in Iaiá Garcia may not seem entirely optimistic, but neither is it pessimistic. And Mr. Bagby concludes, "Perhaps to understand the optimism of Assis one needs only to be... a hard, pragmatic realist.... "Whether hard realists or unregenerate romantics, readers of this novel will find it a compelling tale of love lost and won. Like his earlier translation of Assis's The Hand & the Glove, Mr. Bagby's English rendering of Iaiá Garcia from the original Portuguese is done with both accuracy and sensitivity.

The later novels of Machado de Assis -- notably Dom Casmurro and Esau and Jacob -- are well known in this country, but the earlier novels have never been translated. Here, in The Hand and the Glove (the Brazilian master's second novel), rendered in English for the first time by Albert I. Bagby, Jr. , readers will find a younger, gentler Assis, writing a romantic comedy that is yet permeated with the lively wit characteristic of his later works.The story is a simple one-of love lost and love found. Of love lost by Estêvão, amiable but vacillating, who is bemused by his own romantic posturing, and by Jorge, superficial and calculating. Of love found by Luis Alves, whose self-possession and determination seem destined to carry him far. The love of all three men is the proud and beautiful Guiomar, sure of her own heart but unsure, until faced by rival claims, of where to bestow it -- a foreshadowing of Capitú, the intriguing heroine of Dom Casmurro."English-speaking readers," says Helen Caldwell in the Foreword, "who are already acquainted with Machado de Assis will welcome this latest addition to the translated novels. True, it is a period piece; but its quaintness is a charm to carry us back to the Rio de Janeiro of the 1850s -- to vanished courtly elegance arid attitudes.... Now, we too can know what drew [Assis] back to this early tale, for The Hand and the Glove recreates in English the elegant background, the charming heroine, the comedy, and the light-hearted ebullience of the Portuguese original."

Les Soeurs Vatard, described by its author as a "lewd but exact" slice of life, was J.-K. Huysmans' second novel. Huysmans abandoned poetry and turned to the novel at a time when the works of Emile Zola were intensely controversial; Les Soeurs Vatard is dedicated to Zola by "his fervent admirer and devoted friend."In it, Huysmans vividly depicts the scene that for his generation of French writers stood for the contemporary world: the brutal, teeming life of the industrial quarters of Paris in the 1870s.Huysmans' Vatard sisters are "Désirée, an urchin of fifteen, a brunette with large, pale eyes that were somewhat crossed, plump without being fat, attractive and clean; and Céline, the carouser, a big girl with clear eyes and hair the color of straw, a solid, vigorous girl whose blood raced and danced in her veins." The two are part of that "bizarre race of young women" who work as bookbinders, whose lives revolve around the gaslighted bindery works, the gaudy shop windows, and cheap wineshops that Huysmans describes with minute and colorful detail. His precisely observed sketches show that Naturalism as practiced by Buysmans had none of Zola' s emphasis on "scientific" determinism, but centered primarily on the faithful rendering of what he described as "living persons in real milieus."The Vatard Sisters is the first English translation of Les Soeurs Vatard.

According to the scant historical records available, Uncle Bud Long, his daughter Janey, and her son Frankie lived near Clark's Landing, Kentucky, for about twenty years early in this century. Mr. Clarke has collected the tales of the Longs' strange ways from old-time residents of the community, both those who knew the Longs and those who inherited the stories by word of mouth. Here he skillfully weaves them into a loose narrative and, in addition, analyzes the ways in which the anecdotes have been transmuted in the process of retelling.This analysis of the stories of Uncle Bud reveals much about the delicate process by which the oral folk tradition grows and thrives. Though at first glance these fragmentary anecdotes hardly seem to constitute a legend,

Vintage Visions is a seminal collection of scholarly essays on early works of science fiction and its antecedents. From Cyrano de Bergerac in 1657 to Olaf Stapledon in 1937, this anthology focuses on an unusually broad range of authors and works in the genre as it emerged across the globe, including the United States, Russia, Europe, and Latin America. The book includes material that will be of interest to both scholars and fans, including an extensive bibliography of criticism on early science fiction-the first of its kind-and a chronological listing of 150 key early works. Before Dr. Strangelove, future-war fiction was hugely popular in nineteenth-century Great Britain. Before Terminator, a French author depicted Thomas Edison as the creator of the perfect female android. These works and others are featured in this critical anthology.Contributors include Paul K. Alkon, Andrea Bell, Josh Bernatchez, I. F. Clarke, William J. Fanning Jr., William B. Fischer, Allison de Fren, Susan Gubar, Rachel Haywood Ferreira, Kamila Kinyon, Stanislaw Lem, Patrick A. McCarthy, Sylvie Romanowski, Nicholas Ruddick, and Gary Westfahl.

John Montague, best known as a poet, is also a gifted prose writer. A Ball of Fire collects all of his short stories, together with the erotic novella The Lost Notebooks (which he hoped to have banned, but which ended up winning a major literary prize). In the shorter stories, from The Road Ahead, which comments poignantly on the loss of established landmarks, to the title story, in which a series of chance encounters helps unlock a painter's creativity, he casts a cool yet sympathetic eye over his environment, both in Ireland and farther afield. The longer works - The Lost Notebooks (about the incendiary relationship between a troubled American girl and a young Irish man in Florence), Death of a Chieftain (a daringly ambitious story set in Mexico) and The Three Last Things (a moving meditation on love and death) - stand as pillars within the book. Montague's clear prose is shot through with hard-won insights into his fellow human beings, and the various burdens, physical and emotional, under which they labor. And of course through it all runs the theme of the importance of love, in its many forms.

In this collection, her third book of humorous poems, Liz looks at the roller-coaster journey of women's lives and the lovers and liars, friends and enemies, joys and disappointments, frustrations and betrayals along the way. Wry, bittersweet, often hilarious and with a characteristic sting in the tail, Liz brings a unique and often wicked wit to the pitfalls, perils and pleasures of love in a heady mix of laughter and tears.