The citizens of the small town of Blakesburg see the aurora borealis and decide Judgment Day has come in this 1946 best-seller.

"Irish man of letters MacNamara is perhaps best known for his brilliantly perceptive satire, The Valley of the Squinting Windows (1918), but it is this, his sixth novel, published in 1929, which is considered his most innovative work… It is a fascinating example of early-twentieth century Irish writing, in which tradition follow writers such as Flann O'Brien and John Banville." - Publishers Weekly. "[This is] easily the author's best book… The novel is a fabulist satire, or a satirical - fantasy. The novel has variously been characterized as a meditation on the autonomy of literature, on the immortality of the artist, existence, non-being and reality."--Rudiger Imhof, The Irish Times. "A good addition to literature collections." - Library Journal.

The stories in this extraordinary collection are set in Northern Ireland, specifically Belfast, the center for more than thirty years of fighting between Roman Catholic nationalists and Protestants loyal to the British crown. Cornell is not preoccupied, however, with the details of the war. Her stories explore the emotional and psychological consequences of the struggle to endure not only violence, but loss, failure, and the inability to believe.

The first appearance in English of this finely wrought novel by Norwegian writer Holmebakk (1922-81) exploring the fundamental tensions between life and death that perhaps only love and hope can palliate. Two middle-aged men, retired Lutheran pastor Eilif Grotteland and Olav Klungland, a novelist and active communist, meet by accident outside a hospital. Olav has just visited a dying comrade, and Eilif is admitting his terminally ill wife, but these obvious reminders of death are mere introductions to the spiritual concerns that preoccupy both men. Both are at the "carriage stone" in their lives, a stone symbolizing the moment of choice between dying or living.

"Deep in international intrigue… A gripping story..

The History of Sir George Ellison (1766) is an important novel, both utopian and dystopian. Sir George, a man of benevolence, follows the pattern of the female utopia set forth in Scott's first novel, A Description of Millenium Hall (1762). In this sequel, Scott addresses issues of slavery, marriage, education, law and social justice, class pretensions, and the position of women in society, consistently emphasizing the importance, for both genders and all classes and ages, of devoting one's life to meaningful work. Although she adopted a gradualist approach to reform, Scott's uncompromising revelation of the corruption of English society in her day is clear-sighted, arresting, and hard-hitting.

In her fourth novel of the Kentucky frontier, Giles combines her fascination for the past with her gift for storytelling.Had it not been for the loyalty of men like Giles's fictional hero, Major Cassius Cartwright, General James Wilkinson's 1783 attempt to create a Spanish empire in the West might have succeeded. Interwoven with the Spanish Conspiracy are tales of struggles with Indians, of the birth of a Green River Valley town, and of the two women Cass loves: Rachel, a gentle Quaker, and Tattie, a fiery waif he rescues from Philadelphia slums. Like Giles's earlier historical novels, The Land Beyond the Mountains is an engaging story of adventure and romance. First published in 1958, this reprint gives Giles fans another lively piece of Kentucky's frontier history.Janice Holt Giles (1905-1979), author of nineteen books, lived and wrote near Knifley, Kentucky, for thirty-four years. Her biography is told in Janice Holt Giles: A Writer's Life.

Geoffrey Becker’s Dangerous Men was selected by Charles Baxter as the winner of the fifteenth annual Drue Heinz Literature Prize. His manuscript was selected from nearly three hundred submitted by published writers.In these tightly drafted stories, Becker creates a wide variety of distinct voices, peculiar characters, and odd stettings, with tantalizing emphasis on lonliness, loss, and the ever-present struggle to find one’s place in the world. \u201cIt was wrong to think that our presence would linger on, though it was to this notion that I realized I’d been grasping all along,\u201d the music-student narrator of \u201cDangerous Men\u201d says after an evening involving drugs, a fight, and a car accident, \u201cthe idea that in some way we were etching ourselves onto the air, leaving shadows that would remain forever.\u201dMany of the pieces incorporate music into the storyline. Music is a gathering point in his characters’ misfit lives. In \u201cMagister Ludi,\u201d a seventeen-year-old girl meets up with an older local guitarist whom her younger brother has invited over to their house when their parents are gone, and plays him for her own ends: \u201cShe makes Riggy drive right through the center of town, hoping that someone will see them - one of her friends, or one of her parents’ friends even, it doesn’t matter. She just likes the idea of being spotted in this beat-up car alongside someone so disreputable.\u201dIn \u201cErin and Malcom,\u201d a bass player with an injured hand who still lives with his estranged wife, a singer, and her pet ferret, finds out how out of tune his life really is: \u201cSomething has gone wrong - he could see it in the way she looked at him over her morning bowl of cereal, and the way she didn’t as she peeled herself out of her Lycra pants and leopard shirts at night.\u201dYet , even when the music seems quiet, there are tales of choice and happenstance. \u201cEl Diablo de La Cienega,\u201d set in New Mexico, is about a boy who accepts the challenge of a mysterious figure to a game of basketball, for very high stakes indeed. Charles Baxter - one of America’s great story writers - calls the story \u201ca small masterpiece. It has formal perfection, like a folktale. I thought it was wonderful.\u201dWith leaps from the funny to the sad and the revelatory, these amazing stories explore dreams and longing with remarkable insight and imagination. These are stories you will not forget.

"You see, some folks has albums to put folks' pictures in to remember them by, and some folks has a book and lorites down the things that happen every day so they won't forget them; but, honey, these quilts is my albums and my diaries."Aunt Jane is a fictional character well known for her gentle folk wisdom and her vivid descriptions of a picturesque and almost vanished way of life in the rural South of the last century. Her words recall lavish Sunday dinners, courtships, quilting bees, church meetings, and county fair competitions. Yet Aunt Jane of Kentucky is more than a collection of reminiscences about the region of Western Kentucky where Eliza Caroline Obenchain (who published under the name Eliza Calvert Hall) was born and raised. She writes about strong women and the ways in which they make their voices heard. Obenchain was a dedicated suffragist who worked to win rights for women in the areas of property ownership and divorce, and her interest in the social condition of women is evident throughout her fictional work. In one of the most popular stories in the collection, "Sally Ann's Experience," Sally Ann refuses to agree that women should be silent in church; she tells her male audience, "Now it's my time to talk and yours to listen."Aunt Jane of Kentucky, first published in 1907, is a delightful example of regional fiction that will also serve as a valuable document for those interested in the history of women's issues.

Over the past two decades, sweeping political changes and burgeoning new technologies have resulted in communities being increasingly defined in global as well as regional and national terms. Although the intellectual terra nova of world cultures remains largely uncharted, this anthology of sixty-two stories from around the non-Euro-American world provides what Elisabeth Young-Bruehl calls "an introductory map to the great wealth of literary works now being produced in, at once, the particular settings of the writers' experiences and the global setting."Young-Bruehl finds that while the cultural diversity the stories exemplify is amazing, so too is the similarity in thematic terms of the concerns that this diversity presents. Thus she organized Global Cultures thematically to highlight and clarify how these worldwide cultures both converge and diverge. A comprehensive general introduction outlines forces behind the transnational approach to literary study and chapter introductions contextualize each story. Stories from India, Cuba, South Africa, and Uruguay are connected by the theme of exile and immigration; tales from Nigeria, Guatemala, Cameroon, and Egypt share a theme of political violence and civil uprisings; works from Taiwan, Chile, Jamaica, and Syria describe commonalities of women facing effects of modernization, prejudice, war, and immigration.Global Cultures contributes to the fast-growing body of contemporary short fictions newly available in English and is an invaluable resource to meet the need for multicultural literature.

This is the story of Tara Cochrane, who had been Hod's captain during World War II. Tara had returned from Europe to study medicine and start a practice, only to collapse with a severe nervous breakdown. Hod finds him in the hospital, scarcely recognizable as the tough commander who had slogged it out beside his men through France, Germany, and Austria. When the time comes for Hod to leave the hospital, he persuades Tara to go with him in the hope that the peace of the hill country will effect a cure where medicine has failed.On Piney Ridge, Tara meets Jory, a minister of the Church of the Brethren of Christ, a sect popularly know as the White Caps because of the little caps worn by the women members. Jory's selfless love for humanity helps Tara to rise above his despair and even accept the hopelessness of his love for Mary Pierce. Tara accompanies the young lay preacher as he goes among the hill people, ministering to the sick and helping with simple neighborly chores. This work opens a path to a life of fulfillment and serenity. Healed himself, Tara can now go on to heal others.Janice Holt Giles (1905-1979), author of nineteen books, lived and wrote near Knifley, Kentucky, for thirty-four years. Her biography is told in Janice Holt Giles: A Writer's Life.

Miss Willie, first published in 1951, is part of Giles's Piney Ridge Trilogy. It tells the story of an earnest teacher who moves to the hills of Kentucky to teach in a one-room schoolhouse. Zealously, she tries to change the ways of the stubborn and proud Appalachian people, but to no avail. They listen to her ideas about sanitation and other foolishness because to argue would be rude. But in the end they quietly go about their accustomed ways.Ultimately, Miss Willie realizes that the hill customs have a beauty and dignity of their own and that some of her efforts to reform them were ill-conceived. Her warmth, generosity, and humor help her bridge the gap and find fulfillment in Piney Ridge. This is a story of reconciliation and the coming together of two different ways of life. Above all, it is a story of people and of the land to which they belong.

Author of The Heirs of Columbus, Hotline Healers, Interior Landscapes, Crossbloods, and numerous other works, Gerald Vizenor is one of the century's most important and prolific Native American writers. Drawing on the best work of an acclaimed career, Shadow Distance: A Gerald Vizenor Reader reveals the wide range of his imagination and the evolution of his central themes.This compelling collection includes not only selections from Vizenor's innovative fiction, but also poetry, autobiography, essays, journalism, and the previously unpublished screenplay "Harold of Orange," winner of the Film-in-the-Cities national screenwriting competition. Whether focusing on Native American tricksters or legal and financial claims of tribal sovereignty, Vizenor continually underscores the diversities of modern traditions, the mixed ethnicity that characterizes those who claim Native American origin, and cultural permeability of an increasingly commercial, global world.A. Robert Lee of the University of Kent at Canterbury, England, provides a lucid introduction to this writer whose "radically self-aware and contemporary satiric tricksterism . . . as easily invokes Jabés, Barthes, Lyotard, or Foucault as bear ceremonial, ghost dance, or dream-catcher."

"This first work of fiction by Verna Mae Slone, firmly grounded in her own background, is set in the 1920s and 1930s in a closeknit community in eastern Kentucky, where family roots run deep. At its center stands as strong and resilient a heroine as any in American literature. Verna Mae Slone, a native of Knott County, Kentucky, is the author of several books, including the bestselling memoir, What My Heart Wants to Tell.

This is an account of a Native American family in central Kentucky in the year 1585. Fishes-With-Hands, his wife She-Who-Watches, and their family grind corn, make cooking pots, and build their homes while in their summer village. In autumn, they attend the funeral and mourning feast of Masked-Eyes. Then they move to their winter hunting camp, where they process nuts, make arrows, and hunt and butcher animals in preparation for the winter. Readers will soon realize that their lives and experiences in many ways parallel those of this family from Kentucky's not-so-distant past.

In the novel Hannah Fowler, Janice Holt Giles created a pioneer woman who would, In Giles's words, "endow her own physical seed with her strength and courage, and her own tenderness and love." First published in 1956, this work is the second in Giles's series of historical novels on Kentucky, which includes The Kentuckians and The Believers.Samuel Moore and his daughter Hannah set out for the border country with a party led by George Rogers Clark but left to follow the Kentucky River to Boones' Fort. As the story opens, Hannah is nursing her father, injured when an axe slips and cuts his leg. By the time Tice Fowler, on his way to Logan's Fort, stumbles upon them alone in the wilderness, Samuel is dying from blood poisoning.When Samuel dies, Tice takes Hannah to the fort, where women are scarce, and Hannah finds herself besieged by suitors. Only with Tice, as silent and downright as herself, does Hannah feel at ease. Finally, she turns to the bashful Tice and asks him to marry her and take her away from the crowded fort. Together, they take their claim to land, build a cabin, and start a family. They endure the harsh frontier life, the threat of hungry wolves, a killing blizzard, and Indian raids.Hannah is an unforgettable character -- tall, physically and psychologically strong, the epitome of frontier womanhood -- brought to life by a woman who knew and loved the Kentucky people and setting about which she wrote.Janice Holt Giles (1905-1979), author of nineteen books, lived and wrote near Knifley, Kentucky, for thirty-four years. Her biography is told in Janice Holt Giles: A Writer's Life.