Other books that might interest you

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  Top 10 Short Stories The - The...

  Edith Wharton, Guy de...

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  Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart.  A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. 
   
  In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?  
   
  The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme.  Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature. 
   
  Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made.  If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something. 
   
  In this volume we enjoy a favourite device of authors; the story is heading one way and suddenly twists in another direction entirely. In the pens of Ambrose Bierce, Nikolai Gogol, Saki and a host of others where you end up is the very question they propose.  
   
  01 - The Top 10 - The Twist - An Introduction 
  02 - Roman Fever by Edith Wharton 
  03 - The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant 
  04 - The Nose by Nikolai Gogol 
  05 - Miss Brill by Katherine Mansfield 
  06 - The Gift of the Magi by O Henry 
  07 - Desiree's Baby by Kate Chopin 
  08 - Man Size in Marble by Edith Nesbit 
  09 - An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce 
  10 - The Open Window by Saki 
  11 - The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

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  Dark Tide Rising

  David M. Salkin

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  Underwater horror rises to the surface in this science fiction thriller from the author “who knows the details of deep-sea exploration firsthand” (Ben Bova, Hugo Award-wining author). 
   
  A Japanese fishing trawler becomes a ghost ship. 
   
  A pleasure yacht is under attack by unknown sea creatures. 
   
  A Coast Guard crew is massacred by something not of this world. 
   
  Ted Bell had only one personal goal—to reach Mars. He believed that harnessing the power of the deep-sea bacteria that allows creatures to live in super-heated, poisonous water might get humans to deep space. But when Ted intentionally infected a member of the crew for his own agenda, it didn’t go as planned. A new life form was created–completely out of control. Ted’s failed experiment doomed the crew of the USS Challenger. 
   
  After living through the terrifying disaster that killed half the crew, three survivors think they have escaped the nightmare. Instead, the creatures have risen from the depths—and the three discover that the horrifying experience on the Challenger was only the beginning. 
   
  Praise for Deep Black Sea 
   
  “Spine-tingling terror . . . An exciting read!” —Ben Bova, Hugo Award-winning author 
   
  “Crichton at his best is the main author who comes to mind as a comparable influence when reading Deep Black Sea . . . The informative and fascinating science that fills each page really elevates this book to a higher grade.” —Horror Novel Reviews

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  Boyhood

  Leo Tolstoy

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  Boyhood is the second in Tolstoy's trilogy of three autobiographical novels, including Childhood and Youth, published in a literary journal during the 1850s.

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  Alonzo Fitz and Other Stories

  Mark Twain

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  A collection of Twain short stories including:The Loves Of Alonzo FitzClarence And Rosannah EtheltonOn The Decay Of The Art Of LyingAbout Magnanimous-Incident LiteratureThe Grateful PoodleThe Benevolent AuthorThe Grateful HusbandPunch, Brothers, PunchThe Great Revolution In PitcairnThe Canvasser's TaleAn Encounter With An InterviewerParis NotesLegend Of Sagenfeld, In GermanySpeech On The BabiesSpeech On The WeatherConcerning The American LanguageRogers(Summary from Project Gutenberg)

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  The Guy Not Taken - Stories

  Jennifer Weiner

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  “Eleven marvelous short stories” by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Summer Place and Mrs. Everything (Entertainment Weekly). 
   
  In these tender and often hilarious stories by Jennifer Weiner, we meet Marlie Davidow, home alone with her new baby late one Friday night when she wanders onto her ex’s online wedding registry and wonders where she’d be if she’d wound up with the guy not taken. We stumble on Bruce Guberman, liquored-up and ready for anything on the night of his best friend’s bachelor party, until stealing his girlfriend’s tiny rat terrier becomes more complicated than he’d planned. We find Jessica Norton listing her beloved New York City apartment in the hope of winning her broker’s heart. And we follow an unlikely friendship between two very different new mothers, and the choices that bring them together—and pull them apart. 
   
  From a teenager coming to terms with her father’s disappearance to a widow accepting two young women into her home, these stories demonstrate Weiner’s amazing ability to find hope and humor, longing and love in the hidden corners of our common experiences. 
   
  “Utterly readable.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 
   
  “Another delightful example of Jennifer Weiner’s tender way with words and emotions.” —Harper’s Bazaar 
   
  “Very, very funny.” —Philadelphia Inquirer 
   
  “Puts Weiner on the map as one of her generation’s best literary voices.” —The Boston Herald

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  In Bayswater - One family is...

  Mary Butts

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  Mary Frances Butts was born on 13th December 1890 in Poole, Dorset. 
   
  Her early years were spent at Salterns, an 18th-century house overlooking Poole Harbour.  Sadly in 1905 her father died, and she was sent for boarding at St Leonard's school for girls in St Andrews. 
   
  Her mother remarried and, from 1909, Mary studied at Westfield College in London, and here, first became aware of her bisexual feelings.  She was sent down for organising a trip to Epsom races and only completed her degree in 1914 when she graduated from the London School of Economics.  By then Mary had become an admirer of the occultist Aleister Crowley and she was given a co-authorship credit on his ‘Magick (Book 4)’. 
   
  In 1916, she began the diary which would now detail her future life and be a constant reference point for her observations and her absorbing experiences. 
   
  During World War I, she was doing social work for the London County Council in Hackney Wick, and involved in a lesbian relationship.  Life changed after meeting the modernist poet, John Rodker and they married in 1918. 
   
  In 1921 she spent 3 months at Aleister Crowley's Abbey of Thelema in Sicily; she found the practices dreadful and also acquired a drug habit.  Mary now spent time writing in Dorset, including her celebrated book of short stories ‘Speed the Plough’ which saw fully develop her unique Modernist prose style. 
   
  Europe now beckoned and several years were spent in Paris befriending many artists and writing further extraordinary stories.   
   
  She was continually sought after by literary magazines and also published several short story collections as books. Although a Modernist writer she worked in other genres but is essentially only known for her short stories.  Mary was deeply committed to nature conservation and wrote several pamphlets attacking the growing pollution of the countryside. 
   
  In 1927, she divorced and the following year her novel ‘Armed with Madness’ was published.  A further marriage followed in 1930 and time was spent attempting to settle in London and Newcastle before setting up home on the western tip of Cornwall.  By 1934 the marriage had failed. 
   
  Mary Butts died on 5th March 1937, at the West Cornwall Hospital, Penzance, after an operation for a perforated gastric ulcer. She was 46. 
   
  Her story ‘In Bayswater’ grippingly describes a man’s friendship with a dysfunctional family he rents a room from.  As each facet reveals itself his opinion and decisions change, back and forth, this way and that….

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