Publisher: Sheba Blake Publishing
The longish short story "Adieu" is an excerpt from Honore de Balzac's sweeping masterpiece The Human Comedy. A ghost story of sorts, this tragic tale recounts the blossoming romance of two lovers whose relationship is torn asunder by the vagaries of war. When they reunite by chance years later, there is nothing left to be salvaged.
Not since Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan has a fiction writer explored with such powerful intensity the experience of being Asian American. The characters who inhabit this extraordinary fictional debut are caught between the burden of their past history and the fragility of their unchartered future. Hunger illuminates how first-generation immigrants from China, culturally and emotionally uprooted from their homeland, mistrust connection even as they hunger for attachment—and how the past affects and shapes their children. In luminous prose, these stories of love and loss explore the profound and painful ties between husband and wife, parent and child, sister and sister. The stunning title novella is told by a woman whose love for an exiled musician compels her into a tragic marriage in which her husband's unfulfilled desires nearly destroy their children. In other stories, a ghost seduces a young girl into a flooded river; a mother commands a daughter to avenge her father's death. Lan Samantha Chang weaves the forces of war and magic, food and desire, ghosts and family, into haunting tales. Again and again, Chang asks the question: is love not a kind of burden, stifling and terrifying in the choices and responsibilities it forces on us? And yet we yearn for it, define ourselves by our experience of it, cannot live without it.Show book
They say librarians are old-fashioned. I’m anything but.As a 23-year-old woman I have my whole life ahead of me, and I’m in no rush to settle down.But my favorite patron of the Golden Creek Library has a different opinion … and at 72, Charles McArthur is hard to argue with.He wants to set me up with his grandson and I don’t have the heart to say no.When my date comes to my door, I am oh-so-glad I said yes.Chuck McArthur is a tall, dark, and handsome man who happens to love books as much as I do. He calls me Cookie, just like his gramps, and I’m more than eager for him to have a taste. Luckily for me, he likes a woman with some curves, and lucky for him, his dirty talk is quickly becoming my favorite sound.Best part? Chuck and I want the exact same thing: a no strings attached relationshipBut when tragedy strikes, everything changes.I may like it when he talks wordy to me … but maybe I need more than talk. Maybe I need forever.Show book
'The Prussian Officer'. There is an anti-militarism theme, unpopular as the nation drew near to war and an examination of latent homosexuality as the officer in the story struggles with his feelings for his orderly. The young soldier is driven beyond breaking point but finds a kind of redemption in his final return to natural surroundings and, symbolically, he finds equality in death with his tormentor as they are put side by side in the mortuary.Show book
What's buried beneath the frozen ground… will change his world forever The only thing that made those seemingly unending days in prison bearable was knowing what was waiting for him on the outside, buried deep in the frozen ground where she'd sworn to leave his share of the loot. And after years of isolation, all he has to do is dig it up, rejoin her, and get back to the life that's rightfully his. But even the best laid plans oft go awry. And sure, they'd never claimed to be the best of the best, but still… he never could have imagined what he'd find waiting for him, cold and dark at the bottom of that hole. From A. J. Payler, author of The Killing Song, Bank Error in Your Favor, and Terror Next Door comes Buried, Frozen—a story of the terror that lies at the heart of the human condition and the fear that creeps in the darkest, coldest hours of the night. Also featuring bonus story, You Are the Protagonist (as seen in Flash in a Flash)! As originally published in Dead of Winter: 13 Tales of Winter Terror (M Presents, January 31, 2024) and Flash in a Flash (May 13, 2024).Show book
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin was born on 22nd October 1870 in Voronezh province, in the South-West of the Russian Empire. His early life was plagued by his Father’s gambling habits which caused his education to be erratic and the family to lose most of their wealth. Bunin published his first poem in 1887 in St Petersburg and later in Oryol he worked for the local paper and became its editor, handily allowing him to publish his own poems and short stories. There he met and married Varvara Pashchenko. Ivan Bunin's debut book of poetry ‘Poems (1887–1891)’ was published in 1891. This poetry and his translation of Longfellow garnered him his first Pushkin Prize. Now he switched to writing prose and his novella ‘Antonov Apples’ is regarded as his first masterpiece. Many more would follow. The October Revolution of 1905 found Bunin in the Crimea. Scenes of ‘class struggle’ he saw more as the oppressed people's craving for anarchy and destruction. In November 1906 he began a passionate affair with Vera Muromtseva, within a few months they were touring through Egypt and Palestine. ‘The Bird's Shadow’ collection was the result. His second Pushkin Prize came in 1909 for Poems (1903–1906) and further translations. He was now elected to the prestigious Russian Academy. More widespread fame came in 1910 with ‘The Village’, a controversial and bleak portrayal of Russian country life. Travel too beckoned them back to the Middle East, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and for winters in Capri with their friend Maxim Gorky. That friendship suddenly ended in April 1917 as the revolution began to ferment in war-ravaged Russia. After the Bolsheviks took power and the upheavals continued, he decided to leave Russia, finally achieving that in early 1920. It would take some time to heal the wounds and stress he had been under and for his writing to begin again. Settled in France, Bunin published many of his previous works and collections of novellas. He also made regular contributions to the Russian emigre press. Although reluctant to become involved in politics, Bunin was now feted as both a writer and the figurehead of non-Bolshevik Russian values and traditions. In 1933 he became the first Russian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature ‘for following through and developing with chastity and artfulness the traditions of Russian classic prose.’ In 1938 Bunin began working on the celebrated cycle of nostalgic, and erotically themed stories known Dark Avenues (or Dark Alleys). As World War II broke out he chose to remain in Grasse spending the war at his remote Villa Jeanette, high in the mountains. Ivan Bunin was a staunch anti-Nazi, and often, under difficult conditions, sheltered fugitives after Vichy was occupied by the Germans. He wrote but did not publish during these years until on August 23rd the Nazi’s fled Grasse without a fight. The next day the Americans came. In May 1945 he returned to Paris and, apart from convalescing at times in Juan-les-Pins, he stayed for the rest of his life. After 1948, with his health deteriorating, Bunin concentrated upon writing his memoirs and a book on Chekhov. His last years were overshadowed by bitterness and despair at the situation in Russia and the treatment of its peoples. He was suffering now from asthma, bronchitis and chronic pneumonia. Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin died in a Paris attic flat on 8th November 1953. Heart failure, cardiac asthma and pulmonary sclerosis were given as the causes of death. He was 83.Show book
'The Flying Fish' is unfinished but tells the story of an Englishman, Gethin Day, returning home after years in South America. There is a hint of the home-sickness Lawrence may have felt during his long exile. The bulk of the story is the time spent on the ship which is taking Day back to England. It is a ship of fools, a 'plague ship' and the only positive note is the joy Day sees in the play of the flying fish and porpoises around the ship. It is tantalising to speculate how Day would have adapted to English life again, confined to an old house in an old country.Show book
