The Delicate Prey

The Delicate Prey
Author: Paul Bowles
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2011-11-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062119346

Paul Bowles’s classic collection of short stories, now available in a a deluxe paperback edition—part of Ecco’s Art of the Story series “All the tales are a variety of detective story,” wrote Bowles of this, his first short story collection, “in which the reader is the detective; the mystery is in the motivation for the charcters’ behavior.” In such stories as “A Distant Episode” and How Many Midnights,” Bowles pushes human character beyond socially defined limits and maps a transformed (often horribly transformed) reality. Bowles captures the duality of human frailty and cruelty in these seventeen taut and atmospheric tales, written between 1939 and 1949. Brutal and gorgeous, visceral yet profound, this timeless collection is “one of the most profound, beautifully wrought, and haunting collections in our literature. . . at once austere, witty, violent, and sensuous. . . . His language has a purity of line, a poise and authority entirely its own, capable of instantly modulating from farce to horror without a ruffle” (Tobias Wolff).

Delicate Edible Birds

Delicate Edible Birds
Author: Lauren Groff
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2010-05-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1401396372

From Lauren Groff, author of the critically acclaimed and bestselling novel Fates and Furies, comes Delicate Edible Birds, one of the most striking short fiction debuts in years. Here are nine stories of astonishing insight and variety, each revealing a resonant drama within the life of a twentieth-century American woman. In "Sir Fleeting," a Midwestern farm girl on her honeymoon in Argentina falls into lifelong lust for a French playboy. In "Blythe," an attorney who has become a stay-at-home mother takes a night class in poetry and meets another full-time mother, one whose charismatic brilliance changes everything. In "The Wife of the Dictator," that eponymous wife ("brought back . . . from [the dictator's] last visit to America") grows more desperately, menacingly isolated every day. In "Delicate Edible Birds," a group of war correspondents-a lone, high-spirited woman among them-falls sudden prey to a brutal farmer while fleeing Nazis in the French countryside. In "Lucky Chow Fun," Groff returns us to Templeton, the setting of her first book, for revelations about the darkness within even that idyllic small town. In some of these stories, enormous changes happen in an instant. In others, transformations occur across a lifetime--or several lifetimes. Throughout the collection, Groff displays particular and vivid preoccupations. Crime is a motif--sex crimes, a possible murder, crimes of the heart. Love troubles recur; they're in every story--love in alcoholism, in adultery, in a flood, even in the great flu epidemic of 1918. Some of the love has depths, which are understood too late; some of the love is shallow, and also understood too late. And mastery is a theme--Groff's women swim and baton twirl, become poets, or try and try again to achieve the inner strength to exercise personal freedom. Overall, these stories announce a notable new literary master. Dazzlingly original and confident, Delicate Edible Birds further solidifies Groff's reputation as one of the foremost talents of her generation.

The Delicate Prey

The Delicate Prey
Author: Paul Bowles
Publisher:
Total Pages: 328
Release: 1950
Genre: Africa, North
ISBN:

Exemplary stories that reveal the bizarre, the disturbing, the perilous, and the wise in other civilzations.

Chosen Prey

Chosen Prey
Author: John Sandford
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2001-05-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101146354

He seems like such a nice man. You’d never guess what was going on in his mind… Art history professor James Qatar has a hobby: he takes secret photographs of women to fuel more elaborate fantasies. When he’s alone. Behind locked doors. Then one day, he goes a step further and... well, one thing leads to another. Qatar has no choice. He has to kill her. And you know something? He likes it. When Deputy Chief Lucas Davenport takes the case, he assumes it’ll be straightforward police work. He couldn’t be more wrong. As the investigation trail takes some unexpected turns, it becomes clear that nothing is straightforward about this killer, his victims, or his motives. And to stop him Lucas has no choice but to walk right into his lair. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY JOHN SANDFORD

A Distant Episode

A Distant Episode
Author: Paul Bowles
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2006-06-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0061137383

A Distant Episode contains the best of Paul Bowles's short stories, as selected by the author. An American cult figure, Bowles has fascinated such disparate talents as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, and Jay McInerney.

Fandango and Other Stories

Fandango and Other Stories
Author: Bryan Karetnyk
Publisher: Russian Library
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2019-12-31
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9780231189767

Fandango and Other Stories presents a selection of essential short fiction by Alexander Grin, Russia's counterpart to Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Alexandre Dumas. Grin's ingenious plots explore conflicts of the individual and society in a romantic world populated by a cast of eccentric, cosmopolitan characters.

The Delicate Prey

The Delicate Prey
Author: Paul Bowles
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2011-11-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062119346

Paul Bowles’s classic collection of short stories, now available in a a deluxe paperback edition—part of Ecco’s Art of the Story series “All the tales are a variety of detective story,” wrote Bowles of this, his first short story collection, “in which the reader is the detective; the mystery is in the motivation for the charcters’ behavior.” In such stories as “A Distant Episode” and How Many Midnights,” Bowles pushes human character beyond socially defined limits and maps a transformed (often horribly transformed) reality. Bowles captures the duality of human frailty and cruelty in these seventeen taut and atmospheric tales, written between 1939 and 1949. Brutal and gorgeous, visceral yet profound, this timeless collection is “one of the most profound, beautifully wrought, and haunting collections in our literature. . . at once austere, witty, violent, and sensuous. . . . His language has a purity of line, a poise and authority entirely its own, capable of instantly modulating from farce to horror without a ruffle” (Tobias Wolff).

The Predatory Animal Ball

The Predatory Animal Ball
Author: Jennifer Fliss
Publisher: Okay Donkey Press
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2021-11-27
Genre:
ISBN: 9781733244169

In a society where predators are always the ones doing the celebrating, Jennifer Fliss's debut collection of short stories, THE PREDATORY ANIMAL BALL, crashes the party. These stories are about the people left in the predators' wake, and the large and small ways in which their grief and fear manifest. Predators appear in the places we least expect it, and this collection turns the previously accepted hierarchies upside down in a series of flash fiction that are often absurd, but always cutting.

The Gambler

The Gambler
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Publisher:
Total Pages: 328
Release: 1923
Genre: Russia
ISBN:

The Wilds

The Wilds
Author: Julia Elliott
Publisher: Tin House Books
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2014-10-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1935639927

"At an obscure South Carolina nursing home, a lost world reemerges as a disabled elderly woman undergoes newfangled brain-restoration procedures and begins to explore her environment with the assistance of strap-on robot legs. At a deluxe medical spa on a nameless Caribbean island, a middle-aged woman hopes to revitalize her fading youth with grotesque rejuvenating therapies that combine cutting-edge medical technologies with holistic approaches and the pseudo-religious dogma of Zen-infused self-help. And in a rinky-dink mill town, an adolescent girl is unexpectedly inspired by the ravings and miraculous levitation of her fundamentalist friend's weird grandmother. These are only a few of the scenarios readers encounter in Julia Elliott's debut collection, The Wilds. In these genre-bending stories, teetering between the ridiculous and the sublime, Elliott's language-driven fiction uses outlandish tropes to capture poignant moments in her humble characters' lives. Without abandoning the tenets of classic storytelling, Elliott revels in lush lyricism, dark humor, and experimental play. "--