Great Short Books

Great Short Books
Author: Kenneth C. Davis
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2022-11-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1982180072

This entertaining guide to some of the best short novels of all time, from a bestselling historian, is the “perfect gift for busy bibliophiles” (BookPage). Experience the joys of literature with this this “exciting guide to all that the world of fiction has to offer” (The New York Times Book Review): a compulsively readable, deeply engaging discussion of great short novels. A journey into fiction designed with our contemporary attention spans in mind, Great Short Books suggests fifty-eight excellent short novels, all under 200 pages—easily readable in a week or less—a fresh approach to a fun, fascinating year of reading. From hard-boiled fiction to magical realism, the 18th century to the present day, Great Short Books spans genres, cultures, countries, and time to present an enchanting and diverse selection of acclaimed and canonical novels. From works in translation like Yu Miri’s Tokyo Ueno Station and Marguerite Duras’s The Lover to popular, acclaimed authors like Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, this compilation is a celebration of classics from the historic to contemporary—plus a few bestsellers, including Stephen King and Colson Whitehead. Each entry includes the novel’s opening lines, a spoiler-free plot summary, a “why you should read it” section, and suggestions for what to read next. “An entertaining journey with a fun, knowledgeable guide” (Booklist), this eclectic collection is a fun and practical book for any passionate reader hoping to broaden their literary IQ—or anyone who wants to find an effortless reentry into reading.

The Complete Short Novels

The Complete Short Novels
Author: Anton Chekhov
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 578
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 030742829X

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Aanton Chekhov, widely hailed as the supreme master of the short story, also wrote five works long enough to be called short novels–here brought together in one volume for the first time, in a masterly new translation by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The Steppe–the most lyrical of the five–is an account of a nine-year-old boy’s frightening journey by wagon train across the steppe of southern Russia. The Duel sets two decadent figures–a fanatical rationalist and a man of literary sensibility–on a collision course that ends in a series of surprising reversals. In The Story of an Unknown Man, a political radical spying on an important official by serving as valet to his son gradually discovers that his own terminal illness has changed his long-held priorities in startling ways. Three Years recounts a complex series of ironies in the personal life of a rich but passive Moscow merchant. In My Life, a man renounces wealth and social position for a life of manual labor. The resulting conflict between the moral simplicity of his ideals and the complex realities of human nature culminates in a brief apocalyptic vision that is unique in Chekhov’s work.

The Short Novels of John Steinbeck

The Short Novels of John Steinbeck
Author: John Steinbeck
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 625
Release: 2009-07-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101138874

A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Steinbeck's brilliant short novels Collected here for the first time in a deluxe paperback volume are six of John Steinbeck's most widely read and beloved novels. From the tale of commitment, loneliness and hope in Of Mice and Men, to the tough yet charming portrait of people on the margins of society in Cannery Row, to The Pearl's examination of the fallacy of the American dream, Steinbeck stories of realism, that were imbued with energy and resilience. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Three Short Novels

Three Short Novels
Author: Wendell Berry
Publisher: Counterpoint
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2003-05
Genre: Bildungsromans
ISBN: 9781582432373

Presents a collection of three novels that chronicles life in a Kentucky community.

The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Publisher: DigiCat
Total Pages: 65
Release: 2022-08-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

A Small Fiction

A Small Fiction
Author: James Miller
Publisher: Unbound Publishing
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2018-10-18
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1783526890

At night, the trees whispered. Told ghost stories, their leaves trembling. Remembered the fallen. Joked. Dry laughter rustled the dark. What happens when a writer wants to tell a hundred stories but doesn’t have the time to write a hundred books? They write the seeds of those stories and cast them to the wind... A Small Fiction presents a collection of illustrated micro-fiction, all told in 140 characters or fewer. From the humorous to the bleak, the dystopian to the dog-filled, there’s a story for every occasion, and an occasion for every story.

The Grandmothers

The Grandmothers
Author: Doris Lessing
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2009-10-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0061847666

Shocking, intimate, often uncomfortably honest, these stories reaffirm Doris Lessing’s unequalled ability to capture the truth of the human condition In the title novel, two friends fall in love with each other's teenage sons, and these passions last for years, until the women end them, vowing a respectable old age. In Victoria and the Staveneys, a young woman gives birth to a child of mixed race and struggles with feelings of estrangement as her daughter gets drawn into a world of white privilege. The Reason for It traces the birth, faltering, and decline of an ancient culture, with enlightening modern resonances. A Love Child features a World War II soldier who believes he has fathered a love child during a fleeting wartime romance and cannot be convinced otherwise.

The Mammoth Book of Short Spy Novels

The Mammoth Book of Short Spy Novels
Author: Bill Pronzini
Publisher: Robinson
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2012-03-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1780337361

Spanning more than 75 years of espionage writing in USA and the UK, here are gripping tales by classic writers in the field including W. Somerset Maugham, Ian Fleming, Leslie Charteris, and Erle Stanley Gardner. They are presented complete and unabridged. Among the now legendary fictional secret agents, counterspies and double agents featured are Somerset Maugham's enigmatic operative Ashenden; Ian Fleming's legendary 007; and Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise, 'the female James Bond'. The stories include: The formula for a deadly warfare chemical propels secret agent Peter Baron on a mission through Italy - in Deep Sleep by Bruce Cassiday Agent 007 James Bond confronts military intrigue in the Caribbean - in Octopussy, by Ian Fleming International conspiracy, assassination, bombs, plot and counter-plot in Washington D.C. - in Dealers in Doom by William E. Barrett Someone is out to destroy the British Government, from the inside - in The Spoilers, by Michael Gilbert The CIA enlists a small-town policeman to track down a spy who will stop at nothing to preserve his identity - in The People of the Peacock, by Edward D. Hoch

Modern Classic Short Novels Of Science Fiction

Modern Classic Short Novels Of Science Fiction
Author: Gardner Dozois
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Total Pages: 675
Release: 2014-10-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1466884479

The novella is, in the words of Gardner Dozois, "a perfect length for a science fiction story: long enough to enable you to flesh out the details of a strange alien world or a bizarre future society...and yet, still short enough for the story to pack a real punch." The thirteen masterpieces assembled in Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction travel to the farthest reaches of the imagination, through realms of immortality, along alternate paths of time and across vast galaxies to explore the best of all imaginable worlds.