A fine collection of classic tales of Irish country life.

Stephanie Corinna Bille, a Swiss short-story writer, playwright, poet, and novelist and winner of the 1975 French Prix Concourt, is often considered the major contemporary Franco-Swiss woman writer. In The Transparent Girl and Other Stories Monika Giacoppe and Christiane Makward have assembled and translated a magnificent collection of Bille's work that exposes an English-speaking audience--many for the first time--to Bille's exotic, captivating, mystical, and sexually provocative stories.

The stories of Giovanni Verga (1840-1922) are wonderful evocations of ordinary Italian life, focusing in particular on his native Sicily. In an original and dynamic prose style, he portrays such eternal human themes as love, honour and adultery with rich and colourful language. The inspiration for Mascagni's opera, 'Cavalleria Rusticana' depicts a young man's triumphal return home from the army, spoilt when he learns that his beloved is engaged to another man. Verga's acute awareness of the hardships and aspirations of peasant life can be seen in stories such as 'Nedda', 'Picturesque Lives' and 'Black Bread', while others such as 'The Reverend' and 'Don Licciu Papa' show the dominance of the church and the law in the Sicilian communities he portrays so vividly.

Though it may be difficult to believe, the eleven stories in this collection are based in truth. Author Jeremy Sayers hails from a family of adventurers and farmers. His father's family came to America in 1715 and settled in Virginia. His mother's family arrived much later, immigrants and migrants. All together, these people were coal miners, blacksmiths, and cowboys. Most of all, they were believers in whatever it was that let them survive one sunrise to another. And they were storytellers. Fencline and Other Stories brings some of those tales to life. Like the myths of ancient cultures, the Greeks, Hindus, Hebrews, and Native Americans, these stories tell about a particular time and place. But, they also contain something timeless. These stories give us reasons to laugh and to mourn. And the characters in these tales teach us something about coping with strife as we share little parts of their lives.

Secrets confessed in a rose garden, a kiss shared between a young boy and girl of different races, the anguish of losing a child --- this story collection explores pain and loss in the South. Quirky, often marginalized characters contend with forces beyond their control or understanding – racial terror, childhood traumas, family betrayals. We meet such characters as a childhood friend of Lee Harvey Oswald, a young lawyer sent to investigate the murder of Black troops in the Jim Crow South, and a mental patient obsessed with the film Harold and Maude. In each story, Lambert reveals the humor and tragedy running through the lives of these unique human beings. If you care to sample the dark spicy gumbo of the Southern soul, you will want to meet and get to know these characters.

"Tiger Lily, and Other Stories" by Julia Thompson von Stosch Schayer is one of the most charming collections of short stories almost lost to time. Containing five stories total, "Tiger Lily", "Thirza", "Molly", "A Summer's Diversion", and "My Friend, Mrs. Angel", this small anthology follows a whimsical world that transports readers of all ages into a world full of magic and adventure. Though originally written for children, this book is an example of a piece of literature that spans age groups to this day.

Tibor Déry (1894-1977), winner of Hungary's highest artistic honor, the Kossuth Prize, in 1948, was first imprisoned in 1934 by the Horthy regime for translating André Gide's diary of his journey to Russia, and again, over twenty years later, for his writings and political activities during the Hungarian Revolt of 1956 against Soviet occupation. Around the world, Tibor Déry Committees formed: Picasso, Camus, Sartre, Bertrand Russel, E.M. Forster, and in the Indian Congress Committee were among the many involved. Today, Tibor Déry is venerated as one of the most important literary figures of Hungary and, like Chekhov, a master of the modern short story. Love and Other Stories presents some of Déry's finest work. In "Games of the Underworld," ordinary people in Budapest try to survive the winter of war in cramped cellars and encounter menacing Arrow-Cross men, a towering giant, a blind horse, a vinegar sponge; in "The Circus," a group of bored children transmogrifies into a grotesque spectacle; in "Love," a political prisoner is released after seven years and returns home to his wife and son. George Szirtes, the award-winning translator from the Hungarian and winner of the 2004 T.S. Eliot Prize for poetry, gives a brilliant introduction to this visionary collection that deals passionately with questions of responsibility and conscience, of social justice and renewal.

'This breathtaking collection is a marvel ... One of my literary foremothers.' Tayari Jones 'Astute, brilliantly observed, these timeless stories are remarkable. It's all the more poignant to know the writer died at such a heartbreakingly young age:' Jackie Kay 'Oliver exquisitely projects the biggest narrative of mid-century America - Jim Crow - onto the smallest realities of everyday Black life. These stories are all gems.' Mendez 'Prose of such unexpected grace, with such sharp Gothic swerves, that you hold your breath, completely at Oliver's mercy. What a talent.' Lucy Caldwell And she was becoming frightened too, looking at all those white faces pressed against the windowpanes. One Black family comes under attack as their little boy prepares to start at an all-white school. Friends plan a protest sit-in at the Rose Crest Tea Room, only to be arrested. The first Black student - always the 'Experiment' - retreats into her closet at a newly integrated college. And when a social worker enters a secluded woodland cabin, she meets the fate of all visitors . . . Tragically killed aged twenty-two in 1966, Diane Oliver's masterly stories resonate today with renewed urgency. Steeped in the nightmarish horror of life for the Black community in the Jim Crow-era American South, these chilling tales explore toxic racism and the human toll of activism for 'the cause' with heartbreaking empathy and wisdom. Depicting African American families whole and broken, daily injustices and life-threatening political struggle, Neighbors restores a lost star to the twentieth-century literary canon.