“Oddly beautiful and impossible to look away from”​ (Los Angeles Times), the stories in The Fat Artist are suffused with fear and desire, introducing us to a company of indelible characters reeling with love, jealousy, megalomania, and despair. In prose alternately stark, lush and hallucinatory, occasionally nightmarish and often absurd, the voices in Benjamin Hale’s The Fat Artist and Other Stories speak from the margins: a dominatrix whose longtime client, a US congressman, drops dead during a tryst in a hotel room; an addict in precarious recovery who lands a job driving a truck full of live squid; a heartbroken performance artist who attempts to eat himself to death as a work of art. From underground radicals hiding in Morocco to an aging hippy in Colorado in the summer before 9/11 to a young drag queen in New York at the cusp of the AIDS crisis, these stories rove freely across time and place, carried by haunting, peculiar narratives that form the vast tapestry of American life. “A steadily growing…talent” (Kirkus Reviews), Hale’s prize-winning fiction abounds with a love of language and a wild joy for storytelling, earning accolades from writers such as novelist Jonathan Ames, who compared discovering his work to watching Mickey Mantle play ball for the first time; Washington Post critic Ron Charles, who declared him “fully evolved as a writer,” and bestselling author Jodi Picoult, who simply called him “brilliant.” Pairing absurdity with philosophical musings on the unnerving intersections between life and death, art and ridicule, consumption and creation, “the audacious imagination evident in Hale’s acclaimed debut, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, shines again in this…provocative collection that takes a unique view of the human condition” (Booklist).

There were three distinct stages in the evolution of Annette Brougham's attitude towards the knocking in the room above. In the beginning it had been merely a vague discomfort. Absorbed in the composition of her waltz she had heard it almost subconsciously.

A collection of sixty short stories, articles and poems, covering a range of genres and topics, most of which are NOT sports-related. Heysel, the title story, is a first-hand report of the unfolding tale of the disaster at the Heysel Stadium, Brussels, on the occasion of the 1985 European Cup Final between Liverpool and Juventus.

In the early 1970s, Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian exploded on to the comics scene. Writer Roy Thomas teamed with a young artist named Barry Smith, and together the two mapped out some of the most stirring and memorable Conan adventures to come along since those written by Howard himself. Over the course of their 24 issue run together, Thomas and Smith defined Conan for a generation of comics readers, and now those stories are collected in this series. Featuring completely remastered color and text corrections, and containing material not available for nearly thirty years.

Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) was one of the premiere French novelists. This is a collection of his stories.

"The Darling and Other Stories" by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is a captivating collection that showcases the masterful storytelling and eager observations of certainly one of Russia's best literary figures. Originally published between the past due nineteenth and early 20th centuries, those short tales delve into the complexities of human relationships, societal norms, and the nuances of regular life. At the coronary heart of the collection is the titular story, "The Darling," which follows the life of Olga Semyonovna, a lady whose identity turns into deeply entwined with those around her. The narrative unfolds with Chekhov's signature mixture of humor and pathos, providing a poignant remark on the character of love and dependence. The other tales within the collection provide a rich tapestry of characters and eventualities, a microcosm of the human enjoy. Chekhov's sharp wit and profound insights into the human psyche are evident in memories consisting of "The Kiss," "The Grasshopper," and "The Man in a Case." Through his exploration of diverse characters and situations, Chekhov captures the essence of the human condition, revealing the comedy and tragedy inherent in our normal lives. "The Darling and Other Stories" stays a timeless series, reflecting Chekhov's enduring legacy as a master storyteller and a perceptive chronicler of the human soul.