David

These six short novels show Melville's cleverness and wit as well as his understanding of both the comic and tragic in everyday life. The collection begins with "Bartleby the Scrivener", in which Bartleby, a clerk in a law firm, suddenly starts answering all requests with "I would prefer not to", and mayhem naturally results. It is followed by "Billy Budd", about an angelic, innocent sailor who is punished unjustly. Also included are "The Apple Tree Table", "The Piazza", "I and My Chimney", and "The Happy Failure".

After Dorothy and her dog, Toto, are whisked away from Kansas by a cyclone, they embark on a remarkable odyssey accompanied by the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and the Cowardly Lion. As they travel through enchanted lands toward the Emerald City, they find perils and colorful opponents including the wonderfully evil Wicked Witch.

Three stories concern the same woman - in the first, she escapes from teaching at a girls' school into a wild love affair; in the second, she returns with her child to the home of her parents, whose marriage she finally begins to examine; and in the last, her vanished child turns up caught in the grip of a religious cult. In these and other stories Alice Munro's understanding of the people about whom she writes makes their lives as real as our own.