Anthology World Literature

For an imperial assassin, assignment as a courtesan in the Floating World seems like a waste of her talents...until killers target her clan sisters. In the legendary Floating World, wars are waged with wit, the strongest soldier can be bound with threads of silk, and flesh is the currency by which life, death, and freedom can all be purchased. Half-elf Jie bemoans her temporary assignment as a Night Blossom in the most sought-after house, even if it's the perfect cover for her real work as an assassin in the emperor’s service.

One of the most talented and creative authors working today, Neal Stephenson is renowned for his exceptional novels - works colossal in vision and mind-boggling in complexity. Exploring and blending a diversity of topics, including technology, economics, history, science, pop culture, and philosophy, his books are the products of a keen and adventurous intellect. Stephenson ponders a wealth of subjects, from movies and politics to David Foster Wallace and the Midwestern American College Town; and more.

Three men who have nothing in common are found murdered in Cape Town, and the string of vicious killings pushes the city toward panic. Captain Mat Joubert is left scrambling for answers in a case that might be his last chance to prove that his life's slow spiral will not pull him under.

Widely acclaimed as a progenitor of 20th-century Latin American fiction, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), the son of a mulatto father and a washerwoman, was hailed in his lifetime as Brazil's greatest writer. His prodigious output of novels, plays, and stories rivaled contemporaries like Chekhov, Flaubert, and Maupassant, but, shockingly, he was barely translated into English until 1963, and still lacks proper recognition today.

A story from the renowned tales of "Xiccarph": The sorcerer Maal Dweb approached the flower women with caution, for he knew that they were vampires. These half-woman, half-flower monsters were as venomous as they were beautiful. His presence was now detected. Could their hypnotic singing lure yet another victim, or would Maal Dweb's own magic save him from the wailing power of the enchanting flower women?

In this debut collection of stories, Zev Good takes the listener into a world he knows and illuminates so well: the middle-class American South. These stories, populated with mothers and children, friends and lovers, the living and the dying, reveal the intricate and tenuous bonds that unite us all.

When Trisha Low moves West, her journey is motivated by the need to arrive “somewhere better” - someplace utopian, like revolution; or safe, like home; or even clarifying, like identity. Instead, she faces the end of her relationships, a family whose values she has difficulty sharing, and America’s casual racism, sexism, and homophobia. In this book-length essay, the problem of how to account for one’s life comes to the fore - sliding unpredictably between memory, speculation, self-criticism, and art criticism, Low seeks answers that she knows she won’t find.

Lord Dunsany was the most influential writer in the genre that came to be known as fantasy, which his stories set trends for that continue to this day. In this collection you’ll find sixteen stories from the first and greatest master of the fantasy genre.

Blackfoot storyteller Alex Soop plunges us into a shocking well of imagination in this collection of short stories, Midnight Storm Moonless Sky. From hauntings on the Highway of Tears to fearful gatherings of ghosts and the sorrows of racism, Soop combines the social anxieties of Indigenous life with spellbinding flights and frights of speculative fiction. Through these enthralling stories of reality mixed with terror, listeners get a wicked glimpse into the genre of Indigenous horror.

Студия АРДИС предлагает взрослым слушателям аудиосборник эротических рассказов русских авторов.

A Trinidadian obeah man finds himself reborn, a hundred years after his death, in the body of a Canadian child; a writer takes up a seasonal job as a caretaker for a set of mysterious large sacks hanging from the rafters of the houses in a small town; a woman starts a relationship with the famous artist who painted portraits of her mother; the contents of a sealed envelope upends a woman’s understanding about a tragic crime she committed at the age of six . . .

An ailing farmer in rural Iran unearths an extraordinary find: two parsnips, grown together and looking for all the world like entwined lovers. For now, the sublime treasure is his secret. Wrapping it in a silk handkerchief, he nestles it away in a dresser drawer. Day after day, he gazes at their unmistakable rapture, reminded of the long-gone youthful passions he once shared with his wife. So, too, he mourns the inevitable - the eventual decay of the parsnips in love. When he decides to share his discovery with the world, his life and the lives of those around him connect and change.

From the remarkable Ha Jin, winner of the National Book Award for his celebrated novel Waiting, comes this collection of comical and deeply moving tales of contemporary China that are as warm and human as they are surprising, disturbing, and delightful. In the title story, the head of security at a factory is shocked, first when the handsomest worker on the floor proposes marriage to his homely adopted daughter, and again when his new son-in-law is arrested for the "crime" of homosexuality.

"What is your favorite story?" is the question children across the country often ask professional storyteller Pleasant DeSpain. As he attempts to answer, his list grows longer and longer, until he confesses he likes them all. An untiring researcher of oral traditions, DeSpain is known for his concise versions of world folktales specifically crafted for retelling.

"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own..." So begins The War of the Worlds, the novel that made Wells famous and has enthralled and terrified for almost 100 years. Ten huge and tireless creatures land in England and, using their deadly rays and crushing strength, threaten the very existence of humankind. Wells' classic is not just groundbreaking science fiction, it is a shocking social parable....

Traplines is extraordinary fiction that presents the menacing underside of family life. In crackling prose, Eden Robinson describes homes ruled by bullies, psychopaths, and delinquents; families whose conflict resolution techniques range from grand theft to homicide; and kids who just can't get a break.

Young Alice leads an ordinary sort of life until, one day, she follows a rabbit down a hole and embarks on a series of adventures with some of the most weird and wonderful characters anyone has ever encountered! She soon discovers that nothing is ordinary in Wonderland, least of all the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the Cheshire Cat, the Duchess, and the Mock Turtle.

Una fotógrafa comprende algo que hubiera preferido no comprender. Un veterano de la guerra de Corea se enfrenta a su pasado durante un encuentro que parecía inofensivo. Tras el hallazgo por internet de un libro de 1887, un escritor acaba descubriendo la vida de una mujer apasionante.

"In almost any culture, at any time, you can find food writing,” writes guest editor Mark Bittman in his introduction. “Food means growing and hardship, and health and medicine, and work and holiday. In its abundance it is a gift and a joy, and in its absence a curse and a tragedy. If a culture has writing, that culture has food writing.” The stories in this year’s Best American Food Writing are brilliant, eye-opening windows into the heart of our country’s culture.

In the tradition of Calvino’s Italian Folktales, Greg Sarris, author of the award-winning novel Grand Avenue, turns his attention to his ancestral homeland of Sonoma Mountain in Northern California. In 16 interconnected original stories, the twin crows Question Woman and Answer Woman take us through a world unlike yet oddly reminiscent of our own: one that blooms bright with poppies, lupines, and clover; one in which Water Bug kidnaps an entire creek; in which songs have the power to enchant; in which Rain is a beautiful woman who keeps people’s memories in stones.