A collection of stories which includes "Home," a wryly whimsical account of a soldier's return from war; "Victory lap," a tale about an inventive abduction attempt; and the title story, in which a suicidal cancer patient saves the life of a young misfit.

It was so cold that his spit froze in the air before it hit the ground. He was so far above the Artic Circle that the sun never rose. Seventy below zero, and there was nothing but whiteness in every direction: ice and snow. No trees, no houses, no wood, no warmth.
He had only a few matches and a handful of frozen fingers. And yet, to survive, he had to build a fire...
Jack London's tales of adventure were unsurpassed because London was there.

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Presents a compilation of some of the author's previously published short works, in a volume that includes an original short tale and the story, "Until Gwen."

The Illustrated Man is classic Bradbury - a collection of tales that breathe and move, animated by sharp, intaken breath and flexing muscle. Here are eighteen startling visions of humankind's destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin - visions as keen as the tattooist's needle and as colorful as the inks that indelibly stain the body. The images, ideas, sounds and scents that abound in this phantasmagoric sideshow are provocative and powerful:...

"A gentle Eastern European immigrant arrives in New York City after his family and his life have been torn apart by his country's civil war. A man who loves to bowl rolls a perfect game--and then another and then another and then many more in a row until he winds up ESPN's newest celebrity, and he must decide if the combination of perfection and celebrity has ruined the thing he loves. An eccentric billionaire and his faithful executive assistant...

This omnibus volume by one of the South's greatest writers includes stories published prior to 1980. Stories are as good in themselves and as influential on the aspirations of others as any since Hemingway's. The breadth of Welty's offering is finally most visible not in the variety of types--farce, satire, horror, lyric, pastoral, mystery--but in the clarity and solidity and absolute honesty of a lifetime's vision.

An account of how the author came to be a writer and selections from his writer's notebook augment stories juxtaposing fantasy and truth, and peopled with outrageous and courageous characters.

Ten “beautifully imagined and crafted stories” of the American West by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Independence Day (Joyce Carol Oates).
 
In these ten exquisite stories, Richard Ford explores the wind-scrubbed landscape of the American West and the guarded hopes and gnawing loneliness of the people who live there: a refugee from justice driving across Wyoming with his daughter and girlfriend...

A collection of more than twenty-five short fictional works follows a theme of the intersections between life and death, perception and reality, and darkness and light. Two teenage boys crash a party and meet the girls of their dreams--and nightmares ... A mysterious circus terrifies an audience for one extraordinary performance before disappearing into the night... In a Hugo Award-winning story, a great detective must solve a most unsettling royal...

"Celebrated for her powerful short fiction, Claire Keegan now gifts us three exquisite stories together forming a brilliant examination of gender dynamics and an arc from Keegan's earliest to her most recent work. In "So Late in the Day," Cathal faces a long weekend as his mind agitates over a woman with whom he could have spent his life, had he acted differently; in "The Long and Painful Death" a writer's arrival at the seaside home of Heinrich Böll...