Only the most talented storytellers create worlds that are beyond fantasy, worlds that become realities. In 'Legends' the reader can visit the most fabulous worlds ever created – by Terry Pratchett, Anne McCaffrey, George R.R. Martin, Tad Williams and Robert Jordan.

'The biggest names in contemporary fantasy have written novellas set in their most popular worlds. Fortunately, the standard matches the notion; maybe the contributors were spurred on by group rivalry' 'Time Out'

'An essential buy for every fantasy fan' 'SFX'

Liefde is die sentrale tema in die verhale in Die huis van die digter.

Liefde in Aucamp se werk vertoon ’n wye omvang en baie stemminge. Party verhale is snaaks, ander ontroerend, nog ander vreemd en geheimsinnig. ’n Waardevolle toevoeging tot Die huis van die digter is Aucamp se vertaling van “The Return from the Kloof” deur Joey Muller, ’n vergete meesterstuk, met ’n hantering van die bonatuurlike wat gelykstaan aan dié van Edgar Allan Poe.

In die elegiese sluitstuk “Waar die wolke middag maak” neem Aucamp finaal afskeid van die Stormberge van sy jeug, en word sy kontrei inderdaad “’n aandgesang”.

In semiautobiographical stories set largely in David Vann's native Alaska, Legend of a Suicide follows Roy Fenn from his birth on an island at the edge of the Bering Sea to his return thirty years later to confront the turbulent emotions and complex legacy of his father's suicide.

I Am No One You Know contains nineteen startling stories that bear witness to the remarkably varied lives of Americans of our time. In "Fire," a troubled young wife discovers a rare, radiant happiness in an adulterous relationship. In "Curly Red," a girl makes a decision to reveal a family secret, and changes her life irrevocably. In "The Girl with the Blackened Eye," selected for The Best American Mystery Stories 2001, a girl pushed to an even greater extreme of courage and desperation manages to survive her abduction by a serial killer. And in "Three Girls," two adventuresome NYU undergraduates seal their secret love by following, and protecting, Marilyn Monroe in disguise at Strand Used Books on a snowy evening in 1956. These vividly rendered portraits of women, men, and children testify to Oates's compassion for the mysterious and luminous resources of the human spirit.

***THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER*** 'Three sparkling Grisham stories for the price of one . . . Appealing entertainment' IRISH INDEPENDENT 'These three novellas in a single volume show Grisham at his masterful best, exquisite evocations of the law though far from complimentary about lawyers . . . A minor masterpiece' DAILY MAIL Three thrilling stories of the law from the master of the legal thriller. Homecoming takes us back to Ford County, the fictional setting of many of John Grisham's unforgettable stories. Jake Brigance is back, but he's not in the courtroom. He's called upon to help an old friend, Mack Stafford, a former lawyer in Clanton who three years earlier became a local legend when he stole some money from his clients, divorced his wife, filed for bankruptcy, and left his family in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again. Until now. Now Mack is back and he's leaning on his old pals, Jake and Harry Rex, to help him return. His homecoming does not go as planned. In Strawberry Moon, we meet Cody Wallace, a young death row inmate only three hours away from execution. His lawyers can't save him, the courts slam the door, and the Governor says no to a last minute request for clemency. As the clock ticks down, Cody has only one final request. The Sparring Partners are the Malloy brothers, Kirk and Rusty, two successful young lawyers who inherited a once prosperous firm when its founder, their father, was sent to prison. Kirk and Rusty loathe one another, and speak to each other only when necessary. As the firm disintegrates, the fiasco falls into the lap of Diantha Bradshaw, the only person the partners trust. Can she save the Malloys, or does she take a stand for the first time and try to save herself? 350+ million copies, 45 languages, 10 blockbuster films: NO ONE WRITES DRAMA LIKE JOHN GRISHAM

Voetstoots is ’n bontgejasde keur uit sestien jaar van Annelie se koerantrubrieke. Die temas is so wyd soos die Heer se genade. Rakende aan die torings van Babel wat ons bou. ’n Kind wat doodgeskok word terwyl hulle jagentjies speel. ’n Begrafnisbrief uit Holland. ’n Boer wat sy plaashek vir oulaas sluit. Toentertyd se poskoets en handsentrale. Die boks langspeelplate in die gryse se waenhuis. Die smart om ’n kind te begrawe. ’n Glips met bensien in die tamatieslaai. ’n Sywurmhart wat sy in haar Bybel bêre. Mense sonder ’n woord van eer.

’n Eensame oom wie se hondjie op ’n sypaadjie doodgebyt is. ’n Lys van moets en moenies vir dames uit 1944. ’n Boks papsakwyn wat suur geword het.

Dis lag, huil, kwaadword, nostalgie, deernis, onbegrip en lewenswette saamgeryg in ’n kleurvolle lappieskombers. En Annelie is bedrewe met die rygnaald.

In this acclaimed collection, Jean Thompson limns the lives of ordinary people -- a lonely social worker, a down-and-out junkie, a divorced cop on the night shift -- to extraordinary effect. With wisdom and sympathy and spare eloquence, she writes of their inarticulate longings for communion and grace.Yet even the saddest situations are imbued with Thompson¹s characteristic humor and a wry glimmer of hope. With Who Do You Love, readers will discover a writer with rare insight into the resiliency of the human spirit and the complexities of love.

With this first book of fiction, a gifted young writer brings together eight superbly crafted stories that peer deeply into the human heart, exploring lives derailed by the loss of a vital connection to the land and to the natural world of which they are a part.

"Mule Killers" evokes the end of an era and of a grandfather's dreams when he decides to replace animal power on his farm with tractors. Two restless young girls in "Sweethearts of the Rodeo" live out their last summer of innocence, riding ponies recklessly and spying on their boss and the wealthy women who visit him. In "Phantom Pain," the Tennessee woods are a sliver of what they once were, men now hunt with GPS and cell phones, and the rumor of a dangerous panther on the loose stirs up a small town.

An unexpected vision of the beauty and mystery of life redeems the darkest moments in this stellar debut collection, a book that readers will want to read and reread.

In Love with a Stranger is a moving collection of short stories by Johannesburg-based Kaizer Mabhilidi Nyatsumba, whose impressive powers of human observations and acclaimed writing expertise are on display in this book. Contained in it are fascinating short stories written at a time when South Africa was going through an historic political transition that gripped the world’s attention. Although based in South Africa, the stories have a universal appeal. While some may be of greater interest or relevance to people in countries dealing with conflicts or going through transitions, the themes and emotions that the stories touch upon are universal in nature, such as love and fear, among others.

Annie Proulx's new collection is peopled by characters who struggle with circumstances beyond their control. Born to ranching, drawn to it, or desperate to get out, they inhabit worlds that are isolated and often dangerous. Trouble comes at them from unexpected angles, and they drive themselves through it, hardheaded and resourceful. No one writes better than Proulx about the American west and about lives that may no longer be viable. This is a stunning collection by one of the most vivid and exhilarating writers of our time.

The Collected Stories of Colette beings together in one volume for the first time in any language the comprehensive collection of short stories by the novelist known worldwide as Colette, and now acknowledged, with Proust, as the most original French narrative writer of the first half of our century. of the one hundred stories gathered here, thirty-one appear for the first time in English and another twenty-nine have been newly translated for this volume.

Palestine + 100 poses a question to twelve Palestinian writers: what might your country look like in the year 2048 - a century after the tragedies and trauma of what has come to be called the Nakba? How might this event - which, in 1948, saw the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes - reach across a century of occupation, oppression, and political isolation, to shape the country and its people? Will a lasting peace finally have been reached, or will future technology only amplify the suffering and mistreatment of Palestinians? Covering a range of approaches - from SF noir, to nightmarish dystopia, to high-tech farce - these stories use the blank canvas of the future to reimagine the Palestinian experience today. Along the way, we encounter drone swarms, digital uprisings, time-bending VR, peace treaties that span parallel universes, and even a Palestinian superhero, in probably the first anthology of science fiction from Palestine ever.

An ever-increasing malice. A mind-numbing terror. The seeds of horror are sown in this collection of Junji Ito's earliest works. A vengeful family hides an army deserter for eight years after the end of World War II, cocooning him in a false reality where the war never ended. A pair of girls look alike, but they're not twins. And a boy's nightmare threatens to spill out into the real world... This hauntingly strange story collection showcases a dozen of Junji Ito's earliest works from when he burst onto the horror scene, sowing fresh seeds of terror.

The mysteries of kinship (families born into and families made) take disconcerting and familiar shapes in these refreshingly frank short stories. A family is haunted by a beast that splatters fruit against its walls every night, another undergoes a near-collision with a bus on the way home from the beach. Mothers are cold, fathers are absent-we know these moments in the abstract, but Adaui makes each as uncanny as our own lives: close but not yet understood.

'A debut collection of such precocity and aplomb that it stands comparison to the likes of Junot Diaz and Bryan Washington' Observer 'Moving, truthful, straight from the heart' Neel Mukherjee 'These are excellent stories, told with skill and verve' Jon McGregor Here, beneath the planes circling Heathrow, various lives connect. Priti speaks English and her nani Punjabi. Without Priti's mum around they struggle to make a shared language. Not far away, Chetan and Aanshi's relationship shifts when a woman leaves her car in their drive but never returns to collect it. Gujan's baba steps out of his flat above the chicken shop for the first time in years to take his grandson on a bicycle tour of the old and changed neighbourhood. And returning home after dropping out of university, Lata grapples with a secret about her estranged family friend, now a chart-topping rapper in a crisis of confidence. Mapping an area of West London, these stories chart a wider narrative about the movement of multiple generations of immigrants. In acts of startling imagination, Gurnaik Johal's debut brings together the past and the present, the local and the global, to show the surprising ways we come together.

A masterful collection of stories that showcases one of the country's most beloved and acclaimed writers--award-winning author, Walter Mosley. Bestselling author Walter Mosley has proven himself a master of narrative tension, both with his extraordinary fiction and gripping writing for television. The Awkward Black Man collects seventeen of Mosley's most accomplished short stories to showcase the full range of his remarkable talent. Mosley presents distinct characters as they struggle to move through the world in each of these stories--heroes who are awkward, nerdy, self-defeating, self-involved, and, on the whole, odd. He overturns the stereotypes that corral black male characters and paints a subtle, powerful portrait of each of these unique individuals. In "The Good News Is," a man's insecurity about his weight gives way to a serious illness and the intense loneliness that accompanies it. Deeply vulnerable, he allows himself to be taken advantage of in return for a little human comfort in a raw display of true need. "Pet Fly," previously published in the New Yorker, follows a man working as a mailroom clerk for a big company--a solitary job for which he is overqualified--and the unforeseen repercussions he endures when he attempts to forge a connection beyond the one he has with the fly buzzing around his apartment. And "Almost Alyce" chronicles failed loves, family loss, alcoholism, and a Zen approach to the art of begging that proves surprisingly effective. Touching and contemplative, each of these unexpected stories offers the best of one of our most gifted writers.

Superb collection by modern master explores the complexity, anxiety and futility of modern life. Excellent new English translations of the title story (considered by many critics Kafka's most perfect work), plus "The Judgment," "In the Penal Colony," "A Country Doctor" and "A Report to an Academy." Note.

Years before the publication of "Catch-22" ("A monumental artifact of contemporary literature" -- "The New York Times;" "An apocalyptic masterpiece" -- "Chicago Sun-Times;" "One of the most bitterly funny works in the language" -- "The New Republic"), Joseph Heller began sharpening his skills as a writer, searching for the voice that would best express his own peculiarly wry view of the world.
In "Catch As Catch Can, " editors Matthew J. Bruccoli and Park Bucker have for the first time collected the short stories Heller published prior to that first novel, along with all the other short pieces of fiction and nonfiction that were published during his lifetime. Also included are five previously unpublished short stories, most reflecting the influence on Heller of urban naturalist writers such as Irwin Shaw and Nelson Algren.
The result is an important and significant addition to our understanding and appreciation of Joseph Heller, showing his evolution as a writer and artist. For those unfamiliar with his work, it will serve as an excellent introduction; for everyone else, "Catch As Catch Can" is a chance to explore a new aspect of Heller's remarkable career.

Five close friends in their 90s meet - as they have for decades - for their monthly 'ladies lunch', to puzzle, and laugh at, the enigmas and affronts of ageing. When one of their number is placed unhappily in a home the others conspire to spring her. Lore Segal's witty, yet poignant, short story, Ladies' Lunch, appeared in the New Yorker in 2017, when she herself turned ninety. It was followed by four New Yorker sequels. For this sparkling collection, Segal returns to her group of erudite, sharp-minded nonagenarians in Upper Manhattan offering startling insights into friendship and mortality. In the book's Other Stories, Segal includes tales from her acclaimed and prizewinning oeuvre to illuminate the hinterland of her characters - one of whom, like her, was a Kindertransport refugee. Beautifully crafted and profound, these stories distil the spirit of one of America's great authors to show us what a long life might bring.

A wife is suspended in a bird cage; a thirteenth-century visionary senses the foreskin of Christ on her tongue: Fleur Jaeggy's gothic imagination knows no limits. Whether telling of mystics, tormented families or famously private writers, Jaeggy's terse, telegraphic writing is always psychologically clear-eyed and deeply moving, always one step ahead, or to the side, of her readers' expectations. In this, her long-awaited return, we read of an 'eerie maleficent calm, a brutal calm', and recognise the timbre of a writer for whom a paradoxical world seethes with quiet violence.