A poem about a man visiting a small graveyard and coming away with more questions than answersA 300-line poem about a man who decides to visit such a graveyard in October near midnight, in hopes of seeing a ghost. He stumbles across the field as a storm approaches.I've got to tell you that he sees only parts of what might be a ghost - not a very satisfying result, and then retreats to his car. That's all. Yet this is one of the finest and most affecting modern poems for reading out loud. It will haunt you.

This is a free narrative poetry book which has a study/discussion guide at the end of the book for each story . - Hungry Willie - is about a black bear that ate a lot. - A Dog in a Race - is about a dog who raced to a special place. - The Swan and I - is about the life of a care free swan. - Nature's Scents - is about fresh air we all like - but ---. - Big Jack - is a tragedy about an animal.This book is a narrative poetry book with some real "characters" - some of them are funny. The book has a study/discussion section at the end of the book which may be helpful to students, teachers, librarians, and others. The first story - "Hungry Willie" - is about a black bear that ate a lot and sometimes not. Find out about Willie. The second story - "A Dog In A Race" - is about a smart dog in a race who knew exactly what to do when a family was stranded on top of a corn pile. - "The Swan and I" - is about the life of a care free swan compared to the frustrating life of a human. - "Nature's Scents" - is about fresh air which everyone enjoys, but some times nature disappoints. - "Big Jack" - is a tragedy about an animal in the woods.

The book is a mixed bag of satire, mordant and/or playful wit as well as other forms of non-realistic fiction. Targets include American historical blindness (The Guy in 3C”) , obsessive social correctness (“A Breach of Decorum”), greed (“The Reminder”) and literary pomposity (Litbiz Magazine Interview)The book is a mixed bag of satire, mordant and/or playful wit as well as other forms of non-realistic fiction. One has an upper class man obsessed with propriety and decorum who gets his comeuppance; one, exploring a major problem with democracy, is in the form of a gothic chiller; another takes the form of a medieval tale; two are bird fables roughly in the tradition of Aesop; another a satiric take-off on literary interviews. The title piece satirizes American ethnic identity and its unawareness of history. Most are humorous in spirit, though of course they have an underlying seriousness. There’s even one about an alcoholic, mentally ill street person and a man who had a near-death experience that is structured as a dialectic with a thesis, antithesis and synthesis. And so on. The poet and editor Sonja Skarstedt said in a review of the book when published in 2000 that the collection is “a witty, humorous and enthralling blend of tales” and that the “stories have a distinctive, even sharp-edged narrative tone, with undercurrents of the recognizable, rich tradition.” Arnold Skemer in a review in ZYX #24 (2001) observed that “I've been accustomed to Burnham's essays in THE LONG STORY but hadn't realized that he turns out fables and satires, and has a nasty little wit.”

This anthology contains volumes 41-45 of my zine of book, audio, and other reviews.I love my brother. I loved him when he was a little baby with his tiny fingers and toes. I loved him when he was growing up and stopped following me around. I loved him when my parents gave him everything he asked for, even sometimes at my expense. I loved him in his rebellious teenage years that took him down the mean streets and away from me. I loved him when I would wait up all night and he wouldn't return at all. I loved him when I pulled gun on him and asked him to leave. He was my little brother and I always loved him.

In these lively critical and personal essays, Chabon asserts his literary manifesto: “I read for entertainment, and I write to entertain. Period.” This collection of sixteen essays champions the cause of sci-fi and westerns, superheroes and horror shows, gumshoes and goblins—all the genre novels, comics, and pulp fiction that get pushed aside when literary discussion turns serious. For Chabon, the stories that give us great pleasure are in many ways our truest, best art—the building blocks of our shared imagination. Whether he’s taking up Superman or Sherlock Holmes, Poe or Proust, Chabon’s emphatic mission is to explore the reasons we tell each other tales, and to offer a glimpse of his own history as reader and writer. This ebook features a biography of the author.

Jim Francis has finally found the perfect life – and is now unrecognisable, even to himself. A successful painter and sculptor, he lives quietly with his wife, Melanie, and their two young daughters, in an affluent beach town in California. Some say he’s a fake and a con man, while others see him as a genuine visionary. But Francis has a very dark past, with another identity and a very different set of values. When he crosses the Atlantic to his native Scotland, for the funeral of a murdered son he barely knew, his old Edinburgh community expects him to take bloody revenge. But as he confronts his previous life, all those friends and enemies – and, most alarmingly, his former self – Francis seems to have other ideas. When Melanie discovers something gruesome in California, which indicates that her husband’s violent past might also be his psychotic present, things start to go very bad, very quickly. The Blade Artist is an elegant, electrifying novel – ultra violent but curiously redemptive – and it marks the return of one of modern fiction’s most infamous, terrifying characters, the incendiary Francis Begbie from Trainspotting.

Larry Weller, born in 1950, is an ordinary guy made extraordinary by his creator's perception, irony and tenderness. Carol Shields gives us, as it were, a CAT scan of his life, in episodes between 1977 and 1997 that flash back and forward seamlessly. As Larry journeys toward the millennium, adapting to society's changing expectations of men, Shields' elegant prose makes the trivial into the momentous. Among all the paradoxes and accidents of his existence, Larry moves through the spontaneity of the seventies, the blind enchantment of the eighties and the lean, mean nineties, completing at last his quiet, stubborn search of self. Larry's odyssey mirrors the male condition at the end of our century with targeted wit, unerring poignancy and faultless wisdom.

The bestselling author of he Yacaoubian Building and hicago turns his attention to current affairs in Egypt. In the novels and short stories of Alaa Al Aswany, characters struggle with class differences, police brutality, poverty, sexual harassment, and political corruption; now, in a new collection of the weekly newspaper columns previously published in Arabic, Al Aswany considers these same issues that torment modern Egyptian society. He has a great deal to say about one of the most pressing questions on everyone's mind: who will be the next president of Egypt, and how will he be elected? He discusses the moral ambiguity of appointed politicians, the suitability of democratic reforms in a Muslim society, and the inherent contradiction in the actions of the religiously observant policeman who tortures or the man who harasses women. Critical, controversial, and straightforward, Al Aswany asks his government to serve the people, and the people to demand what they deserve.

Only Georges Bataille could write, of an eyeball removed from a corpse, that "the caress of the eye over the skin is so utterly, so extraordinarily gentle, and the sensation is so bizarre that it has something of a rooster's horrible crowing." Bataille has been called a "metaphysician of evil," specializing in blasphemy, profanation, and horror. Story of the Eye, written in 1928, is his best-known work; it is unashamedly surrealistic, both disgusting and fascinating, and packed with seemingly endless violations. It's something of an underground classic, rediscovered by each new generation. Most recently, the Icelandic pop singer Björk Guðdmundsdóttir cites Story of the Eye as a major inspiration: she made a music video that alludes to Bataille's erotic uses of eggs, and she plans to read an excerpt for an album. Warning: Story of the Eye is graphically sexual, and is only for adults who are not easily offended.

A New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and Denver Post Bestseller   In 1925, the legendary British explorer Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle, in search of a fabled civilization. He never returned. Over the years countless perished trying to find evidence of his party and the place he called “The Lost City of Z.” In this masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, journalist David Grann interweaves the spellbinding stories of Fawcett’s quest for “Z” and his own journey into the deadly jungle, as he unravels the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century. From the Trade Paperback edition.

When a bestselling debut novel from mysterious author J.Colby becomes the literary event of the year, Emiline reads it reluctantly. As an adjunct writing instructor at UC San Diego with her own stalled literary career and a bumpy long-term relationship, Emiline isn’t thrilled to celebrate the accomplishments of a young and gifted writer. Yet from the very first page, Emiline is entranced by the story of Emerson and Jackson, two childhood best friends who fall in love and dream of a better life beyond the long dirt road that winds through their impoverished town in rural Ohio. That’s because the novel is patterned on Emiline’s own dark and desperate childhood, which means that “J. Colby” must be Jase: the best friend and first love she hasn’t seen in over a decade. Far from being flattered that he wrote the novel from her perspective, Emiline is furious that he co-opted her painful past and took some dramatic creative liberties with the ending. The only way she can put her mind at ease is to find and confront “J. Colby,” but is she prepared to learn the truth behind the fiction?