A stellar host of writers explore the cornerstone of fiction writing: character The Book of Other People is about character. Twenty-five or so outstanding writers have been asked by Zadie Smith to make up a fictional character. By any measure, creating character is at the heart of the fictional enterprise, and this book concentrates on writers who share a talent for making something recognizably human out of words (and, in the case of the graphic novelists, pictures). But the purpose of the book is variety: straight "realism"-if such a thing exists-is not the point. There are as many ways to create character as there are writers, and this anthology features a rich assortment of exceptional examples. The writers featured in The Book of Other People include: Aleksandar Hemon Nick Hornby Hari Kunzru Toby Litt David Mitchell George Saunders Colm Tóibín Chris Ware, and more

With his trademark emotional heft and storytelling skill, bestselling author Chris Bohjalian presents this resonant novel about the formation of an unconventional family–the ties that bind it, and the strains that pull it apart. Two years after their twin daughters died in a flash flood, Terry and Laura Sheldon, a Vermont state trooper and his wife, take in a foster child. His name is Alfred; he is ten years old and African American. And he has passed through so many indifferent families that he can’t believe that his new one will last. In the ensuing months Terry and Laura will struggle to emerge from their shell of grief only to face an unexpected threat to their marriage; Terry’s involvement with another woman. Meanwhile, Alfred cautiously enters the family circle, and befriends an elderly neighbor who inspires him with the story of the buffalo soldiers, the black cavalrymen of the old West. Out of the entwining and unfolding of their lives, The Buffalo Soldier creates a suspenseful, moving portrait of a family, infused by Bohjalian’s moral complexity and narrative assurance. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Chris Bohjalian's The Light in the Ruins.

Repackaged in a new tie-in edition to coincide with the Netflix film produced and directed by Angelina Jolie, a moving story of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her triumphant spirit as she survived the Cambodian genocide under Pol Pot’s brutal regime. Until the age of five, Loung Ung lived in Phnom Penh, one of seven children of a high-ranking government official. She was a precocious child who loved the open city markets, fried crickets, chicken fights, and sassing her parents. While her beautiful mother worried that Loung was a troublemaker—that she stomped around like a thirsty cow—her beloved father knew Loung was a clever girl. When Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge army stormed into Phnom Penh in April 1975, Ung’s family fled their home and moved from village to village to hide their identity, their education, their former life of privilege. Eventually, the family dispersed in order to survive. Loung trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, while other siblings were sent to labor camps. As the Vietnamese penetrated Cambodia, destroying the Khmer Rouge, Loung and her surviving siblings were slowly reunited. Bolstered by the shocking bravery of one brother, the courage and sacrifices of the rest of her family—and sustained by her sister’s gentle kindness amid brutality—Loung forged on to create for herself a courageous new life. Harrowing yet hopeful, insightful and compelling, this story is truly unforgettable.

The Undiscovered Chekhov gives us, in rich abundance, a new Chekhov. Peter Constantine's historic collection presents 38 new stories and with them a fresh interpretation of the Russian master. In contrast to the brooding representative of a dying century we have seen over and over, here is Chekhov's work from the 1880s, when Chekhov was in his twenties and his writing was sharp, witty and innovative. Many of the stories in The Undiscovered Chekhov reveal Chekhov as a keen modernist. Emphasizing impressions and the juxtaposition of incongruent elements, instead of the straight narrative his readers were used to, these stories upturned many of the assumptions of storytelling of the period. Here is "Sarah Bernhardt Comes to Town," written as a series of telegrams, beginning with "Have been drinking to Sarah's health all week! Enchanting! She actually dies standing up!..." In "Confession...," a thirty-nine year old bachelor recounts some of the fifteen times chance foiled his marriage plans. In "How I Came to be Lawfully Wed," a couple reminisces about the day they vowed to resist their parents' plans that they should marry. And in the more familiarly Chekhovian "Autumn," an alcoholic landowner fallen low and a peasant from his village meet far from home in a sad and haunting reunion in which the action of the story is far less important than the powerful impression it leaves with the reader that each man must live his life and has his reasons.

"Elizabeth Flock takes us on an intimate cruise on the shifting sea of the heart, in the best book set in Bombay that I've read in years. Flock's total access to her characters, and her highly sympathetic and nonjudgmental gaze, prove that love and literature know no borders. Easily the most intimate account of India that I've read, and of value to anybody that believes in love and marriage."—Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City "This remarkable debut is so deeply reported, elegantly written, and profoundly transporting that it reads like a novel you can’t put down. It’s both a nuanced and intimate evocation of Indian culture, and a provocative and exciting meditation on marriage itself."—Katie Roiphe, author of The Violet Hour In the vein of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, an intimate, deeply reported and revelatory examination of love, marriage, and the state of modern India—as witnessed through the lives of three very different couples in today’s Mumbai. In twenty-first-century India, tradition is colliding with Western culture, a clash that touches the lives of everyday Indians from the wealthiest to the poorest. While ethnicity, class, and religion are influencing the nation’s development, so too are pop culture and technology—an uneasy fusion whose impact is most evident in the institution of marriage. The Heart Is a Shifting Sea introduces three couples whose relationships illuminate these sweeping cultural shifts in dramatic ways: Veer and Maya, a forward-thinking professional couple whose union is tested by Maya’s desire for independence; Shahzad and Sabeena, whose desperation for a child becomes entwined with the changing face of Islam; and Ashok and Parvati, whose arranged marriage, made possible by an online matchmaker, blossoms into true love. Though these three middle-class couples are at different stages in their lives and come from diverse religious backgrounds, their stories build on one another to present a layered, nuanced, and fascinating mosaic of the universal challenges, possibilities, and promise of matrimony in its present state. Elizabeth Flock has observed the evolving state of India from inside Mumbai, its largest metropolis. She spent close to a decade getting to know these couples—listening to their stories and living in their homes, where she was privy to countless moments of marital joy, inevitable frustration, dramatic upheaval, and whispered confessions and secrets. The result is a phenomenal feat of reportage that is both an enthralling portrait of a nation in the midst of transition and an unforgettable look at the universal mysteries of love and marriage that connect us all.

The stories here, all of them written between March of 1972 and November of 1973, mark a critical turning point in my career. Those who know the three earlier volumes have traced my evolution from a capable journeyman, very young and as much concerned with paying the rent as he was to advancing the state of the art, into a serious, dedicated craftsman now seeking to leave his mark on science fiction in some significant way. Throughout the decade of the 1960s I had attempted to grow and evolve within the field of writing I loved building on the best that went before me, the work of Theodore Sturgeon and James Blish and Cyril Kornbluth and Jack Vance and Philip K. Dick and half a dozen others whose great stories had been beacons beckoning me onward and then, as I reached my own maturity, now trying to bring science fiction along with me into a new realm of development, hauling it along even farther out of its pulp-magazine origins toward what I regarded as a more resonant and evocative kind of visionary storytelling. Robert Silverberg, from his introduction Table of Contents Introduction In the Group Getting Across Ms. Found in an Abandoned Time Machine The Science Fiction Hall of Fame A Sea of Faces The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV Breckenridge and the Continuum Capricorn Games Ship-Sister, Star-Sister This is the Road Trips Born with the Dead D.V. Perrot: Teach Yourself Swahili Schwartz Between the Galaxies In the House of Double Minds

Boys and girls begin a dangerous game in a school yard one cold winter's day. (Short fiction)1861: While visiting family friends in Savannah, Luke fell in love with a girl named Julia Branch. Chester Baker, a local young man about town, was a bitter rival for her time and attention. Unfortunately for Luke, her banker father rejected him; it seems Luke's family back in upstate New York wasn't wealthy enough. Then the war started.December 1864: Sherman's army is camped outside Savannah and Luke is back. He was crippled at Kennesaw Mountain, but is a Yankee spy and has been tasked with gaining information about Fort McAllister which is Sherman's next target. Chester lost a leg assaulting the Water Witch and is now a bartender in a broken down saloon in a blockaded cotton port named Coffee Bluff.

Norah has been in the Syme household a few days before she learns of her close resemblance to her employer's niece, Marion Syme, who drowned several years ago. Is there something to be afraid of in the half-deserted house - or something more sinister, in the psyche of someone who lives there?

A critical insight over the assumed changes that we have done and do, which have never had any logical basis. Reasons to change the point of view about our way of life: health, food, time, relationships, work, home, as well as all are related. What feels and thinks an environmentalist that is lacking within all of us.This book is headed to common people: to students who are making that they imagine as their own future; to industrialists who naively believe to be in the edge, the peak, or to be going on the way; teachers who have such wonderful things to tell their students; to simple farmers who do not know exactly what to do, whether to go ahead or go back, if leaving out all, perhaps go to the town; to those persons who come questioning what might make sense. I am sure people has the capacity to think, but the thinking and reflection are sleeping among a muddy mix of what is a supposed information. In this regard, that is the common sense, stop for a while and think about. This book is headed also to you, laboratory technician, researcher, written from a humble floor: to you, who goes for years thinking and assuming that everything is clear, you are walking by a clever trail, despite the outlook we already have seen. Said outright: you may think it awhile, before continue ahead. Thereby this book is not headed neither to politicians nor bankers: make money do not needs think the right things, only complicate and make it necessary. Somehow, I would like achieve you to understand that there are two fields that need a thorough review from below, not from above: the economy and the technology. That review will begin in the hands of people who glimpse despite the noise that goes against that idea. If is well done, including some issues as are the role of both sexes and the behavior, it will affect positively the other fields

The slaughter at Borodino saw at least 50,000 dead soldiers and 30,000 dead horses. The carnage from the artillery was at a grotesque level. After the battle the Russians fell back and the French pushed on to Moscow. Left behind were hundreds of badly wounded and dying men. A handful survived living off the wasteland amidst all the dead for weeks as winter approached - This is their story.Imagine for one minute you are incapacitated in a place of complete desolation, surrounded by carcases, bodies and the debris left from a battle that resulted in 50,000 dead human beings and 30,000 dead horses. Somehow you have to survive....The French immediately pursued the Russians all the way to Moscow leaving behind all the corpses and most of the wounded. For many of those left on the battlefield clinging to life death would come for them over the next three or four days.But a few, just a handful found a way to exist in the folorn hope that there would be salvation and The Grand Armee would come for them.The carnage and misery of the battle was only surpassed by the gruelling challenge for survival for the wounded left behind on the battlefield. Surviving Borodino - is a short story that covers just one day of survival for those left behind in the wasteland that is the battlefield of Borodino.

Trying to prove she's not a coward like her father gets Emily into all kinds of trouble.This is a ghost story for nine to thirteen year olds.Sometimes Emily Macintosh is her own worst enemy. If she could only stop trying to prove her courage all the time, life would be a lot easier. Take the tricky situation of being the new girl in grade six. Emily decides the fastest way of gaining acceptance is to show the other kids that she can solve the mystery of their knocking ghost. But will that be the end or the start of her problems?

Tales of the Hanged Man tells the tale of William Rhys, accused of a crime and hung by the Lord of the land. Three days later, he came back to life. Now, cloaked in his burial shroud and back from the dead, William Rhys stalks the land as the dreaded Hanged Man. The hangman's rope that took his life is now his weapon of vengeance as he hunts the wicked and evil in medieval Britain.The Hanged Man, Author Mark Gelineau’s Revenant of Revenge, debuted first in Pro Se Productions’ High Adventure History. Now the cursed embodiment of vengeful justice returns in a Pro Se Single Shot Signature series of short stories-Tales of the Hanged Man! Tales of the Hanged Man tells the tale of William Rhys, accused of a crime and hung by the Lord of the land. Three days later, he came back to life. Now, cloaked in his burial shroud and back from the dead, William Rhys stalks the land as the dreaded Hanged Man. The hangman's rope that took his life is now his weapon of vengeance as he hunts the wicked and evil in medieval Britain.When an innkeeper and his wife are accused of murdering villagers in a remote settlement and hung by an angry mob for these crimes, their souls cry out for vengeance. And the Hanged Man hears them. A hero with a secret faces judgment at the end of the Hanged Man’s rope, but what is real horror behind the disappearances and death? The Hanged Man discovers truly monstrous evil in The Hundred Bones, the debut short story in Mark Gelineau’s Tales of the Hanged Man, a Pro Se Single Shot Signature series from Pro Se Productions.

She’s making a wish list, and he wants to be on top. From foster kid to trophy wife, Tessa McAllen is about to reinvent herself all over again—and defy every insult her cheating ex-husband ever used against her: Selfish? She’s championing a charity. Stupid? She’s getting her degree. Boring in bed? Kade Vandergriff can help her with that one. When they encounter each other at a singles event held at one of his restaurants, Tessa blurts out that kink is for girls who try too hard, and Kade instantly wants to show this sassy stranger how thrilling a night under his command can be…but when he learns her name, the game changes for both of them. In high school, Tessa was the popular girl who stuttering, awkward Kade fell for. But she chose another. Now, as she eagerly learns lesson after lesson, he’s going to make sure she never forgets him again.