Going For A Beer Selected Short Fictions

“A mixtape of variations and a fugue on time from a postmodern master.… Familiar tales and conventional genres are made new, tinged with shuddering wonder and titillating humor.” —Yu-Yun Hsieh, The New York Times Book Review Robert Coover has been playing by his own rules for more than half a century, earning the 1987 Rea Award for the Short Story as “a writer who has managed, willfully and even perversely, to remain his own man while offering his generous vision and versions of America.” Here, in this selection of his best stories, you will find an invisible man tragically obsessed by an invisible woman; a cartoon man in a cartoon car who runs over a real man who is arrested by a real policeman with cartoon eyes; a stick man who reinvents the universe. While invading the dreams and nightmares of others, Coover cuts to the core of how realism works.

Mavis Gallant is the modern master of what Henry James called the international story, the fine-grained evocation of the quandaries of people who must make their way in the world without any place to call their own. The irreducible complexity of the very idea of home is especially at issue in the stories Gallant has written about Montreal, where she was born, although she has lived in Paris for more than half a century. Varieties of Exile, Russell Banks's extensive new selection from Gallant's work, demonstrates anew the remarkable reach of this writer's singular art. Among its contents are three previously uncollected stories, as well as the celebrated semi-autobiographical sequence about Linnet Muir—stories that are wise, funny, and full of insight into the perils and promise of growing up and breaking loose.

Fifty years after the original release of Coover's satire, this rollicking fable of the grotesque, unhinged Cat in the Hat (and the stuffed shirts who bet on his success) makes for a bitterly funny indictment of politics-as-usual in 2017.

Man from the South is a short, sharp, chilling story from Roald Dahl, the master of the shocking tale. In Man from the South, Roald Dahl, one of the world's favourite authors, tells a sinister story about the darker side of human nature. Here, a man takes part in a very unusual bet, one with appalling consequences . . . Man from the South is taken from the short story collection Someone Like You, which includes seventeen other devious and shocking stories, featuring the wife who serves a dish that baffles the police; a curious machine that reveals the horrifying truth about plants; the man waiting to be bitten by the venomous snake asleep on his stomach; and others. 'The absolute master of the twist in the tale.' (Observer ) This story is also available as a Penguin digital audio download read by Stephen Mangan. Roald Dahl, the brilliant and worldwide acclaimed author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many more classics for children, also wrote scores of short stories for adults. These delightfully disturbing tales have often been filmed and were most recently the inspiration for the West End play, Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales by Jeremy Dyson. Roald Dahl's stories continue to make readers shiver today.

The first collection of short fiction from a rising star whose stories have been anthologized in the first two volumes of the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy series and nominated for many awards. Some of Samatar’s weird and tender fabulations spring from her life and her literary studies; some spring from the world, some from the void. Praise for Sofia Samatar’s Books: “The excerpt from Sofia Samatar’s compelling novel A Stranger in Olondria should be enough to make you run out and buy the book. Just don’t overlook her short ‘Selkie Stories Are for Losers,’ the best story about loss and love and selkies I’ve read in years.” —K. Tempest Bradford, NPR “An imaginative, poetic, and dark meditation on how history gets made.” —Hello Beautiful “Pleasantly startling and unexpected. Her prose is by turns sharp and sumptuous, and always perfectly controlled. . . . There are strains here too of Jane Austen and something wilder.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Like an alchemist, Sofia Samatar spins golden landscapes and dazzling sentences.” —Shelf Awareness (starred review) “Beauty, wonder, and a soaring paean to the power of story.”—Jason Heller, NPR “Highly recommended.” —N. K. Jemisin, New York Times Book Review Sofia Samatar is the author of the novels A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories. She has written for the Guardian, Strange Horizons, and Clarkesworld, among others, and has won the John W. Campbell Award, the Crawford Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the World Fantasy Award. She lives in Virginia.

The prize-winning, New York Times bestselling short story collection from the internationally bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo 'The best book you'll read this year' New York Times 'Dazzlingly surreal stories about a failing America' Sunday Times WINNER OF THE 2014 FOLIO PRIZE AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2013 George Saunders's most wryly hilarious and disturbing collection yet, Tenth of December illuminates human experience and explores figures lost in a labyrinth of troubling preoccupations. A family member recollects a backyard pole dressed for all occasions; Jeff faces horrifying ultimatums and the prospect of Darkenfloxx(TM) in some unusual drug trials; and Al Roosten hides his own internal monologue behind a winning smile that he hopes will make him popular. With dark visions of the future riffing against ghosts of the past and the ever-settling present, this collection sings with astonishing charm and intensity.

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • An outsider who can travel between worlds discovers a secret that threatens the very fabric of the multiverse in this stunning debut, a powerful examination of identity, privilege, and belonging. WINNER OF THE COMPTON CROOK AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE LOCUS AWARD • “Gorgeous writing, mind-bending world-building, razor-sharp social commentary, and a main character who demands your attention—and your allegiance.”—Rob Hart, author of The Warehouse ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—NPR, Library Journal, Book Riot Multiverse travel is finally possible, but there’s just one catch: No one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara, whose parallel selves happen to be exceptionally good at dying—from disease, turf wars, or vendettas they couldn’t outrun. Cara’s life has been cut short on 372 worlds in total. On this dystopian Earth, however, Cara has survived. Identified as an outlier and therefore a perfect candidate for multiverse travel, Cara is plucked from the dirt of the wastelands. Now what once made her marginalized has finally become an unexpected source of power. She has a nice apartment on the lower levels of the wealthy and walled-off Wiley City. She works—and shamelessly flirts—with her enticing yet aloof handler, Dell, as the two women collect off-world data for the Eldridge Institute. She even occasionally leaves the city to visit her family in the wastes, though she struggles to feel at home in either place. So long as she can keep her head down and avoid trouble, Cara is on a sure path to citizenship and security. But trouble finds Cara when one of her eight remaining doppelgängers dies under mysterious circumstances, plunging her into a new world with an old secret. What she discovers will connect her past and her future in ways she could have never imagined—and reveal her own role in a plot that endangers not just her world but the entire multiverse. “Clever characters, surprise twists, plenty of action, and a plot that highlights social and racial inequities in astute prose.”—Library Journal (starred review)

This witty and amusing collection of short pieces shows Dickens liberated from the more formal and sustained demands of the novel and experimenting with a diverse range of fictional techniques. In his tales of the supernatural, he creates frighteningly believable, spine-tingling stories of prophetic dreams and visions, as well as more fantastical adventures with goblins and apparitions. Impressionistic sketches combine imaginatively heightened travel journals with wry observations of home and abroad, while in his dramatic monologues, Dickens demonstrates his talent for exploring the secret workings of the human mind. These short works display Dickens's exuberant sense of comedy and character as his imagination is given free rein.

This is an amazing collection of some of the best short fiction ever written in the SF genre, by an author acclaimed as 'the mastersinger of space opera' THE TIMES. With an introduction by noted SF critic Johnathan Strahan, this collection of twenty short stories, novellettes and novellas includes MINLA'S FLOWERS, SIGNAL TO NOISE, TROIKA, and seven previous uncollected stories, including TRAUMA POD, THE WATER THIEF and IN BABELSBERG. Alastair Reynolds has won the Sidewise Award and been nominated for The Hugo Awards for his short fiction. One of the most thought-provoking and accomplished short-fiction writers of our time, this collection is a delight for all SF readers

In his shorter fiction, Dickens investigated hitherto unexplored themes and engaged in experiments with narrative techniques. This collection focuses on his tales of the supernatural, impressionistic sketches, and dramatic monologues.