The Collected Stories

Collected Stories includes both volumes of the National Book Award–winning author Shirley Hazzard’s short-story collections—Cliffs of Fall and People in Glass Houses—alongside uncollected works and two previously unpublished stories Shirley Hazzard's Collected Stories is a work of staggering breadth and accomplishment. Taken together, these twenty-eight short stories are masterworks in telescoping focus, ranging from quotidian struggles between beauty and pragmatism to satirical send-ups of international bureaucracy, from the Italian countryside to suburban Connecticut. Hazzard's heroes are high-minded romantics who attempt to fit their feelings into the twentieth-century world of office jobs and dreary marriages. After all, as she writes in "The Picnic," "It was tempting to confine oneself to what one could cope with. And one couldn't cope with love." And yet it is the comedy, the tragedy, and the splendor of love, the pursuit and the absence of it, that animates Hazzard's stories and provides the truth and beauty that her protagonists seek. Hazzard once said, "The idea that somebody has expressed something, in a supreme way, that it can be expressed; this is, I think, an enormous feature of literature." Her stories themselves are a supreme evocation of writing at its very best: probing, uncompromising, and deeply felt.

'This is a collection full of energy and stunning, quiet innovation ... it spills over with contempt, raucous humour, sadness and generosity. In it, life and language are synonymous, and there is no higher praise. What a wonderful book' Ali Smith Here are all Grace Paley's classic stories in one volume. Paley's quirky, boisterous characters and rich use of language won her readers' hearts and secured her place as one of America's most accomplished short-story writers. Her stories are united by her signature interweaving of personal and political truths, her extraordinary capacity for empathy and her pointed depiction of the small and large events that make up daily life. Books included in the VMC 40th anniversary series include: Frost in May by Antonia White; The Collected Stories of Grace Paley; Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault; The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann; Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith; The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; Heartburn by Nora Ephron; The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy; Memento Mori by Muriel Spark; A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor; and Faces in the Water by Janet Frame

This definitive collection establishes Williams as a major American fiction writer of the twentieth century. Tennessee Williams’ Collected Stories combines the four short-story volumes published during Williams’ lifetime with previously unpublished or uncollected stories. Arranged chronologically, the forty-nine stories, when taken together with the memoir of his father that serves as a preface, not only establish Williams as a major American fiction writer of the twentieth century, but also, in Gore Vidal’s view, constitute the real autobiography of Williams’ "art and inner life."

With over three hundred new and previously published short stories as well as three novellas, The Collected Stories of Diane Williams brings together distilled works of “unsettling brilliance” (Vanity Fair) that have rewritten the rules of American short fiction. From Ben Marcus’ introduction to The Collected Stories of Diane Williams: “Diane Williams has spent her long, prolific career concocting fictions of perfect strangeness, most of them no more than a page long. She’s a hero of the form: the sudden fiction, the flash fiction, whatever it’s being called these days. The stories are short. They defy logic. They thumb their nose at conventional sense, or even unconventional sense. But if sense is in short supply in these texts, that leaves more room for splendor and sorrow. These stories upend expectations and prize enigma and the uncanny above all else. The Williams epiphany should be patented, or bottled—on the other hand, it should also be regulated and maybe rationed, because it’s severe. It’s a rare feeling her stories trigger, but it’s a keen and deep and welcome one, the sort of feeling that wakes us up to complication and beauty and dissonance and fragility.”

The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg contains twenty-seven short stories by "a contemporary master" (New York Times). Since 1986 with the publication of her first story collection, Deborah Eisenberg has devoted herself to writing "exquisitely distilled stories" which "present an unusually distinctive portrait of contemporary American life" to quote the MacArthur Foundation. This one volume brings together Transactions in a Foreign Currency (1986), Under the 82nd Airborne (1992), All Around Atlantis (1997) and Twilight of the Superheroes (2006). "One of America's finest writers."—San Francisco Chronicle "Concentrated bursts of perfection."—The Times (London)

Collected Stories includes both volumes of National Book Award-winning author Shirley Hazzard's short story collections - Cliffs of Fall and People in Glass Houses - alongside uncollected works and two previously unpublished stories. Twenty-eight works of short fiction in all, Shirley Hazzard's Collected Stories is a work of staggering breadth and talent. Taken together, Hazzard's short stories are masterworks in telescoping focus, 'at once surgical and symphonic' (New Yorker), ranging from quotidian struggles between beauty and pragmatism to satirical sendups of international bureaucracy, from the Italian countryside to suburban Connecticut. In an interview, Hazzard once said, 'The idea that somebody has expressed something, in a supreme way, that it can be expressed; this is, I think, an enormous feature of literature'. Her stories themselves are a supreme evocation of writing at its very best: probing, uncompromising and deeply felt.

Collected in one volume for the first time: 22 classic short stories of love and death, betrayal and hope—from a master storyteller hailed as “the Updike of his day” (New York Observer) In this magnificent collection of Stefan Zweig’s short stories, the very best and worst of human nature is captured with sharp observation, understanding, and vivid empathy. Ranging from love and death to faith restored and hope regained, these stories present a master at work, at the top of his form. Perfectly paced and brimming with passion, these 22 tales from one of the great storytellers of the 20th century are translated by the award-winning Anthea Bell. Included: Forgotten Dreams In the Snow The Miracles of Life The Star Above the Forest A Summer Novella The Governess Twilight A Story Told in Twilight Wondrak Compulsion Moonbeam Alley Amok Fantastic Night Letter from an Unknown Woman The Invisible Collection Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman Downfall of the Heart Incident on Lake Geneva Mendel the Bibliophile Leporella Did He Do It? The Debt Paid Late

'I was so captivated by this book, so utterly drawn in and overwhelmed by the emotional force of it, that it stayed in my bloodstream, it felt, long after I'd finished it.' Nigella Lawson 'Sharp and engrossing' Roxane Gay As the bookish daughter of a travelling salesman, Jami Attenberg was drawn to the road. Her wanderlust led her to drive solo across America, and eventually on travels around the globe, embracing - for better and worse - all the messy life she encountered along the way. As she travelled she was crafting, grafting and honing her work, piecing together a living and career, and wrestling with a deep longing for independence while also searching for community, and eventually, a place she might want to stay in for good. This remarkable memoir reveals the defining moments that pushed her to create a life, and voice, she could claim for herself. Exploring themes of friendship, independence, class and drive, I Came All This Way to Meet You is an inspiring and singular story of living the creative life, and finding one's way home.

100 stories dating from 1908 to 1945.

A complete collection of short works offers insight into the progression of the writer's work throughout a thirty-year period and features, among other tales, the complete texts of At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, Tumble Home, and The Dog of the Marriage. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.