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.

Collects short stories from the author's first two books, "Open" and "Degrees of Nakedness," as well as previously unpublished works.

Pricksongs & Descants, originally published in 1969, is a virtuoso performance that established its author - already a William Faulkner Award winner for his first novel - as a writer of enduring power and unquestionable brilliance, a promise he has fulfilled over a stellar career. It also began Coover's now-trademark riffs on fairy tales and bedtime stories. In these riotously word-drunk fictional romps, two children follow an old man into the woods, trailing bread crumbs behind and edging helplessly toward a sinister end that never comes; a husband walks toward the bed where his wife awaits his caresses, but by the time he arrives she's been dead three weeks and detectives are pounding down the door; a teenaged babysitter's evening becomes a kaleidoscope of dangerous erotic fantasies-her employer's, her boyfriend's, her own; an aging, humble carpenter marries a beautiful but frigid woman, and after he's waited weeks to consummate their union she announces that God has made her pregnant. Now available in a Grove paperback, Pricksongs & Descants is a cornerstone of Robert Coover's remarkable career and a brilliant work by a major American writer.

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.

Known and loved around the world for his vast and sprawling novels, Charles Dickens relished the opportunity to experiment with his shorter writings, investigating hitherto unexplored themes and engaging in uncharacteristic narrative techniques. This anthology presents some of the beloved storyteller's lesser-known works, focusing on tales that reflect his fascination with the supernatural as well as his impressionistic sketches and dramatic monologues. The collection opens with "The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton," in which a gravedigger learns a lesson from mischievous spirits. Other ghostly tales include "The Baron of Grogzwig," "To Be Read at Dusk," and more. A selection of brief, atmospheric essays, most of them written for newspapers and magazines, recaptures vibrant scenes from Victorian London — its prisons, churches, schools, and street life — as well as episodes from the author's extensive travels. The book concludes with a series of dramatic monologues from Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions and other stories, all of them abounding in Dickens' distinctive wit and imaginative power.

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

An indispensable guide to the heady world of Ontario’s craft beer revival, the expanded second edition of The Ontario Craft Beer Guide adds nearly 100 outstanding new breweries. For newcomers and aficionados alike, experts Jordan St. John and Robin LeBlanc guide you through the booming craft beer scene to your new favourite pint.

The complexity and uncertainty of the idea of home are very much at issue in the stories Gallant writes about Canada, her home country. Included in this new collection are the celebrated Linnet Muir stories, wonderfully wise and funny investigations into the difficulties of growing up and breaking free.