My First Ever And Best Story Collection

A collection of five 'extremely' good stories all about 'absolutely' very important things like making friends, being independent and even taking part in your very first school sports day

Charlie has this little sister, Lola, and together they have lots of extremely good adventures and do some very fun things. All Charlie and Lola fans will love this collection of five favourite stories, featuring Charlie and Lola, their friends Lotta and Marv and, of course, Marv's dog Sizzles!

Named a Fall Pick by Boston Globe, ELLE, Library Journal and MyDomain An eerie debut collection featuring missing parents, unrequited love, and other uncomfortable moments A man hangs from the ceiling of an art gallery. A woman spells out messages to her sister using her own hair. Children deemed “bad” are stolen from their homes. In Hardly Children, Laura Adamczyk’s rich and eccentric debut collection, familiar worlds—bars, hotel rooms, cities that could very well be our own—hum with uncanny dread. The characters in Hardly Children are keyed up, on the verge, full of desire. They’re lost, they’re in love with someone they shouldn’t be, they’re denying uncomfortable truths using sex or humor. They are children waking up to the threats of adulthood, and adults living with childlike abandon. With command, caution, and subtle terror, Adamczyk shapes a world where death and the possibility of loss always emerge. Yet the shape of this loss is never fully revealed. Instead, it looms in the periphery of these stories, like an uncomfortable scene viewed out of the corner of one’s eye.

Lola is going to Lotta's house for her first sleepover-but everything is just a bit too different! Lola misses home. How will she ever get to sleep?

Charlie and Lola are planning to put on a circus show, but their plans are cut short when Charlie breaks his arm. Not only is Lola worried because Charlie has hurt himself but also because he is feeling a bit sad. Can Lola find a way to cheer him up?

What, Lola bored? Lola is usually very busy?and very funny!?but today she?s really not feeling well! Charlie does everything he can to help, bringing Lola cookies and pink milk and even a bunch of flowers. But the flowers make Lola sneeze and the pink milk tastes green! Even worse, Charlie has promised his friend Marv that he will play in a soccer game, and now Charlie has to leave! Oh, no! How will Lola ever get better without her big brother around?

National Book Award finalist Mary Gaitskill’s debut collection, Bad Behavior—powerful stories about dislocation, longing, and desire which depict a disenchanted and rebellious urban fringe generation that is searching for human connection. Now a classic, Bad Behavior made critical waves when it first published, heralding Gaitskill’s arrival on the literary scene and her establishment as one of the sharpest, erotically charged, and audaciously funny writing talents of contemporary literature. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times called it “Pinteresque,” saying, “Ms. Gaitskill writes with such authority, such radar-perfect detail, that she is able to make even the most extreme situations seem real…her reportorial candor, uncompromised by sentimentality or voyeuristic charm…underscores the strength of her debut.”

From the author of Exhalation, an award-winning short story collection that blends "absorbing storytelling with meditations on the universe, being, time and space ... raises questions about the nature of reality and what it is to be human" (The New York Times). Stories of Your Life and Others delivers dual delights of the very, very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar, often presenting characters who must confront sudden change—the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens—with some sense of normalcy. With sharp intelligence and humor, Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty, but also by beauty and wonder. An award-winning collection from one of today's most lauded writers, Stories of Your Life and Others is a contemporary classic. Includes “Story of Your Life”—the basis for the major motion picture Arrival