Some Stories

Through a compilation of his many articles on sports, from falconry to fishing and climbing to surfing, along with musings on the purpose of business and the importance of environmental activism, the author reveals his extraordinary and varied life experiences.

“This guy can write!” —Ray Bradbury Loory's collection of wry and witty, dark and perilous contemporary fables is populated by people-and monsters and trees and jocular octopi-who are united by twin motivations: fear and desire. In his singular universe, televisions talk (and sometimes sing), animals live in small apartments where their nephews visit from the sea, and men and women and boys and girls fall down wells and fly through space and find love on Ferris wheels. In a voice full of fable, myth, and dream, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day draws us into a world of delightfully wicked recognitions, and introduces us to a writer of uncommon talent and imagination. Contains 40 stories, including “The Duck,” “The Man and the Moose,” and “Death and the Fruits of the Tree,” as heard on NPR’s This American Life, “The Book,” as heard on Selected Shorts, and “The TV,” as published in The New Yorker.

A collection of seventeen wonderful short stories showing that the legendary Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor. “Reading Tom Hanks's Uncommon Type is like finding out that Alice Munro is also the greatest actress of our time.” —Ann Patchett, bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Dutch House A gentle Eastern European immigrant arrives in New York City after his family and his life have been torn apart by his country's civil war. A man who loves to bowl rolls a perfect game--and then another and then another and then many more in a row until he winds up ESPN's newest celebrity, and he must decide if the combination of perfection and celebrity has ruined the thing he loves. An eccentric billionaire and his faithful executive assistant venture into America looking for acquisitions and discover a down and out motel, romance, and a bit of real life. These are just some of the tales Tom Hanks tells in this first collection of his short stories. They are surprising, intelligent, heartwarming, and, for the millions and millions of Tom Hanks fans, an absolute must-have!

From the author of The Outsiders: “Immediate and gripping” tales of two boys whose lives diverge in dramatic ways after a shared childhood tragedy (School Library Journal). Terry and Mike were cousins who were as close as cousins could be—more like twin brothers, really. They thought they were invincible and that the happy times would last forever, until the day their fathers headed off for their annual deer-hunting trip. That was when everything started to change, and their paths went in very different directions. Years later, another fateful event will send one of them to prison—and the other to a bartending job in Oklahoma—while the prospect of an eventual reunion looms . . . From the award-winning author of That Was Then, This Is Now and Rumble Fish, “Some of Tim’s Stories is a compact set of vignettes” full of “sharp, concise observation” (The New York Times).

Hailed a “Best Book of the Year” by NPR, Publishers Weekly, Vulture, and the New York Public Library, Some Trick is now in paperback Finalist for the Saroyan Prize for Fiction For sheer unpredictable brilliance, Gogol may come to mind, but no author alive today takes a reader as far as Helen DeWitt into the funniest, most far-reaching dimensions of possibility. Her jumping-off points might be statistics, romance, the art world’s piranha tank, games of chance and games of skill, the travails of publishing, or success. “Look,” a character begins to explain, laying out some gambit reasonably enough, even in the face of situations spinning out to their utmost logical extremes, where things prove “more complicated than they had first appeared” and “at 3 a.m. the circumstances seem to attenuate.” In various ways, each tale carries DeWitt’s signature poker-face lament regarding the near-impossibility of the life of the mind when one is made to pay to have the time for it, in a world so sadly “taken up with all sorts of paraphernalia superfluous, not to say impedimental, to ratiocination.”

A collection of animal fables told by the Greek slave Aesop.

“Snippets- some stories short” is a captivating jumble of simple real-like incidents that often escape our attention. The author has delicately drawn out such instances and fictionalized them with a fluidity that keeps the reader absorbed and instinctively flipping pages from one story to the other. Each story has a different hue, flavor and context wherein those interested in variety would find engrossing variegated mix wrapped in one cover. Yet the underlying theme is constant and about human sensibilities, frailty, subtle emotions, common fears, superstitions, faith, flaws and fragility. One may get confronted with commonplace happenings that would otherwise appear innocuous but could be speaking of embedded hierarchies, prejudices and stereotypes that we often take for granted. Then, certain unbelieving instances could catch one unawares that would revive your faith in some supreme power beyond. It makes us understand how experiences mould us in time. Simultaneously, making us realize how everything at the macro level merges into oneness of being - be it be different races of mankind, different religions and castes in India, different colours of a rainbow and so on; all artificial and mortal differences eventually even out. The language used encapsulates the essence of the moment engaging the reader in flow of its simplicity and content. This short story collection specially suits fiction lovers with busy schedules and younger multitasking generation with constricting attention span. A happy reading and a tête-à-tête with latent realities of life.

There are stories that we use to explain what happened to us twenty years ago or last wee, those we use to explain why the world works the way it does, and those that we sue to "fix" the world when it doesn't work the way other stories said it should. And as the author points out in this collection of essays and interviews, some of these stories are better than others. This book is an investigation into which might be the better stories and how they can help clients reach their goals in therapy. This book contains fifteen essays and interviews written or co-written by Michael Hoyt. The collection represents Dr. Hoyt's recent thinking on helping clients with the brief, future-orientated therapeutic approaches.