The Dark And Other Love Stories

“The emotional range and depth of [Willis’s stories], the clarity and deftness, are astonishing.”—Alice Munro The characters in these thirteen masterful and engaging stories exist on the edge of danger, where landscapes melt into dreamscapes and every house is haunted. A drug dealer’s girlfriend signs up for the first manned mission to Mars. A girl falls in love with a man who wants to turn her into a bird. A teenaged girl and her best friend test their relationship by breaking into suburban houses. A wife finds a gaping hole in the floor of the home she shares with her husband, a hole that only she can see. Full of longing and strange humor, these subtle, complex stories—about the love between a man and his pet crow, an alcoholic and his AA sponsor, a mute migrant and a newspaper reporter—show how love ties us to each other and to the world. The Dark and Other Love Stories announces the emergence of a wonderfully gifted storyteller whose stories enlarge our perceptions about the human capacity to love.

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2017 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE Winner of the 2018 Western Canada Jewish Book Awards - Fiction - The Diamond Foundation Prize Nominated for the 2018 OLA Evergreen Award Energized, irreverent, novelistic stories full of longing, strange humour, and the complications of human entanglement from Governor General’s Award nominee Deborah Willis The characters in these thirteen masterful and engaging stories exist on the edge of danger, where landscapes melt into dreamscapes and every house is haunted. A drug dealer’s girlfriend signs up for the first manned mission to Mars. A girl falls in love with a man who wants to turn her into a bird. A teenage girl and her best friend test their relationship by breaking into suburban houses. A wife finds a gaping hole in the floor of the home she shares with her husband, a hole that only she can see. Full of longing and strange humour, these subtle, complex stories—about the love between a man and his pet crow, an alcoholic and his AA sponsor, a mute migrant and a newspaper reporter—show how love ties us to one another and to the world. The Dark and Other Love Stories announces the emergence of a wonderfully gifted storyteller whose stories enlarge our perceptions about the human capacity to love.

Two strangers in Paris ...One passionate, earth-shattering kiss.He was the artist upstairswith the tantalizing smile and laughing eyes.He was the devil inviting me to sin,seducing me to dance in the bright moonlight.He was desire and need.When he touched me, my body sang.My soul came alive.But I belonged to another man,and he didn't want to let me go.

From the Pulitzer Finalist and universally beloved author of the New York Times best sellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove, a stunning new collection of short fiction that showcases Karen Russell’s extraordinary, irresistible gifts of language and imagination. Karen Russell’s comedic genius and mesmerizing talent for creating outlandish predicaments that uncannily mirror our inner in lives is on full display in these eight exuberant, arrestingly vivid, unforgettable stories. In“Bog Girl”, a revelatory story about first love, a young man falls in love with a two thousand year old girl that he’s extracted from a mass of peat in a Northern European bog. In “The Prospectors,” two opportunistic young women fleeing the depression strike out for new territory, and find themselves fighting for their lives. In the brilliant, hilarious title story, a new mother desperate to ensure her infant’s safety strikes a diabolical deal, agreeing to breastfeed the devil in exchange for his protection. The landscape in which these stories unfold is a feral, slippery, purgatorial space, bracketed by the void—yet within it Russell captures the exquisite beauty and tenderness of ordinary life. Orange World is a miracle of storytelling from a true modern master.

A French teacher who collects fiancés; a fortune-teller who fails to predict the heartbreak of her own daughter; an aging cowboy seduced by a city girl . . . these are some of the unforgettable people who live in these pages. In Vanishing and Other Stories, secrets are both kept and unearthed, and lives are shaped by missing lovers, parents, and children. With wisdom and dexterity, moments of dark humor, and a remark- able economy of words, Deborah Willis captures an incredible array of characters that linger in the imagination and prove that nothing is ever truly forgotten.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off meets Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist in this romp through the city that never sleeps from the New York Times bestselling author of Since You’ve Been Gone. Two girls. One night. Zero phones. Kat and Stevie—best friends, theater kids, polar opposites—have snuck away from the suburbs to spend a night in New York City. They have it all planned out. They’ll see a play, eat at the city’s hottest restaurant, and have the best. Night. Ever. What could go wrong? Well. Kind of a lot? They’re barely off the train before they’re dealing with destroyed phones, family drama, and unexpected Pomeranians. Over the next few hours, they’ll have to grapple with old flames, terrible theater, and unhelpful cab drivers. But there are also cute boys to kiss, parties to crash, dry cleaning to deliver (don’t ask), and the world’s best museum to explore. Over the course of a wild night, both Kat and Stevie will get a wake-up call about their friendship, their choices…and finally discover what they really want for their future. That is, assuming they can make it to Grand Central before the clock strikes midnight.

Discover hundreds of stormtrooper helmet designs with a deluxe art book, and customize your own unique helmet with this collector’s set! In 2014, creatives from Lucasfilm, Disney, Industrial Light & Magic, Pixar, and Marvel Studios joined forces for an incredible artistic endeavor, the Star Wars Legion project. The task was simple—decorate, adorn, or transform a blank, vinyl stormtrooper helmet—but the result was extraordinary, with artists creating more than 200 radically unique helmets that were put on display at the Robert Vargas Gallery in 2014. Now, you can experience the Star Wars Legion project through a deluxe art book showcasing incredible helmet designs, and a customizable stormtrooper helmet. • BE INSPIRED BY MORE THAN 200 HELMET DESIGNS: Includes a deluxe, hardcover photography book that showcases the hundreds of stunning helmet designs created for the Legion project. • EXERCISE YOUR CREATIVITY: This collector’s kit includes a blank helmet, based on the stormtrooper design from the beloved television show Star Wars Rebels, which is ready for customization, display, or even signing at conventions. • THE PERFECT GIFT FOR STAR WARS FANS: A great value for fans of any age, this kit is the perfect way to celebrate the boundless inventiveness of the Star Wars galaxy. • COMPLETE YOUR STAR WARS COLLECTION: This kit stands alongside fan-favorite Star Wars books, including Star Wars: The Life Day Cookbook, Star Wars: The Secrets of the Sith, and Star Wars: The Lightsaber Collection.

For daring to peer into the heart of an adulteress and enumerate its contents with profound dispassion, the author of Madame Bovary was tried for "offenses against morality and religion." What shocks us today about Flaubert's devastatingly realized tale of a young woman destroyed by the reckless pursuit of her romantic dreams is its pure artistry: the poise of its narrative structure, the opulence of its prose (marvelously captured in the English translation of Francis Steegmuller), and its creation of a world whose minor figures are as vital as its doomed heroine. In reading Madame Bovary, one experiences a work that remains genuinely revolutionary almost a century and a half after its creation.