Kill Marguerite and Other Stories collects thirteen risk-taking stories obsessed with crossing boundaries, whether formal or corporeal. Narrative genres are giddily mongrelized: the Sweet Valley twins get stuck in a choose-your-own-adventure story; Mean Girls-like violence gets embedded within a classic video game. Protagonists cycle through a series of startling, sometimes violent, changes in gender, physiology, and even species, occasionally blurring into other characters or swapping identities entirely. One woman metamorphoses into a giant slug; another quite literally eats her heart out; a wasp falls in love with an orchid; and a Greek god impregnates a man’s thigh with a sword. More than just a straightforward celebration of the carnivalesque, though, these fictions are deeply engaged, both critically and politically, with the ways that social power operates on, and through, queer bodies.

The book Chain and Other Stories contains nine stories. The first story, Chain, is about two federal agents who go undercover in Anchorage, Alaska, with two NYC detectives to investigate whether or not an oil mogul is using kidnapped kids to make weapons sold throughout the United States if so stop him. The next story, Gradill, is about an FBI agent who is investigating a case in Chicago where a bioterrorist is using SARS and Anthrax to poison or sicken CEOs of biochemical companies and local politicians who are giving them leeway to get funding and do research. The last of the first stories is Shatter Blue Magica story dealing with a young man who is an assassin who leaves a person alive he was supposed to kill, now he is only having to kill the person before he kills him and the lady he loves. The second batch of stories starts with Shatter Blue Magic 2, which is about the assassin from the first story having to kill his younger brother and sister-in-law, who have both been assigned to kill him, his wife, son, and employers. Web is the sequel to Chain where the two federal agents from the first story go undercover in Phoenix, Arizona, with two Phoenix detectives to investigate and stop two nightclub owners in Phoenix from kidnapping teenage girls and selling them to the adult entertainment industry to work as adult film stars. Gradill 2 is where the FBI agent from the first story is going undercover in Chicago to investigate a local domestic terrorist group and stop them from wrecking havoc in Chicago. The third batch of stories is Gradill 3 where the FBI agent from the two previous stories goes undercover with her sister to investigate a growing local domestic terrorist group who is causing trouble in Chicago and to stop them. The Last Call for Shatter Blue Magic picks up where the second story left off, healing his wounds from his encounter with his brother and sister-in-law, the assassin takes one last job where he must go around the world killing criminal organizations, corrupt policemen, crooked politicians, and terrorists, or he and his family and employers will be killed. Link is the last story in the Chain series where the two federal agents must go to Honolulu, Hawaii, with two Honolulu detectives to go undercover at a local sweatshop to investigate and stop a local rich woman and her friends from using children from Asia and America to work in her sweatshop making clothes that end up in department stores.

I'm pleased to have been asked to write the forward to this collection of splendid and heretofore mostly unseen short stories, all of which were written from roughly the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s by my longstanding friend and constant teacher Dave Sims. Mostly the stories transpire in what might reasonably be called working-class settings. They're inhabited by a range of peculiar characters, many of them troubled and distressed, some of them near death, all of them ingenuously sprung from Sims' singularly rich and fertile imagination. These are stories that deserve to be read, pondered and, of course, enjoyed. While recently re-reading them, I was struck, as happened often when I first encountered them years ago, by how strange and real and fully alive the characters seemed. I marveled once again at the details and contours of the stories themselves, their beautiful and inventive architecture, the snap and rhythm of the sentences and the keen, restless intelligence from whence they sprang.

A boy who feels persecuted by the banality of everyday life yearns to ascend to the cold and majestic plane of the stars. A seamstress finds liberation of a sort in “becoming” a dog and howling at the moon. A club of young girls masquerade as the grieving fiancées of strange men. This book brings together these and other remarkable short stories by the Russian Symbolist Fyodor Sologub that explore the lengths to which people will go to transcend the mundane. Renowned as one of late imperial Russia’s finest stylists, Sologub bridges the great nineteenth-century novel and the fin-de-siècle avant-garde. He stands out for his masterful command of both realist and fantastic storytelling; his play with language evinces a belief in its capacity to access other worlds and other levels of meaning. Many of Sologub’s stories are set among children whose alienation from the adult world has lent them imagination and curiosity, enabling them to create an alternative reality. At the same time, he bluntly examines the sordid realities of late imperial Russian society and frankly presents sometimes unconventional sexuality. The book also features a selection of Sologub’s “little fairy tales,” ambiguous parables couched in childlike language whose ingenuity anticipates the miniatures and “incidents” of Daniil Kharms. Susanne Fusso’s elegant translation offers these artful tales to an English-speaking audience.

In "The War of the Fatties," a campy, tongue-in-cheek retelling of an episode from the Mexican "Trojan War," naked fat women from Tlatelolco discombobulate Tenochtitlan’s invading army by squirting them with breast milk. Told with satiric allusions to the policies and tactics used by Mexico’s current ruling party, PRI, to consolidate its power, the play unfolds a history of vain rivalry and decadence, intricate political maneuvers, corruption, and unchecked ambition that determined the course of Mexican history for two centuries before the Spanish conquest. Novo’s other works in this collection—"A Few Aspects of Sex among the Nahuas," "Ahuítzotl and the Magic Water," "Cuauhtémoc: Play in One Act," "Cuauhtémoc and Eulalia: A Dialogue," "Malinche and Carlota: A Dialogue," and "In Ticitézcatl or The Enchanted Mirror: Opera in Two Acts"—represent nearly all of his Aztec-related writings. Taken together, they provide a delightful introduction to Novo’s later works and a light-hearted, historically accurate introduction to Aztec culture. The text is supplemented by a glossary of Nahuatl terms, notes on the historical characters, and an introduction that provides historical background and places Novo’s works within their cultural context.

Welcome to a landscape of ancient evil . . . with stories by masters of horror Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, H. P. Lovecraft, M. R. James​, Ramsey Campbell, Storm Constantine, Christopher Fowler, Alison Littlewood, Kim Newman, Reggie Oliver​, Michael Marshall Smith, Karl Edward Wagner, and more! The darkness that endures beneath the earth . . . the disquiet that lingers in the woodland surrounding a forgotten path . . . those ancient traditions and practices that still cling to standing stone circles, earthworks, and abandoned buildings; elaborate rituals that invoke elder gods or nature deities; the restless spirits and legendary creatures that remain connected to a place or object, or exist in deep wells and lonely pools of water, waiting to ensnare the unwary traveler . . . These concepts have been the archetypes of horror fiction for decades, but in recent years they have been given a name: Folk Horror. This type of storytelling has existed for more than a century. Authors Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, H. P. Lovecraft, and M. R. James all published fiction that had it roots in the notion of the supernatural being linked to objects or places “left behind.” All four writers are represented in this volume with powerful, and hopefully unfamiliar, examples of their work, along with newer exponents of the craft such as Ramsey Campbell, Storm Constantine, Christopher Fowler, Alison Littlewood, Kim Newman, Reggie Oliver, and many others. Illustrated with the atmospheric photography of Michael Marshall Smith, the stories in The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror tap into an aspect of folkloric tradition that has long been dormant, but never quite forgotten, while the depiction of these forces as being in some way “natural” in no way detracts from the sense of nameless dread and escalating horror that they inspire . . .

The lighter side of the other side. Funny stories of Fantasy & Sci Fi. A drunken elf thief hooks up with a gray space alien; ancient astronauts are insisting we build pyramids the old fashioned way; ghost hunters battle decidedly non-Lovecraftian creatures; an infinite number of monkeys at typewriters plot rebellion; a vampire is on the run from his fans; a princess with a different kind of godmother; the antichrist discovers no one cares about his apocalypse, and many more. Tales of the supernatural, the fantastical, the super-scientific and the just plain hilarious.

The first collection of Fonseca's short stories to appear in English, ranging across his oeuvre, exploring the sights and sounds of Rio de Janeiro. Fonseca's Rio is a city at war, where vast disparities, in wealth, social standing and prestige are untenable. Rich and poor live in an uneasy equilibrium, where only overwhelming force can maintain order and violence and deception are the essential tools of survival. From the tale of the businessman who rans over pedestrians to let off steam to a serial killer being pushed to kill more by his lover, this collection is a true gem.

USA TODAY BESTSELLER • In Tom Savage’s chilling novel of suspense, an ambitious reporter is beckoned to an island paradise for the story of a lifetime. But this scoop might just be the death of her. Fifty years ago, on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas, two teenagers born to privilege were convicted of slaughtering their parents in cold blood. Today the men are free and a Hollywood movie has been made about the murders. For Karen Tyler, an eager New York journalist, the case is irresistible. She has been invited to the Virgin Islands for an interview that’s too good to pass up . . . and sounds too good to be true. Karen packs her bikini and her digital recorder and follows an ingeniously designed trail that leads her to a wealthy, mysterious figure. The man claims to be one of the notorious boys, but Karen soon learns that all is not as it seems. On this isolated utopia of sun and surf, a young reporter far from home fights for the truth—and for her life. Because the shocking secret behind the infamous atrocities has remained hidden all these years. And the killing isn’t over yet. Praise for A Penny for the Hangman “Tom Savage spins a web of suspense into this tale of far-off climes, interweaving letters, newspaper accounts, and diary fragments for a pulled-from-the-headlines feel. In Cold Blood meets ‘The Most Dangerous Game,’ A Penny for the Hangman is a predator-and-prey chase that takes the reader to a tropical paradise, and reveals the steaming underbelly it hides.”—Jenny Milchman, award-winning author of Cover of Snow Praise for Tom Savage “Savage knows the mystery novel inside and out, and it shows on every page.”—James Patterson “Tom Savage is becoming a master of the high-speed thriller.”—Michael Connelly “Tom Savage is a very gifted writer who creates living, breathing characters, wonderful dialogue, and mesmerizing tension.”—Nelson DeMille “Savage writes with fierce energy, piercing holes in the shredding fabric of our society, where no one is safe, no one is free from harm.”—Lorenzo Carcaterra

'In recent decades, interest in hunger artists has greatly diminished.' Kafka published two collections of short stories in his lifetime, A Country Doctor: Little Tales (1919) and A Hunger Artist: Four Stories (1924). Both collections are included in their entirety in this edition, which also contains other, uncollected stories and a selection of posthumously published works that have become part of the Kafka canon. Enigmatic, satirical, often bleakly humorous, these stories approach human experience at a tangent: a singing mouse, an ape, an inquisitive dog, and a paranoid burrowing creature are among the protagonists, as well as the professional starvation artist. A patient seems to be dying from a metaphysical wound; the war-horse of Alexander the Great steps aside from history and adopts a quiet profession as a lawyer. Fictional meditations on art and artists, and a series of aphorisms that come close to expressing Kafka's philosophy of life, further explore themes that recur in his major novels. Newly translated, and with an invaluable introduction and notes, Kafka's short stories are haunting and unforgettable. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.