"Look, Jane, " said Dick. "Here is something funny. Can you guess what it is?"

Storytelling as a fundamental human impulse, one that announces itself at the moment, hidden in infancy, that dreams begin—this is what the poet and critic Randall Jarrell set out to illuminate in this extraordinary book. Here Jarrell presents ballads, parables, anecdotes, and legends along with some of the finest work of Chekhov, Babel, Elizabeth Bowen, Isak Dinesen, Kafka, Peter Taylor, and Katherine Anne Porter. This wonderful anthology, with its celebrated introductory essay, enlarges and deepens our perception of the storyteller's art and its central place in the world of our feelings. Contents RANDALL JARRELL: Introduction FRANZ KAFKA: A Country Doctor ANTON CHEKHOV: Gusev RAINER MARIA RILKE: The Wrecked Houses; The Big Thing ROBERT FROST: The Witch of Coös GIOVANNI VERGA: La Lupa NIKOLAI GOGOL: The Nose ELIZABETH BOWEN: Her Table Spread LUDWIG TIECK: Fair Eckbert BERTOLT BRECHT: Concerning the Infanticide, Marie Farrar LEO TOLSTOY: The Three Hermits PETER TAYLOR: What You Hear from 'Em? HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN: The Fir Tree KATHERINE ANNE PORTER: He ANONYMOUS: The Red King and the Witch ANTON CHEKHOV: Rothschild's Fiddle THE BROTHERS GRIMM: Cat and Mouse in Partnership E. M. FORSTER: The Story of the Siren THE BOOK OF JONAH FRANZ KAFKA: The Bucket-Rider SAINT-SIMON: The Death of Monseigneur ISAAC BABEL: Awakening CHUANG T'ZU: Five Anecdotes HUGO VON HOFMANNSTHAL: A Tale of the Cavalry WILLIAM BLAKE: The Mental Traveller D. H. LAWRENCE: Samson and Delilah LEO TOLSTOY: The Porcelain Doll IVAN TURGENEV: Byezhin Prairie WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: The Ruined Cottage FRANK O'CONNOR: Peasants ISAK DINESEN: Sorrow-Acre

A posthumously published collection of thirty-six essays offering Italo Calvino's invigorating and illuminating analysis of his most treasured literary classics.

Thirty one short stories that offer a picture of the Deep South.

The story of the loyalty of Bobby, a Skye Terrier.

Harlem Renaissance author Nella Larsen (1891 –1964) published just two novels and three short stories in her lifetime, but achieved lasting literary acclaim. Her classic novel Passing first appeared in 1926.

A collection of irreverent summations of more than 100 well-known works of literature, from Anna Karenina to Wuthering Heights, cleverly described in the fewest words possible and accompanied with funny color illustrations. Abridged Classics: Brief Summaries of Books You Were Supposed to Read but Probably Didn’t is packed with dozens of humorous super-condensed summations of some of the most famous works of literature from many of the world’s most revered authors, including William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Emily Brontë, Leo Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, J.R.R. Tolkien, Margaret Atwood, James Joyce, Plato, Ernest Hemingway, Dan Brown, Ayn Rand, and Herman Melville. From "Old ladies convince a guy to ruin Scotland" (Macbeth) to "Everyone is sad. It snows." (War and Peace), these clever, humorous synopses are sure to make book lovers smile.

Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin, first published in 1896, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.