Short Stories

Hardcover. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. SIGNED BY O'NAN on title page, with a short hand-written note from the author laid in. His first book. The 1993 winner of the Drue Heinz Prize and the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Prize. A collection of twelve short stories.

Hardcover. Prague, SNDK, 1st, 1958, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, SIGNED BY WENIG. Czech language. Black & white pen-line drawings in color by Mikolase Alse. Red cloth with gilt decoration.

Chicago, Judson, 1st, 1940, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Decorated cloth covers with bold black title, 142 pages. Black & white illustrations by Charles H. Steinbacher. A collection of folk tales from Burma. No dust jacket.

Hardcover. New york, Delacorte Press, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 756 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Light soil on bottom page block corner, as well as a few pages with short folded corners. Yellow decorative stain on top page block, light foxing. Otherwise clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Little Brown, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY EARLEY on the title page during the Breadloaf Writer's Conference in Vermont in 1997.

Hardcover. New York, The World Publishing House, 1st US, 1877, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 332 pages. Hardcover. With 60 b/w illustrations/plates. B/w illustrated frontispiece with tissue guard. No other printings mentioned on publication page, either 1st edition or very early printing. Cover boards bound in green cloth, title reverse in gilt on spine, black decoration on spine and front cover board, decoration blind stamped on back cover board. Some rubbing and chipping to boards (see images). Some tanning to edges and pages, doesn't affect illustrations or text. Some foxing on a few pages (see image). Binding remains tight. Spine very slightly cocked. Short stories by literary master Jules Verne, beautifully bound and ready for display. Illustrated by Henri Theophile Hildibrand, well known for his illustrations in Verne's books.

Hardcover. NY, Penguin Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. First printing with full number line. National Book award winner for 2014. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Ny, Vanguard Press, 1st, 1944, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in an edgeworn and chipped dust jacket. "Collection of stories including scientific romances, contes philosophiques and stories of the supernatural. The most important of the latter is the novella Dromenon, in which an antiquarian discovers the true nature of medieval Christian worship by means of a restored church organ". Bookplate on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Middlebury VT, Middlebury College Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 355 pages. Edited by Robert Pack and Jay Parini. "Collecting short stories, essays, and the long narrativ poem "Fever and Chills," this Reader reveals the range of Elliott's talents and his seemingly effortless command of the written word. The smooth, realistic style of his short stories enhances the emotional resonance of such pieces as "Hymn of Angels," or contrasts with the caustic satire of others, such as the darkly Orwellian "The N.R.A.C.P." Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. These twelve stories further Joy Williamss utterly singular achievement, described by the Washington Post as poetic, disturbing, yet very funny. Her landscapes reach from Maine and Nantucket to the Southwest and into Mexico and Guatemala, while the events cover a range of human travail, from children confronting the death of a parent to parents instead burying their own young, and the various ways-comic, tragic, unnerving-we seek to accommodate diminishment and loss.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 197 pages. Slight wear and creasing to dust jacket, some foxing to top edge, else a very nice, tight copy protected by mylar cover. The author's third book, an amusing collection of satiric sketches. 20 stories beginning with 'Walt and Will' a freewheeling version of the creation of the Disney empire. Clean copy.

Softcover. Ann Arbor MI, Ardis Publishers, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 430 pages. Clean, bright copy. Contents: The Steel Bird by Vasily Aksenov, Snowball Berry Red by Vasily Shukshin, A School for Fools by Sasha Sokolov, The Exchange by Yury Trifonov, Life in Windy Weather by Andrei Bitov, Belshazzar's Feasts by Fazil Iskander, Downstream by Valentin Rasputin.

Hardcover. London/NY, Granta Books / Viking Penguin, 1st , 1990, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Set in an exotic Eastern landscape peopled by magicians and fantastic talking animals, Salman Rushdie's classic children's novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories inhabits the same imaginative space as Gulliver's Travels, Alice in Wonderland, and The Wizard of Oz. In this captivating novel, Haroun sets out on an adventure to restore the poisoned source of the sea of stories. On the way, he encounters many foes, all intent on draining the sea of all its storytelling powers. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Ecco, 2nd pr., 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 216 pages. Nicola Barker's collection of her nineteen most brilliant stories exemplifies her ability to create daring, witty, and dynamic characters, all their idiosyncrasies intact. Barker's stories often use wordplay and humor to stretch the boundaries of metaphor and reality as the outrageously original plots unfold. The collection begins with a smart tale of a teenage girl whose obsession with the size of her nose dangerously compromises her relationships with her friends and her family. "Inside Information" is a pun of a title, describing how the protagonist's unborn fetus is the only one able to reform his mother's compulsive shoplifting by pulling the ultimate prank. "G-String" and "Symbiosis: Class Cestoda" detail women who gain self-esteem, albeit through quirky methods, despite the cowardly men who try to suppress them. The title story, "Three Button Trick," is about a man who deliberately buttons his duffel coat incorrectly to attract sympathetic females. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, D. Appleton and Co., 1st, 1881, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 231 pages plus ads in rear. Illustrated in b&w by Frederick S. Church and James H. Moser. Brown cloth decorated in gilt and black (bright gilt drawing of rabbit with pipe on front). First printing with no mention of this title among 8 pages of publisher's ads in back and the word presumptive in the last line on page 9. Endpapers feature a light gray butterfly pattern. Previous owner's bookplate on front pastedown. A bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston MA, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 145 pages. Minor wear to dust jacket, else like new.

Softcover. New York, Vintage, 1st paperback., 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 213 pages, softcover uncorrected proof. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Minor corner wear, otherwise, very clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 191 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Spotless and tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1st trade, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 393 pages. Brown cloth, gilt lettering to spine. Slight bump to upper edge of spine, else a lovely copy in protective brodart cover.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Theodore Bliss & Co., reprint, 1869, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 300 pages. B&w frontispiece and b&w illustrations throughout. Previous owner's inscription on front flyleaf. Some pages loose. Light spotting to title page. Wear, rubbing, and soiling to cover; Spine faded.

Hardcover. New York, Summit, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED by NORMAN on title page.

Hardcover. Baton Rouge, Lousiana State University, 1st , 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. INSCRIBED BY WEAVER TO JOHN GARDNER in 1973 on half title page. dust jacket with closed tear to front cover, light edgewear.

Hardcover. New York, G. W. Dillingham, 1st, 1897, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped with a 3-color design. Tales of New York City before the turn of the century. Decorated green cloth. Frontispiece of the author, black & white illustrations by F.A. Nankivell. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Michael Joseph, 1st, 1976, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 32 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Limited to 350 copies. Line drawings by John Ward. Brown cover boards with gilt rose decoration on front. Clean, tight copy.

Softcover. NY, Riverhead Books, 1st wraps, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 308 pages. A collection of short stories from the winner of the National Book Award 1n 2013. The stories in Five-Carat Soul--none of them ever published before--spring from the place where identity, humanity, and history converge. They're funny and poignant, insightful and unpredictable, imaginative and authentic--all told with McBride's unrivaled storytelling skill and meticulous eye for character and detail. McBride explores the ways we learn from the world and the people around us. An antiques dealer discovers that a legendary toy commissioned by Civil War General Robert E. Lee now sits in the home of a black minister in Queens. Five strangers find themselves thrown together and face unexpected judgment. An American president draws inspiration from a conversation he overhears in a stable. And members of The Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band recount stories from their own messy and hilarious lives.

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st US, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, 142 pages. Humoroue instructions for the man living on his own. Cartoons by Quenin Blake. Book is clean, very good, dust jacket is worn, chipped.

Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt and Company, 1st, 1921, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Publisher's blue cloth with decoration of men sitting at table and smoking cigars. Humorous essays, including "The Social Life of a Newt." Author's first book. This copy published without the four pages of advertisements at the back (no priority known). 234 pages. Tiny hole near bottom of fist two pages, not affectin title page. Previous owner's inscription dated 1921 on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Riverhead Books, 1st illust thus, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. This is a collaborative edition with Jaime Hernandez illustrations. John Hodgman calls Hernandez "one of the most talented artists our polyglot culture has produced." Bright teal slipcase. Book has no DJ as issued. Still in publisher's shrink wrap.

Hardcover. Paris, Baudry's European Library, 1st, 1838, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, calf binding with title label on spine. Illustrated with 8 b&w engravings. Well written, entertaining legends, history and folklore of the Rhine, including the Mouse Tower, Hildegard von Bingen, St. Ursula, etc. Cover is scuffed with surface scars, but binding is firm. 354 pages. Minor foxing. Aside from cover appearance, very good.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn and chipped dust jacket, 248 pages. This short story collection contains: A Time of Learning; The Mysteries of Life in an Orderly Manner; Love, Death, and the Ladies' Drill Team; Home Coming; The Battle of the Suits; Tom Wolfe's My Name; Learn to Say Good-by; A Little Collar for the Monkey; Public Address System; Foot-Shaped Shoes; Horace Chooney, M.D.; The Linden Trees; Breach of Promise; and The Singing Lesson. Stated first edition. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. The New Yorker magazine named Matt Klam one of the twenty best young writers in America, and the seven stories that comprise Sam the Cat are all the proof we need. Knowing, perceptive, and wickedly funny, Matt Klam loves his characters but spares them nothing: the swaggering womanizer Sam falls in love with a woman across a crowded room who, upon closer inspection, turns out to be not quite what he expected; a self-doubting young professional attends the posh wedding of his successful friend and delivers a disastrous toast; the chicken one man's girlfriend is preparing for dinner comes to embody the darkly corrosive element in their relationship. These stories crackle with humor, intelligence and style and add up to an outrageously funny, unforgettable debut. Clean copy.

Softcover. Taipei, Bookman Books, reprint, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 242 pages. An expanded edition of a book first published in 1983. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 1990, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR on the title page spread. In his first collection of stories, Ralph Lombreglia writes about being young and unsettled, about trying to connect and not always making it - or succeeding in startling ways. Original, at times whimsical, the stories, some of which have appeared in the New Yorker and the Atlantic , are deft and biting entertainment. Clean copy.

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st US, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 187 pages, b&w illustrations. A collection of radical political fairy tales-some in English for the first time-from one of the great female practitioners of the genre Hermynia Zur Muhlen (1883-1951), one of the twentieth century's great political writers, was not seemingly destined for a revolutionary, unconventional literary career. Born in Vienna to an aristocratic Catholic family, Zur Muhlen married an Estonian count. But she rebelled, leaving her upper-class life to be with the Hungarian writer and Communist Stefan Klein, and supporting herself through translations and publications. Altogether, Zur Muhlen wrote thirty novels, mysteries, and story collections, and translated around 150 works, including those of Upton Sinclair, John Galsworthy, and Edna Ferber. A wonderful new addition to the Oddly Modern Fairy Tales series, The Castle of Truth and Other Revolutionary Tales presents English readers with a selection of Zur Muhlen's best political fairy tales, some translated from German for the first time. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st Eng. transl., 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 181 pages. In these surreal and gripping stories about desire, tyranny, fear, and love, one of Brazil's greatest queer writers appears in English for the first time. In 18 daring, scheming stories filled with tension and intimacy, Caio Fernando Abreu navigates a Brazil transformed by the AIDS epidemic and stifling military dictatorship of the 80s. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Lee and Shepard, 3rd Ed., 1875, Book: Very Good, Hardcover, terra-cotta cloth decorated in gilt and black, 386 pages. 4 b&w engraved illustrations. Humorous tales of western rural life. Clean, tight copy.

Softcover. London, Canongate Pub Ltd, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 242 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on half-title page. Very clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Harper & Row, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 183 pages, INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page, minor dust jacket edge fade, otherwise, very clean and tight copy.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 145 pages. A virtuoso Fin de Siecle Viennese innovator of what he called the "telegram style" of writing, Altenberg's signature short prose straddles the line between the lyrical and the narrative, fiction and observation, harsh verity and whimsical vignette. Inspired by the prose poems of Charles Baudelaire, the tales of Hans Christian Andersen and the Viennese Feuilleton, a light journalistic reflection current in his day, Altenberg carved out a spare, strikingly modern aesthetic that speaks with an eerie prescience to our own impatient time. Peter Wortsman's new selection and translation reads like a sly lyrical wink from the turn-of-the-century of the telegram to the turn-of-the-millennium of e-mail. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Harper & Row, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 247 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. 1/4 black cloth. Silver lettering on spine. Black/purple decorative dj in protective clear plastic. Clean, tight, unmarked copy.

Hardcover. Boston, David Godine, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 178 pages, in a bright unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY DUBUS on title page and also INSCRIBED by him on the opposite blank leaf. Previous owner's signature and address on the front fly leaf.

Hardcover. New York, Doubleday, 1st limited, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 375 pages. Hardcover with original slip case. (1st LIMITED EDITION #1337 OUT OF 2000. Monthly letter laid-in.)(SIGNED AT BACK PAGE BY ILLUSTRATOR) Bound in green/blue, gilt title and decoration on spine and front cover. Vibrant color and b/w illustrations throughout by Charles Raymond. Slip case has a little bit of age wear. Spine has a touch of shelf wear. In very good condition, clean and bright inside.

Hardcover. Athens GA, University of Georgia, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. WInner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. One of his landmark, defining works. Ha Jin has seamlessly and eloquently melded historical fact with personal experience. His short stories have been compared to the works of Isaac Babel, the greatest Russian short-story writer of the 20th century. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st US, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 408 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Top edge dyed. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Softcover. Middlebury, VT, Friends of the Library of Middlebury College, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 16 pages. Softcover booklet with cream colored heavy stock paper. Black decoration on front. Limited to 350 copies. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, NYU Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 308 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edge wear to dust jacket. Black and white illustrations throughout. Tight copy

Hardcover. NY, Harper and Brothers, 1st, 1905, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, small volume (4 X 6 1/4"), blue cloth designed and lettered in white. Frontispiece and 5 plates in b/w by Frank Nankivell. Comical theatrical play the scene of which is "a summer hotel in mid-August, where a group of summer-girls, longing for masculine companionship, construct a large worsted man from an old afghan, stuffing him with cotton. He comes to life, and proves to be one of the worst flirts ever created. Exceedingly funny to read, and is suitable for amateur theatricals." Includes a depreciating African-American character, Sambo Front, and use of music borrowed from Gilbert and Sullivan. Inscription on front fly leaf dated 1905, otherwise clean, bright copy. Plate at page 6 is loose.

Hardcover. NY, Library of America, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 860 pages. Writing with equal insight about New York City, Hollywood, and the small-town Pennsylvania world where he grew up, John O'Hara cultivated an unsentimental and often unsparing realism, aiming, he said, "to record the way people talked and thought and felt . . . with complete honesty." Praised by contemporaries including Ernest Hemingway and Dorothy Parker, he wrote about sex, drinking, and social class with a frankness ahead of its time. The fiction he published in The New Yorker (more than any other writer to this day) came to epitomize the kind of short story featured in that magazine, and his impeccable ear and skillful dialogue have influenced later writers such as Raymond Carver. Bringing together sixty stories written over four decades--the largest, most comprehensive collection of O'Hara's stories ever published--former New York Times Book Review editor Charles McGrath presents a fresh and arresting new perspective on one of American literature's master storytellers. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Ontario Review Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the half-title page. A debut collection of short fiction from the author of the novel Leaving the Land, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Douglas Unger's fiction is sharp-edged and compelling, whether he's exploring his own boyhood on the street ("Autobiography") or the life of a student lab assistant who bonds with a burnt-out rhesus monkey ("Leslie and Sam") or the strange fate of a young woman who returns from a second honeymoon on a paradisiacal Brazilian island to succumb to a mysterious disease ("Tide Pool"). The collection is capped by the powerful novella "Looking for War," where a would-be war correspondent, whose older brother is a shell-shocked Vietnam vet, stumbles upon his own war in a grisly five-minute action in the jungles of Paraguay.

Hardcover. NY, Pantheon Books, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on half title page. A signed collectible first edition copy of this short story collection from this National Book Award winning and PEN/Faulkner and Pulitzer Prize nominated author. Clean copy.