All of the stories in this book are exceptionally short, revealing themselves in no more than 300 words. With a foreword by Robert Shapard and an afterword by Christopher Merrill, this book brings you fresh approaches to an exacting form that demands precision, a species of brevity that is surprisingly expansive. Writers say the pieces are hard to compose, but readers say they are easy to appreciate, a pleasure to envision, a wonder to watch life spun out and painted in small places. Real and surreal, lyrical and prosaic, here are 135 stories by 89 authors, certain to make you think.
W. W. Norton & Company Somebody's Darling A1048819802
Forty years ago, Larry McMurtry journeyed from the sprawling ranches of his early work to the provocative Sunset Strip, creating a Hollywood fable that is both immediate and relevant in today's dynamic cultural climate. One would never guess that Jill Peel is still on the verge of stardom. Jill won an Oscar shortly after her fresh-faced arrival in 1950s Hollywood, then for the next twenty years batted away every Tinseltown producer who tried to hire her and get her into bed. Now middle-aged, she's determined to create more movie magic by directing a cast of raunchy eccentrics, including Joe Percy, an aging womanizing screenwriter, and ex-football player Owen Oarson, eager to sleep his way to leading-man stardom. Teeming with biting humor and intriguing characters that mirror the scandals of modern-day Hollywood, Somebody's Darling is a timeless story about a fiercely capable woman who dares to challenge the realities of a deceptively seductive Babel.
W. W. Norton & Company Desperate Characters A1034928057
Otto and Sophie Bentwood live in a changing neighborhood in Brooklyn. Their stainless-steel kitchen is newly installed, and their Mercedes is parked curbside. After Sophie is bitten on the hand while trying to feed a stray, perhaps rabies-infected cat, a series of small and ominous disasters begin to plague the Bentwoods' lives, revealing the fault lines and fractures in a marriage-and a society-wrenching itself apart. First published in 1970 to wide acclaim, Desperate Characters stands as one of the most dazzling and rigorous examples of the storyteller's craft in postwar American literature - a novel that, according to Irving Howe, ranks with "Billy Budd, The Great Gatsby, Miss Lonelyhearts, and Seize the Day."
Norton Diamantscheibe Standard Universal Turbo Ø230 - 70184608563
Segmentbreite: 3,2 mm | Außendurchmesser: 230 mm | Bohrungsdurchmesser: 22,23 mm | Segmenthöhe: 10 mm | Merkmale: Diamantscheibe Standard Universal Turbo ~ Qualitätswerkzeug für allgemeine Baumaterialien und besonders für Dachziegel geeignet ~ Aggressiver Schnitt bei härteren Materialien ~ Bessere Schnittqualität dank geschlossenem Turbo-Schneidrand ~ Trocken- oder Nassschnitt
The Aubrey-Maturin series . . . ebbs and flows with the timeless tide of character and the human heart."Ken Ringle, Washington Post A British whaler has been captured by an ambitious chief in the Sandwich Islands at French instigation, and Captain Jack Aubrey is dispatched with the Surprise to restore order. But stowed away in the cable-tier is an escaped female convict. To the officers, Clarissa Harvill is an object of awkward courtliness and dangerous jealousies. Aubrey himself is won over and indeed strongly attracted to this woman who will not speak of her past. But only Aubrey's friend, Dr. Stephen Maturin, can fathom Harvill's secrets: her crime, her personality, and a clue identifying a highly-placed English spy in the pay of Napoleon's intelligence service. In a thrilling finale, Patrick O'Brian delivers all the excitement his many readers expect: Aubrey and the crew of the Surprise impose a brutal pax Britannica upon the islanders in a pitched battle against a band of headhunting cannibals.
One of the New Yorker's Best Books of 2022 So Far and BuzzFeed's Must-Read Summer Books For readers of Ottessa Moshfegh and Mona Awad, this fearless debut chronicles one woman's escape into a world of obsessive imagination. Bonnie Lincoln just wants to be left alone. To come home from work, shut out the ghosts of some devastating losses, and unwind in front of the nostalgic, golden glow of her favorite TV show, Three's Company. When Bonnie wins the lottery, a more grandiose visionto completely shuck off her own troublesome identitytakes shape. She plans a drastic move to an isolated mountain retreat where she can re-create the iconic apartment set of Three's Company and slip into the lives of its main characters: no-nonsense Janet Wood, pleasantly airheaded Chrissy Snow, and confident Jack Tripper. While her best friend, Krystal, tries to drag her back to her old life, Bonnie is determined to transcend pain, trauma, and the baggage of her past by immersing herself in the ultimate binge-watch.
A dynamic, beautifully orchestrated debut novel connecting five characters caught in the crosshairs of conflict on the Sudanese border. A mysterious burnt corpse appears one morning in Saraaya, a remote border town between northern and southern Sudan. For five strangers on an NGO compound, the discovery foreshadows trouble to come. South Sudanese translator William connects the corpse to the sudden disappearance of cook Layla, a northern nomad with whom he's fallen in love. Meanwhile, Sudanese American filmmaker Dena struggles to connect to her unfamiliar homeland, and white midwestern aid worker Alex finds his plans thwarted by a changing climate and looming civil war. Dancing between the adults is Mustafa, a clever, endearing twelve-year-old, whose schemes to rise out of poverty set off cataclysmic events on the compound. Amid the paradoxes of identity, art, humanitarian aid, and a territory riven by conflict, William, Layla, Dena, Alex, and Mustafa must forge bonds stronger than blood or identity. Weaving a sweeping history of the breakup of Sudan into the lives of these captivating characters, Fatin Abbas explores the porous and perilous nature of borders-whether they be national, ethnic, or religious-and the profound consequences for those who cross them. Ghost Season is a gripping, vivid debut that announces Abbas as a powerful new voice in fiction.
One of the Economist's Best Books of 2026 The dramatic story of the secretive decade-long Pentagon campaign to deliver America into the age of AI warfare. In 2017, a small crew gathered in a windowless Pentagon room to put AI at the heart of how America makes war. Led by Drew Cukor, an unyielding Marine Corps colonel driven by the deaths of US troops and the prospect of war with an AI-equipped China, the Project Maven team raced to send AI into combat, igniting controversy and forever changing the US military. Summoning the mayhem of a tech startup, the Maven team wrestled Pentagon bureaucrats and each other. They enlisted an initially reluctant Silicon Valley, supercharged the growth of Palantir, and sent algorithms made by Amazon, Microsoft, and others into hot wars. Maven fielded technology to identify targets at speed and scale, developed AI-infused command systems, and learned where AI fails. The prospect of machines making independent decisions about life and death alarmed members of the military across all ranks and the project sparked a revolt among thousands of tech workers at Google. Yet today, Maven's AI-enabled systems operate in every branch of the US military, and its lessons are folded into developing autonomous technology set to be on the front lines of future war. Project Maven and its legacy sit at the intersection of colliding trends: America's insecurity about declining global power, the technological revolution driving AI into every aspect of society, the dominance of Big Tech, all-encompassing surveillance, and the ambitions of China's growing military. As the second Trump administration pours money into military AI and autonomy while the UN Secretary-General clamors for a ban on killer robots, this book investigates whether AI will improve accuracy and save lives or if a fundamentally unreliable black-box technology will unleash mistakes and atrocities at scale. Drawing on more than 200 interviews with insiders and opponents, this compelling narrative tells the definitive story of how AI warfare, once the stuff of apocalyptic science fiction, has become a reality.
Homer's great epic of a hero's journey homeinspiration for the major motion picture by Christopher Nolanin a bold, contemporary, and refreshingly readable translation. "Wilson's language is fresh, unpretentious and lean. . . . It is rare to find a translation that is at once so effortlessly easy to read and so rigorously considered." Madeline Miller, author of Circe Composed at the rosy-fingered dawn of world literature almost three millennia ago, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty, and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and the yearning for home. This fresh, authoritative translation captures the beauty of this ancient poem as well as the drama of its narrative. Its characters are unforgettable, none more so than the complicated hero himself, a man of many disguises, many tricks, and many moods, who emerges in this version as a more fully rounded human being than ever before. Written in iambic pentameter verse and a vivid, contemporary idiom, Emily Wilson's Odyssey sings with a voice that echoes the epic's music, sailing along at Homer's swift, smooth pace. A fascinating, informative introduction explores the Bronze Age milieu that produced the epic, the poem's major themes, the controversies about its origins, and the unparalleled scope of its impact and influence. Maps drawn especially for this volume, a pronunciation glossary, and extensive notes and summaries of each book make this an Odyssey that will be treasured by a new generation of readers.
W. W. Norton & Company Italiano Parlato A1005883038
Adrienne's vocabulary lists are contemporary, practical, and uncensored-you'll find words here that aren't in any other language book-and they group together families of words, which makes expanding your vocabulary painless. For the more advanced student, access to the Gimmick's expansive array of colloquial expressions will add an impossible-to-fake native fluency. Whether you're trying to learn the rudiments ("My name is Steve"), travel with globe-trotting panache ("The Louvre has many paintings by Monet"), or get out of a prickly situation ("May I call my lawyer?"), Adrienne and the Gimmick will show you the way.
Norton & Company Adventures of Huckleberry Finn A1061507345
This Norton Critical Edition includes: The American first edition text, plus the reinstated "raft passage" from Life on the Mississippi (1883), complete with all original illustrations by Edward Windsor Kemble and, for the raft passage, John Harley. Editorial matter by Thomas Cooley. A rich selection of contextual and source documents centred on the novel's historical background, language, composition and reception, four of them new to the Fourth Edition. Seventeen carefully chosen critical assessments of Mark Twain's greatest work, ten of them new to the Fourth Edition. A chronology and a selected bibliography. About the Series Read by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format-annotated text, contexts and criticism-helps students to better understand, analyse and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need.