Part of the Penguin 60s series, issued to celebrate 60 years of Penguin books. This collects "Sonny's Blues", "The Rockpile" and "Previous Condition", all taken from Going to Meet the Man (Penguin, 19…
In these four stories, Kate Chopin subtly captures the intricate interior lives of a generation of women. From the famous proto-feminist tale "The Story of an Hour" to the subtly sexy "A Respectable W…
Elisa Allen is tending her chrysanthemums. Strong, with a handsome face she skilfully and proudly cultivates the best in the valley. Tonight, her husband is taking her to town. While she works, a sque…
“Death by Landscape” (1989) is a complex and multi-layered story that explores themes such as the unknown, memory and guilt, and coming of age. It also embodies many of Atwood’s theories of Canadian l…
Alice Walker's early story, "Everyday Use," has remained a cornerstone of her work. Her use of quilting as a metaphor for the creative legacy that African Americans inherited from their maternal ances…
Raymond Carver’s third collection of stories, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, including the canonical titular story about blindness and learning to enter the very different world of another.
The condemned man stands on a bridge, his hands bound behind his back. A noose is tied around his neck. In a moment he will meet his fate: DEATH BY HANGING. There is no escape. Or is there? Find out i…
Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitabil…
Often cited as the best work of short fiction ever written, Joyce's story details a New Year's Eve gathering in Dublin that is so evocative and beautiful that it prompts the protagonist's wife to make…
Diagnosed by her physician husband with a “temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency” after the birth of her child, a woman is urged to rest for the summer in an old colonial mansion. …
