Vintage books Bestiary. Selected Stories Cortazar Julio

Do you believe in ghosts? • Ghosts, spirits, spectres or spooks, we have always felt the presence of someone - or something - hovering in the darkest corners of our imaginations • The great writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, from Elizabeth Gaskell to Rudyard Kipling, also produced some of the most influential ghost stories ever written, defining the genre for generations of writers to follow • Gathered in this thrilling collection are some of the most iconic Victorian ghost stories, from Charles Dickens's 'The Signalman' to M.R. James's 'A Warning to the Curious', alongside more unexpected contributions from masters of the form such as J.S. Le Fanu and H.G. Wells • You may think you don't believe in ghosts, but these stories will haunt you nonetheless

Discover a powerful collection of the hardships, hairbreadth escapes, and mortal struggles of enslaved people seeking freedom: These are the true stories of the Underground Railroad • A secret network of safe houses, committees and guides that stretched well below the Mason-Dixon Line into the brutal slave states of the American South, the Underground Railroad remains one of the most impressive and well-organised resistance movements in modern history. It facilitated the escape of over 30,000 slave 'passengers' through America and into Canada during its peak years of 1850-60, and, in total, an estimated 100,000 slaves found their freedom through the network • Abridged from William Still's The Underground Railroad Records - an epic historical document that chronicles the first-hand stories of American slaves who escaped to freedom via the Underground Railroad - Passengers tells of the secret methods, risks and covert sacrifices that were made to liberate so many from slavery

The complete short stories of the 20th century's greatest visionary • 'Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man' W. H. Auden • This volume contains all of Kafka's shorter fiction, from fragments, parables and sketches to longer tales. Together they reveal the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought. Some are well known, others are mere jottings, observations of daily life, given artistic form through Kafka's unique perception of the world

The Complete Stories gathers together Anita Desai's short story collections Diamond Dust and Games at Twilight and the novellas of The Artist of Disappearance, with a new preface from the author. From the icy suburbs of Canada to the overcrowded B&Bs of Cornwall, via the hill towns and cities of India, Anita Desai observes human behaviour unflinchingly but not unkindly, recognising our ordinariness and our strangeness, and capturing both with quiet precision

'They sing in my head even now... What a wonderful storyteller/poet he was' Michael Morpurgo, Guardian • Have you ever wondered how the leopard got his spots? Or how the camel got his hump? Rudyard Kipling's witty and beautifully written stories explain these secrets and many more and introduce such memorable characters as the Elephant's Child, the Cat that Walked by Himself and the Butterfly that Stamped

"Двадцать одна история" • Знаменитый сборник рассказов одного из самых выдающихся британских писателей двадцатого века. В нем представлен самый известный рассказ Грина "Разрушители" • Написанная между 1929 и 1954 годами, каждая из этих историй несет в себе характерные темы, характерные для великих романов Грина: предательство и месть, любовь и ненависть, жалость и насилие • Начиная с культового рассказа "Разрушители", в котором банда школьников разрушает дом, переживший бомбежку, Грин предлагает нам восхитительно захватывающий взгляд на двадцать один мир, причем каждое произведение написано так же мастерски, как и его романы. От леденящей душу кульминации детского дня рождения до человека, чьи юношеские опрометчивости возвращаются, чтобы преследовать его, - это безошибочно узнаваемая работа одного из величайших и наиболее обожаемых рассказчиков двадцатого века

Эдгар Аллан По был необычайно талантливым писателем. Его рассказ «Убийство на улице Морг» стал одной из первых детективных историй в литературе, а его тяга к поиску странностей человеческой натуры послужила вдохновением для многих видных людей, от Фрейда до Хичкока • В этот сборник вошли лучшие рассказы и новеллы Эдгара Аллана По, включая такие произведения, как «Колодец и маятник» и «Сердце-обличитель», а также некоторые скрытые бриллианты его творчества, полные интриги и напряжения • «Selected Stories», сборник избранных рассказов культового американского автора Эдгара Аллана По, станет отличным подарком для ценителей жанра хоррор • Книга на английском языке • Edgar Allan Рое was a writer of uncommon talent; in 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' he created the genre of detective fiction while his genius for finding the strangeness lurking within us all has been an influence on everyone from Freud to Hitchcock

Selected and with a New Introduction by Tessa Hadley • A girl shares her secret den. A couple stroll through a ruined city. A man walks into a ladies' hat shop. A teacher dreams of killing her pupil • Spanning the 1920s to the post-war years, this new selection brings Elizabeth Bowen's finest short stories together for the first time. Elegant and subtle, they showcase Bowen's ability to evoke ineffable emotions - grief, nostalgia, self-consciousness, dread - and combine remarkable psychological insight with vivid settings, from the countryside of Bowen's native Ireland to the streets of her London home after the Blitz • Encompassing characters from many walks of life and a vast array of moods, these are intricate journeys of domesticity and discovery, of the homely and uncanny, of the mind and body

Selected as a Book of the Year 2016 in The Times, Sunday Times and The Economist, and one of the 10 Best Books of 2016 in the New York Times • Shortly before his death, Stefan Hertmans' grandfather Urbain Martien gave his grandson a set of notebooks containing the detailed memories of his life. He grew up in poverty around 1900, the son of a struggling church painter who died young, and went to work in an iron foundry at only 13. Afternoons spent with his father at work on a church fresco were Urbain’s heaven; the iron foundry an inferno • During the First World War, Urbain was on the front line confronting the invading Germans, and ever after he is haunted by events he can never forget. The war ends and he marries his great love, Maria Emelia, but she dies tragically in the 1919 flu epidemic

Selected as a Book of the Year by The Times and The Economist • China's history is an epic tapestry of courtly philosophies, warring factions and imperial intrigue. Yet, over five thousand years, one ancient element has so dramatically shaped the country's fate that it remains the key to unlocking China's story. That element is water • In The Water Kingdom Philip Ball takes us on a grand tour of China's defining element, from the rice terraces and towering karts of its battle-worn waterways, to the vast engineering projects that have struggled to contain water's wrath. What surfaces is the secret history of a people and a nation, drawn from its deep reverence for nature's most dynamic force

Этот безумный шедевр Хулио Кортасара, основоположника литературы "латиноамериканского бума шестидесятых" выходит в серии Vintage Classics впервые • Аргентинский писатель Орасио Оливейра, выбитый из колеи исчезновением своей музы, бродит по Парижу на фоне джаза и бесед о литературе, жизни и искусстве. Но случайная встреча с литературным кумиром и знакомство с его новой работой - романом, который можно читать с любого места и в любом порядке - замутняет сознание бедолаги ещё сильнее • Возвращение Орасио в Буэнос-Айрес всё ближе, и Тревелер, его друг и коллега по цеху, ждёт с его нарастающим ужасом. Двоих молодых писателей вот-вот затянет водоворот неопределённости и двусмысленности • "Шедевр Кортасара. Первый великий роман испаноговорящей Америки

Covering the first half of Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro's career, these are some of the best, most touching and powerful short stories ever written • This first-ever selection of Alice Munro's stories sums up her genius. Her territory is the secrets that cackle beneath the facade of everyday lives, the pain and promises, loves and fears of apparently ordinary men and women whom she renders extraordinary and unforgettable • This volume brings together the best of Munro's stories, from 1968 through to 1994. The second selected volume of her stories, 1995-2009 is also published by Vintage Classics