The Sacred Door and Other Stories

The Sacred Door and Other Stories PDF

Author: Makuchi

Publisher: Ohio University Press

Published: 2007-12-01

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 0896804585

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The Sacred Door and Other Stories: Cameroon Folktales of the Beba offers readers a selection of folktales infused with riddles, proverbs, songs, myths, and legends, using various narrative techniques that capture the vibrancy of Beba oral traditions. Makuchi retells the stories that she heard at home when she was growing up in her native Cameroon. The collection of thirty-four folktales of the Beba showcases a wide variety of stories that capture the richness and complexities of an agrarian society’s oral literature and traditions. Revenge, greed, and deception are among the themes that frame the story lines in both new and familiar ways. In the title story, a poor man finds himself elevated to king. The condition for his continued success is that he not open the sacred door. This tale of temptation, similar to the story of Pandora’s box, concludes with the question, “What would you have done?” Makuchi relates the stories her mother told her so that readers can make connections between African and North American oral narrative traditions. These tales reinforce the commonalities of our human experiences without discounting our differences.

Locked Door and Other Stories

Locked Door and Other Stories PDF

Author: Rosario de Guzman Lingat

Publisher: Bughaw is

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13:

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The Locked Door and Other Stories collects Rosario de Guzman-Lingat's short stories chosen for the various ways they explore the female experience in all its complexity. They feature women as protagonists who, despite life's numerous blows, refuse to give in, as they strive mightily to make sense of their lives fraught with difficulties. There are no happy endings in Lingat's fiction. There is only a steadfast, clear-eyed view of what it means to live in an unjust system where women find themselves victims. The "locked door" is symptomatic of the almost impenetrable barrier that women must force open to gain their freedom.

Abyss and Other Stories

Abyss and Other Stories PDF

Author: Leonid Andreyev

Publisher: Alma Books

Published: 2018-08-28

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0714549010

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Haunting, disquieting, shocking, `The Abyss' - one of the most powerful short stories ever written - is accompanied in this volume by fifteen other stories. Together, they provide a clear account of the lasting legacy of Russia's foremost man of letters of the early twentieth century. As the young Zinaida and her sweetheart, the student Nemovetsky, stroll through the idyllic Russian countryside, their memories, dreams and thoughts about life and the future mingle in the evening breeze. But when night falls, they hasten to retrace their steps back to town through a small wood, where they are accosted by three threatening drunkards, who knock Nemovetsky unconscious and start to chase the girl through the underwood. When the young student comes round, he is confronted with the horror of what has just happened. Haunting, disquieting, shocking, `The Abyss' - one of the most powerful short stories ever written - is accompanied in this volume by fifteen other stories, never translated into English before by Andreyev, including `Silence', `The Thief' and `Lazarus, some of them never translated before into English. Together, they provide a clear account of the lasting legacy of Russia's foremost man of letters of the early twentieth century.

Grey Fall and Other Stories

Grey Fall and Other Stories PDF

Author: Jean Knight Pace

Publisher: J Publishing

Published: 2024-02-03

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1957936150

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Seven letters. One word. A name for which she could no longer remember the rhythms. Once, in a land turned around and back again, a queen rose up with skin like flower petals and words like silk. When she dismissed a council comprised of shifter, halfbreed, and human in order to reopen the deadly Grey Mines, the shifters were forced to flee to concrete camps or the dangerous woods. But even evil queens get lonely. And even goodly councilmen get angry. And often innocent children get caught in between. When father falls can daughter rise?

The Closed Doors and Other Stories

The Closed Doors and Other Stories PDF

Author: Dorothy Whipple

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 9781903155646

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Dorothy Whipple's key theme is `Live and Let Live'. And what she describes throughout her short stories are people, and particularly parents, who defy this maxim. For this reason her work is timeless, like all great writing. It is irrelevant that Dorothy Whipple's novels were set in an era when middle-class women expected to have a maid; when fish knives were used for eating fish; when children did what they were told. The moral universe she creates has not changed: there are bullies in every part of society; people try their best but often fail; they would like to be unselfish but sometimes are greedy. Like George Eliot, like Mrs Gaskell, like EM Forster, Dorothy Whipple describes men and women in their social milieu, which in her case is the inter-war period, and shows them being all- too human. But her books are not nostalgia reads either, any more than reading George Eliot or Forster is a nostalgia read, nor are they old-fashioned or simplistic. Her prose, it is true, is pure, uncluttered, straightforward, pared down to the bone and never labours the point; her subtlety is the reason why so many people - generally those who have not read her - overlook her excellence.

The Gabble - And Other Stories

The Gabble - And Other Stories PDF

Author: Neal Asher

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Published: 2008-11-07

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 0230714579

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An extraordinary collection from the architect of the Polity universe, Neal Asher's The Gabble - And Other Short Stories reveals a universe of unbridled imagination, and each one is a delight in itself. Much of Neal Asher’s fiction is set in the galactic civilization he calls the Polity, an alliance of human-populated worlds. And in this collection of thirteen marvellously inventive and action-packed short stories, Asher is on top form. You can expect conflicted humans, fiendishly clever plot twists, extraordinary technologies and so much more. The discerning reader can also savour tales of alien poisons, the walking dead, the Sea of Death, and the putrefactor symbiont. No one does weird, wonderful and downright gruesome aliens better than Neal Asher, so prepare to visit his favourites. Sample the lifestyles of creatures such as the gabbleduck and the hooder, as Asher takes you on a wild ride into his vividly-imagined futures.

The Locked Door: The Secret Room Behind the Kidnap Thriller

The Locked Door: The Secret Room Behind the Kidnap Thriller PDF

Author: Madeleine Watson

Publisher: Madeleine Watson

Published:

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 1651854750

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This book is about my kidnap thriller, The Locked Door. It is my second of four novels and none are really novels at all but something far more sinister. The idea was confinement. Why, I didn’t know; I just felt a need to express it. Naturally, I made it into a kidnap thriller. During my writing, I connected with this ‘strand’. This strand grew addictive, compulsive, shameful, deathly and creepy. Little did I realize the source of this strand. Not until the age of 51 when I learned something truly terrible about myself. The précis to The Locked Door reads: “This hostage has a secret. “Gemma would appear to have everything: money, a devoted husband, a lively son, and a fulfilling career. But her life takes a nasty turn when she is kidnapped and trapped in an upstairs room by three thugs demanding a huge ransom from her rich father. “In a bid to escape, she cuts a hole in the bedroom floor. From there, Gemma spies on her kidnappers below. That's when their hostage starts playing games with them. That’s when her spying pulls her into a treacherous psychological game that endangers her sanity.” As the story progressed, the captive’s life began to feel as real as mine. She became like an avatar that I would enter when I craved escapism from my otherwise mundane life. With the terrible truth now known, I have analysed The Locked Door. I am appalled at what I have found. This novel appears to possess a shadow novel beneath the apparent one. During the writing, I was completely oblivious to it. In order to convey the intensity of my other world, I have included illustrations and diary excerpts within this account.

The Truth and Other Stories

The Truth and Other Stories PDF

Author: Stanislaw Lem

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2021-09-14

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 0262046083

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Twelve stories by science fiction master Stanisław Lem, nine of them never before published in English. Of these twelve short stories by science fiction master Stanisław Lem, only three have previously appeared in English, making this the first "new" book of fiction by Lem since the late 1980s. The stories display the full range of Lem's intense curiosity about scientific ideas as well as his sardonic approach to human nature, presenting as multifarious a collection of mad scientists as any reader could wish for. Many of these stories feature artificial intelligences or artificial life forms, long a Lem preoccupation; some feature quite insane theories of cosmology or evolution. All are thought provoking and scathingly funny. Written from 1956 to 1993, the stories are arranged in chronological order. In the title story, "The Truth," a scientist in an insane asylum theorizes that the sun is alive; "The Journal" appears to be an account by an omnipotent being describing the creation of infinite universes--until, in a classic Lem twist, it turns out to be no such thing; in "An Enigma," beings debate whether offspring can be created without advanced degrees and design templates. Other stories feature a computer that can predict the future by 137 seconds, matter-destroying spores, a hunt in which the prey is a robot, and an electronic brain eager to go on the lam. These stories are peak Lem, exploring ideas and themes that resonate throughout his writing.