Dance ​of the Happy Shades

Alice Munro - The ​Love of a Good Woman
Alice ​Munro has a genius for entering the lives of ordinary people and capturing the passions and contradictions that lie just below the surface. In this brilliant new collection she takes mainly the lives of women - unruly, ungovernable, unpredictable, unexpected, funny sexy and completely recognisable - and brings their hidden desires bubbling to the surface. The love of a good woman is not as pure and virtuous as it seems: as in her title story it can be needy and murderous. here are women behaving badly, leaving husbands and children, running off with unsuitable lovers, pushing everyday life to the limits, and if they don't behave badly, they think surprising and disturbing thoughts.

Alice Munro - The ​View from Castle Rock
A ​new collection of stories by Alice Munro is always a major event. This new collection — her most personal to date — is no exception. Alice Munro’s stories are always wonderful and so ingrained with truths about life that readers always want to know where they came from. In this book, Alice Munro tells us. In her Foreword (an unusual feature in itself), she explains how she, born Alice Laidlaw in Ontario, in recent years became interested in the history of her Laidlaw ancestors. Starting in the wilds of the Scottish Borders, she learned a great deal about a famous ancestor, born around 1700, who, as his tombstone records, “for feats of frolic, agility and strength, had no equal in his day.” She traced the family’s history with the help of that man’s nephew, the famous writer James Hogg, finding to her delight that each generation of the family had produced a writer who wanted to record what had befallen them. In this way, she was able to follow the family’s voyage to Canada in 1818, and their hard times as pioneers — once a father dies on the same day that a daughter is born in the same frontier cabin. “I put all this material together over the years,” Alice tells us, “and almost without my noticing what was happening, it began to shape itself, here and there, into something almost like stories. Some of the characters gave themselves to me in their own words, others rose out of their situations.” As the book goes down through the generations, we come to Robert Laidlaw, Alice’s father, and then, at the book’s heart, the stories become first-person stories, set duringher lifetime. So is this a memoir? No. She drew on personal experiences, “but then I did anything I wanted to with this material, because the chief thing I was doing was making a story.” The resulting collection of stories range from the title story — where through a haze of whiskey Alice’s ancestors gaze north from Edinburgh Castle at the Fife coast, believing that it is North America — all the way to the final story, where we travel with “Alice Munro” today. In the author’s words, these stories “pay more attention to the truth of a life than fiction usually does. But not enough to swear on.” All of them are Alice Munro stories. There could be no higher praise.

Alice Munro - Alice ​Munro's Best
In ​her lengthy and fascinating introduction Margaret Atwood says “Alice Munro is among the major writers of English fiction of our time... Among writers themselves, her name is spoken in hushed tones.” This splendid gift edition is sure to delight Alice Munro’s growing body of admirers, what Atwood calls her “devoted international readership.” Long-time fans of her stories will enjoy meeting old favourites, where their new setting in this book may reveal new sides to what once seemed a familiar story; devoted followers may even dispute the exclusion of a specially-beloved story. Readers lucky enough to have found her recently will be delighted, as one masterpiece succeeds another. The 17 stories are carefully arranged in the order in which she wrote them, which allows us to follow the development of her range. “A Wilderness Station,” for example, breaks “short story rules” by taking us right back to the 1830s then jumping forward more than 100 years. “The Albanian Virgin” destroys the idea that her stories are set in B.C. or in Ontario’s “Alice Munro Country.” And “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” the story behind the film Away From Her, takes us far from the world of young girls learning about sex into unflinching old age. This is a book to read slowly, savouring each story. It deserves a place in every Canadian book-lover’s library.

Alice Munro - Szeret, ​nem szeret...
Kilenc ​nő, kilenc sors, kilenc történet. A látszólag hétköznapi, ártalmatlan történetek egy életre rabul ejtik az olvasót, de ennél szebb rabságot senki sem kívánhatna magának. Alice Munro kitűnő novellista. Rengeteget tud az emberekről, ironikus és megbocsátó, stílusa áttetsző, a szerző szinte eltűnik mögötte. Nagyszerű olvasmány.

Alice Munro - Something ​I've Been Meaning to Tell You
In ​the thirteen rich stories that make up Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You, Alice Munro demonstrates the precise observation, straightforward prose style, and masterful technique that have won her comparisons to Chekhov. Exploring the mysteries, dangers, joys, and bewilderment in the lives of ordinary girls and women, Munro tells of sisters, mothers and daughters, aunts, grandmothers, and friends who shimmer with hope and love, anger and reconciliation, as they contend with their histories and their present, and what they can see of the future.

Alice Munro - Dear ​Life
With ​her peerless ability to give us the essence of a life in often brief but spacious and timeless stories, Alice Munro illumines the moment a life is shaped -- the moment a dream, or sex, or perhaps a simple twist of fate turns a person out of his or her accustomed path and into another way of being. Suffused with Munro's clarity of vision and her unparalleled gift for storytelling, these stories (set in the world Munro has made her own: the countryside and towns around Lake Huron) about departures and beginnings, accidents, dangers, and homecomings both virtual and real, paint a vivid and lasting portrait of how strange, dangerous, and extraordinary the ordinary life can be.

Alice Munro - The ​Moons of Jupiter
In ​these piercingly lovely and endlessly surprising stories by one of the most acclaimed current practitioners of the art of fiction, many things happen: there are betrayals and reconciliations, love affairs consummated and mourned. But the true events in The Moons Of Jupiter are the ways in which the characters are transformed over time, coming to view their past selves with an anger, regret, and infinite compassion that communicate themselves to us with electrifying force.

Alice Munro - Egy ​jóravaló nő szerelme
A ​szerelem áll Alice Munro nyolc történetének középpontjában: az, hogy mi mindent meg nem tesznek érte az emberek, hogyan viselkednek, ha megszerzik, akire vágytak, hogyan hagyják, hogy elsodorja őket a szenvedély, és milyen árat kell fizetniük érte. Ahogy már megszoktuk tőle, aprólékosan boncolja az emberi kapcsolatokat, finoman érezteti, milyen bonyolult, érdekes és kiszámíthatatlan az elme működése, és hogy igazabb és árnyaltabb képet kapunk mindarról, ami velünk történt, ha néhány évtized távlatából elemezzük az eseményeket. Hősei: a lányok, a nők és az asszonyok Kanada kisebb és nagyobb szigetein, városaiban titkok, hazugságok és elfojtások között élik mindennapjaikat, próbálják megérteni jelenüket, egykori döntéseiket, melyek következményeit egy életen át viselik. Személyiségük varázsa jórészt abból a bátorságból ered, amellyel képesek őszintén szembenézni a múltjukkal, képesek átélni a változás és az elmúlás érzését, hogy előbb vagy utóbb, így vagy úgy valamiféle derűs nyugalommal megbékéljenek sorsukkal. "Munro történetei a tekintetben is kivételesek, hogy a novella szűk terében teljes sorsokat követnek végig. A hétköznapok nagy krónikása: étkezésről, pénzzavarról, öltözködésről, öregedésről, szexről, gyerekszülésről és nevelésről senki más nem ír úgy, mint ő." A. S. Byatt forrás: www.parkkiado.hu

Alice Munro - Too ​Much Happiness
Short-story ​collections continue to be the bane of the publishing world - as Alice Munro herself puts it in a story here, they seem to 'diminish the book's authority, making the author seem like somebody who is just hanging on to the gates of literature, rather than safely settled inside'. Well, the septuangenarian Munro is undoubtedly safely inside; widely considered among the best in the business, earlier this year she won the International Man Booker prize. This latest collection is, as you might expect from the mocking tenor of the title, largely concerned with the elusive nature of happiness, a state of mind that, amid the chaotic everyday inhabited by Munro's characters, is impossible to fathom or control. It starts horrifically, with a woman in therapy following the murder of her three children by her demented husband. Just when you think there can be no possible relief, Munro throws in a deft, final redemptive sentence that's the equivalent of opening a window on a stifling, locked-up-room. Many stories reverberate with the aftershock of some grotesque or traumatic childhood event, from the son who falls down a ravine in Deep-Holes and the consequences this has for his mother, to the woman in Child's Play who is forced to acknowledge the guilt she has refused to bear for the death of a fellow pupil at summer camp. Munro's prose is surprisingly rangy, almost giving the impression of artlessness, yet there's nothing remotely careless about these effortless composition that run so dangerously close to real life and which, like touching an electric fence, jolt you violently alive. (Claire Allfree)

Lucy Maud Montgomery - Against ​the Odds
In ​Against the Odds: Tales of Achievement, Montgomery has once again created for us believable characters who live in a world she knew well and depicted lovingly and accurately, the small villages and towns of eastern and western Canada. Though her characters are distant from us in time, their problems are very similar to those we have today, and their methods of solving them not very different. Just as Montgomery’s characters have to explore all feasible methods of reaching their goals, so young people today have to be inventive and intelligent, quick to notice a need they can fill. Just as her “disadvantaged” characters have to do battle to prove their worth in the face of prejudice and distrust, so do we all today have to learn to deal with set opinions and unswerving, even if erroneous, beliefs. Old-fashioned Montgomery may be, but out of fashion, never. Against the Odds: Tales of Achievement is the fifth volume of L.M. Montgomery’s rediscovered stories to be published by McClelland & Stewart. Akin to Anne: Tales of Other Orphans, Along the Shore: Tales by the Sea, Among the Shadows: Tales of the Darker Side, and After Many Days: Tales of Time Passed preceded this collection.

Stephen King - Night ​Shift
Never ​trust your heart to the New York Times bestselling master of suspense, Stephen King. Especially with an anthology that features the classic stories "Children of the Corn," "The Lawnmower Man," "Graveyard Shift," "The Mangler," and "Sometimes They Come Back"-which were all made into hit horror films. From the depths of darkness, where hideous rats defend their empire, to dizzying heights, where a beautiful girl hangs by a hair above a hellish fate, this chilling collection of twenty short stories will plunge readers into the subterranean labyrinth of the most spine-tingling, eerie imagination of our time.

Edgar Allan Poe - Rejtelmes ​történetek / Mystery stories
A ​sötét éjszaka mesterében, Poe-ban minden együtt van: ő a kánon, a kinyilatkoztatás, ő a törvény, s ami azon felül van benne, az az ördögtől való. A fantasztikus elbeszélés és a bizarr rémtörténet legnagyobb képviselője mellesleg megteremtette a logikára alapított detektívtörténetek később oly divatossá vált műfaját. Bár a krimiszerzők névsora lassan körbeéri az egyenlítőt, a mesterség alapjait mindenki Poe-tól tanulta. A detektívregény minden lényeges eleme együtt van a történeteiben: a titokzatos bűntény, a több gyanúsított, a remek logikával és emberismerettel rendelkező amatőr detektív, akinek a hivatalos nyomozás képviselőivel is meg kell küzdenie. Az általa megteremtett leltár azóta sem igen bővült. Poe a detektívregényt az általa művelt rémmese örökségével keresztelte meg. Ő nem a világban megjelenő gonosztett külső valóságát ragadja meg, hanem a lélek mélységében gyökerező bűntett belső valóságát. "A detektívregényt - mondja Van Doren Stern - éppúgy, mint a könyvnyomtatást, csupán technikailag tökéletesítették. Mint művészi alkotást sem Gutenberg bibliáját, sem Poe A Morgue utcai kettős gyilkosság című művét nem múlták felül soha."

Lucy Maud Montgomery - Akin ​to Anne
Canada’s ​L. M. Montgomery is beloved by readers from Japan to Poland as the creator of the irresistible Anne of Green Gables. In this exciting collection of rediscovered tales — none of which has been available since its original publication — L. M. Montgomery has brought to life a multitude of characters who share not only Anne’s initial loneliness and vulnerability but also her spunkiness and charm. Their stories are told in Montgomery’s own inimitable, heart-warming style. This important new collection reclaims at last a long-last part of our rich literary heritage. Never before have these charming and poignant tales of orphans been assembled within one cover. Admirers of Montgomery will treasure this anthology; it reflects her personal experience of loneliness and lovelessness, and her bittersweet memories of adversity overcome. Akin to Anne is the first in a series of rediscovered stories to be collected in book form which will be published by McClelland & Stewart.

F. Scott Fitzgerald - Tales ​of the Jazz Age
Though ​most widely known for the novella The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald gained a major source of income as a professional writer from the sale of short stories. Over the course of his career, Fitzgerald published more than 160 stories in the period's most popular magazines. His second short fiction collection, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), includes two masterpieces as well as several other stories from his earlier career. One, "May Day," depicts a party at a popular club in New York that becomes a night of revelry during which former soldiers and an affluent group of young people start an anti-Bolshevik demonstration that results in an attack on a leftist newspaper office. "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" is a fantastic satire of the selfishness endemic to the wealthy and their undying pursuit to preserve that way of life. All of these stories, like his best novels, meld Fitzgerald's fascination with wealth with an awareness of a larger world, creating a subtle social critique. With his discerning eye, Fitzgerald elucidates the interactions of the young people of post-World War I America who, cut off from traditions, sought their place in the modern world amid the general hysteria of the period that inaugurated the age of jazz. This new edition reproduces in full the original collection, stories that represent a clear movement in theme and character development toward what would become The Great Gatsby. In introducing each story, Fitzgerald offers accounts of its textual history, revealing decisions about which stories to include.

Amos Oz - Scenes ​from Village Life
Strange ​things are happening in Tel Ilan, a century-old pioneer village. A disgruntled retired politician complains to his daughter that he hears the sound of digging at night. Could it be their tenant, that young Arab? But then the young Arab hears the digging sounds too. Where has the mayor’s wife gone, vanished without trace, her note saying “Don’t worry about me”? Around the village, the veneer of new wealth—gourmet restaurants, art galleries, a winery—barely conceals the scars of war and of past generations: disused air raid shelters, rusting farm tools, and trucks left wherever they stopped. Scenes from Village Life is a memorable novel-in-stories by the inimitable Amos Oz: a brilliant, unsettling glimpse of what goes on beneath the surface of everyday life.

Dan Brown - Inferno ​(angol)
Dan ​Brown's new novel, Inferno, features renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and is set in the heart of Europe, where Langdon is drawn into a harrowing world centred around one of history's most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces. As Dan Brown comments: "Although I studied Dante's Inferno as a student, it wasn't until recently, while researching in Florence, that I came to appreciate the enduring influence of Dante's work on the modern world. With this new novel, I am excited to take readers on a journey deep into this mysterious realm.a landscape of codes, symbols, and more than a few secret passageways."

F. Scott Fitzgerald - The ​Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Six Other Stories
Full ​grown with a long, smoke-coloured beard, requiring the services of a cane and fonder of cigars than warm milk, Benjamin Button is a very curious baby indeed. And, as Benjamin becomes increasingly youthful with the passing years, his family wonders why he persists in the embarrassing folly of living in reverse. In this imaginative fable of ageing and the other stories collected here - including "The Cut-Glass Bowl" in which an ill-meant gift haunts a family's misfortunes, "The Four Fists" where a man's life shaped by a series of punches to his face, and the revelry, mobs and anguish of "May Day" - F. Scott Fitzgerald displays his unmatched gift as a writer of short stories.

Lucy Maud Montgomery - Among ​the Shadows
These ​nineteen fascinating stories are unlike any others L.M. Montgomery ever wrote. Filled with strange and supernatural occurrences, they are peopled with drunkards, embezzlers, and thieves: A woman confesses to murder after she has passed away. . . . A righteous deacon gets a taste of his own bitter medicine. . . . An amateur photographer records a dark deed. . . . The ghost of a woman's sweetheart comes to bid her good-bye. . . . Somber, dark, and brooding, these intriguing stories suggest that love really can last beyond death and that poetic justice does exist. Each of these wonderful tales is full of the strength of Montgomery's own inner resources.

Stephen King - Skeleton ​Crew
'Grab ​onto my arm now. Hold tight. We are going into a number of dark places, but I think I know the way.' Unrivalled monarch of the macabre Stephen King again takes the unsuspecting reader on a fantastic journey through the dark, shadowy areas of our innermost fears. In a bumper collection of tales guaranteed to chill the spine and freeze the blood, we meet GRAMMA - who only wanted to hug little George, even after she was dead; THE RAFT - a primeval sea creature with an insatiable appetite; THE MONKEY - an innocent-looking toy with sinister powers; the unspeakable horror of other stories, each with the distinctive blend of unimaginable terror and realism that typifies King's writing. 'Liable to leave the reader in a state of shock' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH STEPHEN KING'S BESTSELLERS: FIRESTARTER, THE DEAD ZONE, CUJO, DIFFERENT SEASONS, DANSE MACABRE AND EYES OD THE DRAGON ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FROM FUTURA

Lucy Maud Montgomery - Along ​the Shore
This ​is a collection of sixteen short stories (re-discovered and re-published in 1989 by Rea Wilmshurst) by popular writer L.M. Montgomery which captures the haunting beauty and drama of living on Prince Edward Island, surrounded by the sea.