"Playwright, actor, composer, poet, painter and songwriter, Noel Coward was perhaps the most complete entertainer the twentieth century - or any other - produced. But with his sophisticated manner and his clipped wit he became something more ... an icon of his times, the embodiment of "cool" before the term was ever thought of. On the centenary of his birth, amid the revival of his complete works, it is time to take stock of Coward the songwriter....

In the early decades of the twentieth century, newspaperman and humorist Ring Lardner (1885–1933) made America laugh with his hilarious depictions of odd characters in the sporting world, Tin Pan Alley, and Hollywood. His first great success was You Know Me Al, a fictional series of letters from a popular baseball hero to his friend, slyly revealing the letter writer as a crude, conceited, semiliterate, self-deceiving boob. The letters, created...

"We think we know the ones we love." So Pearlie Cook begins her indirect and devastating exploration of the mystery at the heart of every relationship: how we can ever truly know another person. It is 1953 and Pearlie, a dutiful young housewife, finds herself living in the Sunset District in San Francisco, caring not only for her husband's fragile health but also for her son, who is afflicted with polio. Then, one Saturday morning, a stranger appears...

This is vintage Vonnegut: short stories never-before collected or published in book form. They are from the era of the Golden Age of magazines: a pre-television time when publications such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Argosy, and others reigned supreme as Americans' entertainment choice.Before that Golden Age drew to a close half a century ago, a young PR man at General Electric sold his first short story to one of the publications. By...

Matt, a young cabin boy aboard an airship, and Kate, a wealthy young girl traveling with her chaperone, team up to search for the existence of mysterious winged creatures reportedly living hundreds of feet above the Earth's surface.

A hijacker and his hostage escape to a very strange, very dangerous farm. Since his father died, every Saturday night has been the same for Dave and his mother. She starts by talking - aimless, weird fantasies about get-rich-quick schemes that never come to anything - but finally she goes silent, and that's when Dave becomes afraid. Mom has a way of getting very close that is repellent and appealing all at once, and he's terrified of where it might...

They met on Friday and Saturday she stole his heart... A heart that was worth one hundred and fifty thousand euros in the market. To solve this case, Inspector Proaza must return to the darkest corners of the Murcia region. In Prime Meat, Rafael Estrada masterfully narrates a new police investigation. Original and fluid, the second volume of the Inspector Proaza Trilogy engages the reader from the beginning, predicting bright moments for the black...

The Awakening of HK Derryberry is the inspiring story of how one man was willing to step out of his upper middle-class world into the life of a young, disabled boy with a dismal future. Little did Jim Bradford know the transformational potential of that friendship-for HK and himself. HK Derryberry came into the world with the odds stacked heavily against him. He was taken from his unmarried mother's womb three months prematurely when she was killed...

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. Ring Lardner's first published fiction created a sensation, catapulting a regional sports journalist into the national literary spotlight. Presented as semi-literate letters written to a friend by a baseball player embarking on a professional career, Lardner's short stories first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1914. Readers couldn't get enough of "busher"...