The Complete Stories brings together all of Kafka’s stories, from the classic tales such as ‘The Metamorphosis,’ ‘In the Penal Colony,’ and ‘A Hunger Artist’ to shorter pieces and fragments that Max Brod, Kafka’s literary executor, released after Kafka’s death. With the exception of his three novels, the whole of Kafka’s narrative work is included in this volume.

Charlotte Davis is in pieces. At seventeen she’s already lost more than most people do in a lifetime. But she’s learned how to forget. The broken glass washes away the sorrow until there is nothing but calm. You don’t have to think about your father and the river. Your best friend, who is gone forever. Or your mother, who has nothing left to give you.

K is for Kidd. Set in South Carolina during the tumultuous summer of 1964, The Secret Life of Bees also ushered young Lily Owens, a girl transformed by the power and divinity of the female spirit, into the canon of modern-day heroines. Lily and her fierce-hearted black ‘stand-in mother’ escape the racism of their hometown and find refuge with an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters,...

In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation’s history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo’s firsthand account of the raid that led to his...

One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years—due largely to initial audiences’ rejection of its strong black female protagonist—Hurston’s classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the...

No one ever said life was easy. But Ponyboy is pretty sure that he's got things figured out. He knows that he can count on his brothers, Darry and Sodapop. And he knows that he can count on his friends—true friends who would do anything for him, like Johnny and Two-Bit. But not on much else besides trouble with the Socs, a vicious gang of rich kids whose idea of a good time is beating up on...

The Troll longs for a juicy goat to eat – but he's stuck with boring old fish for supper. Bother! Meanwhile, Hank Chief and his pirate crew love fish, but without a decent recipe their slimy, soggy dinner is even worse. If only they could find their buried treasure and pay for a ship's cook . . . but it seems they've sailed to the wrong island. Again.

Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin’s story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a...

The fairy-tale characters Moomins were born in the 1930s at the behest of the writer and talented artist Tove Jansson. It is thanks to them that Tove Jansson is known and loved all over the world - books about the Moomins have been translated into more than 30 languages. This is not surprising, because the inhabitants of the hospitable valley are so nice and kind. But at first, Jansson thought...

One day Moomintroll and his friends found a black cylinder on the top of a mountain out of nowhere. Imagine their surprise when it turned out that this hat was magic! And I must say, her pranks-transformations managed to do a lot of things before the real owner of the hat showed up - a lonely Wizard.

Ein Haus an einem märkischen See: Schauplatz für fünfzehn Lebensläufe, Geschichten, Schicksale, von den Zwanzigerjahren bis heute. Seine Bewohner erleben die Weimarer Republik, das Dritte Reich, den Krieg und dessen Ende, die DDR, die Wende und die Zeit der Nachwende. Jedem einzelnen Schicksal gibt Jenny Erpenbeck eine eigene literarische Form, jedes entfaltet auf ganz eigene Weise seine...

»Du bist die Aufgabe. Kein Schüler weit und breit.« – Diesen und 108 weitere Aphorismen notiert Kafka während eines Kuraufenthalts bei seiner Schwester Ottla im böhmischen Zürau. In rätselhafter Mehrdeutigkeit legen sie Zeugnis ab von Kafkas existentieller Selbstbefragung. Neben den Zürauer Aphorismen enthält der Band die sogenannten ›Er-Aphorismen‹, in denen Kafka seine Gedanken fortführt.