Kiowa County Public Library District

It is one of the most memorable first lines in all of literature: "When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into some kind of monstrous vermin." So begins Kafka's famous short story, The Metamorphosis . Kafka considered publishing it with two of the stories included here in a volume to be called Punishments. The Judgment explores an enigmatic power struggle between a father and son, while In the Penal Colony...

They came West, risking it all to dig the gold, ride the range, conquer the greedy and carve out a legacy of freedom. Louis L'Amour tells of the real heroes of the frontier, the survivors, for whom hanging tough was as natural as drawing breath.

In this collection of masterful stories, steeped in realism, James Joyce creates an exacting portrait of his native city, showing how it reflects the general decline of Irish culture and civilization.

Charlie and Mouse, two young brothers, enjoy a day out together, attending an imaginary party and collecting rocks.

Contains ten stories of war, mystery, romance, crime, and punishment, from the wide-open range of the American West to the frozen seas of the Siberian coast.

An intoxicating collection of short fiction by one of the most beloved writers of our time. Eva Luna is a young woman whose powers as a storyteller bring her friendship and love. Lying in bed with her European lover, refugee and journalist Rolf Carlé, Eva answers his request for a story "you have never told anyone before" with these twenty-three samples of her vibrant artistry. Interweaving the real and the magical, she explores love, vengeance,...

"A master storyteller at his best--the O. Henry Prize winner Stephen King delivers a generous collection of stories, several of them brand-new, featuring revelatory autobiographical comments on when, why, and how he came to write (or rewrite) each story. Since his first collection, Nightshift, published thirty-five years ago, Stephen King has dazzled readers with his genius as a writer of short fiction. In this new collection he assembles, for the...

In "One-Car Bridge," one of four Joe Pickett stories, Pickett goes up against a "just plain mean" landowner, with disastrous results, and in "Shots Fired," his investigation into the radio call referred to in the title nearly ends up being the last thing he ever does. In "Pirates of Yellowstone," two Eastern European tough guys find out what it means to be strangers in a strange land, and in "Le Sauvage Noble," the stranger is a Lakota in Paris who...

A collection of scary stories to share around the campfire.

1922 opens with the confession of Wilfred James to the murder of his wife, Arlette, due to a long-standing argument about farmland willed to Arlette by her father. In "Big Driver", mystery writer Tess has been supplementing her writing income for years by doing speaking engagements with no problems. But following a last-minute invitation to a book club 60 miles away, she takes a shortcut home with dire consequences. Suffering from cancer, Dave Streeter...