This collection of contemporary multi-cultural fiction includes stories by: Bessie Head * Charles Mungoshi * Ngugi wa Thiong'o * Wang Anyi * Ding Ling * Wang Meng * Chen Rong * Lu Wenfu * Anita Desai * Mahasweta Devi * Ruth Prawer Jhabvala * R. K. Narayan * Khushwant Singh * Kobo Abe * Sawako Ariyoshi * Yasunari Kawabata * Yukio Mishima * Yuko Tsushima * Carlos Fuentes * Luisa Valenzuela * Nadine Gordimer * Isabel Allende

Unmarried Lulu Bett can't question her role as chief cook and housekeeper in her married sister's home, but when a peripatetic brother-in-law comes to visit, he playfully proposes marriage. Lulu accepts, and the marriage soon reveals its underside, but not before she has tasted freedom.

They are the fearful images that have stalked humanity's nightmares for centuries, supernatural creatures that feast on flesh and haunt the soul, macabre and uncanny beings that frighten and fascinate the imagination.
Vampires, Zombies, Werewolves, and Ghosts collects classic stories from literary masters inspired by folklore and mythology who dared to explore the darker side of human nature and crafted tales that defied convention, stirred up controversy, and gave life to a storytelling genre that has endured for generations.
With stories by Charles Dickens, Rudyard...

Encompassing many different visions of Africa, the stories in this comprehensive collection feature characters struggling to survive grinding poverty, tyrannical governments, cultural upheavals, and disintegrating relationships.

Reflecting a continent with a tragic history, An African Quilt depicts a place where even everyday life is extraordinary, and the continent's history changes what it means to be a woman, an employee, a couple, a passerby, and, of course, a citizen. Revealed through the backdrop of postcolonial Africa, the struggles within these stories resonate beyond...

At the turn of the twentieth century, Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a celebrity--acclaimed as a leader in the feminist movement and castigated for her divorce, her relinquishment of custody of her daughter, and her unconventional second marriage. She was also widely read, with stories in popular magazines and with dozens of books in print. Her most famous short story, the intensely personal -The Yellow Wallpaper, - was read as a horror story when first published in 1892 and then lapsed into obscurity before being rediscovered and reinterpreted by feminist scholars in the 1970s.
Noted...