– "Meat. They're made out of meat." – "Meat?" – "There's no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. …
Part of the Penguin 60s series, issued to celebrate 60 years of Penguin books. This collects "Sonny's Blues", "The Rockpile" and "Previous Condition", all taken from Going to Meet the Man (Penguin, 19…
Ophelia Todd is always looking for a shorter distance between two points, so she just wrinkles the map a little--until she gets caught in one of the wrinkles.
Annie Proulx has written some of the most original and brilliant short stories in contemporary literature, and for many readers and reviewers, "Brokeback Mountain" is her masterpiece.
"A & P" is a comic short story written by John Updike in 1961 in which the hero and first person narrator takes a stand for what is right and therefore has hope for a better future
When the White family comes into the possession of a monkey’s paw that magically grant wishes, they do what many people would do—they succumb to vanity and wish for the unneeded. But every wish has a …
On the eve of his ninetieth birthday a bachelor decides to give himself a wild night of love with a virgin. As is his habit–he has purchased hundreds of women–he asks a madam for her assistance. The f…
First published pseudonymously in 1764, The Castle of Otranto purported to be a translation of an Italian story of the time of the crusades. In it Walpole attempted, as he declared in the Preface to t…
Margot is a nine-year-old girl whose family moved from Earth to Venus when she was four. She remembers the sun shining on Earth, something it rarely does on Venus. "All Summer in a Day" takes place on…
In 'Charles,' the main character, Laurie, and his alter ego, Charles, are loosely based on Jackson's son Laurence. It is told from the mother's point-of-view and focuses on Laurie's search for identit…
"Who Goes There?" is the novella that formed the basis of John Carpenter's film The Thing. Campbell's classic story tells of an Antarctic research base that discovers and thaws the ancient, frozen bod…
A henpecked husband copes with the frustrations of his dull life by imagining he is a fearless airplane pilot, a brilliant doctor, and other dashing figures.
