Fans of the work of Donald Barthelme, Kurt Vonnegut, George Saunders, and T. Coraghessan Boyle will revel in Alasdair Gray's masterful, witty collection. Gray's stories defy genre, and his angular, playful style, prodigious wit, and razor-sharp intellect are matched by his remarkable skill with the short-story form. In "Job's Skin Game," the narrator humbly tells his life story like the evenings news. During a moment of awkward revelation, he shares the strangely exquisite pleasure he receives from scratching at the skin condition he's developed since losing his two sons in the Twin Towers tragedy and a small fortune in the dot-com meltdown. In "Big Pockets with Button Flaps," a wily old man teases and taunts a pair of punk teenage girls as their confrontation takes on social implication through lightning-fast transfers of power and wit. The Ends of Our Tethers is vintage Gray — accessible, experimental, mischievous, wide ranging, beautifully written, and wise.<

Ten Tales Tall & True carries on the tradition, illustrations and all, from the alarming story of the train of the future and the child who has not yet made up its mind whether to be male or female to the poignancy of "Time Travelling, " a memorable picture of old age. There are, as the author assures us, social realism, sexual comedy, science fiction, and satire included here. There are also, as Gray confesses, more than ten tales — but "I would spoil my book by shortening it, spoil the title if I made it true." These stories are pure, unadulterated Alasdair Gray.<

EVERYONE KNEW THE STORY OF ANCIENT EGYPT.

UNTIL NOW.

For thousands of years, Egypt was a rich, ingenious civilization. Then it became a fertile hunting ground for archaeologists and explorers. Now the streets of Cairo teem with violence as a political awakening shakes the region. In the face of overwhelming danger, Jack Howard and his team of marine archaeologists have gathered pieces of a fantastic puzzle. But putting it together may cost them their lives.

Howard has connected a mystery hidden inside a great pyramid to a fossilized discovery in the Red Sea and a 150-year-old handwritten report of a man who claims to have escaped a labyrinth beneath Cairo. For that his team is stalked by a brutal extremist organization that will destroy any treasure they find.

As people fight and die for their rights aboveground, Jack fights for a discovery that will shed an astounding new light on the greatest story ever told: Moses’s exodus from Egypt and the true beginnings of a new chapter in human history.

'Kuttner tenía algo que nos admira y atrae a todos: amor por las ideas y amor por la literatura. Escribía reservadamente, pero ojalá de vez en cuando hubiera aullado -como he aullado yo- para llamar la atención sobre si mismo. Ya es hora de que prestemos atención, de que nos acerquemos, de que estudiemos las quietas figuras del empapelado y descubramos a Kuttner'. RAY BRADBURY<

"Georgi Gospodinov wants to blow your mind — or maybe just provide the ultimate bathroom reader. The formal playfulness suggests Kundera with A.D.D. and potty jokes." — Ed Park,

A finalist for both the Strega Europeo and Gregor von Rezzori awards (and winner of every Bulgarian honor possible), reaffirms Georgi Gospodinov's place as one of Europe's most inventive and daring writers.

Using the myth of the Minotaur as its organizing image, the narrator of Gospodinov's long-awaited novel constructs a labyrinth of stories about his family, jumping from era to era and viewpoint to viewpoint, exploring the mindset and trappings of Eastern Europeans. Incredibly moving — such as with the story of his grandfather accidentally being left behind at a mill — and extraordinarily funny — see the section on the awfulness of the question "how are you?" is a book that you can inhabit, tracing connections, following the narrator down various "side passages," getting pleasantly lost in the various stories and empathizing with the sorrowful, misunderstood Minotaur at the center of it all.

One of Alasdair Gray's most brilliant creations, Poor Things is a postmodern revision of Frankenstein that replaces the traditional monster with Bella Baxter-a beautiful young erotomaniac brought back to life with the brain of an infant. Godwin Baxter's scientific ambition to create the perfect companion is realized when he finds the drowned body of Bella, but his dream is thwarted by Dr. Archibald McCandless's jealous love for Baxter's creation. The hilarious tale of love and scandal that ensues would be "the whole story" in the hands of a lesser author (which in fact it is, for this account is actually written by Dr. McCandless). For Gray, though, this is only half the story, after which Bella (a.k.a. Victoria McCandless) has her own say in the matter. Satirizing the classic Victorian novel, Poor Things is a hilarious political allegory and a thought-provoking duel between the desires of men and the independence of women, from one of Scotland's most accomplished author.<

En los primeros tiempos de nuestra era, cuando la poderosa Roma extiende sus dominios a lo largo de todo el mundo conocido, envejece la gran Raza, heredera de la ferocidad de los primeros surgidos entre los hombres; en la indómita Bretaña, dirigidos por Bran Mak Morn, del clan del lobo, el pueblo picto lucha por imponerse a los pueblos jóvenes y mantener a raya el acoso de Roma.

Dolor, muerte y venganza son los argumentos que fuerzan a Bran Mak Morn a confiar tan sólo en el acero que empuña y los ritos de los suyos, de cuyo destino los Dioses han querido hacerlo depositario. Y ésta es la saga de Bran Mak Morn.

Gusanos de la tierra reúne todo el conjunto de relatos que dedicó Howard al personaje de Bran Mak Morn, incluyendo una introducción del autor en la que explica la elaboración de los cuentos más famosos del volumen, publicados originalmente en la mítica Weird Tales a finales de los años veinte y principio de los treinta, antes de que se quitara la vida trágicamente. El conjunto es de lo mejor que puede encontrarse en Howard, con la fuerza épica que le ha hecho famosos en su mayor grado. Su publicación supone además una visión de la obra de fantasía del autor en toda su amplitud: permite entrever la totalidad del marco pseudohistórico en el que Howard situó a los héroes primarios, desde los albores de la edad Hyboria -durante la que surgieron las figuras de Kull de Valusia y Conan de Aquilonia-, hasta la conexión con la historia conocida, en la que se sitúa Gusanos de la Tierra.

Robert E. Howard es sin duda el más popular de los autores que han abordado la fantasía heroica y uno de los que la han conformado con mayor influencia en su forma actual. Los diferentes personajes surgidos de su pluma, y muy particularmente la figura de Conan, son objeto de un auténtico culto por los aficionados y han sido llevados a todos los tipos de medios visuales

Here John Turner was cast away in a heavy snow storm in the night in or about the year 1755. The print of a woman’s shoe was found by his side in the snow where he lay dead. This enigmatic memorial stone, high on the bank of a prehistoric Pennine track in Cheshire, is a mystery that lives on in the hill farms today. John Turner was a packman. With his train of horses he carried salt and silk, travelling distances incomprehensible to his ancient community. In this visionary tale, John brings ideas as well as gifts, which have come, from market town to market town, from places as distant as the campfires of the Silk Road. John Turner’s death in the eighteenth century leaves an emotional charge which, in the twenty-first century, Ian and Sal find affects their relationship, challenging the perceptions they have of themselves and of each other. Thursbitch is rooted in a verifiable place. It is an evocation of the lives and the language of all people who are called to the valley of Thursbitch.<

Lucca, an actress, is rushed into hospital in a provincial Danish town after a motor accident. She is severely injured and Robert, the doctor treating her, is obliged to tell her she may never see again. Both of them are recovering from love affairs, and they relate their stories to each other.<

En un lejano futuro una minoría aristocrática, totalitaria y belicista domina los Estados Unidos de América, explotando el trabajo de hombres y mujeres que han preferido vivir como esclavos antes que morir en la pobreza. Las paradojas de Einstein y las concepciones históricas de Toynbee animan este libro singular, un clásico eminente de la ciencia-ficción contemporánea.

"La novela Los Hombres Paradójicos puede ser considerada como el clímax del banquete de un billón de años.Entreteje el espacio y el tiempo con altura, amplitud y belleza; zumba dando vueltas por el sistema solar como una avispa enloquecida; es ingeniosa, profunda y trivial, todo a la vez, y ha demostrado tener una inventiva que muchas hordas de presuntos imitadores han tratado de alcanzar en vano." (Brian W. Aldiss)

This simmering tension threatens to break into violence when a well-known tradesman is found dead in one of the colleges. Matthew Bartholomew knows he was poisoned but cannot identify the actual substance, never mind the killer. He also worries that other illnesses and deaths may have been caused by the effluent from his sister's dye works.

Torn between loyalties to his kin and to his college, he fears the truth may destroy both his personal and professional life, but he knows he must use his skills as a physician to discover the truth before many more lose their lives entirely.

El Mortzestus, un velero de tres palos, tiene fama de ser una embarcación con mala estrella. Sin embargo, todo parece ir bien al principio... excepto por las sombras. Y es que al anochecer a veces se ven sombras rondando por las cubiertas y en lo alto de la arboladura, unas sombras confusas y extrañas...

William Hope Hodgson, uno de los mejores escritores de relatos ambientados en el mar, nos deleita durante más de doscientas páginas con una de las mejores historias de fantasmas de la literatura fantástica (sin duda la mejor de cuantas suceden en el mar) y logra mantener la tensión y el ambiente fantasmagórico en un tour de force que se prolonga página tras página.

Presentamos también el relato El navío silencioso, que era el final original de la novela, y que nos brinda la oportunidad de leer dos excelentes conclusiones para la misma historia.

H.P. Lovecraft, admirador incondicional de Hodgson, dijo a propósito de Los piratas fantasmas: 'Es un relato poderoso sobre un barco condenado y espectral... Con su dominio de la ciencia marinera y su hábil selección de alusiones e incidentes para sugerir horrores latentes en la naturaleza, este libro alcanza a veces cimas envidiables de fuerza'.

"An uncannily honest writer." — The novelist and journalist Amitav Ghosh has offered extraordinary firsthand accounts of pivotal world events over the past twenty years. He is an essential voice in forums like , the , the , and The New Yorker, Incendiary Circumstances brings together the finest of these pieces for the first time — including many never before published in the States — in a compelling chronicle of the turmoil of our times. Incendiary Circumstances begins with Ghosh’s arrival in the Andaman and Nicobar islands just days after the devastation of the 2005 tsunami. We then travel back to September 11, 2001, as Ghosh retrieves his young daughter from school, sick with the knowledge that she must witness the kind of firestorm that has been in the background of his everyday life since childhood. With a prescience born of experience, Ghosh warned decades ago of the dangerous rise of religious extremism. In his travels he has stood on an icy mountaintop on the contested border between India and Pakistan, interviewed Pol Pot’s sister-in-law in Cambodia, shared the elation of Egyptians when Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize, and stood with his threatened Sikh neighbors through the riots following Indira Gandhi's assassination. With intelligence and authentic sympathy, he "illuminates the human drama behind the headlines" (Publishers Weekly). Incendiary Circumstances is unparalleled testimony of an era defined by the ravages of politics and nature.

Amitav Ghosh is acclaimed for his political journalism and his travel writing. The New York Times Book Review called his travelogue, In An Antique Land, "remarkable. . rivals anything by the masters of social realism in modern Egyptian literature." He is also the best-selling author of four novels, including The Hungry Tide and The Glass Palace, which has been published in eighteen foreign editions. Ghosh has won France's prestigious Prix Medici Etranger, India's Sahitya Akademi Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and a Pushcart Prize. Educated in South Asia, the Middle East, and the United Kingdom, Ghosh holds a doctorate in social anthropology from Oxford. He divides his time between Harvard University, where he is a visiting professor, and his homes in Kolkata, India, and Brooklyn, New York.

1975. The cusp of Argentina's Dirty War. The magnate Tamerlán has been kidnapped by guerrillas, demanding a bust of Eva Perón be placed in all ninety-two offices of his company. The man for the job: Marroné. His mission: to penetrate the ultimate Argentinian mystery — Eva Perón, the legendary Evita.

Carlos Gamerro's novel is a caustic and original take on Argentina's history.