Short Stories Books

I like the way the author brought the Jordan and Starris together. The love between the two was evident for eveyone to see. The story was well written with enough drama and romance to keep you turning the pages.

This book is great. I have read it over and over again. This is one of my favorite books.

I am a true romance reader and I consider this book a wonderful addition to my collection. Subtle Secrets by Wanda Y. Thomas is a nice read with a light taste of mystery added to the mix. Starris Gilmore is looking for steady employment so she can adopt Danielle Kathryn Carter, a beautiful little girl who was left on the doorsteps of an orphanage when she was just an infant. After leaving behind a verbal abusive marriage, Starris feels she has truly found peace and love with Danielle, which she affectionately calls Dani. Starris interviews for a position with ROBY headed by Jordan Banks, but is turned down. Though she is perfect for the job, she is left with seeking employment elsewhere to ensure that nothing stands in her way of adopting Dani.

Jordan Banks is executive director of ROBY, a mentoring and job opportunity program for young males from the inner city. Jordan is still recovering from a marriage gone bad from the very beginning. His ex-wife is found murdered by an unknown suspect, and he soon learns he has a daughter who was left in a home for children in Atlanta. After bringing his daughter Jolie Kathryn Banks home, he vows to himself that he will never love or trust another woman again. Starris and Jordan become more aware of each other when they both find out that their daughters are best friends. The sparks begin to fly and the girls begin plotting ways to bring their parents together. What stands out is the fact that the girls not only get along well as if they are sisters, but they look similar in features.

Leaving the suspense right there, you are in for a wonderful romantic and intense story about people who are afraid to love again; afraid to face their "demons" and move on; afraid to forgive and forget, and afraid to love each other. As Starris and Jordan soon learn and reveal through a plotting siniser employee working for ROBY, and who holds a key connection to the girls' past, their love is finally tested.

Ms. Thomas does a wonderful job of staging every detail of emotion that anyone could endure after being hurt and so afraid to try again. I especially enjoyed her character development of Jolie and Dani, they will make you relate and smile several times throughout the story. As that famous saying goes "out of the mouth of babes comes much wisdom." I also recommend that you read the author's note in the back of the book. You will learn that this storyline is very dear to Ms. Thomas. Thank you for making us understand and the continued awareness of parentless children needing to love and be loved. I highly recommend this for the romantic reader, you will not be disappointed. I applaud Ms. Thomas and graciously give Subtle Secrets a rating of 4.

Reviewed by Kalaani

I loved it! This was my first book written by Wanda Thomas, but it will definitely not be my last!! Ms. Thomas has not only been added to my book list, but her books have become some of the top priorities. "Subtle Secrets" is not only about the love of a man and woman, Jordan Banks and Starris Gilmore, but it is about love of family. Life has dealt some hard blows to both Jordan and Starris, but each has been blessed with the love of a child -- Jolie Kathryn Banks and Danielle "Dani" Kathryn Carter. Ironically their lives are entwined in more ways than one.
Starris first encounters Jordan at her friend's home. Then, later meets face to face when Starris applies for a much needed job at ROBY, where Jordan is the director. From there, they discover that their daughters are best friends. Starris and Jordan's relationship at first is bumpy, but soon the bumps began to smooth out as they are constantly thrown together and can no longer deny their mutual feelings.
"Subtle Secrets" also gives the reader insight into the welfare adoption system. Dani may not be Starris' biological daughter, but Starris has all the love for Dani that a natural mother would have for her child. Dani's and Jolie's lives are entwined with similarities that cannot be ignored. They both were abandoned as infants at an orphanage. However, Jolie was blessed with the love of her father, Jordan, and his wonderful family. Dani was not so blessed until Starris came into her life, then all the love that Dani has kept bottled inside came pouring out to the only mother she had ever known - Starris.
"Subtle Secrets" is a touching, heartwarming, loving story about family, faith, trust, and caring. It's also about overcoming lack of trust and the old hurts from the past. Not only are the adults affected, but the children are also embroiled in old wounds from the past. However, true love will outweigh all ills and bring new joy.
Great read and I look forward to reading the other books written by Ms. Thomas. My next one to read will be Shelby's and Nelson's story, "Truly Inseparable."

This is my second book by the author Wanda Thomas. I love the way she writes a love story and also inform you about life matters. Her latest novel involves Starris Gilmore and Jordan Banks.

Starris has come from a terrible marriage and believes that she is unlovable to a man. Her ex-husband got a kick out of abusing her emotionally in front of their guest. In the process of healing she volunteered to help children. This is where she met a little girl that she now wants to adopt. In order to adopt she must have stable employment.

When Starris walks into Jordan's office for a job interview he knew that he could not hire her because he was sexually attracted to her.

Jordan has also come through a bad marriage. Jordan learns of a daughter that he didn't know he had until after his ex-wife is murdered. He vows never to give his love to another woman again. But once his path crosses with Starris, he vow is tested.

Will they get together? I love the way the author has all the characters playing a big part in telling this story. The girls were very funny in their schemes to get their parents together.

You will truly love this page turning story. I hope to see a story on Jordan's sister.

You have to applaud simplicity in writing. It is the hardest thing for a writer to achieve. That sense of keeping the book `small' for lack of a better term, honing the story down to the barest strokes on the canvas. I always thought Hemingway did it beautifully with The Old Man and the Sea. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson is another great `small' book that draws you in with its perfectly simple prose and contstruction.

In many ways, Tove Jansson's The Summer Book is closer to the latter. It is a series of vignettes, rather than flowing narrative. It almost reads like a short story collection with all of the vignettes focusing on young Sophia and her grandmother, de facto stand-ins for the writer herself. At the time of writing, Jansson was a in her sixties, a grandmother, but also had recently lost her own mother (which happens to Sophia at the start of the book). It is this great understanding of both characters that allows her to imbue them with such life. Sophia is a precocious child, prone to fits and bouts of crying, and yet, can switch to being serene and adult. The Grandmother on the other hand is loving and accommodating, constantly nurturing Sophia in her adventures, but then swings into bouts of adolescent anger and bad behavior. The wonderful scene where she breaks into a neighbor's house is a great example.

"In the middle of the gravel was a large sign with black letters that said PRIVATE PROPERTY--NO TRESPASSING.

`We'll go ashore,' Grandmother said. She was very angry. Sophia looked frightened. `There's a big difference,' her grandmother explained. `No well-bred person goes ashore on someone else's island when there's no one home. But if they put up a sign, then you do it anyway, because it's a slap in the face.'

`Naturally,' Sophia said, increasing her knowledge of life considerably.'

`What we are now doing,' Grandmother said, `is a demonstration. We are showing our disapproval. Do you understand?'

`A demonstration,' her grandchild repeated, adding, loyally, `This will never make a good harbor.'"

The interaction between the two is often hilarious and at other times really touching. They constantly swap roles, as in that scene from "The Neighbors," where the grandmother can't help but behave childishly while Sophia grows instantly into an adult. Writing from her advanced age, Jansson is able to look back at the two sides of herself and imbue a sort of rough love between them.

What truly grabs you about The Summer Book, strong characters aside, is its sense of place. It is a book of and about Scandinavian life on a tiny island in the Finnish archipelago. In her introduction, Kathryn Davis describes the book's "unusual point of view, which hovers above and around the island and seems not so much to move from grandmother to granddaughter as to share them." It's imbued with the air, soil, and water of the small archipelago island where the stories are set. It has that contemplation and patience that one finds in Swedes, Norwegians, and Fins. Jansson gives you that sense of awe when viewing the landscape. You can feel yourself amongst the marshes, bilberry bushes, Rosa Rugosa, polished stones on the beaches, wet grass, and dense forests. You can feel yourself floating around in the small boats and feel the wind and rain on your face. You can see the long slow sunsets that last until after 10 pm. In many ways, the characters are small compared to the natural surroundings they walk through. It is a very Scandinavian appreciation of nature and while reading it you get a sense of walking through one of Carl Larsson's watercolors.

While not all of the vignettes in The Summer Book are solid, "Berenice" and "Dead Calm" fall a little flat, the rest more than make make up for the duds. Some are quite funny, such as "The Neighbor," "Of Angelworms and Others," and "The Cat." Others have a wonderful sense of sadness such as "Midsummer" or the closing "August."

"Every year, the bright Scandinavian summer nights fade away without anyone's noticing. One evening in August you have an errand outdoors, and all of a sudden it's pitch-black. A great warm, dark silence surrounds the house. It is still summer, but the summer is no longer alive."

As you keep reading the vignettes in The Summer Book, you always feel yourself there, walking along with Sophia and her grandmother, or floating in the boat, soaking up the atmosphere of the tiny little island in the Finnish Archipelago. It has that same quality that all great paintings from Scandinavian painters have, whether it be Munch or Larsson or Zorn, to instantly give you a sense of that northern lit sky and the serenity of the landscape beneath it.

Yes, this is truly a great work of literature. For one, the unique, intimate descriptions of life on a small island off the west coast of Finland are exquisite. The writing captures so much of this maritime word in such sure, spare language, that the reader is placed there among the nordic flora, tasting and feeling the ocean, the sky. Nature binds this book together.

The other facet of this book is the relationship between the child, Sophia, and her Grandmother. We do not learn anything about the father, other than that he works at a desk, plants flowers, and skeins. We do learn early that the mother has died, but aside from its initial mention, it is never directly addressed again. Instead we get an oblique look at grief through the interactions between the two primary characters -- granddaughter and grandmother. Sophia deals with the loss primarily through questioning the natural world around her, observing and mourning the deaths of other small creatures, like mice and birds. In fact a lot of dead animals make an appearance in this work. The psychological portrayal of Sophia is astute, at times subtle. Perhaps the strongest part of the books is when she dictates a book to her grandmother about the death of a worm, which turns into a free-flow stream of conscious on death in general. Powerful stuff.

The grandmother seems less affected by the loss of Sophia's mother (her daughter-in-law?). She does not seem overly concerned with death, although she has to deal with its imminence daily through her own physical limitations, but more with the emotions of her granddaughter. She proves to be very tolerant and wise.

The book's ultimate power and brilliance rests heavily on the use of an old woman juxtaposed against a child. They are both confronting the mystery of existence, and their conversations and interactions reveal a deep longing to understand the eternal. A great book.

PS -- this reader felt that the illustrations added to the work, however the few with human characters seemed strangely off-putting.

As a child, Tove Jansson lived in summer on islands in the Gulf of Finland, and later she and her partner Tuulikki Pietilä lived on a small island called Klovharu. Jansson wrote many children books, including the Moomin series, and ten books for adults.

The plot of the most famous of her adult novels is very simple; an elderly artist and her six-year-old granddaughter Sophia spend the summer on a tiny island exploring and talking about everything but Sophia's mother's death and their love for each other. They wander, pick flowers, watch storms, take trips in a rowboat. The 22 short episodes create a unity: "On an island," thinks the grandmother, "everything is complete."

The interaction between Sophia and her grandmother is a clash of wills, Sophia stubborn, impetuous and supportive; her grandmother wise, unsentimental, on the edge of exhaustion, dizzy, fearful of losing her balance "the balance between survival and extinction was so delicate that even the smallest change was unthinkable".

"It was just the same long summer always, and everything lived and grew at its own pace."

The book has been a major best seller in Scandinavia since it was first published in 1972. Thomas Teal has produced a wonderful English translation. This new edition from NYRB Classics is beautifully printed and bound. This novel captures a summer growing "at its own pace."

Robert C. Ross 2008

Mm, this is a beautiful, wonderful little book! It is a collection of little stories of a very small girl and her small grandmother going adventures on their little island in Sweden. So full of green things and little bites of happiness. The grandmother is oh so clever and says so many poignants to the girl. The girl is wise too. So full of joy.

This book was given to me by an uncommon friend and I enjoyed it very much. It is about the friendship between a grandmother and her young grandaughter who live on a bit of an island in Finland (?). The beauty and treasures discovered in the quiet lives they lead, finding joy in simple things and loving each other besides those petty annoyances of personality (they are very much alike). There are many "huggable" humorous moments. I think of one in which they trade cats--their cat is indifferent to the grandaughter's overtures and the one traded was much more warm and cuddly, but then (and I quote from the book).

"Hunt! Do something! Be like a cat!" And then she started to cry and ran to the guest room and banged on the door.
"What's wrong now?" Grandmother said.
"I want Moppy back!" Sophia screamed.
"But you know how it will be," Grandmother said.
"It'll be awful," said Sophia gravely. "But it's Moppy I love."

John Gardner wrote many good works, the Sunlight Dialogues being by far the best. In it he captures the range of hope and anxiety that made the 1960s such a thrilling and tormenting time to be alive. Using the small town of Batavia, New York, Gardner plunges the reader into the life of a prodigal son of the most prestigious family in town and that of the dedicated police chief. And do the intellectural sparks fly! The illustrations by John Napper are reminescent of those from the Yellow Book in the 1890s, by Aubrey Beardsley. There is a lot of subtle humor ("take a gun of, say, x caliber...") as well as dead-on observation of what makes people do outrageous things for perfectly logical reasons.
It's a roller coaster of a novel, so hang on and enjoy the ride. You might even want to go back for a second trip. I did.

The Sunlight Dialogues_ is truly John Gardner's magnum opus, equaling and perhaps overshadowing _Grendel_, the book for which he is best known.

Grossly over-simplified, it is about the tide of discontent and change that came about in the 1960s, exemplified in the stories of a handful of people who live in the small New York town of Batavia. All of these characters' stories occur at roughly the same moment, and to a certain degree overlap each other; they all come into contact with one another at some point during the novel, and may even influence each other, but every member of the book's huge cast has his or her own story and denouement.

The primary one of these stories is the one that concerns Police Chief Fred Clumly and a haggard, maniacal drifter known as "the Sunlight Man", and the happenings of this particular storyline are the catalysts for the rest of the stories. "The Sunlight Man", whom we later find out is Taggert Hodge, the black sheep of the wealthy and powerful family the members of whom comprise roughly half the other characters in the novel, is the one who sets all of these denouements into motion with his seminal return to his hometown as a magician, hippie, murderer, and poet. His has been a life of disillusionment, loss, betrayal and unattainable wants, and he returns to Batavia to set into motion a sort of romantically juvenile plot to take revenge on the world and to mewl out his disappointment with the way things are, the latter of which he does through Fred Clumly(thus is the origin of the title.)

Gardner is remarkably adept at character development; Taggert Hodge, Walter Benson and Fred Clumly are among the best painted characters of fiction I know of. The author has a gift for articulating neuroses and flaws of characters, from miniscule ticks in their everyday behavior to major personality faults. And with a cast of roughly eleven major characters, making each and every one entirely unique in their drives and hamartias is no task to be scoffed at. However, the ability of John Gardner's I perhaps envy the most is that of taking a very normal, even pretty environmental setting, and turning it nightmarish and haunting. In the novel, the dense forests and century-old barns of Batavia are made into artifacts and ruins of an almost Lovecraftian caliber of queerness, and yet it does not serve to displace the small New York town from the realm of believable reality, but rather forces you to evaluate your reality on the same dark and weird basis as his authorial voice.

The sheer scope of the novel (that of several stories cycloning around a unifying theme and plot catalyst) at times threatens to tear it apart, however; the reader at times is left wondering why the author has switched point of views when the scenario he was describing previously had yet to be resolved. This is a mere annoyance, however, and is not really something for which I believe the novel should be faulted, for the rewards of its pages are vast ones.

Due perhaps to its relatively young age, it has yet to receive the proper "classic" status it so rightly deserves, and, sadly, it may never, for "Grendel" seems to be John Gardner's only remembered and widely read work, and is perpetually overshadowing the rest of the author's material, most of which are just as powerful and memorable as tale of Beowulf's tragic nemesis. In fact, some may even be better, as I propose The Sunlight Dialogues is, but until the higher-ups at Norton and the like get around to looking at this master of fiction as a master should, I advise any and all of the people reading this to purchase this book from whatever obscure publisher it has currently been tossed to.

Back in the 70s, I became fascinated with John Gardner, starting with The Wreckage of Agathon and Grendel. When The Sunlight Dialogues came out, I was hooked. I picked up a paperback copy and just fell into the story. After that, each new Gardner was purchased in hardcover, which I could ill afford back then.

About 10 years ago, I tracked down a fine condition copy of TSG and re-read it. Bad move, though, donating the paperback to the library.

I welcomed the arrival of a new trade paperback edition of the novel, and of one or two others by Gardner until I actually had the opportunity to hold them. The reprints were done without the original illustrations, which are integral to the books. Unbelievable!

For old times sake, I bought a used Ballantine paperback copy and am re-reading it. I have no intention of buying this new edition.

So, five stars for Gardner and the book, with a one-star demerit for this compromised reprint. The new introduction doesn't add much to the book.

I recently met a recent graduate of the State University of New York: Binghamton, an English major. He had never heard of John Gardner, author of the one American post WWII novel that stands comparision in scope and quality, if not import, with Middlemarch.

This novel is unabashedly symbolic, it's many characters each representing the dichotomies of order/chaos, love/hatefulness, light/darkness. But don't think that the work is heavy handed or didactic because of the obviously metaphorical quality. Rather, it is like other great metafiction, the reading of which is akin to entering a complex microcosm, and best of all, having a bird's eye view into the lives and minds of all the many characters. The multiplicity of narratives, some dramatic, others hilariously banal, is nearly perfectly balanced so that when one character might get tiresome, we are transported into another new and fascinating life. Most impressively, all these narratives are eventually woven together in perfect and beautiful harmony. Once you enter this work, you will not want to stop. I don't advice reading this unless you have some free time, otherwise all your other responsibilities will suffer.

This book show individuals that we are all rich, even in the most ordinary ways.

This book brings tears to my eyes. It reminds me of the benefits of living surrounded by nature and does it in a fun way (through a child's eyes while she's learning the monetary "value" of her life from her parents). I gave this as a gift to several close friends because the message is truly beautiful.

I love this book. It was an amazing story. I liked how they called the girl Mountain Girl. But the one thing that I didn't understand is how the parents thought they were rich. But then at the end of the story I understood. It was nature that made them rich. It was priceless...and that made them all special people sitting at their table.
Samantha Morgans..age 10...Parker colo.

The young girl in this story doesn't notice that her family is rich. I think her family is rich because they get to sit under the stars so shiney at night and there is always a shining start of the day in the morning and they get to watch nature grow and on having a family right there for her. And that's how I think she is rich.
Malia... age9

The Table Where Rich People Sit touched my heart. It made me realize that I have more riches than I knew. Simple riches like the colors of Autumn. Mountain Girl didn't understand about her riches either. But by the end of the story she knew that nature and family were the best kind of riches. Read this book so you can realize what your riches are, too.
Brielle age 9 parker, colo.

Poe, Doyle, Christie -- none of their stories is better than "The Stolen Cactus," "The Crime at the Post Office," or "Footprints." This collection of crime stories had all the twists and clever resolutions I could ask for. Unexpectedly, it also has quite a few insights into human nature and coping with reality. I read "The Man Who Couldn't Sleep" after a night of disturbing dreams and felt as if Capek were writing to me from the grave.

I found this book in the English-language section of a bookstore in Prague, during my first visit to the Czech Republic, which is a surprising and wonderful place. I didn't know the first thing about Czech culture or history before then. I didn't even know that one of Capek's contemporaries in Prague was Kafka, who was Czech, not German.

Reading Capek convinced me that Kafka was -- like Capek -- a humorist; unfortunately humanities professors in the U.S. don't get the joke. In other words, Capek is Kafkaesque and Kafka is Capekesque. Both drew quirky little images, too. That's right: Kafka drew pictures in his manuscripts. A few of Capek's illustrations are reproduced in this book, as well. (Karl Capek's brother Josef was a member of the little-known and very odd Czech Cubist Movement, a group that abhorred right angles.)

The prose in this translation is a bit ponderous, though, so I recommend that when your first open this book you temporarily abandon your requirements -- if any -- that crime fiction be terse and gritty. Remember that you're reading a translation from a Slavic language written a decade after WW I. In addition, the stories are first-person narratives, a form that is little used these days.

I'm eager to read more Capek. And it would be great if the publisher would create a Kindle version of his work.

A superb collection of stories told in a simple, yet very descriptive and captivating language, each a different nugget. Some are very funny, others reach a quiet conclusion, others make you think, but not enough to rob you of your sleep. Nice to read just a few at a time, otherwise it's hard to remember them all. Can be read completely out of sequence. Enjoy!

The fourth Earl of Chesterfield once admonished his son to "wear your learning, like your watch in a private pocket: and do not merely pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one." The stories contained in Karel Capek's "Tales From Two Pockets", unlike Chesterfield's watch, are worth taking out and reading again and again and again.

Karel Capek played a pivotal role in Czech arts, literature, and politics in the years of the first Czech Republic. He was a playwright and, with his brother, authored "RUR", the play that introduced the word robot to the world. His novel War With the Newts remains today one of the great pieces of dystopian fiction. His life and work during this period was inextricably linked with a strong belief in the newly born Czechoslovakian Republic. Capek's devout faith in democracy and his aversion to both fascism and communism was well known. His intimate socio-political relationship with Czech President Tomas Masaryk served as an inspiration to Vaclav Havel the artist who became president after the Velvet Revolution.

The 48 stories in Tales From Two Pockets first appeared in print in 1928 in a Prague newspaper. They were known as pocket tales because presumably the newspaper could be folded and placed in ones coat pocket after getting off the tram. Immensely popular the first 24 stories were published in book form as Tales from One Pocket. The remaining 24 stories were originally published as Tales From the Other Pocket. This edition, published by Catbird Press (which has done a marvelous job of publishing English editions of Czech masterpieces) and excellently translated by Norma Comrada, contain all 48 tales.

To call the first 24 stories detective stories would not do them justice. They do tend to involve a murder or a crime of some sort but Capek stands the genre on its head. They involve more than the solution of a crime. Capek tends to work around the crime to look and spin small stories that tell us a little bit more about human nature than about the crime business. Each story contains a snippet; they are too short to be an exegesis on humanity. But each snippet is worth reading and after you read one or two you can put them in your pocket and start all over again.

The second 24 stories each flow from one into another. Think of a group of people sitting around a table in a bar. One tells a story about a crime or some other foul deed. After one story is finished someone pipes in and announces, "I can top that". They stories flow seamlessly one to another. Again, no single story packs a huge `message' but cumulatively they are thought provoking and provocative. It should also be mentioned that the stories are also just fun to read. Capek was one of the first Czech authors to write in colloquial Czech. His writing style was not formalistic and stilted. He wrote the way people talked and his stories are all warmly told and engaging.

So, put these tales in your pocket and pull them out whenever you'd like to lose yourself for a little while in the world of little mysteries created by Karel Capek.

"Tales from Two Pockets" should have a special place in the minds of its readers. That's the place reserved for works which are entertaining without being trivial, consistently amusing and delightful upon re-reading, and which appear to have been written effortlessly and on the spur of the moment (this latter characterization is probably an illusion, since even a rapidly written piece by the right writer incorporates a lifetime of craftsmanship and professional skill). The stories in this collection, which combines two different but related sets of stories ("from one pocket, then the other"), were written for Capek's newspaper columns during 1928-1929. Czech readers responded enthusiastically to these stories, which started out clearly enough as detective or crime stories but soon overflowed the boundaries of that category to become something very different: reflections on the human mind and character under duress and meditations on the nature of crime, punishment, and, most especially, justice. The difficulty of judgment which is fair to both the victim and the perpetrator is a theme returned to several times, leaving the question an open one, even in the most gruesome cases, e.g., "The Ballad of Jura Cup", in which the motive is highly personal and bizarre, or "An Ordinary Murder" in which the motive is routine but the results are unsettling. Also related to this idea is the story (from the first set of 24) entitled "The last Judgment", which seems to be the prototype of the stories in a completely different collection,"Apocryphal Tales", stories that veer off in the direction of "alternate reality" parables (this may be the story which Capek himself thought of as "the turning point" within the whole collection of 48 stories).

The second set of 24 stories is a continuous round-table conversation, organized along the lines of the Decameron. One story ends, and a thematically-related one begins (or a story is based on a stray remark or characterization in the immediately preceding story), something like a baton that is passed from one relay racer to the next. Often there is a smaller story within the larger one, recruiting another member at the table as a second narrator. From the formal point of view the most interesting of these is "The Confession", in which a priest, a lawyer, and a doctor are all told the same story by the same man over several decades - he has done something terrible (his deed is never specified) and must talk about it or implode, though he feels neither contrition nor guilt nor remorse, while he has a specific desire to avoid retribution (which is why he picks men professionally and ethically bound to keep his confession a secret). It's a large and eclectic collection of narrators that Capek creates - including policemen, businessmen of various stripes, a doctor, a priest, a "jailbird", a journalist, civil servants, and men of unidentified callings. Based on their names and their vocations they are meant to be a representative sample of inter-war Czechoslovakia's polyglot mixture of ethnicities, nationalities, religions, and social strata. This is the "social undercurrent" of these stories, an idealized picture of a hybrid, pluralistic society created by an admirer and strong advocate of T. G. Masaryk and the political system of the First Republic.

The translation by Norma Comrada is excellent, colloquial and fluent. As is her Introduction, which gives the background of the stories' creation and of Capek's familiarity with the detective-story genre in the literatures of France, England and America. On a light note, the musings of the lifelong bachelor, Police Captain Bartosek, on a kidnapped child (which I think of as "Bartosek on Babies") should be required reading for new mothers and new policemen as well. And it is in his portrayal of policemen that we see the breach that separates Capek's time and place from the grimmer post-World-War-II world of Czechoslovakia. We meet Captain Havalka who sympathizes with the inner turmoil of Jura Cup, and, more than once, we see at work the squirrel-toothed Inspector Pistora, whose unprepossessing exterior houses a first-class deductive brain that rivals that of Sherlock Holmes. Then there is Detective Holub, who, when recovering the funds that the confidence-man Plichta has defrauded from widows and lonely women, allows Plichta to deduct his "operational expenses" from the restitution he makes and admires his strict system of accounting (it is Holub who says,"We like ordinary criminals, not mysteries"). You can't imagine such empathetic portraits of policemen after 1945, though P. Kohout has tried his best to endow even State-Security policemen with admirable streaks in their characters.

The stories were written during the "calm years" of the First Republic, after the difficulties of setting up a new state had been dealt with, and before the Depression and the encroaching threats of international power-politics had arrived. This allowed Capek a respite to write as he pleased without an eye looking over his own shoulder at the political excitements of the years before and the years to follow. As Comrada points out, it would be incorrect to call these works "detective stories" or even "crime stories" (in many of them there are neither crimes nor solutions). However the reader characterizes them, it should be obvious that Capek displayed a relaxed freedom of spirit as he wrote them and took a great deal of pleasure in doing so, both of which are strongly communicated to the reader.

great stories to read a few at a time, not necessarily in order. they are like a whimsical sherlock holmes with a definite eastern european bent. i had never read any Capek before and I think this has been a great start.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is a compilation of many stories that have to do with a girl named Nancy in the land of Cunburra. I was completely astonished that the characters were so well developed. The author introduces various characters separately and uses them in different stories, allowing you to actually visualize them in your mind and really get to know them. She has such a way with words that her book is both enjoyable and spiritual. I could barely put the book down, wanting to know more about Cunburra and the people living there and their dilemmas concerning the battles between good and evil (God and Satan). One aspect my children enjoyed was the animals in the story. They have a human-like quality to them. Nancy always seems to take care of them and treat them with kindness. This is a good lesson for any children who read this book. The author's imagination is quite active and completely captivates the reader, leaving you wanting to know more about each character. I would definitely recommend purchasing this book to anyone, regardless of their age.

This book is great for anyone who loves exciting adventures. I have read this book all the way through and re-read my favorite stories several times. Up On Shadow Hill is about two horses who are love but they get separated and go through lots of adventures before they find each other again. I recommend this book for all ages

I couldn't belive it was Kara writing this book. It seemed as though some older author had wrote it. That was how good it was. I loved it!!!!!

Great book. I just bought a second one as a gift for a cousin who has gone through similar life experiences as the author.

As a member of the same home-school group as Kara, I was able to buy a copy from Kara herself and have it autographed . I admired Kara for surviving extensive cancer in her arm, but my admiration grew steadily after I read her book. Being a fan of fantasy, I thoroughly enjoyed the stories. The symbolism is remarkable and very in-depth considering how old she was when she wrote it. The characters are well-developed and each chapter you read increases your amazement that one so young could write so well. The book is also full of Kara's illustrations, which add a visual to the already extensively developed character. Overall, I would highly recommend Tales Of Cunburra And Other Stories to anyone of any age. Younger children especially will enjoy the tales, and adults will love Kara's deep insight in her other stories.

The book held me in suspense the entire time I was reading it!
I could not put the book down because I awaited the next day until I again read without any interruptions. When I finally reached the end of the book, I was pleasentely surprised and was delighted with the ending. I can not wait until this local author publishes another great story!!

Tavern Tales is an engaging book filled with fantasies that take you away from the realities of modern life. All were enjoyable, but The Wraith's Forest by Judith Leger by far my favorite. Through her smooth writing style, Judith made Keely's sheer terror palpable and turned her fear into compassion.

Tavern Tales has some very good stories in it about fantasy. Some of them are hard to read. The Wraith's Forest on the other hand was a very good story. Judith Leger drew you into the story with the first few paragraphs and held you there until the last word. The was a story I could not put down I had to continue reading to find out what was going to happen next. The only regret I have about the story is that I did not want it to end.

So beautifully described with every intricate detail I felt as if it were me and not "Keely" who crept throughout the woods trying to outstep the Wraith in the opening pages of "The Wraith's Forest" by Judith Leger.
As we may all at times bear resentment to tasks and responsibilities, Keely soon learns that such sour thoughts seal the fate of the harvest and thereby affecting so many lives all around her.....including her very own.

What's in a name? Thorugh events in the story Keely is taken into the Wraith's intimate circle where she not only learns of his given name "Seth" but also that he was forsaken by his father for the betterment of his people and somewhere along the way forgotten...To sacrifice for so many and recieve not an ounce of recognition is a difficult path to follow even when one has no choice....the author expertly lays out how sadness turns to resentment resulting in isolation for the one protector of the tree while creatively using her heroine's character to set this troubled soul free through a tiltilating climax while also saving her village.
Touched by his curse and driven by unknown feelings, Keely helps Seth to put an end to his life of imprisonment as well as setting her own heart free.
As with the entire story, the last few pages of this entry were so creatively written I could hear the gates rising and smell the fresh coat of white paint as it was revealed through the author's vision.

Judith Leger wrote a terrific story. It holds your attention from the first word to the last word. You feel drawn in to the characters, you can feel for them and the conflicts they are going through.

Oe's giant stature as a writer is demonstrated here more than in any other of his books. All these stories are wonderful, but "The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away" is one of the greatest works of fiction I've ever read. I mean that. Buy this book and read it. You won't be sorry.

The longest stories ever... But they were alright, I found them more interesting to talk about than to actually read...

"Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness" collects four stories--novellas, really--from the first 15 years of Oe's career. Each is unique in narrative style, in tone, and in pace, but all four deal with similar themes that matured over the years.

"Prize Stock" (1957), one of Oe's very first stories and perhaps his most famous, is about a black American airman captured during the war by the residents of a remote village, who take him prisoner but hide him from the authorities in a cellar, where he seemingly manages to befriend the local children. In "Aghwee the Sky Monster" (1964), a narrator recalls a friend haunted by the spirit of a son born with serious brain damage. It is one of the earliest of many works (including the masterpiece, "A Personal Matter") featuring such a child, inspired by Oe's own son Hikari, who in fact eventually overcame serious disabilities to become a respected composer of music.

An "idiot child" is also at the center of the title story (1969), which is my favorite of the collection--and may well be the best short work Oe ever wrote. "A fat man" takes his beloved son for a pleasant day at the zoo. Assaulted by hoodlums and tossed into the polar bear pond, he regains consciousness to discover that the child is missing. The trauma serves as a catalyst for coming to terms with the man's relationship with his own father, whose death had been a mystery to him.

Similar themes and characters populate the longest and most complex selection, "The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away" (1972). A hospital patient believes he has cancer--although his doctors insist he does not. Much of the man's first-person, non-linear rant is told to the "the acting executor of the will," that is, his wife. Bedridden, he lives in his past, brooding over his estrangement from his mother and recounting his father's suicidal mission to save Japan from defeat at the end of World War II--an event the narrator distorts in memory. Oe apparently intended this as an anguished parody of Yukio Mashima's suicide. While eerily compelling, the story can be difficult and baffling. It strongly echoes Oe's earlier novel "The Silent Cry," which (I think) deals with these themes much more successfully--at least for readers unfamiliar with Japanese history and traditions.

What is most notable about Oe's work is that the same characters, ideas, subjects, and even certain scenes appear repeatedly in his many works--yet each story or novel is utterly distinctive. And his offbeat, sometimes morbid humor often catches readers unawares. His fiction translates remarkably well to English, and I never feel like I've read the same work twice.

If you haven't bought this book, then you should get it now. Kenzaburo Oe is one of the few left wing writers in Japan who has made a great impact world wide. His style is original, his themes often poignant. His own personal suffering and the suffering of his own brain-damaged child often feature in his novels in subtle and not so subtle forms. You will not find any cliches in this novel and Oe is never nauseatingly sentimental. A true gem.

I adore this book... I read it all at once, woke up my parents in the middle of the night talking about its descriptions of the sky, talked about it at my college interviews, which were about three years ago... Loved it. But Discovered that some of Oe's other work isn't as good. But wow! The language, plot, the strangeness, the beauty, inventiveness, and reach of the book is tremendous. :)

That Summer Place: Old ThingsPrivate ParadiseIsland Time Debbie Macomber always provides a great story. This was a great introduction to two writers I had not previously read (Susan Wiggs and Jill Barnett). Now I can add them to my "favorites" list.

I did not want these books to end. I now want to visit the Pacific Northwest.

I was very pleased with the book. All of the authors presented a good story. The book arrived when it was promised. All in all it was a very pleasant experience.

The San Juan Islands in Washington State come alive in That Summer Place, an anthology set on fictional Spruce Island. In "Old Things" by Jill Barnett, California divorceé Catherine Winslow seeks to recreate the magic of her childhood with her two daughters on the island where her family spent many happy summers. She has no idea that she is about to revive a teenage romance as well.

In Debbie Macomber's "Private Paradise," widow Beth Graham is invited to stay on an island with friends. But when a last-minute accident keeps her friends from the island, Beth and her son end up sharing quarters with a handsome single father, John Livingstone, and his teenage daughter. Close quarters cause tempers to flare, but Beth and John just may manage to find love before the trip is over.

"Island Time" by Susan Wiggs finds workaholic Mitch Rutherford and Dr. Rosalinda Galvez busily conducting an environmental impact study of the island, although Mitch wonders if he will ever get anything done with the beautiful doctor around.

Barnett's trademark humor, Macomber's poignancy, and Wiggs's expert storytelling all combine to create the perfect summer beach book.

This was a nice book. Three very pleasant stories without much depth--but they were novellas so that's to be expected. The setting was glorious.

A very funny,entertaining,and well thought out book. A great collection of stories by a wide variety of talented authors. Highly recommended!

I became interested in reading this book because I had read something about the controversy between the anthology titled THIS IS CHICK LIT and the one titled THIS IS NOT CHICK LIT.

I decided to read the anthology, and form my own opinion.

What I found was an engaging collection of stories with a wide variety of subject matters, themes and styles, that shared only that they were of interest to women. These stories were great-- funny and varied and well-written.

I especially enjoyed "The Infidelity Diet" and "Nice Jewish Boy". I also really enjoyed reading the introduction by Lauren Baratz-Logsted where she traces the Lit-chick divide back to Bronte and Austen... It's a terrific introduction to chick lit for someone who hasn't read much of it before.


I would highly recommend this book to fans of chick lit but also to readers who are interested in sampling a wide range of new authors.

I agree with many of the other reviewers: If you already read chick lit, you'll like this. It provides a selection of interesting stories, lets you get to know a little about the authors, and may introduce you to the work of authors you don't already know.

If you don't read chick lit, or don't think you want to, you'll be pleasantly surprised, I think. It's a quick read, and it can't hurt, so why not?

It's time to get mad, make a stand, and buy a copy of This is Chick Lit


Earlier this year, This is Not Chick Lit: Original Stories by America's Best Women Writer's hit the stands. As the title suggests, this book wants to set itself apart from chick lit writing. In the introduction, editor Elizabeth Merrick claims that the huge popularity of "bubbly" and "fluffy" chick lit novels is obscuring the writing of "some our country's most gifted women." She goes on to say that chick lit "numbs our senses" and "reduces the complexity of human experience."

When Lauren Baratz-Logsted, a seasoned chick lit author, heard about this collection she got angry. And then she got motivated! Baratz-Logsted without delay rallied the troops, quickly compiled eighteen stories by loud and proud chick lit writers, and This is Chick Lit was born.

Straight off the bat, the book proves that chick lit and its authors are far from mind-numbing or fluffy. In her fantastic introduction, Baratz-Logsted hits the nail on the head when she considers the publication of Merrick's This is Not Chick Lit and wonders, "What next: These Are Not Mysteries? This is Not Science Fiction? This is Not a Literary Coming of Age Novel?"

What Baratz-Logsted understands - unlike so many literary critics, book reviewers, and many supposedly smart writers - is that chick lit is a genre. And thus like all genres - mystery, sci-fi, literary fiction - chick lit has its own features and style and concerns. It is not better or worse than any other genre, it is just different. Baratz-Logsted demonstrates how it is basically sexist to single out chick lit, a hugely popular genre by and for women, as the one genre to attack and malign.

Baratz-Logsted's smart introduction is followed by a whole host of intelligent, funny, sad, ironic, entertaining, and very real tales about women. Jennifer Coburn's "Two Literary Chicks" wryly captures the whole standoff between a literary chick and her chick lit writing enemy. Deanne Carlyle's "Dead Man Don't Eat Quiche" is a mystery set in France and is as hilarious as its title suggests. Heather Swain deals beautifully with the trials and tribulations of postpartum life in "Café con Leche Crush." Baratz-Logsted's own story, an eloquent satire called "Shell Game," is a must for any successful and independent career girl heading for marriage, the suburbs, and potentially the loss of identity.

Many people are going to love This is Chick Lit. However, true to form, the literary world and the press are putting the boot in. In its review of the book, Publisher's Weekly says the stories in the collection are marred by "ho-hum dialogue" (and you're telling me Hemingway never wrote a ho-hum exchange?), "clichéd characters" (uh, and Dickens didn't have a few stock villains?) and "may pander to female audiences" (oh my god, what a crime!). The Village Voice described the stories as "glib and goal-oriented and focus on well-dressed women afraid of being 30" (hello? Can you read?).

To snoots like these, I say, "Go read what you want to read and leave the chick lit writers and chick lit lovers alone!" And to everyone else, I say, "Buy This is Chick Lit. You wont just make a purchase. You'll being making a political stand!!"

Apparently this book was born out of a sense of high dudgeon; a retort to the publication of the volume This is Not Chick-Lit; an assemblage of the leading authors of the centuries old genre now going by the name chick-lit; a defensive call to arms. As contributing writer Jennifer Coburn exclaims: "an author recently commented that the term chick-lit sounds as if the writing is about, for, and by women, nothing more. Nothing more?! Why isn't that enough?"

Enough, indeed. This savvy little collection of eighteen short, delicious stories showcases the tremendous variety, voice, and appeal of the oft-maligned, but also well-loved chick-lit authors. It should quickly disabuse the reader of any notion that chick-lit is somehow not representative or worthy of today's reader of popular fiction. So although the origin of this book may be found in a fit of pique, the result is a marvelous assortment of tales of the modern situation. Can we state more (or less?) of Jane Austen? If the Bronte sisters were writing today, would they be doing book tours on the Bridget Jones circuit? Would Mary Shelley be signing at ComicCon?

Always entertaining, frequently funny, occasionally wistful, this is the cream of the crop. Infidelity, fashion sense, husband hunting, girlfriend trauma: it's all here in this candybox sampler of morality tales, fables, and small encouragements. Dig in.