Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in Literature & Fiction

This collection of classic horror tales is as remarkable for its literary value as for its scream factor. You'll hear stories by the masters of the genre, past and present.

Fourth in the new study guide series featuring engaging commentary by writer / lecturer Dr. Elizabeth McNamer on great literary classics. Dr. McNamer now concentrates on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Chaucer’s merry charm and Milton’s high seriousness become accessible to modern minds when explored by Dr. McNamer.

Third in the new study guide series featuring engaging commentary by writer/lecturer Dr. Elizabeth McNamer on great literary classics. Dr. McNamer now concentrates on Homer’s Trojan War / Greek epic poems, The Iliad, which deals with love, jealousy, pride and the courage men and women display in war and The Odyssey, where hero Odysseus meets with strange adventures en route home to his faithful wife.

Perhaps the first great and truly "American" poet, Walt Whitman's writing reflected the idealism and turbulence of the mid-19th century. His poetry broke new stylistic ground with its unconventional meter and rhyme schemes, yet celebrated democratic values, the beauty of nature, and the complex variety and vitality of American life.

Just as the style of a great writer cannot easily be imitated, the performance of a great reader is hard to duplicate. This volume features some of the best readers dramatizing some of the best writings.

More of the Greatest Mysteries of All Time is the second in a series featuring the finest short story mystery fiction by the most acclaimed writers, past and present. From Thomas Hardy, O. Henry, Jack London, Vincent Starrett and everyone in between, this unique collection, edited by multi-award winning mystery connoisseur Otto Penzler, is a delightful mixture of mystery and suspense.

Legendary Western writer Max Evans takes you into the heart of Hi Lo Country to spend a little time with cowboys who work hard, play hard, live hard - and have a great time being cowboys.

Six-time Hugo Award winner Bova likes to tell big stories in a small way. This approach both helps and hurts in this collection of stories, excerpts and outtakes from his "Grand Tour" novels (Saturn, etc.), which explore the colonization of the solar system. Despite his vast subject, Bova focuses tightly on the heroes and villains whose striving makes up his future history. While some characters are standards of the SF genre (megalomaniac capitalist, lone-wolf entrepreneur, love object caught between them), Bova imbues each with Homeric virtues and flaws.

The lure of the American West is in the spirit of adventure, in the majestic expanse of unconquered wilderness and in rugged individuals on a quest for identity and sometimes for survival. Owen Wister's unsmiling Virginian... Dorothy M. Johnson's, "A Man Called Horse": These are a few of the colorful, even legendary characters who populate The American West in Fiction, a collection of stories edited by Jon Tuska.

Drs. Stephen Pearse and Peter Maryk once worked together to research a horrifying virus outbreak in the Congo. Now Pearse heads the Bureau of Disease Control and Maryk runs the clandestine special pathogens section of the disease detectives - making the 2 scientists bitter enemies. But when the disease from the Congo re-emerges in America, they must set aside their differences in order to stop a potential worldwide epidemic.

Although she is most famous for her bestselling fiction, Erica Jong started her publishing career as a poet and has an international reputation for her verse. Becoming Light includes early poems previously uncollected in book form, selections from her previous books and many new poems. Erica Jong's poetry exhibits her rare gifts for inventiveness, wit, vigor, honesty and accessibility.

This is the story of Bronx-born David Kokolovitz and his hilarious experiences with sex, Shakespeare, and the South Pacific. We follow David on his journey away from his Bronx home in search of an acting career. In a comedy of opposites, New Yorker David ends up living in the Deep South where he lands his first acting job at a southern Shakespeare repertory company. Just as the hazards of too-tight tights and too-long soliloquies become too much for him, World War II conveniently breaks out and he moves on to entertain the troops.

Combining short fiction with speculative history, this entertaining book invites listeners to look at what didn't happen to gain a richer understanding of what did. What if Napoleon had become emperor of the United States? Could one faulty screw have altered America's atomic-bomb policy? If Lincoln had been assassinated during the Gettysburg Address, would the Confederate States have remained a separate country?

Only 35, Jack Whitman is head of long-range planning at a major media-entertainment empire. It has been two years since the senseless murder of his pregnant wife in New York; the tragedy has left him emotionally numb, and blindly ambitious. With the corporation in verge of a merger with its German-Japanese counterpart, Jack becomes caught in a ruthless power play between the scheming CEO and the aging chairman and tastes the bitterness of corporate politics at its most ruthless level.

This collection of the finest short story mystery fiction by the most acclaimed writers, past and present features Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Burke, Harry Kemelman, and everyone in between. Edited by multi-award-winning mystery connoisseur Otto Penzler, it offers a delightful mixture of mystery and suspense.

Learn the truth behind the mask of Hollywood in these 10 bizarre tales of dreams and dream weavers, movies and movie-makers, by some of the most respected fantasy writers of our time.

Julia Lang is a winner-beautiful, vivacious, publicity director of London's top hotel. Robert Brand is charismatic, handsome with his vast fortune he can works magic. Together they make a golden couple, the world at their feet. Together they can almost forget Robert's unhappy marriage to Grace, a union bound by secrets a generation old...until, suddenly, Julia's world is shattered when Robert tragically dies; inheriting his fortune leaves her little consolation.

Lela lives in a fantasy world. It is the only place she can go to escape the horrendous legacy of her father's sexual abuse and his brutal murder of mother. When she joins a loving adoptive family, she buries all the memories of her former life - even her last memory of her sister, Jolene, pledging in a courtroom that she would come back for Lela some day. Then, one day , a strange man walks into Lela's life, bringing with him a neglected child who needs her love.

Champion Motors, one of Detroit's biggest auto manufactures and ruled by the law of overtime, is shutting down plants and laying off their workers. Tensions are mounting and violence is erupting. The lack of overtime to go around and a fatal attraction between employees at the plant ends in murder. Against this backdrop four very different people are about to collide.

America's richest legends come from the frontier - from the land where the events of a single moment might erase the lines between law and lawlessness, between safety and mortal danger, between heroes and villains. The carefully selected stories in this collection are vibrant proof that the great American West is a fertile ground to storytellers. Here is the most varied collection of short stories by 17 highly acclaimed Western writers.