A superb new translation by Michael Hofmann of some of Kafka's most frightening, strange and visionary short fictionAfter Franz Kafka's death, in perhaps the most important of all acts of literary disobedience, his executor refused to agree to Kafka's wish that his great mass of unpublished fiction be destroyed. This fiction included not only The Castle and The Trial but also the amazingly varied, chilling and ingenious short works collected in The Burrow and Other Stories. These tales, some little more than a page, others much more substantial, are among the greatest works of Central European literature. They vary from the tiny and horrifying 'Little Fable' to the elaborate waking nightmares of 'Building the Great Wall of China' and the title story 'The Burrow', where an unidentified creature describes its creation of an endlessly elaborate burrow to protect itself from unidentified enemies, but with every trap or tunnel only creating further...

What will you be doing when the world ends? Nick Hancock’s waiting for a plane when someone tries to kill him. He wakes up in a puddle of his own blood to a new world. A dying one. An alien race has invaded Earth, and humanity can’t stop them. But there are others. Aliens from far and wide who’ve settled on Earth or crashed here.

Album provides an unparalleled look into Roland Barthes's life of letters. It presents a selection of correspondence, from his adolescence in the 1930s through the height of his career and up to the last years of his life, covering such topics as friendships, intellectual adventures, politics, and aesthetics. It offers an intimate look at Barthes's thought processes and the everyday reflection behind the composition of his works, as well as a rich archive of epistolary friendships, spanning half a century, among the leading intellectuals of the day.Barthes was one of the great observers of language and culture, and Album shows him in his element, immersed in heady French intellectual culture and the daily struggles to maintain a writing life. Barthes's correspondents include Maurice Blanchot, Michel Butor, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marthe Robert, and Jean...

Thieves in the Night : Chronicle of an Experiment was written in 1946. Originally intended to be the first of a trilogy, Koestler later concluded that the book stood on its own and plans for further novels made redundant.Based on the author's own experiences in a kibbutz, it sets up a stage in describing the historical roots of the conflict between Arabs and Jewish settlers in the British ruled Palestine.The book tackles many subjects, such as Zionism and idealism. Koestler was Zionist early in life, but later abandoned the idea.The title is a Biblical reference, quoted on the title page: "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night." (2 Peter 3:10)

An urban fantasy with everything from romance to mystery, The Witch's Bell Series follow a feisty witch, Ebony Bell, as she solves magical malady after magical malady.Ebony has had just enough time to pat her hair down and wipe the ash and magical residue off her heels, before yet another ridiculously powerful entity starts threatening her lovely little town again. This time she's a little distracted though. Sure, there might be something incredibly sinister going on underneath the streets of Vale. And sure, she keeps finding rather large, worrying gaps in her memory. But the Wizards are in town for their yearly get-together, and one of them just so happens to be the most handsome magic man she's ever seen. And he even wears fancy suits.But pleasant distractions aside, Vale has no intention of letting her sit this one out. Soon Ebony is chasing after monsters in the sewer, having tea with wanted criminals, and finding out just how to deal with a certain...