"Four Stories offers honest, uncontrived portrayals of everyday life in early twentieth-century Norway. In Selma Brøter, as a spinster becomes involved in the love affair of her two coworkers, Undset draws a powerful, heartrending contrast between her delusion and their bliss. In Simonsen, an aged clerk gains support from his son and daughter-in-law, but learns it could come at a steep price. A housekeeper finds happiness (and love), in Miss Smith-Tellefesen, until a sudden change results in the loss of everything she has found. In Thodolf, a childless sailor’s wife adopts a baby boy. The sudden appearance of the boy’s birth mother sets off a series of events with an affecting conclusion. Marked with Undset’s distinctive compassionate insight into her characters, Four Stories profoundly captures the oscillation between contentment and sadness which is part and parcel of every human life."--

4 fascinating stories. All interconnected in a way that only YOU can discover. Here’s a keyhole into their lives. Take a sneak peak! Rajani: A corporate honcho, an ardent "Game of Thrones" fan battles with nail biting drama that has conveniently accompanied some of her big decisions. Will she shine again? Lata: A housemaid whose inner demons come alive as she comes face to face with the gruesome truth about her husband, who she has loved despite all his flaws. Will she survive this betrayal? Sarthak: A young boy with pain in his heart, finds a new dimension to his life. Will he ever talk to the stars, again? Gabbar: He may seem like just another dog, but is he? Have you heard his story, from himself? A Journey of companionship, love and forgiveness. In short, “life”~ the way he sees it. These dramatic, gripping and comically sublime stories will change the way you perceive people around you. Get ready for a memorable journey into their world.

If you could live forever, would you want to? Both a fascinating look at the history of our strive for immortality and an investigation into whether living forever is really all it’s cracked up to be. A fascinating work of popular philosophy and history that both enlightens and entertains, Stephen Cave investigates whether it just might be possible to live forever and whether we should want to. He also makes a powerful argument that it’s our very preoccupation with defying mortality that drives civilization. Central to this book is the metaphor of a mountaintop where one can find the Immortals. Since the dawn of humanity, everyone – whether they know it or not—has been trying to climb that mountain. But there are only four paths up its treacherous slope, and there have only ever been four paths. Throughout history, people have wagered everything on their choice of the correct path, and fought wars against those who’ve chosen differently. In drawing back the curtain on what compels humans to “keep on keeping on,” Cave engages the reader in a number of mind-bending thought experiments. He teases out the implications of each immortality gambit, asking, for example, how long a person would live if they did manage to acquire a perfectly disease-free body. Or what would happen if a super-being tried to round up the atomic constituents of all who’ve died in order to resurrect them. Or what our loved ones would really be doing in heaven if it does exist. We’re confronted with a series of brain-rattling questions: What would happen if tomorrow humanity discovered that there is no life but this one? Would people continue to please their boss, vie for the title of Year’s Best Salesman? Would three-hundred-year projects still get started? If the four paths up the Mount of the Immortals lead nowhere—if there is no getting up to the summit—is there still reason to live? And can civilization survive? Immortality is a deeply satisfying book, as optimistic about the human condition as it is insightful about the true arc of history.

"Four short stories set in a hutong, or residential alleyway, of Beijing, China. Yu'er, her grandfather, and their eccentric neighbors experience the magic of everyday life."--

Like everything Bennett does, these stories are playful, witty and painfully observant of ordinary people's foibles. They all have brilliant twists, are immensely entertaining and highly moral. And all are modern classics. The Laying on of Hands The painfully observant account of a memorial service for a masseur to the famous. The Clothes They Stood Up In The comic tale of an elderly couple's trials after their flat is stripped completely bare. Father! Father! Burning Bright The savage satire on the family of a dying man who rules over them from his hospital bed. The Lady in the Van The true story of the eccentric old woman who is invited to live in a homeowner's front garden. She stays there, in her van, for fifteen years. The home is Alan Bennett's. It became a West End hit and a major film, starring Maggie Smith.

This booklet includes a lecture called "Second Generation" and four remarkable short stories by Etgar Keret: "Asthma Attack," "Shoes," "Siren," and "Foreign Language," the last of which has never before appeared in the United States. Openly discussing his family background for the first time, Keret brings to life the confused experience of growing up as an Israeli child of Holocaust survivors. One of Israel¿s leading voices in literature and cinema, Keret mixes wry humor, keen intelligence, and subtle tenderness to create some of the most provocative and entertaining stories of his generation.

Representing four prominent American women writers who flourished in the period following the Civil War, this collection includes "Life in the Iron Mills" by Rebecca Harding Davis, "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Country of the Pointed Firs" by Sarah Orne Jewett, and "Souls Belated" by Edith Wharton. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.