Although written a century ago, the sixteen stories by Emilia Pardo Bazan collected in this volume are strikingly relevant to contemporary concerns. Noted for narrative complexity, stylistic variety, and feminist themes, Pardo Bazan's stories explore many aspects of the relationships between men and women. Both outspoken and witty, melancholy and humorous, these stories will interest general readers as well as students and scholars of Spanish literature.

"This is a collection of stories by Emilia Pardo Bazan (1851-1921), a Spanish author who often found the subject matter of her stories in the mysteries and vicissitudes of life. Some of her tales are fictional accounts of actual occurrences or people ("The Pardon," "A Galician Mother," and "The Lady Bandit"); others are a defense of women subjugated by a double standard ("The Guilty Woman" and "The Faithful Fiancee"); a number focus on the figure of the rural priest ("A Descendant of the Cid" and "Don Carmelo's Salvation," for example). One highly symbolic story - "The White Horse" - qualifies Pardo Bazan as the godmother of the Generation of 98, the group of writers who exhorted Spain to begin anew, ridding itself of inertia, apathy, and fixation on past glories. Several of the collected tales are like contemporary suspense thrillers (such as "The Cuff Link" and "The White Hair"), while many others reveal a keen psychological insight ("The Torn Lace," "The Substitute," "Scissors," "The Nurse," and "Rescue"). Pardo Bazan's themes are fear, love, hatred, forgiveness, cruelty, poverty, necrophilia, repentance, homesickness, and madness - that is, naked reality, bitter reality, and often an ugly, vicious reality." "One of the indisputable giants of the nineteenth-century short story is Guy de Maupassant. Pardo Bazan met him (along with Daudet and Zola) in France and considered him - author of "The Horla" - to be the master of short story writers. However, although Maupassant influenced her (most notably in psychological inquiry and careful attention to realistic detail), Pardo Bazan put her own stamp on her stories and developed a style sui generis, the most striking feature of which is brevity." "The essence of Pardo Bazan's approach is to engage the reader as quickly as possible, certainly in the first paragraph, frequently in the first few sentences. Some aspect of a character or an episode is brought to light and the story unfolds rapidly. There are third-person narratives in which the author occasionally injects herself or her point of view. Other narratives are presented wholly in the first person - some by an omniscient narrator, some by the "players"; and, from time to time, Pardo Bazan has someone else tell the story to her, and then as narrator she becomes the audience." "It is entirely plausible that some of her graphic descriptions were intended to blunt accusations of softness (i.e., femininity) that in her era would - foolishly, but automatically - have been associated with a woman writer. Still, when the time came to represent the plight of women - in terms of natural, understandable sexual needs and intellectual acceptance - Pardo Bazan captured the anguish and inferior status of her Spanish sisters."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Caterina Albert i Paradis (1869-1966) began her career with a scandal. Her dramatic monologue "The Infanticide," delivered by a young woman, won prizes and garnered the attention of the Catalan literary world, but its harsh theme drew outrage when the anonymous author was revealed to be a woman. In the tradition of George Eliot, George Sand, and other controversial women authors, Albert had assumed a man's name, Víctor Catala. She continued to write unflinching narratives, mostly in Catalan, of the people and life around her, producing a body of work still enlisted today to help the Catalan language resist the dominance of Peninsular Spanish. ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

In this beautiful love story of "forbidden longing" (New York Times bestselling author Penelope Douglas), a sweet young woman and a rough and tough biker are connected in a way they can’t contain—and they’ll do anything they can to be together. When I was five years old, I told Toren Grace we were going to get married someday. He’d been my closest friend, my protector, and my rock since the day I was born. But during my senior year, our relationship slowly changed. Silly conversations morphed into serious heart-to-hearts. Innocent friendship turned to stolen glances. Then one day, an unexpected kiss changed everything. While that kiss was all I’d ever dreamed of, it knocked Tor clear off his axis. His strong moral compass makes it impossible for him to accept our feelings for each other. Because, not only am I eighteen and fifteen years younger than him, I’m the one person he should never, ever want. Tor is my father’s best friend—my pseudo uncle. Neither one of us can stand to betray or hurt my dad, but we can’t keep our relationship hidden forever. Will there be a way for us to find our happily-ever-after? Or will we all be torn apart? Torn is book one in the All Torn Up series but can be read as a standalone novel.

In Cigar Smoke and Violet Water, a work informed by feminist and narrative theory as well as by linguistic discourse analysis, Joyce Tolliver considers narrative tactics and their cultural context in the nineteenth-century Spanish writer Emilia Pardo Bazan (1851-1921). The critical focus is on the narrative voices in short stories by this writer and on the role gender plays both in narrative dynamics and in the writer's engagement with her public.

Haunting, disquieting, shocking, `The Abyss' - one of the most powerful short stories ever written - is accompanied in this volume by fifteen other stories. Together, they provide a clear account of the lasting legacy of Russia's foremost man of letters of the early twentieth century. As the young Zinaida and her sweetheart, the student Nemovetsky, stroll through the idyllic Russian countryside, their memories, dreams and thoughts about life and the future mingle in the evening breeze. But when night falls, they hasten to retrace their steps back to town through a small wood, where they are accosted by three threatening drunkards, who knock Nemovetsky unconscious and start to chase the girl through the underwood. When the young student comes round, he is confronted with the horror of what has just happened. Haunting, disquieting, shocking, `The Abyss' - one of the most powerful short stories ever written - is accompanied in this volume by fifteen other stories, never translated into English before by Andreyev, including `Silence', `The Thief' and `Lazarus, some of them never translated before into English. Together, they provide a clear account of the lasting legacy of Russia's foremost man of letters of the early twentieth century.