As a young boy growing up in California, Claude Boyd rode precariously down the famous San Francisco hills on homemade coasters made of doors and old roller skate wheels. As a teenager, he chased purse snatchers in his father's 1939 Graham Paige automobile. With such an adventurous beginning to his life, it's no surprise that Claude Boyd's autobiography is filled with many more lively anecdotes, one of which involves a fake turkey made from a brown paper bag and two turkey legs, placed in the street for some unsuspecting soul to discover on Thanksgiving. He describes his enlistment in the Army and his subsequent year spent in peacetime Korea, where his first assignment is to set up a prison library. After he earns his college degree, he eventually moves to Thule Air Force Base in northern Greenland, where he begins a new experience in the arctic tundra. Boyd concludes with the story of his transcontinental courtship and subsequent marriage that has lasted over fifty years. Combined with photographs, Claude Boyd's humorous true story captures the essence of what life was really all about before, during, and after World War II.

A New York Times Notable Book Winner of the Bram Stoker Award "One of the best collections of the 21st century." — Stephen King A chilling collection of psychological suspense and literary horror from the multiple award-winning author of the national bestseller The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts. A masterful anthology featuring nineteen pieces of short fiction, Growing Things is an exciting glimpse into Paul Tremblay’s fantastically fertile imagination. In “The Teacher,” a Bram Stoker Award nominee for best short story, a student is forced to watch a disturbing video that will haunt and torment her and her classmates’ lives. Four men rob a pawn shop at gunpoint only to vanish, one-by-one, as they speed away from the crime scene in “The Getaway.” In “Swim Wants to Know If It’s as Bad as Swim Thinks,” a meth addict kidnaps her daughter from her estranged mother as their town is terrorized by a giant monster . . . or not. Joining these haunting works are stories linked to Tremblay’s previous novels. The tour de force metafictional novella “Notes from the Dog Walkers” deconstructs horror and publishing, possibly bringing in a character from A Head Full of Ghosts, all while serving as a prequel to Disappearance at Devil’s Rock. “The Thirteenth Temple” follows another character from A Head Full of Ghosts—Merry, who has published a tell-all memoir written years after the events of the novel. And the title story, “Growing Things,” a shivery tale loosely shared between the sisters in A Head Full of Ghosts, is told here in full. From global catastrophe to the demons inside our heads, Tremblay illuminates our primal fears and darkest dreams in startlingly original fiction that leaves us unmoored. As he lowers the sky and yanks the ground from beneath our feet, we are compelled to contemplate the darkness inside our own hearts and minds.

From football games at Kezar Stadium to a perfectly broiled Zim burger, San Franciscans have fond memories of the decades after World War II. Dressing up for a movie at the Fox Theatre on Market Street, catching the train at the old S.P. Station on Third and Townsend, taking the streetcar downtown to see magnificent displays in the Emporium's windows or spending a day at Golden Gate Park, the outside lands of San Francisco were teeming with youngsters and the young-at-heart alike. Western Neighborhoods Project columnist and San Francisco native Frank Dunnigan offers a charming collection of nostalgic vignettes about the thriving Western communities of unforgettable people and places that defined generations.

"The Gentleman From San Francisco And Other Stories" by using Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is a group of shifting stories approximately the intricacies of human emotions, relationships, and cultural standards in early twentieth-century Russia. The foremost narrative, which follows the reports of a wealthy Russian gentleman who reveals himself adrift within the bustling city of San Francisco, serves as the collection's heart. Bunin's evocative phrases and sharp observations transport readers to a global of luxurious, longing, and existential introspection. Each narrative offers a glimpse into the lives of numerous characters, ranging from aristocracy dealing with the lack of function to lowly peasants negotiating the difficulties of everyday existence. Themes of affection, grief, and the passage of time at some stage in the book, as Bunin investigates the fleeting essence of human existence and the long-lasting electricity of remembrance. Bunin conveys the center of the human experience via poetic language and a deep experience of empathy, prompting readers to mirror at the well-known truths that unite us all. Bunin's "The Gentleman From San Francisco And Other Stories" cements his reputation as one among Russia's main literary abilities, imparting readers with a gripping exam of the human soul in all of its complexities.

Newcomers and visitors can still enjoy iconic San Francisco with activities like riding a cable car or taking in the view from Twin Peaks. But San Franciscans cherish memories of a place quite different. They reminisce about seafood dinners at A. Sabella's on Fisherman's Wharf, the enormous Christmas tree in Union Square's City of Paris department store and taking a handful of dimes to Playland-at-the-Beach for arcade games and cotton candy. In his second volume of these unforgettable stories, local author and historian Frank Dunnigan vividly recalls the many details that made life special in the City by the Bay for generations.

Powerful, evocative stories from the first Russian author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature A Penguin Classic A much neglected literary figure, Ivan Bunin is one of Russia's major writers and ranks with Tolstoy and Chekhov at the forefront of the Russian Realists. Drawing artistic inspiration from his personal experience, these stories are set in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia of his youth, in the countries that he visited and in France, where he spent the last thirty years of his life. In the title story, a family's tour of fashionable European resorts comes to an unexpected end; "Late Hour" describes an old man's return to the little Russian town in the steppes that he has not seen since his early youth; "Mitya's Love" explores the darker emotional reverberations of sexual experience. Throughout his stories, there is a sense of the precariousness of existence, an omnipresent awareness of the impermanence of human aspirations and achievements. 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.

The Lupus Kid and Other Stories For a year Bob Wendell recorded the path his life took through illness and despair. He was alive and grateful for that much. But the turn his relationship would take, and the downfall of those around him, made Wendell question the very meaning of his existence. Set under the gray skies of the Pacific Northwest, The Lupus Kid and Other Stories gives more than insight into life with chronic illness; it provides a glimpse into the human condition and the struggle to maintain dignity and hope. And that while hope doesn't come easily, it is sometimes found in the most unlikely places. "But tomorrow comes and even as agonizingly slowly as the days pass, they nonetheless do. And whether you're having the time of your life, or the hell of your life, they pass in a collective whole and are gone, irretrievably so." From The Lupus Kid and Other Stories