The first collection of short stories from the pen of Michael McGuire.

The Devil Inside Me is a real-life, twisted account of Joshua T Berglan's life that started with privilege and ended with his loss of freedom, sanity, family, money, home, and health. Where did things go wrong?

Posession. Murder. Mayhem. Let the games begin... Exorcism isn’t a job, it’s a calling—and a curse. Just ask Morgan Kingsley, a woman who has a stronger aura than any Demon. Or so she thought. Now, in a pair of black leather pants and a kick-ass tattoo, Morgan is heading back to Philadelphia after a nasty little exorcism—and her life is about to be turned upside down…by the Demon that’s gotten inside her. Not just any Demon. Six foot five inches of dark, delicious temptation, this one is to die for—that is, if he doesn’t get Morgan killed first. Because while some humans vilify Demons and others idolize them, Morgan’s Demon is leading a war of succession no human has ever imagined. For a woman trying to live a life, and hold on to the almost-perfect man, being possessed by a gorgeous rebel Demon will mean a wild ride of uninhibited thrills, shocking surprises, and pure, unadulterated terror. . . .

Morgan Kingsley, an exorcist with an attitude, returns in this paranormal fantasy follow-up to "The Devil Inside"--but this time a demon is living inside her and Morgan must do everything she can to protect him for the sake of herself and humanity. Original.

This collection of remarkable stories depicts realistic vignettes of Himalayan life; from the predicament of hill women to the preservation of hill ecology and the devastation that callous commercialism brings to them. Standing out among these vignettes are stories of lust that depict a monk who has the passionate desires of any young man or nostalgia about courtesan life in Nawabi Lucknow, the tragic life of a village woman who becomes the fourth wife of an impotent man or the story of an estranged wife whose husband lives the secret life of a deviant in the title story and the touching love between a scrap seller and his wife. A Secret Life on The Alaknanda depicts various facets of life with a sensitivity that makes this collection memorable. Told in a traditional narrative this is a collection worthy of one's time.

A man who does not recognise his own face, an aristocrat who keeps his amputated limbs in jars on the shelf, an infant that commits suicide, a cat that is secretly writing a novel, a rooster that rebels against fate -- those are some of the characters that make Bahram Sadeqi's stories intriguing, incomparable and inimitable. Sadeqi is an original story-teller who depicts familiar facts and mundane realities in such a way that shocks us to the core and makes us call everything into question. With a subtle irony reminiscent of Poe, Kafka and Marquez, he engages us in an intricate quest to explore the meaning of life, death and the cosmos. Considering the slight body of work Sadeqi left behind after his untimely death, one cannot help but be struck by the impact his work has had on Persian literature nevertheless. Sadeqi consistently transgressed established literary ideologies with an easy confidence, pioneering an entirely new style of literature and presenting his own unique perspective on the human condition. His presence in contemporary Persian prose fiction was like that of a lone meteorite: appearing in a blinding flash, instantly yet fleetingly illuminating its surroundings, then abruptly fading into the darkness, leaving only a completely original, overwhelming and fantastic trail, the remainder of something singularly magnificent that we cannot hope to ever see repeated. Ever since he first published his stories in literary journals as a young writer, Sadeqi's works have been widely reprinted, finding vast audiences among each new generation of Iranians. This collection contains some of Sadeqi's best short stories, as well as Malakut, his magnum opus, a novella that took everyone by surprise in the 1960s, still fascinating readers and critics alike.

The modem Brazilian short story begins with the mature work of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), acclaimed almost unanimously as Brazil's greatest writer. Collectively, these nineteen stories are representative of Machado's unique style and world view, and this translation doubles the number of his stories previously available in English. The stories in this volume reflect Machado's post-1880 emphasis on social satire and experimentation in psychological realism. If he had continued to produce the moralistic love stories and parlor intrigues of his earlier fiction, Machado's legacy would have been an entertaining but inconsequent body of work. However, by 1880 he had begun a devastating satirical assault on society through his fiction. In spite of his ruthlessness, Machado does at times reveal an ironic sympathy for his characters. He is not indifferent to human conflict but uses humor and irony to stress the absurdity of these conflicts, acted out against the backdrop of an indifferent universe. Such a spectacle creates a sense of helplessness that can only inspire wistful amusement. In his technical mastery of the short story. Machado was decades ahead of his contemporaries and can still be considered more modern than most of the modernists themselves. That his stories elicit such strong and diverse reactions today is a tribute to their richness, complexity, and significance.