Oedipus the King

"The stories collected here challenge the orthodoxy of what Canadian fiction can and should do, while continually adding fuel to the eternal flame of literature. These are "tales from tomorrow" in that the future is now -- it's 2010...We need more books like this, Canada. If you're one of those who counts themselves among Darwin's illegitimate children as well, check this one out." -- Broken Pencil

"Canadians who read this book will be proud to see that their imaginative landscape is as wildly bizarre - and honest to the truth - as ever." -- Globe & Mail

Social satire, fabulist tales and darkly humorous dystopian visions by some of Canada's most adventurous and distinguished writers.

The 23 stories in Darwin's Bastards take us on a twisted, wild ride into some future times and parallel universes where characters as diverse as a dead boy, a one-legged international actuarial forensics specialist, a pharmaceutical guinea pig, and a far-sighted fetus engage in their own games of the survival of the fittest.

The collection includes the first new short story by William Gibson to be published since 1997, as well as original, previously unpublished fiction by Lee Henderson, Timothy Taylor, Heather O'Neill, Mark Anthony Jarman, and others.

From recent Trillium Award-winner Pasha Malla's hilarious take on the apocalypse, where Prince is the only man left alive, to newcomer Matthew J. Trafford's brilliant triptych about the fallout from the cloning of Jesus Christ, to iconoclast Sheila Heti's meditative romp about beleaguered physicists and Oracle of Delphi-like BlackBerrys, Darwin's Bastards is a fast-moving, thought-provoking reading extravaganza.

43 works of William Shakespeare
English poet and playwright (1564-1616)

This ebook presents a collection of 43 works of William Shakespeare. A dynamic table of contents allows you to jump directly to the work selected.

Table of Contents:
- A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare
- A Lover’s Complaint
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- Coriolanus
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV - Part I
- Henry IV - Part II
- Henry V
- Henry VI - Part I
- Henry VI - Part II
- Henry VI - Part III
- Henry VIII
- History of Troilus and Cressida
- Julius Caesar
- King John
- King Lear
- King Richard II
- King Richard III
- Loues Labour's Lost
- Macbeth
- Measure for Measure
- Much Ado about Nothing
- Othello
- Pericles
- Romeo and Juliet
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- The Comedy of Errors
- The Life of Timon of Athens
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- The Passionate Pilgrim
- The Phoenix and the Turtle
- The Rape of Lucrece
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Winter's Tale
- Troilus and Cressida
- Twelfth Night
- Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Venus and Adonis

The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway's most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal -- a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream.

Here Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the classic theme of courage in the face of defeat, of personal triumph won from loss. Written in 1952, this hugely successful novella confirmed his power and presence in the literary world and played a large part in his winning the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare is a novel by G. K. Chesterton, first published in 1908. The book has been referred to as a metaphysical thriller. Although it deals with anarchists, the novel is not an exploration or rebuttal of anarchist thought; Chesterton's ad hoc construction of "Philosophical Anarchism" is distinguished from ordinary anarchism and is referred to several times not so much as a rebellion against government but as a rebellion against God. The novel has been described as "one of the hidden hinges of twentieth-century writing, the place where, before our eyes, the nonsense-fantastical tradition of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear pivots and becomes the nightmare-fantastical tradition of Kafka and Borges."

At Mile 81 on the Maine turnpike is a boarded up rest stop, a place where high school kids drink and get into the kind of trouble high school kids have always gotten into. It’s the place where Pete Simmons goes when his older brother, who’s supposed to be looking out for him, heads off to the gravel pit to play “paratroopers over the side.” Pete, armed only with the magnifying glass he got for his tenth birthday, finds a discarded bottle of vodka in the boarded up burger shack and drinks enough to pass out.

Not much later, a mud-covered station wagon (which is strange because there hadn’t been any rain in New England for over a week) veers into the Mile 81 rest area, ignoring the sign that says “closed, no services.” The driver’s door opens but nobody gets out.

Doug Clayton, an insurance man from Bangor, is driving his Prius to a conference in Portland. On the backseat are his briefcase and suitcase and in the passenger bucket is a King James Bible, what Doug calls “the ultimate insurance manual,” but it isn’t going to save Doug when he decides to be the Good Samaritan and help the guy in the broken down wagon. He pulls up behind it, puts on his four-ways, and then notices that the wagon has no plates.