Jordan

Bruna Guedes

Husain Kothari

FRNK

Uendi Prifti

Abdul Hasib

Loughlin Sullivan

Delaney Knopp

Auriel W

Blake Molmen

Dani Shahar

Luis Javier Campos nieto

Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, these superb stories share Vonnegut’s audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.Alternative cover edition here 

1968 short story collection by Kurt Vonnegut

"It began as a mistake." By middle age, Henry Chinaski has lost more than twelve years of his life to the U.S. Postal Service. In a world where his three true, bitter pleasures are women, booze, and racetrack betting, he somehow drags his hangover out of bed every dawn to lug waterlogged mailbags up mud-soaked mountains, outsmart vicious guard dogs, and pray to survive the day-to-day trials of sadistic bosses and certifiable coworkers.This classic 1971 novel--the one that catapulted its author to national fame--is the perfect introduction to the grimly hysterical world of legendary writer, poet, and Dirty Old Man Charles Bukowski and his fictional alter ego, Chinaski.

Written in 1914 but not published until 1925, a year after Kafka’s death, The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, The Trial has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers.

Pulp (novel), Charles BukowskiPulp is the last completed novel by Los Angeles poet and writer Charles Bukowski. It was published in 1994, shortly before Bukowski's death. Pulp is a pulp fiction novel which acts also as a meta-pulp. Pulp comments on the obsessions of the pulp fiction genre, making fun of itself as stereotypical of the genre in the grimiest form. Bukowski dedicates the story to "bad writing", as Bukowski did not plan his mystery novel well and frequently wrote Nicky Belane into holes from which he could not escape. Bukowski wrote some of his most violent, cynical, sarcastic, and shocking work during the final months of his life. Many critics have agreed this novel exemplifies Bukowski showing an acceptance of his own pending mortality.تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیستم ماه ژوئن سال 2010 میلادیعنوان: عامه‌ پسند؛ نویسنده: چارلز بوکوفسکی؛ مترجم: پیمان خاکسار؛ مشخصات نشر: تهران، نشر چشمه، 1388، در 198 ص، شابک: 9789643625726؛ چاپ سوم 1389؛ چاپ پنجم 1390؛ چاپ ششم 1393؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان امریکایی - سده 20 معنوان: عامه‌ پسند؛ نویسنده: چارلز بوکوفسکی؛ مترجم: محمدصادق سبط الشیخ؛ مشخصات نشر: تهران، چلچله، 1394، در 332 ص،؛ شابک: 9789646553835؛ کتابنامه داردراوی داستان، نیکی بلان - کارآگاه خصوصی - ست؛ که سعی می‌کند در مورد نویسنده کلاسیک فرانسوی سلین و گنجشک قرمز تحقیق کند. کنکاش نیکی بلان، او را گام به گام در زندگی سطح پایین شهری فرومی‌برد؛ چیزی که در دیگر نوشته‌ های بوکوفسکی نیز موضوعی طبیعی است. کتاب با دارا بودن رگه‌ هایی از نوشته‌ های علمی تخیلی، و فوق طبیعی، توسط خود بوکوفسکی به «بد نوشتن» تقدیم شده‌ است. ا. شربیانی

In what is widely hailed as the best of his many novels, Charles Bukowski details the long, lonely years of his own hardscrabble youth in the raw voice of alter ego Henry Chinaski. From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, women, and the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of D. H. Lawrence, "Ham on Rye" offers a crude, brutal, and savagely funny portrait of an outcast's coming-of-age during the desperate days of the Great Depression.

The book is structured as a series of loosely connected vignettes. Burroughs stated that the chapters are intended to be read in any order. The reader follows the narration of junkie William Lee, who takes on various aliases, from the U.S. to Mexico, eventually to Tangier and the dreamlike Interzone.The vignettes are drawn from Burroughs' own experiences in these places and his addiction to drugs (heroin, morphine, and while in Tangier, majoun [a strong hashish confection] as well as a German opioid, brand name Eukodol, of which he wrote frequently).[source wiki}

Before his 1959 breakthrough, Naked Lunch, an unknown William S. Burroughs wrote Junky, his first novel. It is a candid eye-witness account of times and places that are now long gone, an unvarnished field report from the American post-war underground. Unafraid to portray himself in 1953 as a confirmed member of two socially-despised under classes (a narcotics addict and a homosexual), Burroughs was writing as a trained anthropologist when he unapologetically described a way of life - in New York, New Orleans, and Mexico City - that by the 1940's was already demonized by the artificial anti-drug hysteria of an opportunistic bureaucracy and a cynical, prostrate media. For this fiftieth-anniversary edition, eminent Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has painstakingly recreated the author's original text, word by word, from archival typescripts and places the book's contents against a lively historical background in a comprehensive introduction. Here as well, for the first time, are Burroughs' own unpublished introduction and an entire omitted chapter, along with many "lost" passages, as well as auxiliary texts by Allen Ginsberg and others.

2.5 starsClassic British noir; properly titled Jack's Return Home. I understand why the film version is Get Carter; much snappier. It was written in 1970 and is actually set in Scunthorpe; my hometown, which is why I read it (the blurb is wrong, it's not Doncaster, Jack just changed trains there). The plot is fairly similar to the film, with a few variations. It is very much a book of its time and some of the dialogue is a little obscure ("she was a bit Harrison Marks"; I had to look that one up).The geography is a little out at times; some of the road names were accurate others not; but it wasn't far out. The descriptions of the steelworkers pubs was accurate and the casual violence of the area is true to life. The arrival of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent is depicted, along with the tensions created in the local community. The language is very strong, the women are there as sexual objects or as victims of casual violence. Now I reflect on it, the treatment of all of the female characters is brutal. Carter is an anti-hero; the only reason he is creating havoc is because it is his neice who has been exploited. If it had been someone else's he would not have been bothered. He is a cog in the wheel and ultimately stands no chance of winning. The faults outweighed the nostalgia, but I had to read it; there aren't many novels set in Scunthorpe!!

Detroit businessman Harry Mitchell is a self-made man, happily married for over twenty-two years and a pillar of the community. But then he slips--he meets a young "model" and begins an affair. One night he arrives at his girlfriend's apartment and finds more than he bargained for. Two masked men have caught his misdemeanors on camera and now they want a cool hundred grand. But they've picked the wrong man, because Harry Mitchell doesn't get mad--he gets even.

There are some terrible reviews of SH5 floating around Goodreads, but one particularly awful sentiment is that Slaughterhouse-Five isn't anti-war.This is usually based on the following quote. "It had to be done," Rumfoord told Billy, speaking of the destruction of Dresden."I know," said Billy."That's war.""I know. I'm not complaining""It must have been hell on the ground.""It was," said Billy Pilgrim."Pity the men who had to do it.""I do.""You must have had mixed feelings, there on the ground.""It was all right," said Billy. "Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that on Tralfamadore."For context, Mr. Rumfoord is an old military historian described as "hateful and cruel" who wants to see weaklings like Billy exterminated.On Tralfamadore, Billy was introduced to the revelation that all things happen exactly as they do, and that they will always happen that way, and that they will never happen any other way. Meaning, time is all at once. The aliens, incidentally, admit to destroying the universe in a comical accident fated far into the future, and they're very sorry, but so it goes. &lt;- passive acceptanceThe entire story up to this point has been about Billy, buffeted like a powerless pathetic leaf in a storm, pushed this way and that by forces entirely outside his tiny purview. He lays catatonically in a hospital bed after the plane crash and the death of his wife, and all the time traveling back and forth from Dresden where toddlers and families and old grannies and anti-war civilians were burned alive in a carefully organized inferno (so it goes), and Billy is about ready to agree to absolutely anything. It can't be prevented. It can't be helped.You're powerless, after a while. What hope have we, or anyone caught in the middle of a war, or even the poor soldiers who are nothing but pawns and children (hence the children's crusade), to influence these gigantic, global events? Therefore, Billy agrees with the hateful, the cruel Mr. Rumfoord, who is revising his military history of WWII, having previously forgotten to mention the Dresden bombing. Women and children, not evaporated instantly, but melted slowly by chemicals and liquid flame, their leftovers, according to Billy, lying in the street like blackened logs, or in piles of families who died together in their little homes. Incidentally, how can anything be pro-war or anti-war? Because being anti-war is a bit like being anti-conflict, anti-death, and anti-suffering. Is there a book that's pro these things? Is there a book that touches on the subject of war and is not against it?We don't support wars, though we are sometimes forced to accept them. Anyone who thinks that the bombing of Dresden was necessary is delusional.It's like saying, "yo, look how they bombed these innocents - that shit was wrong! Let's go bomb some innocents, too."That's the sad truth of it.

In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s  most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.

Librarian note: Alternate cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.

novel by Kurt Vonnegut; fictional memoirs of a Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American who moved to Germany in 1923 at age 11, and later became a well-known playwright and Nazi propagandist

A teenage girl is found raped and murdered and a boy who was known to have sex with her is the prime suspect. The newspaper turns the case into a circus and the town turns against the boy? Did he do it? And will it even matter when the dust settles?This wasn't quite what I expected from old Mr. Happy, Jim Thompson. Yeah, it has the feel of a lot of Jim Thompson books in that all people are bastards but it wasn't quite as bleak as the others. Sure, the Talbert boy went through the wringer and his parents and the lawyers didn't have a picnic but the main characters got off kind of light.The thing that I really liked about The Criminal was the use of a variety of viewpoint characters. The Criminal is a pretty short book but Thompson used close to ten viewpoint characters and gave each a unique voice. While it didn't have the usual brutality of a Jim Thompson novel, The Criminal did a great job at showing Thompson's skill as a writer. I wouldn't say it's a top tier Thompson, it's shoulders above some of his weaker efforts. It's an easy three stars.

“David Goodis is the mystery man of hardboiled fiction.”—Geoffrey O’BrienIn Street of No Return, we meet the pathetic figure of Whitey. Once upon a time Whitey was a crooner with a million-dollar voice and a standing invitation from any woman who heard him use it. Until he had the bad luck to fall for Celia. And then nothing would ever be the same.In Street of No Return, David Goodis works the magic that made him one of the most distinctive voices in hard-boiled fiction, creating a claustrophobic universe in which wounded men and women collide with cataclysmic force.

A woman, a survivor of a failed murder attempt by a person dubbed "The Half-Moon Killer" by the police, and her husband must find the connecting thread between herself, six other women, and the killer before the killer strikes at her again.

A bomb attack in a cinema in Palermo kills all the fellows of Attardi's clan a part from Cocchi. He immediately understands that the author of the bomb attack is Daniello from Don Corrasco's clan. Cocchi is determined to revenge. His actions, including the Corrasco's daughter kidnap, in a Palermo in which also the police is corrupted, will soon destroy the old equilibrium giving the way to an escalation of violence that won't save anyone. If Cocchi will survive to the mafia war he will be the new boss for sure.

Just out of prison, ex-con Ugo Piazza meets his former employer, a psychopathic gangster Rocco who enjoys sick violence and torture. Both the gangsters and the police believe Ugo has hidden $300,000 that should have gone to an American drug syndicate boss.

Arms dealer Yolaf Peterson aims to make a sale to guerilla Mongo, but the money is locked in a bank safe, the combination known only to Professor Xantos, a prisoner of the Americans. Yolaf agrees to free Xantos, accompanied by reluctant guerilla Basco, but a former business partner of Yolaf's- John 'The Wooden Hand', has other ideas.

After a high-class party in Rome, there's an assault. The victim is injured but lives. Andrea, an investigative reporter who drinks too much, is assigned the story. Then, always on Tuesdays, there are a series of murders. At each crime scene, a glove is left with a finger cut off for each victim. After four murders, Andrea thinks he's making progress, but by this time he may himself be a suspect, and someone he loves is in danger.

A young girl is brutally murdered somewhere in France. Sometime later, the same thing happens to the daughter of a well-known sculptor. This time the parents (the sculptor and his wife) start investigating, and soon find they are in way over their head. Meanwhile, the body-count keeps rising as the killer now starts butchering all those who find out too much...

Nora is a young tourist traveling through Rome which takes a sudden turn when she witnesses a murder by a serial killer that the police have sought for years for the so-called Alphabet Killings, and Nora soon finds herself in way-over-her-head trouble when the police want her cooperation to catch the killer while the mystery killer soon targets her for his next victim.

In 19th-century France, teenage Teresa Garan is the daughter of a cabaret-singer single mother. A friend of her mother pays for her to have one year at Ms. Fourneau's boarding school. Soon Teresa learns that the school is also a prison: Ms. Fourneau keeps everything locked up. Her protégée, the wicked student Irene Tupan, keeps watch over the other girls and uses her power to bully and torture them. Ms. Fourneau's teenage son is a peeping Tom and his mother keeps him secluded from the girls, saying they're worthless and he needs to find a girl who's more "like his mother." When students start vanishing, their classmates think they're running away, but they're actually being abducted and murdered by a serial killer. When Irene discovers that Teresa is secretly meeting Luis, she tortures her until Teresa decides to flee in the middle of the night. What will happen to her?

Isabella, a young model is murdered by a mysterious masked figure at a boarding house run by Max Morlan and his lover Countess Christina Como. When Isabella's boyfriend is suspected of the killing, her diary, which apparently has some incriminating evidence linking her to the killer, disappears, the masked killer begins killing off all the models in and around the house to find the diary.

Someone is strangling coeds in Perugia. The only clue is that the killer owns a red and black scarf, and police are stumped. American exchange student Jane and her friends decide to take a break from classes by going up to Danielle's uncle's villa in the country. Unfortunately the killer decides to follow, and the women begin suffering a rapid attrition problem.

On her way back home, a solitary woman picks up a frail flower, and then, she drops her key. Exhausted, she finally enters her home and falls asleep in a deep and comfortable armchair. However, even in her intimate dreams, an intangible and elusive dark presence blemishes her afternoon nap--she tries to catch it; but, in vain. Now, as, more and more, the already confined environment becomes a maze-like purgatory, bizarre but perfect doppelgängers of her physical self start materialising in the house, catching a glimpse of a record player playing a never-ending tune, a telephone, and a sharp, serrated bread knife. The blade thirsts for blood; the woman hungers for a way out. Can the undivided mind/matter entity escape consciousness?

A film that defies conventional logic and storytelling, fueled by its dark nightmarish atmosphere and compellingly disturbing visuals. Henry Spencer is a hapless factory worker on his vacation when he finds out he's the father of a hideously deformed baby. Now living with his unhappy, malcontent girlfriend, the child cries day and night, driving Henry and his girlfriend to near insanity.

A former CIA-assassin, on the run from his former employers, gets stranded in a small Wyoming town and stays to help a local farmer and his daughter fight the corrupt sheriff who's under the thumb of a ruthless land developer out to evict all the farmers from their homes.

In Los Angeles, after a violent drug rip-off, the Los Angeles Police Department detectives find the identity of the trio - the sadistic I.Q. of 150 and college graduate Lenny "Pluto" Franklyn; his not so bright buddy in San Quentin Ray Malcolm; and his girlfriend Fantasia. Their further investigation indicates that the criminals are fleeing to Star City, Arkanas, and LAPD detective Dud Cole and his partner John McFeely contact the local Chief of Police Dale 'Hurricane' Dixon and they head to the little town. The yokel family man Dale, who is used to resolve domestic issues, is fascinated with the chance to participate of a manhunt and befriends the two detectives. But when he sees the picture of Fantasia, he recognizes her as Lila Walker and is haunted by his past, hiding a secret about Lila Walker.

The soldier Nick Garcos returns back home from the war very happy, with gifts for his parents Yanko and Parthena Garcos and money in his pocket to open a business and marry his girlfriend Polly Faber. Out of the blue, Nick realizes that his father has lost both legs. Yanko, who was a truck driver, says that he was cheated by a dealer, Mike Figlia, in a San Francisco market when he delivered a truckload of tomatoes but was not paid. He believes that his accident was caused by Figlia's gangsters. Yanko also says that he then sold the truck to a driver named Ed Kinney who has not paid him. Nick meets Ed and says that he will take back the truck, but Ed proposes a deal with apples, where they may earn a great amount of money. Nick invests his savings in another truck and buys apples from a Polish farmer. They need to drive directly to the market in San Francisco without sleeping to keep the fruit fresh; but Ed's truck has problem with its axle, and Nick arrives first. Mike Figlia hires the Italian whore Rica to distract Nick but she falls for him and tells him that Mike is robbing his cargo. Mike is forced to share his earnings with Nick, who earns a large amount. Then Nick calls Polly and asks her to meet him to get married. Rica tells Nick that Polly is only interested in his money. When Nick is robbed by Mike's gangsters, he learns who really loves him. But Nick still has to settle the score with Mike.

War veteran Frank Enley seems to be a happily married small-town citizen until he realises Joe Parkson is in town. It seems Parkson is out for revenge because of something that happened in a German POW camp, and when a frightened Enley suddenly leaves for a convention in L.A., Parkson is close behind.

When the intelligent criminal Erwin "Doc" Riedenschneider is released from prison, he seeks a fifty thousand-dollar investment from the bookmaker Cobby to recruit a small gang of specialists for a million-dollar heist of jewels from a jewelry. Doc is introduced to the lawyer Alonzo D. Emmerich who offers to finance the whole operation and buy the gems immediately after the burglary. Doc hires the safe cracker Louis Ciavelli, the driver Gus Minissi, and the gunman Dix Handley to the heist. His plan works perfectly but bad luck and betrayals compromise the steps after the heist and the gangsters need to flee from the police.

After being away for a few years, working class Steve Thompson returns to his hometown of Los Angeles to move back into the family home with his parents and younger brother. Steve quickly falls into old, familiar routines: getting his old job as a driver at the Horten's Armored Car Service where his Pop works, hanging out at his old watering hole the Round Up bar and restaurant despite many of the faces there having changed, and reuniting with two people, his friend, Police Lt. Pete Ramirez, and his ex-wife, Anna. Ma Thompson knows that despite the two having only lasted as husband and wife for seven months, Steve cannot stay away from Anna, and both Ma and Pete know that Anna is bad news for Steve. And although Steve believes he and Anna have made an emotional connection with each other all over again, he learns that she has ended up marrying gangster, Slim Dundee, a regular at the Round Up. With the emerging circumstance, Steve devises a spur of the moment plan appealing to Slim's crooked side not only to get Anna back but to obtain enough money for he and Anna to escape together. But what some state may not be their true motivation, which affects what happens between Steve, Anna and Slim.

Det. Sgt. Mark Dixon always wanted to be something his old man wasn't: a guy on the right side of the law. But for a good guy, he's awfully vicious. After several complaints over his roughing people up, his boss, Insp. Nicholas Foley, demotes him. Foley tells him he's a good man, but needs to get his head on straight and be more like Det. Lt. Thomas, who has just gotten a promotion. Meanwhile, Tommy Scalise has an illegal dice game going and is looking to make a sucker out of the rich Ted Morrison, who was brought in by Ken Paine and his beautiful wife Morgan. She figures out too late her husband is using her as a decoy. Paine strikes her when she refuses to play along. The chivalrous Morrison intervenes but Paine knocks him out cold. That seems to be the worst of it, but later it turns out the guy is dead; and Paine looks guilty. Soon Dixon has fallen in love with Morgan - but not before losing his temper again and committing a terrible deed that he tries to cover up. Morgan's father, a tale-spinning taxi driver, may take the rap for it. It's up to Dixon to try to pin the blame on Scalise.

Harry Mitchell, an L.A. manufacturer with a fancy car, a nice house, and a wife running for city council, has his life overturned when three masked blackmailers appear with a video tape of Harry and his young mistress. He's been set up, and they want $105,000. To protect his wife's political ambitions, Harry won't go to the police; instead, he shines them on and then doesn't pay. They up their demands, so he goes on the offensive, tracking them down and trying to turn one against the other. Their sociopathic leader, Alan, responds with violence toward the mistress and menace toward Harry's wife. Will Harry let up and pay off Alan or can he find some other solution?

American singer-songwriter, musician, actor, film producer, and boxer (1929-2000)

Anna

Alon Shai

When Jack Kerouac’s On the Road first appeared in 1957, readers instantly felt the beat of a new literary rhythm. A fictionalised account of his own journeys across America with his friend Neal Cassady, Kerouac’s beatnik odyssey captured the soul of a generation and changed the landscape of American fiction for ever.Influenced by Jack London and Thomas Wolfe, Kerouac always wanted to be a writer, but his true voice only emerged when he wrote about his own experiences in On the Road. Leaving a broken marriage behind him, Sal Paradise (Kerouac) joins Dean Moriarty (Cassady), a tearaway and former reform school boy, on a series of journeys that takes them from New York to San Francisco, then south to Mexico. Hitching rides and boarding buses, they enter a world of hobos and drifters, fruit-pickers and migrant families, small towns and wide horizons. Adrift from conventional society, they experience America in the raw: a place where living is hard, but ‘life is holy and every moment is precious’.With its smoky, jazz-filled atmosphere and its restless, yearning spirit of adventure, On the Road left its mark on the culture of the late 20th century, influencing countless books, films and songs. Kerouac’s prose is remarkable both for its colloquial swing and for the pure lyricism inspired by the American landscape – ‘the backroads, the black-tar roads that curve among the mournful rivers like Susquehanna, Monongahela, old Potomac and Monocacy’. This Folio Society edition is illustrated with evocative photographs of Kerouac and the landscapes of 1950s America. Now acknowledged as a modern classic, On the Road remains a thrilling and poignant story of the road less travelled.

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A young girl witnesses her brother murder a man through a reflection in a mirror. Twenty years later the mirror is shattered, freeing his evil spirit, which seeks revenge for his death.

Charles (Jean Gabin), a sixtyish career criminal fresh out of jail, rejects his wife's plan for a quiet life of bourgeois respectability. He enlists a former cellmate, Francis (Alain Delon), to assist him in pulling off one final score, a carefully planned assault on the vault of a Cannes casino. Bad luck and Francis's lack of professionalism set the caper maddeningly askew, and the stolen cash resurfaces in an unexpected manner.

Ex-gangster Willie Parker (Terence Stamp) has betrayed his former "colleagues" and now lives in Spain where he thinks he can hide from their vengeance. But one day, ten years later, two hitmen (Braddock (Sir John Hurt) and Myron (Tim Roth)) show up and kidnap Willie. They are ordered to escort him back to Paris where he should stand trial. But it is a long way to Paris.

Five adults and a child (two parties traveling separately) are stranded in a storm and spend the night in the mansion of an elderly couple who are dollmakers. However, the travelers' young daughter realizes the dolls the couple makes were once wicked humans whom the couple has miniaturized and turned into dolls.

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