If You Could Read My Voice is a compilation of the best pieces from Mark Daniel Curley's nighttime AM radio show, SportstatiC, from the year 1998. This compilation was originally written and printed, in a very limited but unpublished run, in early 1999. The content has been preserved in its original state for this e-book, from Preface to Table of Contents to Main Text to Index. This was Mark Daniel Curley's first crack at professional writing, and his subsequent newspaper columns, book, an...

Scott Freeh is a handsome, prodigious 30-year-old Wharton C.P.A. and Renaissance man whose successful California Web business lets him leave the daily grind behind with over $300 million free and clear. Needing more than Florida fun and philanthropy to fill his days, he soon embarks on a new venture in his home state of Massachusetts. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that a great many sacrifices may be required. The remaining pages are a dark, sensuous, relentless, and often seriocomi...

Love, in some of the infinite ways we may know it, is the shared concern of these stories, which have been chosen from among the hundreds that have appeared in the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction series.More than seventy volumes, which include approximately eight hundred stories, have won the Flannery O’Connor Award. This stunning trove of always engaging, often groundbreaking short fiction is the common source for this anthology on love—and for planned anthol...

Travel, and the exhilarating experiences it offers us, is the shared concern of these stories, which have been chosen from among the hundreds that have appeared in the prestigious Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction series.More than seventy volumes, which include approximately eight hundred stories, have won the Flannery O'Connor Award. This stunning trove of always engaging, often groundbreaking short fiction is the common source for this anthology on childhood—and for plann...

Front porches, family cars, playgrounds, swimming pools: from such familiar haunts of childhood, these stories look out on the world through young eyes and hearts. Wise beyond their years—or soon to be—Ruthie, Omar, J.J., and the other kids in these stories veer in and out of touching distance to hard lessons about trust, love, and mortality. However engaged or aloof, grownups are always nearby. Far-from-perfect emissaries to the realm of adulthood, they pose questions for children even as...

In Daniel Curley's stories, passionate rage and cool, clear hatred alter the terms of even the most basic human relationships, etching odd patterns on the surface of the natural world—a man applies the methods of Mata-Hari to the task of keeping track of his ex-wife; the victim of a pickpocket plots psychological revenge on the criminal population of a Mexico City bus line; a spurned lover summons all his strength and courage to liberate a roomful of snakes held captive by his rival.

The lovely, lonely princess wandered along the edge of a pond thinking about finding a mate, but her fathers kingdom was poor, and no noble had ever asked for her hand. Suddenly a large bullfrog jumped up on the bank and said, “Kiss me and you will find a mate.”“What do I have to lose?” thought the princess, as she stooped down and kissed the frog.Within moments, two frogs jumped happily into the pond and swam out together among the lily pads.Not what ...

This "impressive crime anthology" presents a century of American greed, crime and comeuppance by some of the genre's greatest authors ( Publishers Weekly, starred review).James Ellroy, the author of such noir classics as The Black Dahlia and L.A. Confidential, joins forces with award-winning editor Otto Penzler to present this treasure trove of stories. Ranging from the 1920s to the present day, this collection represents noir at its best...

A journalist. A sniper. A city on edge.As investigative journalist Andrea Kellner is heading out of Chicago for a long weekend, a driver in front of her is shot and killed. The city’s gang violence problems have spilled onto a major expressway for the third time in a month.Or is something else at play?Her career faltering and marriage all but over, Andrea desperately needs a win, provided she can find out what’s really behind the shootings.W...

No one burned hotter than Eve Babitz. Possessing skin that radiated “its own kind of moral laws,” spectacular teeth, and a figure that was the stuff of legend, she seduced seemingly everyone who was anyone in Los Angeles for a long stretch of the 1960s and ’70s. One man proved elusive, however, and so Babitz did what she did best, she wrote him a book. Slow Days, Fast Company is a full-fledged and full-bodied evocation of a bygone Southern California that far exceeds its mash-note...

“if you read this after I am deadIt means I made it”-“The Creation Coffin”The People Look like Flowers at Last is the last of five collections of never-before published poetry from the late great Dirty Old Man, Charles Bukowski.In it, he speaks on topics ranging from horse racing to military elephants, lost love to the fear of death. He writes extensively about writing, and about talking to people about writers such as Camus, Hemingway, and Stein. He writes ...

Driving a cab for more than 30 years Gene Salomon has collected a remarkable selection of stories. He shares the very best in this unforgettable memoir.Eugene has had everyone in the back of his cab: Lauren Bacall, Leonardo di Caprio, John McEnroe, Sean Penn and Dennis Hopper, Simon and Garfunkel, Robin Williams, Norman Mailer, Diane Keaton and, yes, even Kevin Bacon.He’s taken all sorts of people for a ride: Mafiosi, hookers, the rich and famous, down and outs, young lover...