When people speak, their words never fully encode what they mean, and the context is always compatible with a variety of interpretations. How can comprehension ever be achieved? Wilson and Sperber argue that comprehension is a process of inference guided by precise expectations of relevance. What are the relations between the linguistically encoded meanings studied in semantics and the thoughts that humans are capable of entertaining and conveying? How should we analyse literal meaning, ap...

What The Three Little Pigs Have to Teach Us is a story about a business on the brink. Clients are threatening to leave because errors are mounting up. Key staff walk. The partners argue about what is the right approach. And the clock keeps ticking.What do the three little pigs have to do with it?Remember that only one pig had enough smarts to build a house that could withstand stinky wolf breath? He designed the house to get the right outcome - to prevent the wolf'...

Includes a 2015 Derringer Award winning short story: "The Kaluki Kings of Queens."Come meet the relatives. As diverse in theme and mood as the city itself, these stories take us from from the explosive excitement of the New York City Marathon to a secret cellar in Queens, from the warmth of an immigrant culture to the moneyed New York art world, and from brutality and poverty to Wall Street's privileged thugs. What the families have in common is this: their lives ha...

Slices of life beyond the tourist's view. By turns funny, tough, and somber, the twenty-one helpings of New York attitude in Fresh Slices reveal neighborhoods both rich and poor, where oldtimers desperately protect their secrets and brand new arrivals indulge dangerous appetites. There is as much variety in tone and setting as in Gotham itself, and yet each of these crime stories also reflects the city's most infectious and unifying principle, that specia...

This book explores the value for literary studies of the model of communication known as relevance theory. Drawing on a wide range of examples—lyric poems by Yeats, Herrick, Heaney, Dickinson, and Mary Oliver, novels by Cervantes, Flaubert, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton—nine of the ten essays are written by literary specialists and use relevance theory both as a broad framing perspective and as a resource for detailed analysis. The final essay, by Deirdre Wilson, co-founder (with Dan Sperb...

Tender-hearted, tough-minded (and occasionally foul-mouthed) girls take center stage in suspenseful tales that are also touching, haunting, and darkly funny. From modern cities and the middle of nowhere--even a place that never existed--come stories about female entrepreneurs, housewives, mothers, daughters, addicts, strivers, wanderers, conquerors, runaways, and women in collision. Whatever you think upon hearing the phrase Girl Trouble, this spectacularly varied e-collection of short cri...

Finally available in the United States, a singular story collection that Time Out declared "unsettlingly brilliant"Astudent's suicide note is not what it seems. A high school football rivalry turns absurd—and deadly. A much-loved cat seems to have been a different animal all along. A pair of identical twins aren't identical at all—or even related. A man finds his own yellowed birth announcement inside a bureau bought at auction. Set in a small upstate New York town, told i...

David Sanders is a penniless poet struggling to hold onto his lowly teaching position in his university’s English department. When his girlfriend, botany professor Claire Dumont, receives an invitation from an old friend to investigate a mystery at his vineyard in Niagara wine country, David convinces her to let him tag along. But what starts out as a lark—a chance to escape their stuffy offices and play Nick and Nora Charles—soon puts these amateur sleuths on the trail of a conspiracy far...

Detective Lane is back, tracking down trouble on the streets of Calgary with his sharp-eyed partner Harper in tow. The duo must find the missing daughter of local radio celebrity Bobbie Reddie before it's too late. But is Bobbie really as saintly as her fans believe? Lane must uncover the truth or this time the danger will hit much closer to home.

With the traumatic events of Foxed behind him, Detective Lane has been promoted to the head of the Calgary Major Crimes Unit, a position that brings new responsibilities, as well as a new partner in the form of headstrong rookie Nigel Li.Lane and Li’s first case, an investigation into the death of a migrant worker, points them in the direction of John A. Jones, the leader of a fractured community in northern Alberta, who has been suspected of bombing oil and gas pipelines....

Detective Lane returns for a fourth time in Smoked, Garry Ryan's darkest mystery to date.When Jennifer Towers is found dead in a graffiti-tagged dumpster, Detectives Lane and Harper must decipher the art to find its artist - and possibly the victim's killer. What begins as an unconventional murder investigation leads to the disturbing discovery of two abused children, whose father becomes a prime suspect in the case. In true Detective Lane form, Lane must protect the damag...

"Vividly drawn characters, history, music, birds, love, loneliness, and wisdom . . . A brilliant book, rich and satisfying as a Viennese torte" (Sy Montgomery, author of Birdology).In this poignant yet rollicking novel, ninety-six-year-old ornithologist Luka Levadski forgoes treatment for lung cancer and moves from Ukraine to Vienna to make a grand exit in a luxury suite at the Hotel Imperial. He reflects on his past while indulging in Viennese cakes and s...