A World Fantasy Award–winning anthology of erotic horror stories, including dark tales of desire by Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen Dedman, Harry Crews, and others.The title of this acclaimed anthology comes from the French term "la petite mort," a seventeenth-century euphemism for orgasm. It was thought that part of a man's life-force was drained from him each time he climaxed. In Little Deaths, renowned horror editor Ellen Datlow collects twenty-two stories th...

A collection of the very best in contemporary first-person journalism compiled by the award-winning former Washington Post reporter and author.Great journalists, at one time or another, have all been characters in their own stories: people with personalities that shaped what they saw and reported, and were touched and changed by the experiences about which they wrote; and innovators who borrowed the storytelling techniques of fiction. The Beholder's Eye...

**Crews’s novel about a boxer with the gift of knocking himself unconscious, with a new foreword by New York Times-bestselling author S. A. CosbyA Penguin Classic**A favorite of longtime Harry Crews fans, The Knockout Artist (1988) portrays Eugene Talmadge Biggs, a young boxer from rural Georgia whose champion rise is diverted by a vulnerability, or gift, for knocking himself unconscious. As he begins to exploit his talents, the notorious...

**“Harry Crews is magnificently twisted and brutally funny.” - Carl HiaasenA Penguin Classic**Golden-haired, with the voice of an angel and a reputation as a healer, the Gospel Singer appeared on the cover of LIFE and brought thousands to their knees in Carnegie Hall. But for all his fame, he is a man in mortal torment that drives him back to his obscure and wretched hometown of Enigma, Georgia. But by the time his Cadillac pulls into Enigma, he discovers an old friend is b...

Harry Crews’s savagely funny and gritty portrait of discipline, obsession, control, and powerShereel Dupont, formerly the secretary Dorothy Turnipseed, trains rigorously at the behest of her boss turned personal trainer Russell (“Muscle”) Morgan, sculpting her body into taut muscles and bone in preparation for the Ms. Cosmos bodybuilding championship. But the arrival of one family — her family, the Turnipseeds — endangers her chance for victory. The ragtag...

**“One of the Finest Memoirs Ever Written” –The New Yorker“A Childhood has been widely recognized as a masterpiece, a Dickensian document of survival and blight in Depression-era Georgia.” –Harper’s**The highly acclaimed memoir of one of the most original American storytellers of the rural SouthA Penguin ClassicHarry Crews grew up as the son of a sharecropper in Georgia at a time when “the rest of the country was j...

Harry Crews’s savagely funny and gritty portrait of discipline, obsession, control, and powerShereel Dupont, formerly the secretary Dorothy Turnipseed, trains rigorously at the behest of her boss turned personal trainer Russell (“Muscle”) Morgan, sculpting her body into taut muscles and bone in preparation for the Ms. Cosmos bodybuilding championship. But the arrival of one family — her family, the Turnipseeds — endangers her chance for victory. The ragtag...

**“Harry Crews is magnificently twisted and brutally funny.” - Carl HiaasenA Penguin Classic**Golden-haired, with the voice of an angel and a reputation as a healer, the Gospel Singer appeared on the cover of LIFE and brought thousands to their knees in Carnegie Hall. But for all his fame, he is a man in mortal torment that drives him back to his obscure and wretched hometown of Enigma, Georgia. But by the time his Cadillac pulls into Enigma, he discovers an old friend is b...

“One of the Finest Memoirs Ever Written” –The New YorkerThe highly acclaimed memoir of one of the most original American storytellers of the rural SouthA Penguin ClassicHarry Crews grew up as the son of a sharecropper in Georgia at a time when “the rest of the country was just beginning to feel the real hurt of the Great Depression but it had been living in Bacon County for years.” Yet what he conveys in this moving, brutal...

**Crews’s novel about a boxer with the gift of knocking himself unconscious, with a new foreword by New York Times-bestselling author S. A. CosbyA Penguin Classic**A favorite of longtime Harry Crews fans, The Knockout Artist (1988) portrays Eugene Talmadge Biggs, a young boxer from rural Georgia whose champion rise is diverted by a vulnerability, or gift, for knocking himself unconscious. As he begins to exploit his talents, the notorious...

Karen Armstrong explains how to practise the religion of compassion that her last books have preached.In November 2009 Armstrong and TED launched The Charter of Compassion, which states that "We call upon all men and women to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion...to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings — even those regarded as enemies." To date, it's been signed by over 48,000 people on the Web, including such figures as The Dal...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A whirlwind tour of fundamental physics and cosmology.”—The Wall Street Journal“Fascinating . . . a wealth of ideas [that] leave us with a clearer understanding of modern physics in all its invigorating complexity.”—Los Angeles TimesWhen and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? What is the nature of reality? Is the apparent “grand design” of our universe evidence of a benevo...