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'...

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...

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...

It's curtains for Gotham in Deadly Debut, which takes the first bow in the Murder New York Style series. In these pages, a Bronx teen steeped in Poe confronts a tormentor; a recovering alcoholic sweeps up deadly secrets; and a gutsy lie shatters lives in post-war Queens. From a Brooklyn nanny’s street smarts to a small grocer’s grit, from a nightclub’s belly dancers to a P.I. reared on jive, the characters in these twisted tales will keep you cheering.

This anthology includes 21 stories by Stuart Kaminsky, Max Allan Collins, Sara Paretsky, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Marcus Sakey, Sean Chercover, J.A. Konrath, Barbara D'Amato, and more. Originally published in hardcover and paperback in October, 2007.Blue is the new Noir, and nobody does Blues like Chicago.Migrating north from the Mississippi delta, the Blues found itself on the frozen streets of Chicago, struggling to survive in the Windy City's sti...

Two bestselling novels in one volume!PuppetLiving a no-strings-attached life in glamorous Palm Beach, beautiful, steely-nerved criminal attorney Amanda Travis knows exactly what she likes: spinning classes, the color black, and one-night stands. Here's what she dislikes: the color pink, nicknames . . . and memories. She has shut the door on two ex-husbands, her estranged mother, and her hometown of Toronto. Then comes the news that will shat...

Christmas -- the very word conjures up memories of the most wondrous childhood holiday of all--filled with the glitter of colorfully-wrapped presents, family visits, carols, photographs, decorating the tree, attendance at church to celebrate the birth of the Christ child, and tummy-stuffing dinners tucked with treats seen at no other time of the year. But the yule holiday has been celebrated for at least two centuries in North America, and our writers have been producing memorable stories ...

On a scorching August day in 1963, seven-year-old Annie Banks meets the girl who will become her best friend. Skinny, outspoken Starr Dukes and her wandering preacher father may not be accepted by polite society in Jackson, Mississippi, but Annie and Starr are too busy sharing secrets and playing elaborate games of Queen for a Day to care. Then, as suddenly as she appeared in Annie's life, Starr disappears.Annie grows up to follow the path ordained for pretty, well-to-do Jackson wo...

Scotland Yard’s most unlikely pair of detectives must hide a blossoming romance as they hunt for a dangerous killer.An Irish redhead of humble beginnings and modest means, Kathleen Doyle is the antithesis of Chief Inspector Michael Sinclair, as known as Lord Acton, the brilliant but enigmatic lord with a knack for solving London's most high profile homicides. When a horse trainer is found dead at a racetrack, the duo’s investigation does little to deter the killer ...