A definitive compilation of short fiction for adults from the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and other children's classics blends the macabre with humor and the grotesque in such works as "The Landlady," set in an unusual boardinghouse with two small, permanent clientele; "Pig," a study[...]
An open-minded and clear-eyed reexamination of the cultural artifacts of Franco's Spain
True, false, or both? Spain's 1939-75 dictator, Francisco Franco, was a pioneer of water conservation and sustainable energy.Pedro Almodovar is only the most recent in a line of great antiestablishment film d[...]
History is written by the victors. It's a cliche, but a reliable one - except in the case of the Spanish Civil War. Many believe - wrongly, as it turns out - that under Franco's dictatorship, nothing truthful or imaginatively worthwhile could be said or written or created. This book examines the ten[...]
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) is best known as the author of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Treasure Island, and Kidnapped, but his essays comprise an oft-overlooked trove of gems, intriguing in their content and generous in their scope. This collection of nearly three dozen of St[...]
Many of these stores are now so famous from film and television adaptations that they need no introduction. Roald Dahl is well known as a master of the macabre and the unexpected in the tradition of Saki, and this volume does not disappoint. He began his literary career by writing about his own expe[...]