Ocean State Libraries

"Histoires et contes fantastiques, here translated by Brian Stableford as A Malediction, was the first volume of prose by Erckmann-Chatrian, the pseudonym of Émilie Erckmann (1822-1899) and Alexandre Chatrian (1826-1890), who wrote in collaboration. Ranging from the Romantic melodrama of the title novelette, which has never before appeared in English, to the horrific fantastic of "Red Wine and White Wine," the current collection features imaginative...

An aviator, whose plane is forced down in the Sahara Desert, encounters a little man from a small planet who describes his adventures in the universe, seeking the secret of what is really important in life.

The dazzling and exuberant moral stories of Rabelais (c. 1471-1553) expose human follies with their mischievous and often obscene humor, while intertwining the realistic with carnivalsque fantasy to make us look afresh at the world. Gargantua depicts a young giant, reduced to laughable insanity by an education at the hands of paternal ignorance, old crones and syphilitic professors, who is rescued and turned into a cultured Christian knight. And in...