Librarian note: An alternative cover for this ISBN can be found here. The perfect companion to The Penguin Book of English Short Stories, this second volume offers more gems from the last hundred years or so of short-story writing. Here are some of the finest short stories by masters of the genre. From the lyrical prose of Thomas Hardy we move to the irreverent wit of Kingsley Amis via, among others, Virginia Woolf and Muriel Spark, whose two very different monologues appear in this collection. Once again D.H. Lawrence, Joyce Cary and James Joyce demonstrate that they are as at home with the miniature of the short-story form as with the broad canvas of the novel. Together these fifteen stories demonstrate that the last century has been a golden age for the short story.