This magisterial collection of short works by Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner reminds readers of his ability to compress his epic vision into narratives as hard and wounding as bullets. Among the 42 selections in this book are such classics as "A Bear Hunt, " "A Rose for Emily, " Two Soldiers, " and "The Brooch."

William Faulkner, one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897. He published his first book, The Marble Faun, a collection of poems, in 1924, but it is as a literary chronicler of life in the Deep South-particularly in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, the setting for several of his novels-that he is most highly regarded. In such novels as Sanctuary (1931), The Hamlet (1940), The Town (1957), and The Mansion (1959), he explored the full range of post-Civil War Southern life, focusing both on the personal histories of his characters (especially members of the Snopes family) and on the moral uncertainties of an increasingly dissolute society. His other novels include The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), The Unvanquished (1938), Intruder in the Dust (1948), Requiem for a Nun (1951), A Fable (1954), and The Reivers (1962). For the latter two books, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He also wrote several volumes of short stories, as well as collections of poems and essays. In combining the use of symbolism with a stream-of-consciousness technique, he created a new approach to the writing of fiction. In 1949, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. William Faulkner died in Byhalia, Mississippi, on July 6, 1962.