S.T. Joshi – författare

If we could only put aside our civil pose and say what we really thought, the world would be a lot like the one alluded to in The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. There, a bore is "a person who talks when you wish him to listen," and happiness is "an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another." This is the most comprehensive, authoritative edition ever of Ambrose Bierce’s satiric masterpiece. It renders obsolete all other versions that have appeared in the book’s ninety-year history.A virtual onslaught of acerbic, confrontational wordplay, The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary offers some 1,600 wickedly clever definitions to the vocabulary of everyday life. Little is sacred and few are safe, for Bierce targets just about any pursuit, from matrimony to immortality, that allows our willful failings and excesses to shine forth.This new edition is based on David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi’s exhaustive investigation into the book’s writing and publishing history. All of Bierce’s known satiric definitions are here, including previously uncollected, unpublished, and alternative entries. Definitions dropped from previous editions have been restored while nearly two hundred wrongly attributed to Bierce have been excised. For dedicated Bierce readers, an introduction and notes are also included.Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary is a classic that stands alongside the best work of satirists such as Twain, Mencken, and Thurber. This unabridged edition will be celebrated by humor fans and word lovers everywhere.

I. The Golden Age

Dorothy L. Sayers: Lords and ServantsJohn Dickson Carr: PuzzlemeisterMargery Allingham: Murder, Gangs, and SpiesPhilip MacDonald: Expanding the “Cosy” Mystery

II. The Hard-Boiled School

Dashiell Hammett: Sam Spade and OthersRaymond Chandler: Mean StreetsRoss Macdonald: Family Affairs

III. The Psychological Mystery

Margaret Millar: Scars of the Psyche Patricia Highsmith: Guilt and InnocenceL. P. Davies: The Workings of the Mind

IV. Some Contemporaries

P. D. James: The Empress’s New ClothesRuth Rendell: The Psychology of MurderSue Grafton: Hard-Boiled Female

A well-told horror story has much in common with your own cherished puss. Kitty jumps upon your lap and purrs, and you turn the page of your book.

Pray, take heed! Some dire thing is afoot! On your lap, Kitty stirs, her ears lifting into two small velvet tents. She raises her chin, stares expectantly into the gloom beyond the aura of the reading lamp, gazes at something which you cannot see! Her silken hairs begin to fluff, signaling her unease. Swiftly, Kitty moves from your lap onto the arm of your chair, where, channeling Bastet, she strikes an Egyptian-cat pose, her expectant stance and twitching whiskers communicating unseen peril.

The hairs on your neck begin to rise in sympathy. As you doggedly continue reading your book, you cast frequent glances at your cat: Kitty provides you with a sixth sense which you lack, a window into the unseen and the uncanny. You are mindful that cats dwell in a larger world than our own, the gulfs and abysses of which we can obtain but a shadowy glimpse, through their eyes.

In The Weird Cat you delve into that larger realm through more than three dozen classic and contemporary short stories, poems, and essays by masters of the craft including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, H.P. Lovecraft, Mary A. Turzillo, Christina Sng, Darrell Schweitzer, and others. Compiled and edited by Katherine Kerestman and S.T. Joshi.