When God Laughs and Other Stories

Book excerpt: Young lovers were pale and anaemic beside that long-married pair. To see them, all fire and flame and tenderness, at a trembling distance, lavishing caresses of eye and voice with every action, through every silence-their love driving them toward each other, and they withholding like fluttering moths, each to the other a candle-flame... Small wonder they were called the wonderful lovers.-from "When God Laughs"He was one of the most prolific American writers of the early 20th century, and remains one of the most beloved, but while his novels have remained continuously in print for a century, his short stories have been much harder to find. Here, in one volume first published in 1911, are a marvelous selection of Jack London's short fiction, including: When God Laughs . The Apostate . A Wicked Woman . "Just Meat"Created He Them . The Chinago . Make Westing . Semper Idem . A Nose for the KingThe "Francis Spaight" . A Curious Fragment . A Piece of SteakThese outstanding stories-of the sea, of the land, of the ordinary people who work them-are examples of London at this passionate best.American writer Jack London (1876-1916) is best known for his novels The Call of the Wild (1903), White Fang (1906), and the work considered his best, The Sea-Wolf (1904).