Books by Ambrose Bierce

One of the most popular satirical works of world literature, The Devil's Dictionary - here enriched with over 800 definitions left out from the original publications - brilliantly lays bare the hypocrisies of American society and displays a razor-sharp wit to rival that of Bierce's contemporary Mark Twain.

Drei schaurig-spannende Geschichten! "Der Reiter am Himmel" spielt im Amerikanischen Bürgerkrieg. Ein junger Mann beschließt für die Nordstaaten zu kämpfen. In der Schlacht steht er plötzlich seinem für den Süden kämpfenden Vater gegenüber und muss sich entscheiden: Wird er seine Familie verraten und den Vater erschießen?Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) war ein amerikanischer Schriftsteller und Journalist. Er gilt neben Edgar Allan Poe als Begründer der modernen Horror-Literatur. Sein bekanntestes Werk ist "Des Teufels Wörterbuch".Bierce führte ein abenteuerliches Leben, kämpfte im Amerikanischen Bürgerkrieg und geriet in Gefangenschaft. Bierce konnte jedoch fliehen und ließ sich in San Francisco nieder, wo er zu einem der einflussreichsten Journalisten der Stadt aufstieg. Im Jahr 1914 verschwand Bierce plötzlich während einer Reise in Mexiko spurlos. Er wurde vermutlich erschossen.

Bierce's dictionary, first published in 1906 as 'The Cynic's Word Book', brought his biting black humour to bear on spoof definitions of everyday words. Over 100 years later, Bierce's redefinitions still give us pause for thought- making for a timely new edition of this irreverent and provocative satire.

A virtual onslaught of acerbic, confrontational wordplay, this dictionary offers 1600 wickedly clever definitions to the vocabulary of everyday life. Little is sacred and few are safe, for Ambrose Bierce targets just about any pursuit that allows our failings and excesses to shine forth.

AMBROSE BIERCE - The City of the Goneaway - and 67 other stories of the supernatural and the weird. Before he trailed off into the wilds of Mexico, never to be heard from again, Ambrose Bierce achieved a public persona as "bitter Bierce" and "the devil's lexicographer." He left behind a nasty reputation and more than ninety short stories that are perfect expressions of his sardonic genius. The stories in this volume represent an unprecedented accomplishment in American literature. In their iconoclasm and needle-sharp irony, their formal and thematic ingenuity and element of surprise, they differ markedly from the fiction admired in Bierce's time.

Ambrose Bierce's Tales of Soldiers and Civilians presents through a series of short stories the American Civil War in all of its gruesomeness as well as its glory. A Civil War veteran himself, Bierce knew firsthand the horrors of war, and how meaningless the heroism of these soldiers could be, in light of the devastation war wreaked on soldiers and civilians alike.

Allegedly a rewriting from a lost German original, Ambrose Bierce's 1892 novel reads as a seamless, almost folktale-like masterpiece.