Of all Jack London's fictions none has been as popular as his dog stories. In addition to The Call of the Wild, the epic tale of a Californian dog's adventures during the Klondike gold rush, this edition includes White Fang, and five famous short stories - Bâtard, Moon-Face, Brown Wolf, That Spot, and To Build a Fire.
In this definitive collection of Ernest Hemingway's short stories, readers will delight in the author's most beloved classics such as "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," "Hills Like White Elephants," and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and will discover seven new tales published for the first time in this collection. For Hemingway fans The Complete Short Stories is an invaluable treasury.
This collection demonstrates Hemingway’s ability to write beautiful prose for each distinct story, with plots that range from experiences of World War II to beautifully touching moments between a father and son.
Little Critter is trying his best to be a help to his mother in this classic, funny, and heartwarming book. Whether he's trying to make breakfast, mow the lawn, or carry the groceries, both parents and children alike will relate to this beloved story.
This silly and sweet picture book about the mayhem that results from trying to help mom is a perfect gift any time of year!
Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (the book is a bildungsroman; a coming-of-age story). It is Dickens' second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. The novel was first published as a serial in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861.
The novel is set in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century and contains some of Dickens's most celebrated scenes, starting in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict Abel Magwitch. Great Expectations is full of extreme imagery – poverty, prison ships and chains, and fights to the death – and has a colorful cast of characters who have entered popular culture. These include the eccentric Miss Havisham, the beautiful but cold Estella, and Joe, the unsophisticated and kind blacksmith. Dickens's themes include wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and the eventual triumph of good over evil. Great Expectations, which is popular both with readers and literary critics, has been translated into many languages and adapted numerous times into various media.
From one of the twentieth century’s master novelists, the author of the classic All Quiet on the Western Front, comes Heaven Has No Favorites, a bittersweet story of unconventional love that sweeps across Europe.
Lillian is charming, beautiful... and slowly dying of consumption. But she doesn’t wish to end her days in a hospital in the Alps. She wants to see Paris again, then Venice—to live frivolously for as long as possible. She might die on the road, she might not, but before she goes, she wants a chance at life.
Clerfayt, a race-car driver, tempts fate every time he’s behind the wheel. A man with no illusions about chance, he is powerfully drawn to a woman who can look death in the eye and laugh. Together, he and Lillian make an unusual pair, living only for the moment, without regard for the future. It’s a perfect arrangement—until one of them begins to fall in love.
A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield - the weary, demoralized men marching in the rain during the German attack on Caporetto; the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion—this gripping, semiautobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep.
Ernest Hemingway famously said that he rewrote his ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times to get the words right.
The Golden Ass is a unique, entertaining, and thoroughly readable Latin novel, the only work of fiction in Latin to have survived in its entirety. It tells the story of Lucius, whose curiosity and fascination for sex and magic result in his transformation into an ass.
After suffering a series of trials and humiliations, he is ultimately transformed back into human shape by the kindness of the Goddess Isis.
Blending romantic adventure, fable, and religious testament, The Golden Ass is one of the truly seminal books of European literature, of intrinsic interest as a novel in its own right, and one of the earliest examples of the picaresque.
This enchanting story has inspired generations of writers with its dazzling combination of allegory, satire, bawdiness, and sheer exuberance, remaining one of the most continuously and accessibly amusing books from Classical antiquity.
Today, F. Scott Fitzgerald is known for his novels, but in his lifetime, his fame stemmed from his prolific achievement as one of America's most gifted (and best-paid) writers of stories and novellas. In 'The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald', Matthew J. Bruccoli, the country's premier Fitzgerald scholar and biographer, assembles a sparkling collection that encompasses the full scope of Fitzgerald's short fiction.
The forty-three masterpieces range from early stories that capture the fashion of the times to later ones written after the author's fabled crack-up, which are sober reflections on his own youthful excesses. Included are classic novellas, such as "The Rich Boy," "May Day," and "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," as well as a remarkable body of work he wrote for the Saturday Evening Post and its sister "slicks."
These stories can be read as an autobiographical journal of a great writer's career, an experience deepened by the illuminating introductory headnotes that Matthew Bruccoli has written for each story, placing it in its literary and biographical context. Together, these forty-three stories compose a vivid picture of a lost era, but their brilliance is timeless. This essential collection is a monument to the genius of one of the great voices in the history of American literature.
In this National Book Award–winning novel from a "brilliantly breathtaking writer," a young Southerner searches for meaning in the midst of Mardi Gras. On the cusp of his thirtieth birthday, Binx Bolling is a lost soul. A stockbroker and member of an established New Orleans family, Binx's one escape is the movie theater that transports him from the falseness of his life.
With Mardi Gras in full swing, Binx, along with his cousin Kate, sets out to find his true purpose amid the excesses of the carnival that surrounds him. Buoyant yet powerful, The Moviegoer is a poignant indictment of modern values, and an unforgettable story of a week that will change two lives forever.
Solennels parmi les couples sans amour, ils dansaient, d'eux seuls préoccupés, goûtaient l'un à l'autre, soigneux, profonds, perdus. Béate d'être tenue et guidée, elle ignorait le monde, écoutait le bonheur dans ses veines, parfois s'admirant dans les hautes glaces des murs, élégante, émouvante, exceptionnelle, femme aimée, parfois reculant la tête pour mieux le voir qui lui murmurait des merveilles point toujours comprises, car elle le regardait trop, mais toujours de toute son âme approuvées, qui lui murmurait qu'ils étaient amoureux, et elle avait alors un impalpable rire tremblé, voilà, oui, c'était cela, amoureux, et il lui murmurait qu'il se mourait de baiser et bénir les longs cils recourbés, mais non pas ici, plus tard, lorsqu'ils seraient seuls, et alors elle murmurait qu'ils avaient toute la vie, et soudain elle avait peur de lui avoir déplu, trop sûre d'elle, mais non, ô bonheur, il lui souriait et contre lui la gardait et murmurait que tous les soirs ils se verraient.
Ariane devant son seigneur, son maître, son aimé Solal, tous deux entourés d'une foule de comparses : ce roman n'est rien de moins que le chef-d'œuvre de la littérature amoureuse de notre époque.
"I’ve not always been what I am now"
In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Subtitled ‘A Story of a Man of Character’, Hardy’s powerful and sympathetic study of the heroic but deeply flawed Henchard is also an intensely dramatic work, tragically played out against the vivid backdrop of a close-knit Dorsetshire town.
Marian is determined to be ordinary. She lays her head gently on the shoulder of her serious fiancé and quietly awaits marriage. But she didn't count on an inner rebellion that would rock her stable routine, and her digestion. Marriage à la mode, Marian discovers, is something she literally can't stomach...
The Edible Woman is a funny, engaging novel about emotional cannibalism, men and women, and the desire to be consumed. This groundbreaking work of fiction is marked by blazingly surreal humor and a colorful cast of eccentric characters.
American Pastoral, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Seymour 'Swede' Levov—a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory—comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.
For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.
A Season in Hell was written by Arthur Rimbaud at the tender age of 18, following a passionate and tumultuous affair with fellow poet, Paul Verlaine. This piece has been a beacon for anguished poets, artists, and lovers for over a century.
This volume beautifully presents the text in both French and English, accompanied by evocative photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. It serves as a powerful testament to the passion and suffering experienced by Rimbaud and continues to influence artists and poets worldwide.
The year is 1928. On the outskirts of a large German city, three young men are earning a thin and precarious living. Fully armed young storm troopers swagger in the streets. Restlessness, poverty, and violence are everywhere. For these three, friendship is the only refuge from the chaos around them. Then the youngest of them falls in love, and brings into the group a young woman who will become a comrade as well, as they are all tested in ways they can never have imagined.
Written with the same overwhelming simplicity and directness that made All Quiet on the Western Front a classic, Three Comrades portrays the greatness of the human spirit, manifested through characters who must find the inner resources to live in a world they did not make, but must endure.
When she was about to turn five, a little girl named Rae Hansen invited Richard Bach to her birthday party. Though deserts, storms, mountains, and a thousand miles separated them, Rae was confident that her friend would appear.
There's No Such Place As Far Away chronicles the exhilarating spiritual journey that delivered Rae's anxiously awaited guest to her side on that special day—and tells of the powerful and enduring gift that would keep him forever close to her heart.
Written with the same elegant simplicity that made Jonathan Livingston Seagull a bestselling phenomenon, There's No Such Place As Far Away has touched the hearts of thousands of readers since its first publication. Richard Bach's inspiring, now-classic tale is a profound reminder that miles cannot truly separate us from friends...that those we love are always with us—every moment of the infinite celebration we call life.
The Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics Circle Award winning play—reissued with an introduction by Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), and Williams’ essay “The World I Live In.”
It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared—57 years after its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights of his generation, as well as that of Elia Kazan as the greatest American stage director of the ’40s and ’50s.
The Knight in the Panther's Skin is the first English verse translation of the Georgian epic of adventure and romance, written in the 12th or 13th century. This epic, penned by the renowned poet Shota Rustaveli, is a masterpiece of Georgian literature that explores themes of chivalry, love, and heroism.
Translator Marjory Scott Wardrop has skillfully rendered the complex metrical structure of the original work, which often requires rhyming words to the fourth syllable. Her translation captures the essence of the original text while making it accessible to modern readers.
The book includes an introduction by David M Lang from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, which places Rustaveli and his poem in historical context, offering insights into the cultural and literary significance of the work.
This edition also provides a brief list of Georgian words retained in the translation, enriching the reader's experience and understanding of the cultural nuances embedded within the epic.
Tonio Kröger is a captivating exploration of the struggles of youth and the complex journey of self-discovery. Written by Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann, this novel occupies a central position in his spiritual and artistic development.
The narrative follows the life of Tonio, the son of a north German merchant and a "Southern" mother with artistic talents. As a child, Tonio experiences conflicting feelings for the bourgeois people around him. He feels both superior in his insights and envious of their innocent vitality. This conflict continues into adulthood, when he becomes a famous writer living in southern Germany.
"To be an artist," Tonio believes, "one has to die to everyday life." These issues are only partially resolved when Tonio travels north to visit his hometown, where he is mistaken for an escaped criminal. This reinforces his belief that the artist must remain an outsider to "respectable" society.
With influences from Schopenhauer and Wagner, this philosophical fiction delves into the duality of Tonio's parentage, his abhorrence of discipline, and the infatuation and entanglements of a passionate heart destined to intellectualize its feelings in artistic terms.
Père Goriot is the tragic story of a father whose obsessive love for his two daughters leads to his financial and personal ruin. Interwoven with this theme is that of the impoverished young aristocrat, Rastignac, who came to Paris from the provinces to hopefully make his fortune. He befriends Goriot and becomes involved with the daughters. The story is set against the background of a whole society driven by social ambition and lust for wealth.
First published in 1970, nine years after Ernest Hemingway's death, Islands in the Stream is the story of an artist and adventurer—a man much like Hemingway himself. Rich with the uncanny sense of life and action characteristic of his writing—from his earliest stories (In Our Time) to his last novella (The Old Man and the Sea)—this compelling novel contains both the warmth of recollection that inspired A Moveable Feast and a rare glimpse of Hemingway's rich and relaxed sense of humor, which enlivens scene after scene.
Beginning in the 1930s, Islands in the Stream follows the fortunes of Thomas Hudson from his experiences as a painter on the Gulf Stream island of Bimini, where his loneliness is broken by the vacation visit of his three young sons, to his antisubmarine activities off the coast of Cuba during World War II. The greater part of the story takes place in a Havana bar, where a wildly diverse cast of characters—including an aging prostitute who stands out as one of Hemingway's most vivid creations—engages in incomparably rich dialogue.
A brilliant portrait of the inner life of a complex and endlessly intriguing man, Islands in the Stream is Hemingway at his mature best.
Bob Slocum was living the American dream. He had a beautiful wife, three lovely children, a nice house... and all the mistresses he desired. He had it all — all, that is, but happiness. Slocum was discontent. Inevitably, inexorably, his discontent deteriorated into desolation until... something happened.
Something Happened is Joseph Heller's wonderfully inventive and controversial second novel satirizing business life and American culture. The story is told as if the reader was overhearing the patter of Bob Slocum's brain — recording what is going on at the office, as well as his fantasies and memories that complete the story of his life. The result is a novel as original and memorable as his Catch-22.
While Eisenstein documented the forces of totalitarianism and Stalinism upon the faces of the Russian peoples, DeLillo offers a stunning, at times overwhelming, document of the twin forces of the Cold War and American culture, compelling that "swerve from evenness" in which he finds events and people both wondrous and horrifying.
Underworld opens with a breathlessly graceful prologue set during the final game of the Giants-Dodgers pennant race in 1951. Written in what DeLillo calls "super-omniscience" the sentences sweep from young Cotter Martin as he jumps the gate to the press box, soars over the radio waves, runs out to the diamond, slides in on a fast ball, pops into the stands where J. Edgar Hoover is sitting with a drunken Jackie Gleason and a splenetic Frank Sinatra, and learns of the Soviet Union's second detonation of a nuclear bomb. It's an absolutely thrilling literary moment. When Bobby Thomson hits Branca's pitch into the outstretched hand of Cotter—the "shot heard around the world"—and Jackie Gleason pukes on Sinatra's shoes, the events of the next few decades are set in motion, all threaded together by the baseball as it passes from hand to hand.
"It's all falling indelibly into the past," writes DeLillo, a past that he carefully recalls and reconstructs with acute grace. Jump from Giants Stadium to the Nevada desert in 1992, where Nick Shay, who now owns the baseball, reunites with the artist Kara Sax. They had been brief and unlikely lovers 40 years before, and it is largely through the events, spinoffs, and coincidental encounters of their pasts that DeLillo filters the Cold War experience. He believes that "global events may alter how we live in the smallest ways," and as the book steps back in time to 1951, over the following 800-odd pages, we see just how those events alter lives. This reverse narrative allows the author to strip away the detritus of history and pop culture until we get to the story's pure elements: the bomb, the baseball, and the Bronx. In an epilogue as breathless and stunning as the prologue, DeLillo fast-forwards to a near future in which ruthless capitalism, the Internet, and a new, hushed faith have replaced the Cold War's blend of dread and euphoria.
Through fragments and interlaced stories—including those of highway killers, artists, celebrities, conspiracists, gangsters, nuns, and sundry others—DeLillo creates a fragile web of connected experience, a communal Zeitgeist that encompasses the messy whole of five decades of American life, wonderfully distilled.
The bestselling novels from the foremost philosopher of the modern age, this set includes Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
Iphigenia in Aulis is a play by the ancient Greek playwright Euripides. It tells the story of Agamemnon's sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia, in order to ensure the good fortune of his forces in the Trojan War. Despite its heroic background, it is, in many respects, a domestic tragedy.
This new translation by Mr. Rudall retains the poetic beauty of Euripides while fashioning a playable dialogue. It beautifully captures the emotional depth and complexity of the characters involved.
Best known for the 1892 title story of this collection, a harrowing tale of a woman's descent into madness, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote more than 200 other short stories. Seven of her finest are reprinted here.
Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a naïve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories.
These charming tales are not only highly readable and full of humor and invention, but also offer ample food for thought about the social, economic, and personal relationship of men and women — and how they might be improved.
Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry's eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin!
With their message of hope, belonging and the enduring power of truth and love, the story of the Boy Who Lived continues to delight generations of new readers.
Electronics engineer Dan Davis has finally made the invention of a lifetime: a household robot with extraordinary abilities, destined to dramatically change the landscape of everyday routine.
Then, with wild success just within reach, Dan's greedy partner and even greedier fiancée trick him into taking the long sleep—suspended animation for thirty years. They never imagine that the future time in which Dan will awaken has mastered time travel, giving him a way to get back to them—and at them.
Outstanding translations by leading contemporary scholars--many commissioned especially for this volume--are presented here in the first single edition to include the entire surviving corpus of works attributed to Plato in antiquity.
In his introductory essay, John Cooper explains the presentation of these works, discusses questions concerning the chronology of their composition, comments on the dialogue form in which Plato wrote, and offers guidance on approaching the reading and study of Plato's works. Also included are concise introductions by Cooper and Hutchinson to each translation, meticulous annotation designed to serve both scholar and general reader, and a comprehensive index.
This handsome volume offers fine paper and a high-quality Smyth-sewn cloth binding in a sturdy, elegant edition.
Miraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as much as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is the world’s oldest epic, predating Homer by many centuries. The story tells of Gilgamesh’s adventures with the wild man Enkidu, and of his arduous journey to the ends of the earth in quest of the Babylonian Noah and the secret of immortality. Alongside its themes of family, friendship and the duties of kings, the Epic of Gilgamesh is, above all, about mankind’s eternal struggle with the fear of death.
The Babylonian version has been known for over a century, but linguists are still deciphering new fragments in Akkadian and Sumerian.
Doctor Zhivago is an epic tale that explores the effects of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath on a bourgeois family. The story is centered on Dr. Yury Zhivago, who is not only a physician but also a poet and philosopher. His life is deeply disrupted by the war and his love for Lara, the wife of a revolutionary.
Yury's artistic nature renders him particularly vulnerable to the brutality and harshness that follow in the wake of the Bolsheviks' rise to power. Within the novel, the poems written by Yury are a testament to some of the most beautiful writing the book has to offer. His experiences and the challenges he faces are a reflection of the turmoil that grips the society around him.
The Floating Opera and The End Of The Road are John Barth's first two novels. Their relationship to each other is evident not only in their ribald subject matter but in the eccentric characters and bitterly humorous tone of the narratives. Both concern strange, consuming love triangles and the destructive effect of an overactive intellect on the emotions. Separately, they give two very different views of a universal human drama.
In The Floating Opera, the protagonist Todd Andrews, an orphaned war veteran, has been sleeping with his friend's wife. Todd awakens one morning determined to commit suicide, having concluded that nothing in life has intrinsic value—but then spends the day methodically reasoning his way into disregarding that fact and remaining a part of the floating opera of life.
In The End of the Road, a man named Jacob Horner finds himself literally paralyzed by an inability to choose a course of action from all possibilities. He begins an unconventional course of "mythotherapy" treatment at the Remobilization Farm, but his eccentric doctor's directives lead him into a tragic love triangle and from there to the nihilistic end of the road.
These novels form the beginnings of an illustrious literary career.
The classic novel of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual undercurrents set against the austere New England countryside. Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena's vivacious cousin enters their household as a hired girl, Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent.
In one of American fiction's finest and most intense narratives, Edith Wharton moves this ill-starred trio toward their tragic destinies. Different in both tone and theme from Wharton's other works, Ethan Frome has become perhaps her most enduring and most widely read book.
The Apology of Socrates is Plato's version of the speech given by Socrates as he unsuccessfully defended himself in 399 BCE against the charges of corrupting the young and not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other daimonia that are novel.
"Apology" here has its earlier meaning (now usually expressed by the word "apologia") of speaking in defense of a cause or of one's beliefs or actions.
The revised edition of this popular textbook features revised vocabulary and grammatical notes that now appear on the same page as the text, sentence diagrams, principal parts of verbs listed both by Stephanus page and alphabetically, word frequency list for words occurring more than twice, and complete vocabulary.
The Neverending Story is an epic work of the imagination that has captured the hearts of millions of readers worldwide. The story invites readers to become part of the book itself, beginning with a lonely boy named Bastian who finds a strange book that draws him into the beautiful but doomed world of Fantastica.
Only a human can save this enchanted place by giving its ruler, the Childlike Empress, a new name. Bastian's journey to her tower leads through lands of dragons, giants, monsters, and magic. As he embarks on his quest, the possibility of never returning looms over him.
Drawn deeper into Fantastica, Bastian must find the courage to face unspeakable foes and the mysteries of his own heart. Readers are invited to travel to the wondrous, unforgettable world of Fantastica by simply turning the page.
Middlemarch, a masterpiece of English literature by George Eliot, is set in the fictitious Midlands town during the years 1830-32. The novel intertwines multiple storylines to create a coherent narrative that delves into various themes such as the status of women, social expectations, hypocrisy, religion, political reform, and education. Often hailed as one of the greatest novels in the English language, Middlemarch offers a profound exploration of human relationships and societal dynamics.
The narrative follows a rich array of characters, each with their own complex stories and struggles. At the heart of the novel are Dorothea Brooke, the idealistic yet naive heroine, and Tertius Lydgate, a brilliant but morally flawed physician. Their journeys alongside other memorable characters like Rosamond Vincy, Edward Casaubon, Will Ladislaw, Fred Vincey, and Mary Garth provide both a critical social commentary and an engaging reading experience with elements of humor and irony.
Infinite Jest is a gargantuan, mind-altering tragi-comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America. Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human—and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.
Abandoned as an infant by his father, the evil warlord Swartt Sixclaw, Veil is raised by the kindhearted Bryony. Despite concerns from everyone at Redwall, Bryony is convinced that Veil's goodness will prevail.
But when he commits a crime that is unforgivable, he is banished from the abbey forever. Then Swartt and his hordes of searats and vermin attack Redwall, and Veil has to decide: Should he join Swartt in battle against the only creature who has ever loved him? Or should he turn his back on his true father?
Garry Wills’s complete translation of Saint Augustine’s spiritual masterpiece—available now for the first time. Garry Wills is an exceptionally gifted translator and one of our best writers on religion today. His bestselling translations of individual chapters of Saint Augustine’s Confessions have received widespread and glowing reviews. Now for the first time, Wills’s translation of the entire work is being published as a Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition. Removed by time and place but not by spiritual relevance, Augustine’s Confessions continues to influence contemporary religion, language, and thought. Reading with fresh, keen eyes, Wills brings his superb gifts of analysis and insight to this ambitious translation of the entire book.
“Wills renders Augustine’s famous and influential text in direct language with all the spirited wordplay and poetic strength intact.”—Los Angeles Times
“Wills’s translations... are meant to bring Augustine straight into our own minds; and they succeed. Well-known passages, over which my eyes have often gazed, spring to life again from Wills’s pages.”—Peter Brown, The New York Review of Books
“Augustine flourishes in Wills’s hand.”—James Wood
“A masterful synthesis of classical philosophy and scriptural erudition.”—Chicago Tribune
Set in Vienna on the eve of World War I, this great novel of ideas tells the story of Ulrich, ex-soldier and scientist, seducer and skeptic, who finds himself drafted into the grandiose plans for the 70th jubilee of the Emperor Franz Josef.
This new translation is the first to present Musil's complete text, including material that remained unpublished during his lifetime.
In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose by Truman Capote that delves into the chilling true story of the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. On November 15, 1959, the Clutters were brutally killed, with no apparent motive and scant clues left behind. Capote's reconstruction of the crime, the ensuing investigation, and the eventual capture, trial, and execution of the killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, is both suspenseful and empathetically narrated.
The narrative draws a vivid and humanizing portrait of the killers, depicting them as reprehensible yet frighteningly human. Through Capote's skilled journalistic approach combined with a powerfully evocative narrative, readers are offered a gripping and poignant insight into the nature of violence in America.
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.
So begins Robert Fagles' magnificent translation of the Odyssey, which Jasper Griffin in The New York Times Review of Books hails as "a distinguished achievement." If the Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, then the Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey through life.
Odysseus' reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces, during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, is at once a timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance. In the myths and legends that are retold here, Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer's original in a bold, contemporary idiom, and given us an Odyssey to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery.
Renowned classicist Bernard Knox's superb introduction and textual commentary provide new insights and background information for the general reader and scholar alike, intensifying the strength of Fagles' translation.
This is an Odyssey to delight both the classicist and the public at large, and to captivate a new generation of Homer's students.
Joan of Arc is a historical novel that showcases Mark Twain's unrestrained admiration for the French heroine's nobility of character. This book, purportedly written by Joan's longtime friend, Sieur Louis de Conte, takes readers on an inspirational journey through her life.
Mark Twain once said, "I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well." This sentiment reflects the depth of research and passion Twain invested in writing this novel, which took twelve years of preparation and two years of writing.
Joan of Arc is not just a tale of a young girl leading an army; it's a story of bravery, faith, and the enduring spirit of a woman who became a saint. Twain's portrayal of Joan is filled with respect and admiration, bringing her story to life for generations of readers.
Tales of Mystery and Imagination is a collection of some of Edgar Allan Poe's most enthralling and chilling stories. This book brings to life the macabre and mysterious worlds crafted by one of the greatest authors of all time.
Within its pages, readers will find themselves immersed in tales such as The Gold-Bug, Ms. Found in a Bottle, and A Descent into the Maelström. The collection also includes classics like The Fall of the House of Usher, William Wilson, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and The Tell-Tale Heart.
This volume is a must-have for fans of the macabre and those who enjoy stories that delve into the depths of the human psyche. Edgar Allan Poe is renowned for his ability to weave suspense and horror into narratives that have stood the test of time, making this collection a fantastic addition to any bookshelf.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of William Shakespeare's most enchanting comedies. The story revolves around the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of amateur actors, who are manipulated by the fairies inhabiting the forest in which most of the play is set.
The play opens with Hermia, who is in love with Lysander, facing an arranged marriage to Demetrius, whom her friend Helena loves. Hermia and Lysander plan to escape Athens to avoid the marriage decree by Hermia's father. Meanwhile, in the forest, the King and Queen of the fairies, Oberon and Titania, are in the midst of a quarrel.
Oberon's mischievous servant, Puck, is sent to fetch a magical flower, the juice of which can cause one to fall in love with the first creature they see upon waking. Chaos ensues as Puck's love potion causes unintended love triangles and mistaken identities. Additionally, a group of laborers are rehearsing a play for the upcoming wedding of the Duke of Athens, and Puck's interference leads to further comedic outcomes, including one actor, Bottom, being transformed into a donkey and becoming the object of the enchanted Titania's affections.
The play masterfully blends elements of love, humor, and magic, culminating in a delightful tale that continues to be celebrated and performed around the world.
In the first novel of C.S. Lewis's classic science fiction trilogy, Dr. Ransom, a Cambridge academic, is abducted and taken on a spaceship to the red planet of Malacandra, which he knows as Mars. His captors are plotting to plunder the planet's treasures and plan to offer Ransom as a sacrifice to the creatures who live there. Ransom discovers he has come from the 'silent planet' – Earth – whose tragic story is known throughout the universe.
As Ransom explores the strange and often beautiful world of Malacandra, he uncovers information about the larger universe and Earth's place in it, suggesting that he has as much to discover about his home planet as he does about the alien Malacandra. His adventures reveal the complexities and wonders of the universe, making him question his understanding of humanity and the cosmos.
Aldous Huxley's lifelong concern with the dichotomy between passion and reason finds its fullest expression both thematically and formally in his masterpiece Point Counter Point. By presenting a vision of life in which diverse aspects of experience are observed simultaneously, Huxley characterizes the symptoms of the disease of the modern man in the manner of a composer—themes and characters are repeated, altered slightly, and played off one another in a tone that is at once critical and sympathetic.
First published in 1928, Huxley's satiric view of intellectual life in the '20s is populated with characters based on such celebrities as D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Nancy Cunard, and John Middleton Murry, as well as Huxley himself.