For the first time, the complete collection of Maya Angelou's published poems is available in a permanent collectible, handsome hardcover edition.

Maya Angelou's poetry is lyrical and dramatic, exuberant and playful. It speaks of love, longings, and partings; of Saturday night partying and the smells and sounds of Southern cities; of freedom and shattered dreams.

Her work is just as much a part of her autobiography as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, and The Heart of a Woman.

The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom, Pecola's life does change - in painful, devastating ways.

With its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment, The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrison's most powerful, unforgettable novels - and a significant work of American fiction.

Once regarded as a brilliant eccentric whose works skirted the outer fringes of English art and literature, William Blake (1757–1827) is today recognized as a major poet, a profound thinker, and one of the most original and exciting English artists. Nowhere is his glorious poetic and pictorial legacy more evident than in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which many consider his most inspired and original work.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is both a humorous satire on religion and morality and a work that concisely expresses Blake's essential wisdom and philosophy. Much of it is revealed in the 70 aphorisms of his "Proverbs of Hell." This beautiful edition, reproduced from a rare facsimile, invites readers to enjoy the rich character of Blake's own hand-printed text along with his deeply stirring illustrations, reproduced on 27 full-color plates. A typeset transcription of the text is included.

Dostoevsky’s most revolutionary novel, Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In complete retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.

Andrew "Ender" Wiggin thinks he is playing computer simulated war games; he is, in fact, engaged in something far more desperate. The result of genetic experimentation, Ender may be the military genius Earth desperately needs in a war against an alien enemy seeking to destroy all human life. The only way to find out is to throw Ender into ever harsher training, to chip away and find the diamond inside, or destroy him utterly. Ender Wiggin is six years old when it begins. He will grow up fast.

But Ender is not the only result of the experiment. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway almost as long. Ender's two older siblings, Peter and Valentine, are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. While Peter was too uncontrollably violent, Valentine very nearly lacks the capability for violence altogether. Neither was found suitable for the military's purpose. But they are driven by their jealousy of Ender, and by their inbred drive for power. Peter seeks to control the political process, to become a ruler. Valentine's abilities turn more toward the subtle control of the beliefs of commoner and elite alike, through powerfully convincing essays. Hiding their youth and identities behind the anonymity of the computer networks, these two begin working together to shape the destiny of Earth—an Earth that has no future at all if their brother Ender fails.

Buddenbrooks, first published in Germany in 1901, when Mann was only twenty-six, has become a classic of modern literature. It is the story of four generations of a wealthy bourgeois family in northern Germany facing the advent of modernity; in an uncertain new world, the family’s bonds and traditions begin to disintegrate. As Mann charts the Buddenbrooks’ decline from prosperity to bankruptcy, from moral and psychic soundness to sickly piety, artistic decadence, and madness, he ushers the reader into a world of stunning vitality, pieced together from births and funerals, weddings and divorces, recipes, gossip, and earthy humor.

In its immensity of scope, richness of detail, and fullness of humanity, Buddenbrooks surpasses all other modern family chronicles. With remarkable fidelity to the original German text, this superb translation emphasizes the magnificent scale of Mann’s achievement in this riveting, tragic novel.

"Fortune's Favorites" is a captivating historical fiction novel set in the tumultuous times of ancient Rome. Blessed by the gods at birth with wealth and privilege, a new generation of Romans vies for greatness amidst the disintegrating remnants of their beloved Republic.

Amidst this backdrop, one figure towers above them all—a brilliant and beautiful boy whose ambition is unequaled, whose love is legendary, and whose glory is Rome's. This is the story of a boy who would one day be called Caesar.

Join the journey through a cataclysmic upheaval, where the chosen and the cursed are entangled in a savage struggle for power. Experience the ambition, love, and destiny that shape the course of history in this epic tale of ancient Rome.

The shocking thing about the girls was how nearly normal they seemed when their mother let them out for the one and only date of their lives. Twenty years on, their enigmatic personalities are embalmed in the memories of the boys who worshipped them and who now recall their shared adolescence: the brassiere draped over a crucifix belonging to the promiscuous Lux; the sisters' breathtaking appearance on the night of the dance; and the sultry, sleepy street across which they watched a family disintegrate and fragile lives disappear.

Hardy's last work of fiction, Jude the Obscure is also one of his most gloomily fatalistic, depicting the lives of individuals who are trapped by forces beyond their control. Jude Fawley, a poor villager, wants to enter the divinity school at Christminster. Sidetracked by Arabella Donn, an earthy country girl who pretends to be pregnant by him, Jude marries her and is then deserted. He earns a living as a stonemason at Christminster; there he falls in love with his independent-minded cousin, Sue Bridehead. Out of a sense of obligation, Sue marries the schoolmaster Phillotson, who has helped her. Unable to bear living with Phillotson, she returns to live with Jude and eventually bears his children out of wedlock. Their poverty and the weight of society's disapproval begin to take a toll on Sue and Jude; the climax occurs when Jude's son by Arabella hangs Sue and Jude's children and himself. In penance, Sue returns to Phillotson and the church. Jude returns to Arabella and eventually dies miserably.

The novel's sexual frankness shocked the public, as did Hardy's criticisms of marriage, the university system, and the church. Hardy was so distressed by its reception that he wrote no more fiction, concentrating solely on his poetry.

John Keats, an archetypal Romantic genius, believed he would be recognized among the English poets after his death. His works endure as a testament to his exploration of the imagination and the pleasures of the senses.

This collection includes all of Keats's magnificent verse: 'Lamia', 'Isabella', 'The Eve of St. Agnes'; his sonnets and odes; the allegorical romance Endymion; and the five-act poetic tragedy Otho the Great. Also presented are the famous posthumous and fugitive poems, including the fragmentary 'The Eve of Saint Mark' and the great 'La Belle Dame sans Merci', perhaps the most distinguished literary ballad in the language.

Keats’s writing is illuminated by his exaltation of the imagination and abounds with sensuous descriptions of nature’s beauty. It also explores profound philosophical questions, making him one of the greatest and most original thinkers of the second generation of Romantic poets.

Acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero. Told in a series of vignettes – sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous–it is the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Few other books in our time have touched so many readers.

"In English my name means hope," she says. "In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting." This gorgeous coming-of-age novel is a celebration of the power of telling one’s story and of being proud of where you're from. Like Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street or Toni Morrison’s Sula, it makes a world through people and their voices, and it does so in language that is poetic and direct.

The heir to the magnificent English trading company, the Noble House… the direct descendant of the first Toranaga Shogun battling to usher his country into the modern age… a beautiful young French woman forever torn between ambition and desire…

Their lives intertwine in an exotic land newly open to foreigners, gai-jin, torn apart by greed, idealism, and terrorism. Their passions mingle with monarchs and diplomats, assassins, courtesans, and spies. Their fates collide in James Clavell’s latest masterpiece set in nineteenth-century Japan – an unforgettable epic seething with betrayal and secrets, brutality and heroism, love and forbidden passions.

Throughout a single day in 1892, John Shawnessy recalls the great moments of his life—from the love affairs of his youth in Indiana, to the battles of the Civil War, to the politics of the Gilded Age, to his homecoming as schoolteacher, husband, and father. Shawnessy is the epitome of the place and period in which he lives, a rural land of springlike women, shady gamblers, wandering vagabonds, and soapbox orators.

Yet here on the banks of the Shawmucky River, which weaves its primitive course through Raintree County, Indiana, he also feels and obeys ancient rhythms. A powerful novel, Raintree County is a compelling vision of 19th-century America with timeless resonance.

At the centre of Music for Chameleons is Handcarved Coffins, a ‘nonfiction novel’ based on the brutal crimes of a real-life murderer. Taking place in a small Midwestern town in America, it offers chilling insights into the mind of a killer and the obsession of the man bringing him to justice.

Also in this volume are six short stories and seven ‘conversational portraits’ including a touching one of Marilyn Monroe, the ‘beautiful child’ and a hilarious one of a dope-smoking cleaning lady doing her rounds in New York.

This volume contains the six major novels by Jane Austen, which are:

• Emma
• Mansfield Park
• Northanger Abbey
• Persuasion
• Sense and Sensibility
• Pride and Prejudice

Pedro Páramo is a classic of Mexican modern literature about a haunted village. As one enters Juan Rulfo's legendary novel, one follows a dusty road to a town of death. Time shifts from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of dreams, desires, and memories, a world of ghosts dominated by the figure of Pedro Páramo - lover, overlord, murderer.

Rulfo's extraordinary mix of sensory images, violent passions, and unfathomable mysteries has been a profound influence on a whole generation of Latin American writers, including Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Gabriel García Márquez. To read Pedro Páramo today is as overwhelming an experience as when it was first published in Mexico back in 1955.

Forward the Foundation is the long-awaited final novel of Isaac Asimov's classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series. Completed just before his death, it is both a crowning achievement of a great writer's life and a stirring testament to the creative genius of Isaac Asimov.

As Hari Seldon struggles to perfect his revolutionary theory of psychohistory and ensure a place for humanity among the stars, the great Galactic Empire totters on the brink of apocalyptic collapse. Seldon and all he holds dear become pawns in the struggle for dominance. The control of Seldon equates to the control of psychohistory—and with it the future of the Galaxy.

Among those seeking to wield psychohistory as the greatest weapon known to man are a populist political demagogue, the weak-willed Emperor Cleon I, and a ruthless militaristic general. In his final act of service to humanity, Hari Seldon must protect his life's work from their grasp as he embarks on a search for its true heirs, a quest that begins with his own granddaughter and the dream of a new Foundation.

The original and bestselling leadership book! Sun Tzu's ideas on survival and success have been read across the world for centuries. Today they can still be applied to business, politics and life. The Art of War demonstrates how to win without conflict. It shows that with enough intelligence and planning, it is possible to conquer with a minimum of force and little destruction.

This luxury hardback edition includes an introduction by Tom Butler-Bowdon that draws out lessons for managers and business leaders, and highlights the power of Sun Tzu's thinking in everyday life.

The seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the whirlwind of Borges's genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his obsession with fantasy. Borges sends us on a journey into a compelling, bizarre, and profoundly resonant realm; we enter the fearful sphere of Pascal's abyss, the surreal and literal labyrinth of books, and the iconography of eternal return. To enter the worlds in Ficciones is to enter the mind of Jorge Luis Borges, wherein lies Heaven, Hell, and everything in between.

Part One: The Garden of Forking Paths
Prologue
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim (1936, not included in the 1941 edition)
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (1939)
The Circular Ruins (1940)
The Lottery in Babylon (1941)
An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain (1941)
The Library of Babel (1941)
The Garden of Forking Paths (1941)
Part Two: Artifices
Prologue
Funes the Memorious (1942)
The Form of the Sword (1942)
Theme of the Traitor and the Hero (1944)
Death and the Compass (1942)
The Secret Miracle (1943)
Three Versions of Judas (1944)
The End (1953, 2nd edition only)
The Sect of the Phoenix (1952, 2nd edition only)
The South (1953, 2nd edition only)

Published when Truman Capote was only twenty-three years old, Other Voices, Other Rooms is a literary touchstone of the mid-twentieth century. In this semiautobiographical coming-of-age novel, thirteen-year-old Joel Knox, after losing his mother, is sent from New Orleans to live with the father who abandoned him at birth.

But when Joel arrives at Skully’s Landing, the decaying mansion in rural Alabama, his father is nowhere to be found. Instead, Joel meets his morose stepmother, Amy, eccentric cousin Randolph, and a defiant little girl named Idabel, who soon offers Joel the love and approval he seeks.

Fueled by a world-weariness that belied Capote’s tender age, this novel tempers its themes of waylaid hopes and lost innocence with an appreciation for small pleasures and the colorful language of its time and place.

Mikhail Bulgakov's absurdist parable of the Russian Revolution. A world-famous Moscow professor -- rich, successful, and violently envied by his neighbors -- befriends a stray dog and resolves to achieve a daring scientific first by transplanting into it the testicles and pituitary gland of a dead man. But the results are wholly unexpected: a distinctly and worryingly human animal is on the loose, and the professor's hitherto respectable life becomes a nightmare beyond endurance.

As in The Master and Margarita, the masterpiece he completed shortly before his death, Mikhail Bulgakov's early novel, written in 1925, combines outrageously grotesque ideas with a narrative of deadpan naturalism. Heart of a Dog can be read as an absurd and wonderfully comic story; it can also be seen as a fierce parable of the Russian Revolution.

Murphy, Samuel Beckett's first published novel, was written in English and published in London in 1938. Beckett himself subsequently translated the book into French, and it was published in France in 1947. The novel recounts the hilarious but tragic life of Murphy in London as he attempts to establish a home and to amass sufficient fortune for his intended bride to join him.

Set in London and Dublin, during the first decades of the Irish Republic, the title character loves Celia in a “striking case of love requited” but must first establish himself in London before his intended bride will make the journey from Ireland to join him. Beckett comically describes the various schemes that Murphy employs to stretch his meager resources and the pastimes that he uses to fill the hours of his days.

Eventually, Murphy lands a job as a nurse at Magdalen Mental Mercyseat hospital, where he is drawn into the mad world of the patients which ends in a fateful game of chess. While grounded in the comedy and absurdity of much of daily life, Beckett’s work is also an early exploration of themes that recur throughout his entire body of work including sanity and insanity and the very meaning of life.

Three of a Kind

Betsy and Tacy are best friends. Then Tib moves into the neighborhood and the three of them start to play together. The grown-ups think they will quarrel, but they don't. Sometimes they quarrel with Betsy's and Tacy's bossy big sisters, but they never quarrel among themselves.

They are not as good as they might be. They cook up awful messes in the kitchen, throw mud on each other and pretend to be beggars, and cut off each other's hair. But Betsy, Tacy, and Tib always manage to have a good time.

Ever since their first publication in the 1940s, the Betsy-Tacy stories have been loved by each generation of young readers.

At its heart lies the marriage of Peter and Maureen Tarnopol, a gifted young writer and the woman who wants to be his muse but who instead is his nemesis. Their union is based on fraud and shored up by moral blackmail, but it is so perversely durable that, long after Maureen's death, Peter is still trying—and failing—to write his way free of it.

Out of desperate inventions and cauterizing truths, acts of weakness, tenderheartedness, and shocking cruelty, Philip Roth creates a work worthy of Strindberg—a fierce tragedy of sexual need and blindness.

The Master and Margarita, recognized as one of the essential classics of modern Russian literature, is an audacious revision of the stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate. The novel's portrayal of Soviet life in the 1930s is so ferociously accurate that it could not be published during Bulgakov's lifetime, appearing only in a censored edition in the 1960s.

One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue including a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two unhappy Muscovites: the Master, a writer criticized for daring to write a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate, and Margarita, who loves the Master so deeply that she is willing to go to hell for him.

A novel of inexhaustible energy, humor, and philosophical depth, Bulgakov's work emerges splendidly in this English translation, revealing its nuances for the first time.

Banned in America for almost thirty years because of its explicit sexual content, this companion volume to Miller's Tropic of Cancer chronicles his life in 1920s New York City. Famous for its frank portrayal of life in Brooklyn's ethnic neighborhoods, and Miller's outrageous sexual exploits, Tropic of Capricorn is now considered a cornerstone of modern literature.

Endgame & Act Without Words is a brilliant work by Samuel Beckett, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. This play is a pinnacle of Beckett's characteristic raw minimalism, offering a pure and devastating distillation of the human essence in the face of approaching death.

Originally written in French and translated into English by Beckett himself, Endgame is considered by many critics to be his greatest single work. Four characters engage in a game of life, concluding with the exit of one character and the immobility of the remaining three, in a profound study of man's relationship to his fellows.

Probably the most popular book in the history of the Far East, this classic sixteenth-century novel is a combination of picaresque novel and folk epic that mixes satire, allegory, and history into a rollicking adventure.

It is the story of the roguish Monkey and his encounters with major and minor spirits, gods, demigods, demons, ogres, monsters, and fairies.

This translation, by the distinguished scholar Arthur Waley, is the first accurate English version; it makes available to the Western reader a faithful reproduction of the spirit and meaning of the original.

Sexus is the first novel of Henry Miller's frank, autobiographical trilogy known collectively as The Rosy Crucifixion. This captivating narrative uses dream, fantasy, and burlesque to portray the life of a struggling writer in pre-World War I New York.

Delve into Miller's tempestuous marriage and his relentless sexual exploits in the vibrant city of New York. The trilogy continues with the novels Plexus and Nexus, exploring further the depths of human desire and artistic ambition.

This is the first complete English translation of the play that many critics consider to be Dürrenmatt's finest work. Unlike an earlier version adapted for the English-language stage, this translation adheres faithfully to the author's original play as it was published and performed in German.

The action of The Visit takes place in the small town of Guellen, "somewhere in Central Europe." An elderly millionairess, Claire Zachanassian, returns to Guellen, her home town, after an absence of many years. Merely on the promise of her millions, she shortly turns what has been a depressed area into a boom town. But there is a condition attached to her largess, which the natives of Guellen realize only after they have become enmeshed in her vengeful plot: murder.

Out of these elements, Dürrenmatt has fashioned a many-leveled play which is at once a macabre parable, a deeply moving tragedy, and a scathing indictment of the power of greed.

A disease of unparalleled destructive force has sprung up almost simultaneously in every corner of the globe, all but destroying the human race. One survivor, strangely immune to the effects of the epidemic, ventures forward to experience a world without man. What he ultimately discovers will prove far more astonishing than anything he'd either dreaded or hoped for.

Meditations on First Philosophy is a foundational text in modern Western philosophy, authored by the renowned philosopher René Descartes. This work is composed of six meditations, each building upon the previous, where Descartes embarks on a journey of philosophical inquiry and doubt.

In the first meditation, Descartes introduces the method of radical doubt, questioning the reliability of sensory experience, mathematical truths, and even the physical world's existence. This leads to the famous conclusion: Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am).

The second meditation explores the distinction between the mind, as a thinking, non-material substance, and the body, an extended, material one, introducing the concept of mind-body dualism.

In the third meditation, Descartes formulates his argument for the existence of God, positing that the idea of a perfect, infinite being must have originated from such a being, since a finite, imperfect being could not have conceived it independently.

The fourth meditation attributes human error to the misuse of free will, where judgments are made without sufficient understanding, rather than any flaw in God.

In the fifth meditation, Descartes presents the ontological argument for God's existence, asserting that the very idea of a perfect being necessarily includes existence.

Finally, the sixth meditation concludes that the external world exists, affirming the reality of material objects and the body, since a non-deceptive God would not allow clear and distinct perceptions to be false, although sensory experience can still be occasionally misleading.

This systematic method of doubt and reasoning establishes a secure foundation for scientific and philosophical knowledge, marking a significant shift towards individual reasoning and critical inquiry.

In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future.

Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.

When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.

Caligula is a fascinating exploration of the complexities of human nature, penned by the illustrious Albert Camus. Originally conceived before the war, Caligula is portrayed as an angel in search of the absolute, as well as a bloodthirsty monster. This duality makes him one of the most intriguing figures in theater.

In 1945, the play was received as a fable reflecting the horrors of Nazism. Over time, different versions and stagings, along with the evolving sensibilities of audiences, have contributed to making Caligula a deeply unsettling character. His image is forever intertwined with the faces of Gérard Philipe, who originated the role, and Albert Camus himself, who combined a need for tenderness and purity with a peculiar obsession with murder and an "inner violence" that animates his Roman emperor.

Andersonville is a gripping tale of the notorious Georgia prison, where over 50,000 Union soldiers were held captive during the American Civil War. This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel captures the glory and shame of America's most tragic conflict.

Based on extensive research and nearly twenty-five years in the making, MacKinlay Kantor's masterwork delves into the lives of those inside and outside the prison's barricades. The novel tells the heartbreaking story of the infamous camp where the best and worst of the Civil War came together, portraying the savagery of the camp commandant, the compassion of a nearby planter and his gentle daughter, and the daily fight for survival among the prisoners.

A moving portrait of bravery, cowardice, and the human spirit, Andersonville is an inspiring American classic about an unforgettable period in history.

The Calculus Affair is a thrilling adventure featuring Tintin, the Captain, and Snowy as they embark on a daring mission to rescue Dr. Calculus.
He has been kidnapped by the Bordurians, and it's up to our heroes to save him.

Join them in this exciting journey full of mystery, humor, and classic comic thrills!

Maggie Cassidy is a touching novel of adolescent love set in a New England mill town. Written by Jack Kerouac, one of the prominent figures of the Beat Generation, this novel is a bittersweet evocation of the awkwardness and joy of growing up in America.

Kerouac's straightforward narrative structure captures the essence of young love, portraying the lives of Jean and Maggie, two girls in love with the idea of being in love. They look ahead to marriage with hope and trepidation while maturing in the 1950s.

This novel, part of the Duluoz Legend series, is a remarkable work that beautifully captures the essence of adolescence and first love, making it one of Kerouac's most accessible works.

Othello is a powerful drama created by William Shakespeare that delves into the complexities of a marriage that starts with fascination and intense mutual devotion but ends in jealous rage and tragic demises. The play transports the audience to the romantic Mediterranean, transitioning from Venice to the island of Cyprus, and adds an exotic touch with tales of Othello's African past.

The narrative weaves a tale of stark contrasts between the hero, Othello, a Moor, and Desdemona, a Venetian lady. Despite differences in race, age, and cultural background, their love is portrayed as strong enough to overcome these obstacles. However, the malevolent Iago, who harbors a deep-seated hatred for Othello, sets out to dismantle this love through deceit and manipulation.

As Othello falls prey to Iago's insinuations of Desdemona's infidelity, the early fascination morphs into horror, particularly for the audience. We witness the generous and trusting Othello caught in Iago's web, and the innocent Desdemona, completely devoted to her love, subjected to Othello's brutal accusations and assaults—a result of his erroneous beliefs about her loyalty.

With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning.

This book contains the complete Andersen's fairy tales and stories in audiobook and hardcopy format. Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author and poet. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales, a literary genre he so mastered that he himself has become as mythical as the tales he wrote. Andersen's popularity is not limited to children; his stories - called eventyrs, or "fantastic tales" - express themes that transcend age and nationality.

During his lifetime he was acclaimed for having delighted children worldwide and was feted by royalty. Andersen's fairy tales, which have been translated into more than 125 languages, have become culturally embedded in the West's collective consciousness, readily accessible to children, but presenting lessons of virtue and resilience in the face of adversity for mature listeners/readers as well. They have inspired motion pictures, plays, ballets, and animated films.

Angels in America is a powerful narrative told through two full-length plays: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika. In this poignant story, Tony Kushner explores the lives of a handful of people trying to make sense of the world amidst the AIDS crisis.

The central character, Prior, is a man living with AIDS. His lover, Louis, has left him and becomes involved with Joe, an ex-Mormon and political conservative. Joe's wife, Harper, is slowly having a nervous breakdown.

These personal stories are woven together with that of Roy Cohn, a fictional re-creation of the infamous American conservative ideologue. Cohn is depicted as struggling to remain in the closet while seeking personal salvation through his beliefs.

Set against the backdrop of America in the mid-1980s, the play addresses themes of life and death, love and sex, heaven and hell, offering a bold and emotional exploration of human experiences.

J R is the long-awaited novel from William Gaddis, author of The Recognitions, that tremendous book which, in the twenty years since its publication, has come to be acknowledged as an American masterpiece. And J R is a book of comparable magnitude, substance, and humor—a rushing, raucous look at money and its influence, at love and its absence, at success and its failures, in the magnificently orchestrated circus of all its larger- and smaller-than-life characters; a frantic, forlorn comedy about who uses—and misuses—whom.

At the center: J R, ambitious sixth-grader in torn sneakers, bred on the challenge of "free enterprise" and fired by heady mail-order promises of "success." His teachers would rather be elsewhere, his principal doubles as a bank president, his Long Island classroom mirrors the world he sees around him—a world of public relations and private betrayals where everything (and everyone) wears a price tag, a world of "deals" where honesty is no substitute for experience, and the letter of the law flouts its spirit at every turn.

Operating from the remote anonymity of phone booths and the local post office, with beachheads in a seedy New York cafeteria and a catastrophic, carton-crammed tenement on East 96th Street, J R parlays a deal for thousands of surplus Navy picnic forks through penny stock flyers and a distant textile-mill bankruptcy into a nationwide, hydra-headed "family of companies."

The J R Corp and its Boss engulf brokers, lawyers, Congressmen, disaffected school teachers and disenfranchised Indians, drunks, divorcées, second-hand generals, and a fledgling composer hopelessly entangled in a nightmare marriage of business and the arts. Their bullish ventures—shaky mineral claims and gas leases, cost-plus defense contracts, a string of nursing homes cum funeral parlors, a formula for frozen music—burgeon into a paper empire ranging from timber to textiles, from matchbooks to (legalized) marijuana, from prostheses to publishing, inadvertently crushing hopes, careers, an entire town, on a collision course with the bigger world... the pragmatic Real World where the business of America is business, where the stock market exists as a convenience, and the tax laws make some people more equal than others... the world that makes the rules because it plays to win, and plays for keeps.

Absurdly logical, mercilessly real, gathering its own tumultuous momentum for the ultimate brush with commodity trading when the drop in pork belly futures masks the crumbling of our own, J R captures the reader in the cacophony of voices that revolves around this young captive of his own myths—voices that dominate the book, talking to each other, at each other, into phones, on intercoms, from TV screens and radios—a vast mosaic of sound that sweeps the reader into the relentless "real time" of spoken words in a way unprecedented in modern fiction.

The disturbing clarity with which this finished writer captures the ways in which we deal, dissemble, stumble through our words—through our lives—while the real plans are being made elsewhere makes J R the extraordinary novel that it is.

King Lear by William Shakespeare is a profound theatrical exploration of familial conflict, honor, and madness. With its compelling narrative, the play delves into the heart of a kingdom divided by the whims of a flawed monarch and the machinations of his ambitious offspring.

The tragedy unfolds as Lear, the aging king, decides to divide his realm amongst his three daughters, leading to a treacherous power struggle that strips him of his authority and sanity. Through the tribulations of Lear and his court, Shakespeare examines themes of loyalty, betrayal, and the harsh consequences of vanity and pride.

At its core, King Lear is a poignant commentary on the human condition, the fragility of power, and the complex bonds that tie families together, often tightly interwoven with suffering and loss. It is a story that resonates as much today as it did when it was first performed, with timeless insights into the depths of human nature and the inevitable flow of fate.

Angels in America is a play in two parts by American playwright Tony Kushner. The play is a complex, often metaphorical, and at times symbolic examination of AIDS and homosexuality in America in the 1980s. Certain major and minor characters are supernatural beings (angels) or deceased persons (ghosts). The play contains multiple roles for several of the actors. Initially and primarily focusing on a gay couple in Manhattan, the play also has several other storylines, some of which occasionally intersect.

The Recognitions is a masterwork about art and forgery, exploring the increasingly thin line between the counterfeit and the fake. Gaddis anticipates by almost half a century the crisis of reality that we currently face, where the real and the virtual are combining in alarming ways, and the sources of legitimacy and power are often obscure to us.

The book delves into the obsession with seventeenth-century Flemish masterpieces, through the character Wyatt Gwyon, who forges original artwork that is amazingly faithful to the spirit and techniques of the time. This profound narrative is a bold critique of cultural and artistic authenticity.

Smoky knows only one way of life: freedom. Living on the open range, he is free to go where he wants and do what he wants. And being a smart colt, he learns what he must in order to survive. He can beat any enemy whether it be a rattlesnake or a hungry wolf. He is as much a part of the Wild West as it is of him, and Smokey can't imagine anything else.

But then he comes across a new enemy, one that walks on two legs and makes funny sounds. Smoky can't beat this enemy like he has all the others. But does he really want to beat it? Or could giving up some of his freedom mean getting something else in return that's even more valuable?

This novel by Will James details the life of a horse in the western United States from his birth to his eventual decline. Smoky is captured and trained by a cowboy named Clint, becoming known as the best cow horse around. However, Smoky's life takes a dramatic turn when he is stolen by a horse thief, leading to a journey filled with challenges and heartwarming reunions.

Smoky's tale is a captivating story of resilience, loyalty, and the enduring bond between a horse and his rider. A classic piece of literature that has been adapted to the screen multiple times, "Smoky the Cow Horse" remains a testament to the spirit of the West.

Capital, Vol. 2: The Process of Circulation of Capital is the "forgotten" second volume of Karl Marx's world-shaking analysis of economics, politics, and history. This essential part of Marx's work contains the vital discussion of commodity, which is the cornerstone of Marx's theories.

Marx delves into the nature of the marketplace in bourgeois society, arguing that prosperity in a capitalist society inevitably holds within itself the seeds of its own destruction. This immensely powerful work is a vital cornerstone to Marx’s overall theory of economics.

Raised on a ranch in northern California, young Jody is well-schooled in the hard work and demands of a rancher's life. He is used to the way of horses, too; but nothing has prepared him for the special connection he will forge with Gabilan, a hot-tempered pony his father gives him.

With Billy Buck, the hired hand, Jody tends and trains his horse, restlessly anticipating the moment he will sit high upon Gabilan's saddle. But when Gabilan falls ill, Jody discovers there are still lessons he must learn about the ways of nature and, particularly, the ways of man.