Light in August, a novel set in the American South during Prohibition, contrasts stark tragedy with hopeful perseverance in the face of mortality. This work features some of Faulkner’s most memorable characters:

• Guileless, dauntless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn child;
• Reverend Gail Hightower, plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen;
• And Joe Christmas, a desperate, enigmatic drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry.

“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.” —William Faulkner

The Complete Works by William Shakespeare is an extensive collection that brings together the celebrated works of one of the most influential writers in the English language. This comprehensive edition includes Shakespeare's timeless plays, sonnets, and poems, offering readers a unique opportunity to explore the breadth and depth of his literary genius.

From the tragic love story of Romeo and Juliet to the comedic twists of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and from the political machinations of Julius Caesar to the haunting contemplations of Hamlet, this volume presents an array of Shakespeare's most renowned works. Also featured are his lesser-known poems, such as Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, as well as his profound sonnets that delve into themes of love, beauty, and mortality.

Whether you are a dedicated scholar or a casual reader, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare is an essential addition to any library, providing endless hours of engagement with the words of the Bard himself.

Spain. A land of eternal passion and unceasing bloodshed. From the vengeance of a pitiless tyrant, four women flee the sacred, once-safe walls of a convent: LUCIA, the proud survivor harboring a murderous secret from the savage clan wars of Sicily...GRACIELLA, the beauty still unpurged of guilt from one reckless, youthful sin...MEGAN, the orphan seeking perilous refuge in the arms of a defiant Basque rebel...and TERESA, the believer haunted by a faith that mocks her with silence. Leaving innocence but not hope behind, they venture into an alien, dazzling world, where each will encounter an unexpected destiny -- and the truth about herself.

When four nuns are forced to flee their Spanish convent in 1976 to face a hostile world, they find themselves pawns in a violent struggle between the outlawed Basque underground movement and the Spanish army under the command of Colonel Ramon Acoca, who is bent on destroying them all.

Todd Anderson and his friends at Welton Academy can hardly believe how different life is since their new English professor, the flamboyant John Keating, has challenged them to make your lives extraordinary! Inspired by Keating, the boys resurrect the Dead Poets Society--a secret club where, free from the constraints and expectations of school and parents, they let their passions run wild. As Keating turns the boys on to the great words of Byron, Shelley, and Keats, they discover not only the beauty of language, but the importance of making each moment count.

But the Dead Poets pledges soon realize that their newfound freedom can have tragic consequences. Can the club and the individuality it inspires survive the pressure from authorities determined to destroy their dreams?

Orphaned siblings create a macabre secret world for themselves in this “irresistibly readable” novel by the New York Times-bestselling author (The New York Review of Books).

This “powerful and disconcerting” novel by the Booker Prize-winning author of The Children Act and Atonement (The Daily Telegraph) tells the story of a dying family who live in a dying part of the city.

A father of four children decides, in an effort to make his garden easier to control, to pave it over. In the process, he has a heart attack and dies, leaving the cement garden unfinished and the children to the care of their mother. Soon after, the mother too dies and the children, fearful of being separated by social services, decide to cover up their parents’ deaths: they bury their mother in the cement garden.

The story is told from the point of view of Jack, one of the sons, who is entering adolescence with all of its attendant curiosity and appetites. Julie, the eldest, is almost a grown woman. Sue is rather bookish and observes all that goes on around her. And Tom is the youngest and the baby of the lot. The children seem to manage in this perverse setting rather well—until Julie brings home a boyfriend who threatens their secret by asking too many questions.

“[A] beautiful but disturbing novel.”—The AV Club
“McEwan’s evocative detail and perfect British prose lend a genteel decorum to the death and decay that surround the family.”—The New Yorker

The plot of Washington Square has the simplicity of old-fashioned melodrama: a plain-looking, good-hearted young woman, the only child of a rich widower, is pursued by a charming but unscrupulous man who seeks the wealth she will presumably inherit. On this premise, Henry James constructed one of his most memorable novels, a story in which love is answered with betrayal and loyalty leads inexorably to despair.

In Washington Square (1880), Henry James reminisces about the New York he had known thirty years before as he tells the story of Catherine Sloper and her fortune-seeking suitor Morris Townsend. This perceptively drawn human drama is James' most accessible work and an enduring literary triumph.

Raised from birth in the orphanage at St. Cloud's, Maine, Homer Wells has become the protege of Dr. Wilbur Larch, its physician and director. There Dr. Larch cares for the troubled mothers who seek his help, either by delivering and taking in their unwanted babies or by performing illegal abortions. Meticulously trained by Dr. Larch, Homer assists in the former, but draws the line at the latter.

Then a young man brings his beautiful fiancee to Dr. Larch for an abortion, and everything about the couple beckons Homer to the wide world outside the orphanage...

Novel with Cocaine delves into the depths of an adolescent's cocaine addiction, presenting a Dostoevskian psychological novel of ideas. It explores the complex interplay between psychology, philosophy, and ideology through the story of Vadim, who, after formative experiences at school and with women, succumbs to drug abuse and the philosophical reflections it provokes.

Though the narrative makes little direct reference to the Revolution, it's set against a backdrop where the obsession with addictive forms of thinking resonates with the historical context. The novel critically examines how "our inborn feelings of humanity and justice" can lead to "the cruelties and satanic transgressions committed in its name."

In the Oresteia—the only trilogy in Greek drama which survives from antiquity—Aeschylus took as his subject the bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos.

Moving from darkness to light, from rage to self-governance, from primitive ritual to civilized institution, their spirit of struggle and regeneration becomes an everlasting song of celebration.

Different Seasons is a gripping collection of four novellas by Stephen King, each narrative presenting a distinct tone and season, offering a departure from the author's signature horror genre.

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption - A profound tale of injustice and an unconventional escape, echoing the sentiments of The Count of Monte Cristo.

Apt Pupil - The disturbing bond between a seemingly perfect California schoolboy and an old man with a horrific history, culminating in a chilling symbiosis.

The Body - A coming-of-age story where four adventurous boys encounter life, death, and the stark reality of mortality in the Maine woods.

The Breathing Method - A mysterious narrative shared within an unusual club, about a woman's unwavering determination to give birth against all odds.

Carson McCullers’ prodigious first novel was published to instant acclaim when she was just twenty-three. Set in a small town in the middle of the deep South, it is the story of John Singer, a lonely deaf-mute, and a disparate group of people who are drawn towards his kind, sympathetic nature. The owner of the café where Singer eats every day, a young girl desperate to grow up, an angry drunkard, a frustrated black doctor: each pours their heart out to Singer, their silent confidant, and he in turn changes their disenchanted lives in ways they could never imagine.

A Tale of Passion, as its subtitle declares, The Good Soldier relates the complex social and sexual relationships between two couples, one English, one American, and the growing awareness by the American narrator John Dowell of the intrigues and passions behind their orderly Edwardian facade. It is the attitude of Dowell, his puzzlement, his uncertainty, and the seemingly haphazard manner of his narration that make the book so powerful and mysterious.

Despite its catalogue of death, insanity, and despair, the novel has many comic moments, and has inspired the work of several distinguished writers, including Graham Greene. This is the only annotated edition available.

Cujo is a 1981 psychological horror novel by American writer Stephen King about a rabid Saint Bernard. The novel won the British Fantasy Award in 1982 and was made into a film in 1983.

Such wonderful children. Such a beautiful mother. Such a lovely house. Such endless terror!

It wasn't that she didn't love her children. She did. But there was a fortune at stake—a fortune that would assure their later happiness if she could keep the children a secret from her dying father.

So she and her mother hid her darlings away in an unused attic. Just for a little while. But the brutal days swelled into agonizing years. Now Cathy, Chris, and the twins wait in their cramped and helpless world, stirred by adult dreams, adult desires, served a meager sustenance by an angry, superstitious grandmother who knows that the Devil works in dark and devious ways. Sometimes he sends children to do his work—children who—one by one—must be destroyed....

Way upstairs there are four secrets hidden. Blond, beautiful, innocent struggling to stay alive....

Our Town was first produced and published in 1938 to wide acclaim. This Pulitzer Prize–winning drama of life in the town of Grover's Corners, an allegorical representation of all life, has become a classic. It is Thornton Wilder's most renowned and most frequently performed play.

It is now reissued in this handsome hardcover edition, featuring a new Foreword by Donald Margulies, who writes, "You are holding in your hands a great American play. Possibly the great American play." In addition, Tappan Wilder has written an eye-opening new Afterword, which includes Thornton Wilder's unpublished notes and other illuminating photographs and documentary material.

After years of study in Europe, the young narrator of Season of Migration to the North returns to his village along the Nile in the Sudan. It is the 1960s, and he is eager to make a contribution to the new postcolonial life of his country. Back home, he discovers a stranger among the familiar faces of childhood—the enigmatic Mustafa Sa’eed.

Mustafa takes the young man into his confidence, telling him the story of his own years in London, of his brilliant career as an economist, and of the series of fraught and deadly relationships with European women that led to a terrible public reckoning and his return to his native land.

But what is the meaning of Mustafa’s shocking confession? Mustafa disappears without explanation, leaving the young man—whom he has asked to look after his wife—in an unsettled and violent no-man’s-land between Europe and Africa, tradition and innovation, holiness and defilement, and man and woman, from which no one will escape unaltered or unharmed.

Season of Migration to the North is a rich and sensual work of deep honesty and incandescent lyricism. In 2001 it was selected by a panel of Arab writers and critics as the most important Arab novel of the twentieth century.

Dolls: red or black; capsules or tablets; washed down with vodka or swallowed straight—for Anne, Neely, and Jennifer, it doesn't matter, as long as the pill bottle is within easy reach. These three women become best friends when they are young and struggling in New York City and then climb to the top of the entertainment industry—only to find that there is no place left to go but down—into the Valley of the Dolls.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is the story of a sixteen-year-old who retreats from reality into the bondage of a lushly imagined but threatening kingdom, and her slow and painful journey back to sanity.

Chronicles the three-year battle of a mentally ill, but perceptive, teenage girl against a world of her own creation, emphasizing her relationship with the doctor who gave her the ammunition of self-understanding with which to help herself.

Joanne Greenberg wrote this novel, which is a fictionalized autobiography, to give a picture of what being schizophrenic feels like and what can be accomplished with a trusting relationship between a gifted therapist and a willing patient. It is not a case history or study. She likes to think it is a hymn to reality.

Goethe’s Faust reworks the late medieval myth of a brilliant scholar so disillusioned he resolves to make a contract with Mephistopheles. The devil will do all he asks on Earth and seeks to grant him a moment in life so glorious that he will wish it to last forever. But if Faust does bid the moment stay, he falls to Mephisto and must serve him after death. In this first part of Goethe’s great work, the embittered thinker and Mephistopheles enter into their agreement, and soon Faust is living a rejuvenated life and winning the love of the beautiful Gretchen. But in this compelling tragedy of arrogance, unfulfilled desire, and self-delusion, Faust heads inexorably toward an infernal destruction.

The best translation of Faust available, this volume provides the original German text and its English counterpart on facing pages. Walter Kaufmann's translation conveys the poetic beauty and rhythm as well as the complex depth of Goethe's language. Includes Part One and selections from Part Two.

For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. Willy Loman has been a salesman for 34 years. At 60, he is cast aside, his usefulness now exhausted. With no future to dream about he must face the crushing disappointments of his past. He takes one final brave action, but is he heroic at last, or a self-deluding fool?

Miss Lonelyhearts was a newspaper reporter, so named because he had been assigned to write the agony column, to answer the letters from Desperate, Sick-of-It-All, Disillusioned. A joke at first; but then he was caught up, terrifyingly, in a vision of suffering, and he sought a way out, turning first here, then there—Art, Sex, Religion. Shrike, the cynical editor, the friend and enemy, compulsively destroyed each of his friend’s gestures toward idealism. Together, in the city’s dim underworld, Shrike and Miss Lonelyhearts turn round and round in a loathsome dance, unresolvable, hating until death…

The Day of the Locust To Hollywood comes Tod Hackett, hoping for a career in scene designing, but he finds the way hard and falls in with others—extras, technicians, old vaudeville hands—who are also in difficulty. Around him he sees the great mass of inland Americans who have retired to California in expectation of health and ease. But boredom consumes them, their own emptiness maddens them; they search out any abnormality in their lust for excitement—drugs, perversion, crime. In the end only blood will serve; unreasoned, undirected violence. The day of the locust is at hand…

Abandoned pregnant and penniless on the teeming streets of London, 16-year-old Amber St. Clare manages, by using her wits, beauty, and courage, to climb to the highest position a woman could achieve in Restoration England—that of favorite mistress of the Merry Monarch, Charles II. From whores and highwaymen to courtiers and noblemen, from events such as the Great Plague and the Fire of London to the intimate passions of ordinary—and extraordinary—men and women, Amber experiences it all. But throughout her trials and escapades, she remains, in her heart, true to the one man she really loves, the one man she can never have. Frequently compared to Gone with the Wind, Forever Amber is the other great historical romance, outselling every other American novel of the 1940s—despite being banned in Boston for its sheer sexiness. A book to read and reread, this edition brings back to print an unforgettable romance and a timeless masterpiece.

Baldwin's haunting and controversial second novel is his most sustained treatment of sexuality, and a classic of gay literature. In a 1950s Paris swarming with expatriates and characterized by dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses, despite his determination to live the conventional life he envisions for himself. After meeting and proposing to a young woman, he falls into a lengthy affair with an Italian bartender and is confounded and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two.

Examining the mystery of love and passion in an intensely imagined narrative, Baldwin creates a moving and complex story of death and desire that is revelatory in its insight.

Valentina Hunter's parents think they've just hit the jackpot. When her mother invents a product that makes her family millionaires overnight, they buy a new house and new cars, and enroll their daughter in the ultra-exclusive Palm Lake private school.

The school comes with an excellent resume; more Palm Lake graduates go on to the Ivy League than any other private school in the area. Ninety percent of them start college with at least a year’s worth of Advanced Placement credits, and they earn more perfect ACT scores per capita than the students at any other high school.

Valentina’s mother and father are ecstatic, but Val doesn’t share the sentiment; she would rather go to the local public school with all her middle school friends. Events only increase her desire, as Valentina quickly finds herself embroiled in bitter social battles and hostile vendettas, leaving her to question whether she’ll even be able to survive the first month.

Much Ado About Nothing, one of Shakespeare's most beloved comedies, intertwines two very different tales of love. On one hand, we have the young lovers Hero and Claudio, whose journey to the altar is thwarted by the villainous Don John. On the other, the story of Beatrice and Benedick showcases how pride and mutual antagonism can be overcome when friends decide to intervene, turning their merry war into an unexpected romance.

The play also delves into the themes of honor, shame, and societal expectations, providing a rich tapestry of human emotions and interactions. From the humorous misunderstandings and witty banter to the dramatic accusations and eventual reconciliations, Much Ado About Nothing remains a timeless exploration of love and its various complications.

No Exit presents a compelling portrayal of hell unlike any other. In this existentialist drama, three characters find themselves locked together in a room for eternity, with no escape. The play explores the psychological torment and humiliation that comes from being stripped of all pretenses under the unrelenting gaze of others. It's a place where secrets are laid bare and the deepest deeds are exposed to the harsh light of judgement. The true torture of this hell lies not in physical pain, but in the endless psychological anguish and introspection. This thought-provoking piece is a testament to Sartre's brilliance in exploring the human condition.

Set adrift by his wife's sudden death and struggling to keep a grip on reality, Bunny Munro does the only thing he can think of - with his young son in tow, he hits the road. An epic chronicle of one man's judgement and death, The Death of Bunny Munro is an achingly tender portrait of the relationship between father and son.

'A thing to marvel at, a thing to be grateful for.' A rich American art-collector and his daughter Maggie buy in for themselves and to their greater glory a beautiful young wife and noble husband. They do not know that Charlotte and Prince Amerigo were formerly lovers, nor that on the eve of the Prince's marriage they had discovered, in a Bloomsbury antique shop, a golden bowl with a secret flaw. The superstitious Amerigo, fearing for his gilded future, refuses to accept it as a wedding gift from Charlotte. 'Don't you think too much of "cracks,"' she is later to say to him, 'aren't you too afraid of them? I risk the cracks...' When the golden bowl is broken, Maggie must leave the security of her childhood and try to reassemble the pieces of her shattered happiness.

In this, the last of his three great poetic masterpieces, James combined with a dazzling virtuosity elements of social comedy, of mystery, terror, and myth. The Golden Bowl is the most controversial, ambiguous, and sophisticated of James's novels.

The text of this World's Classics paperback is that of the first English edition (1905). James's Preface is included, and a new introduction, notes, and selected variant readings.