But for most readers it is the characters of the novel who loom the largest: Swann and Odette, Monsieur de Charlus, Morel, the Duchesse de Guermantes, Françoise, Saint-Loup and so many others — Giants, as the author calls them, immersed in Time."In Search of Lost Time" is a novel in seven volumes. The novel began to take shape in 1909. Proust continued to work on it until his final illness in the autumn of 1922 forced him to break off. Proust established the structure early on, but even after volumes were initially finished he kept adding new material, and edited one volume after another for publication. The last three of the seven volumes contain oversights and fragmentary or unpolished passages as they existed in draft form at the death of the author; the publication of these parts was overseen by his brother Robert.

    This Faust-like and magical story is evidence of Hesse's searching philosophy and extraordinary sense of humanity as he tells of the humanization of a middle-aged misanthrope. Yet his novel can also be seen as a plea for rigorous self-examination and an indictment of the intellectual hypocrisy of the period. As Hesse himself remarked, "Of all my books Steppenwolf is the one that was more often and more violently misunderstood than any of the others".

    "Queen Lucia" was published in 1920, "Miss Mapp" in 1922 and "Lucia in London" in 1927. They are much-loved novels of provincial snobbery and became a successful television series.

    Traven. Evidence suggests that he was born Otto Feige in Schlewsig-Holstein and that he escaped a death sentence for his involvement with the anarchist underground in Bavaria. Traven spent most of his adult life in Mexico, where, under various names, he wrote several bestsellers and was an outspoken defender of the rights of Mexico's indigenous people. First published in 1935, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is Traven's most famous and enduring work, the dark, savagely ironic, and riveting story of three down-and-out Americans hunting for gold in Sonora.

    His portrait of a golden-tongued evangelist who rises to power within his church--a saver of souls who lives a life of duplicity, sensuality, and ruthless self-indulgence--is also the record of a period, a reign of grotesque vulgarity, which but for Lewis would have left no trace of itself. Elmer Gantry has been called the greatest, most vital, and most penetrating study of hypocrisy that has been written since the works of Voltaire.

    They are available for the first time as Overlook paperbacks. Walter R. Brooks introduced Freddy the Pig in Freddy Goes to Florida. Freddy and his friends from Bean Farm migrate south for the winter, with every mile of the way a terrific adventure complete with bumbling robbers and a nasty bunch of alligators. This is vintage Freddy and the whole ensemble cast at their charming best.

    In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour comes to serve as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory of red hills and tortuous arroyos, American by law but Mexican and Indian in custom and belief. In the almost forty years that follow, Latour spreads his faith in the only way he knows--gently, all the while contending with an unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Out of these events, Cather gives us an indelible vision of life unfolding in a place where time itself seems suspended.

    Despite their hints, Constance remains ever cool, and seemingly oblivious. Or is she? In this comedy of unfaithful manners, Constance (a not-desperate housewife) has surprising ideas of her own about extra-marital activity.

    Powys." -- The Encyclopedia of Fantasy

    F. Benson’s beloved Mapp and Lucia novels are sparkling, classic comedies of manners set against the petty snobberies and competitive maneuverings of English village society in the 1920s and 1930s.The third and fourth novels in the series, Lucia in London (1927) and Mapp and Lucia (1931) continue the adventures of Benson’s famously irrepressible characters, and bring them into hilarious conflict. Both Mrs. Lucia Lucas and Miss Elizabeth Mapp are accustomed to complete social supremacy, and when one intrudes on the other’s territory, war ensues. Lucia sees herself as a benevolent—if ruthless—dictator, while Miss Mapp is driven by an insatiable desire for vengeance against the presumptuous interloper. Their skirmishes—played out on a battlefield composed of dinner parties, council meetings, and art exhibits—enliven the plots of Benson’s maliciously witty comedies.

    Complete tales and poems in one volume, with special biographical introduction by Hervey Allen.

    Gales, a laconic American drifter, turns his hand to anything for a meal and a flea-bitten bunk--he works on a cotton plantation, in an oil field, in a bakery, as a cowboy for a North American ranch owner. Opposing exploitation, he leaves behind him a trail of rebellion. Underlying this lively and funny tale of his adventures is a powerful study of social injustice, and most of all a testament to the strength of human courage and dignity one of Traven's favorite themes. "B. Traven is coming to be recognized as one of the narrative masters of the twentieth century."--New York Times Book Review. "Great storytellers often arise like Judaic just men to exemplify and rehearse the truth for their generation. The elusive B. Traven was just such a man."--Book World.

    Crevel explores the private worlds of children and their sexual imaginations in this important novel, now republished in the prestigious Sun & Moon Classics. A free-spirited young girl witnesses her father elope with a beautiful English cousin, the chambermaid run off with and then kill the gardener, her grandmother seduce her mother's new fiance, and her mother finally accept an arranged marriage with the bizarre Mac-Louf, darling of the Society for Protection by Rational Experience.

    First published in 1927, this novel tells the story of an indomitable woman who serves for almost 80 years as a caretaker, first to her parents, then to her siblings, her children, and ultimately, her grandniece to whom she passes on her metaphoric vision of women of women as "islanders."