As their relationship develops, Renault expertly conveys Greek culture, showing the impact of this supreme philosopher whose influence spans epochs.

    Using as a springboard a real literary hoax that transfixed Australia in his boyhood, Peter Carey wickedly and ruefully explores how a phantom poet taunts, haunts and otherwise destroys his maker, pursuing him from Melbourne to a seedy, sweaty, bitter ending in the tropical chaos of Kuala Lumpur.

    The system worked this way: When a man committed a crime important enough to interest the king, notice was given that the fate of the accused person would be decided, on a given date, in the arena of the amphitheater. When the date arrived and everyone had assembled in the galleries, the king gave a signal, a door beneath him opened, and the accused stepped out into the arena. Two doors, exactly alike and side by side, faced the accused, and it was his duty to open one of them. He could open either door he pleased. If he opened the one, a hungry tiger would spring upon him and tear him to pieces. But, if he opened the other door, a beautiful lady came out and the accused was immediately married to her, as a reward for his innocence.The king had a beautiful daughter, with whom a young man of common blood fell in love. The king's daughter was also in love with the young man. The love affair went on for some time before the king discovered its existence. Immediately, the king had the youth placed into prison and set a day for the trial in the arena. The appointed day arrived, and the galleries of the arena were filled. The signal was given, a door beneath the royal party opened, and the lover of the princess walked into the arena. The princess, through the use of her position and money, had learned behind which door stood the lady and behind which waited the tiger. The youth expected her to have learned this information, and he looked toward her for a signal. Her signal was toward the right, and the youth went to the door on the right and opened it. The story leaves it up to the reader to decide which came out of the door--the lady or the tiger. Which did the princess decide? Was it to let her lover to live and love another woman, or did she decide that if she couldn't have him no one would?

    It is the story of the fortunes and misfortunes of the egotistical dandy Peregrine Pickle, and it provides a comic and caustic portrayal of 18th century European society.

    Cerf chose the most famous and representative stories from Sir Richard F. Burton's multivolume translation, and includes Burton's extensive and acclaimed explanatory notes. The tales of told by Shahrazad over a thousand and one nights to delay her execution by the vengeful King Shahriyar have become among the most popular in both Eastern and Western literature, as recounted by Sir Francis Burton. From the epic adventures of "Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp" to the farcical "Young Woman and her Five Lovers" and the social criticism of "The Tale of the Hunchback", the stories depict a fabulous world of all-powerful sorcerers, jinns imprisoned in bottles and enchanting princesses. But despite their imaginative extravagance, the Tales are anchored to everyday life by their realism, providing a full and intimate record of medieval Islam.'

    A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. These familiar components of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history. Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment — of powerful men seeking to become more powerful and one woman seeking justice for her child — but this version brings new context to an old story. While crafting her contemporary adaptation, Headley unearthed significant shifts lost over centuries of translation; her Beowulf is one for the twenty-first century.

    In the end, Myshkin’s honesty, goodness, and integrity are shown to be unequal to the moral emptiness of those around him. In her revision of the Garnett translation, Anna Brailovsky has corrected inaccuracies wrought by Garnett’s drastic anglicization of the novel, restoring as much as possible the syntactical structure of the original story.

    Outside the Smolny Institute for Noble Young Ladies, an English governess is waiting for her young charge to be released from school. But so are the Tsar’s secret police… Beautiful and headstrong, Sashenka Zeitlin is just sixteen. As her mother parties with Rasputin and her dissolute friends, Sashenka slips into the frozen night to play her part in a dangerous game of conspiracy and seduction. Twenty years on, Sashenka has a powerful husband with whom she has two children. Around her people are disappearing, but her own family is safe. But she's about to embark on a forbidden love affair which will have devastating consequences. Sashenka's story lies hidden for half a century, until a young historian goes deep into Stalin's private archives and uncovers a heart-breaking tale of passion and betrayal, savage cruelty and unexpected heroism - and one woman forced to make an unbearable choice.

    The refined Arab courtier Ibn Fadlan is accompanying a party of Viking warriors back to their home. He is appalled by their customs—the gratuitous sexuality of their women, their disregard for cleanliness, and their cold-blooded sacrifices. As they enter the frozen, forbidden landscape of the North—where the day’s length does not equal the night’s, where after sunset the sky burns in streaks of color—Fadlan soon discovers that he has been unwillingly enlisted to combat the terrors in the night that come to slaughter the Vikings, the monsters of the mist that devour human flesh. But just how he will do it, Fadlan has no idea.

    M. Forster once described The Longest Journey as the book "I am most glad to have written." An introspective novel of manners at once comic and tragic, it tells of a sensitive and intelligent young man with an intense imagination and a certain amount of literary talent. He sets out full of hope to become a writer, but gives up his aspirations for those of the conventional world, gradually sinking into a life of petty conformity and bitter disappointments.

    Robyn Ballantyne and her brother Morris have waited years for this moment: to return to Africa, to search for their missionary father who had disappeared somewhere in the wilderness.Traveling north from Cape Town, they follow a map left by a madman--into an uncharted world of waterfalls and jungle, teeming wildlife, murderous disease, and the ghastly ruins of an astounding city.Uncovering their father's trail, Robyn and her brother are in the midst of a slave trade that pours out of Africa like a bloody wound. Now, to survive what they have found, they must make their separate ways out--through pitched battles on land and on sea…and through the pride, passions and fury of their hearts…

    The longest poem covers less than two pages. Yet in theme and tone her writing reaches for the sublime as it charts the landscape of the human soul. A true innovator, Dickinson experimented freely with conventional rhythm and meter, and often used dashes, off rhymes, and unusual metaphors—techniques that strongly influenced modern poetry. Dickinson’s idiosyncratic style, along with her deep resonance of thought and her observations about life and death, love and nature, and solitude and society, have firmly established her as one of America’s true poetic geniuses.