Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty—even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path, an invisible line toward his own salvation as straight as a ruler’s edge.

    It tells the story of the Fall of Man, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of innocence pitted against corruption, in which God and Satan fight a bitter battle for control of mankind's destiny. The struggle rages across three worlds - heaven, hell, and earth - as Satan and his band of rebel angels plot their revenge against God. At the center of the conflict are Adam and Eve, motivated by all too human temptations, but whose ultimate downfall is unyielding love.Marked by Milton's characteristic erudition is a work epic both in scale and, notoriously, in ambition. For nearly 350 years it has held generation upon generation of scholars, students and readers in rapt attention and its profound influence can be seen in almost every corner of Western culture.

    "The Kreutzer Sonata" (1891) is a penetrating study of jealousy as well as a splenetic complaint about the way in which society educates young men and women in matters of sex. In "The Death of Ivan Ilych" (1886), a symbolic Everyman discovers the inner light of faith and love only when confronted by death. "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" (1886) is a simple, didactic story of peasant life, written by Tolstoy in the wake of a spiritual crisis. All three tales offer readers a splendid introduction to Tolstoy's work as well as the focused delights of the short story form brought to a pinnacle in the hands of a master.

    Munro) stands alongside Anton Chekhov and O Henry as a master of the short story. His extraordinary stories are a mixture of humorous satire, irony and the macabre, in which the stupidities and hypocrisy of conventional society are viciously pilloried. This collection includes Sredni Vastar and The Unrest Cure. 'We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other married couples they sometimes live apart'[Description from back cover]

    Featuring: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Diane Di Prima, Bob Dylan, Ken Kesey, Charles Bukowski, Michael McClure, and more.

    The story of Robert Kincaid, the photographer and free spirit searching for the covered bridges of Madison County, and Francesca Johnson, the farm wife waiting for the fulfillment of a girlhood dream, THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY gives voice to the longings of men and women everywhere-and shows us what it is to love and be loved so intensely that life is never the same again.

    But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy – the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.

    From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, women, and the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of D. H. Lawrence, "Ham on Rye" offers a crude, brutal, and savagely funny portrait of an outcast's coming-of-age during the desperate days of the Great Depression.

    It tells of the advent and the rise of the Snopes family in Frenchman's Bend, a small town built on the ruins of a once-stately plantation. Flem Snopes -- wily, energetic, a man of shady origins -- quickly comes to dominate the town and its people with his cunning and guile.

    Peter finds himself in the shabby study of his former home. Surrounded by the comforting, familiar sights of his past, he surveys his life and the people he has loved — his wife Lillian, his daughters, and Tom Outland, his most outstanding student and once, his son-in-law to be. Enigmatic and courageous—and a tragic victim of the Great War — Tom has remained a source of inspiration to the professor. But he has also left behind him a troubling legacy which has brought betrayal and fracture to the women he loves most.

    At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate; this far from civilization the boys can do anything they want. Anything. They attempt to forge their own society, failing, however, in the face of terror, sin and evil. And as order collapses, as strange howls echo in the night, as terror begins its reign, the hope of adventure seems as far from reality as the hope of being rescued. Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies is perhaps our most memorable novel about “the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart.”

    This modern section has been overhauled to reflect the diversity of American writing since 1945. A section on 19th-century women's writing is included.

    Lawrence's mesmerizing and unsettling 1926 novel is his great work of the political imagination.

    In addition to the title poem, this selecion includes "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", "Gerontion", "Ash Wednesday", and other poems from Mr. Eliot's early and middle work. "In ten years' time," wrote Edmund Wilson in Axel0s Castle (1931), "Eliot has left upon English poetry a mark more unmistakable than that of any other poet writing in English." In 1948 Mr. Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize "for his work as trail-blazing pioneer of modern poetry".

    Together, the three original Star Wars movies–A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi–told one epic: a heroic tale of innocence lost and wisdom gained, of downfall and redemption, of the never-ending fight between the forces of good and evil. Read the story of the movies–all three in one trade paperback volume–and rediscover the wonder of the legend that begins: A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . . Luke Skywalker lived and worked on his uncle’s farm on the remote planet of Tatooine, but he yearned to travel beyond the farthest reaches of the universe to distant, alien worlds. Then Luke intercepted a cryptic message from a beautiful, captive princess . . . and found himself catapulted into the adventure of a lifetime.Luke Skywalker, proud Princess Leia, and headstrong Han Solo . . . merciless Darth Vader, wise Obi-Wan Kenobi, loyal droids R2-D2 and C-3PO, and the inscrutable Yoda . . . Chewbacca the Wookiee, shifty Lando Calrissian, and the vile Jabba the Hutt . . . all the vivid characters from the Star Wars universe spring to life in these thrilling pages.The Star Wars Trilogy is a must-read for anyone who wants to relive the excitement, the magic, and the sheer entertainment of this legendary saga–now and forever.