Martin Eden


Jack London - 1908
    Set in San Francisco, this is the story of Martin Eden, an impoverished seaman who pursues, obsessively and aggressively, dreams of education and literary fame. London, dissatisfied with the rewards of his own success, intended Martin Eden as an attack on individualism and a criticism of ambition; however, much of its status as a classic has been conferred by admirers of its ambitious protagonist.Andrew Sinclair's wide-ranging introduction discusses the conflict between London's support of socialism and his powerful self-will. Sinclair also explores the parallels and divergences between the life of Martin Eden and that of his creator, focusing on London's mental depressions and how they affected his depiction of Eden.

Moscow to the End of the Line


Venedikt Erofeev - 1969
    On the way he bestows upon angels, fellow passengers, and the world at large a magnificent monologue on alcohol, politics, society, alcohol, philosophy, the pains of love, and, of course, alcohol.

Snow


Maxence Fermine - 1999
    Haiku.And snow."An international bestseller, "Snow "is "a novel that reads like a poem. Limpid, delicate, and pure like its title."* In nineteenth-century Japan, a young haiku poet named Yuko journeys through snow-covered mountains on a quest for art and finds love instead. Maxence Fermine's prose is hypnotic, and his sensuous love story envelops you as if you¹re wrapped in one of his dreams with your eyes wide open.Yuko has all the makings of greatness, but must learn to reach beyond the silent starkness of snow, his ultimate inspiration, to find the color pulsing through life. Color enhanced by love, without which he will remain invisible to the world. On his journey to enlightenment he learns how fragile the balance of life can be through the tragic story of his blind master, Soseki, and the love of his life, a French tightrope walker named Snow. Love and art finally converge in a most startling and exquisite way when a special young woman opens Yuko's heart to the purest of color and light."*Gala" (Italy)

Jeeves & the Song of Songs


P.G. Wodehouse - 1929
    Originally published in the Strand, in September 1929.

Pierre and Luce


Romain Rolland - 1920
    --- The great French writer Romain Rolland (1866-1944, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1915) wrote his famous tragic love story "Pierre and Luce" at the end of World War I. Its protagonists recall the lovers of classical antiquity as well as those of the Middle Ages.

The Saffron Kitchen


Yasmin Crowther - 2006
    The story begins on a blustery day in London, when Maryam Mazar’s dark secrets and troubled past surface violently with tragic consequences for her pregnant daughter, Sara. Burdened by guilt, Maryam leaves her comfortable English home for the remote village in Iran where she was raised and disowned by her father. When Sara decides to follow her she learns the price that her mother had to pay for her freedom and of the love she left behind. Poetic, haunting, and brilliantly crafted, The Saffron Kitchen is sure to entrance fans of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.

Fungi from Yuggoth and Other Poems


H.P. Lovecraft - 1920
    Since publication of The Outsider and Others in 1939, his work has been published in many parts of the world, widely anthologised, and filmed. His books include The Survivor and Others, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Doom That Came to Sarnath, Fungi from Yuggoth and Other Poems, The Tomb and Other Tales, At the Mountains of Madness, The Lurker at the Threshold (Lovecraft and Derleth) and The Lurking Fear. Lovecrat was born and lived most of his life in Providence, Rhode Island.1."Foreword", by August Derleth2."Providence"3."On a Grecian Colonnade in a Park"4."Old Christmas"5."New England Fallen"6."On a New England Village Seen by Moonlight"7."Astrophobos"8."Sunset"9."To Pan"10."A Summer Sunset and Evening"11."To Mistress Sophia Simple, Queen of the Cinema"12."A Year Off"13."Sir Thomas Tryout"14."Phaeton"15."August"16."Death"17."To a Youth"18."My Favorite Character"19."To Templeton and Mount Monadnock"20."The Poe-et's Nightmare"21."Lament for the Vanished Spider"22."Regnar Lodbrug's Epicedium"23."Little Sam Perkins"24."Drinking Song from the Tomb"25."The Ancient Track"26."The Eidolon"27."The Nightmare Lake"28."The Outpost"29."The Rutted Road"30."The Wood"31."The House"32."The City"33."Hallowe'en in a Suburb"34."Primavera"35."October"36."To a Dreamer"37."Despair"38."Nemesis"39."Yule Horror"40."To Mr. Finlay, Upon His Drawing for Mr. Bloch's Tale, 'The Faceless God'"41."Where Once Poe Walked"42."Christmas Greetings to Mrs. Phillips Gamwell—1925"43."Brick Row"44."The Messenger"45."To Klarkash-ton, Lord of Averoigne"46."Psychopompos"47."The Book"48."Pursuit"49."The Key"50."Recognition"51."Homecoming"52."The Lamp"53."Zaman's Hill"54."The Port"55."The Courtyard"56."The Pigeon-Flyers"57."The Well"58."The Howler"59."Hesperia"60."Star Winds"61."Antarkos"62."The Window"63."A Memory"64."The Gardens of Yin"65."The Bells"66."Night Gaunts"67."Nyarlathotep"68."Azathoth"69."Mirage"70."The Canal"71."St. Toad's"72."The Familiars"73."The Elder Pharos"74."Expectancy"75."Nostalgia"76."Background"77."The Dweller"78."Alienation"79."Harbour Whistles"80."Recapture"81."Evening Star"82. "Continuity"Cover Illustration: Gervasio Gallardo

Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran


Azadeh Moaveni - 2009
    She is forced to hide her pregnancy from the religious authorities until she can marry, navigate Byzantine wedding customs and raise a newborn in a country far from home.

Cane


Jean Toomer - 1923
    The sketches, poems, and stories of black rural and urban life that make up Cane are rich in imagery. Visions of smoke, sugarcane, dusk, and flame permeate the Southern landscape: the Northern world is pictured as a harsher reality of asphalt streets. Impressionistic, sometimes surrealistic, the pieces are redolent of nature and Africa, with sensuous appeals to eye and ear.

Versuri


Tudor Arghezi - 1976
    The translators of this volume have endeavored not only to convey the spirit of the original Romanian, but to find an English equivalent for its sound. The English verse, printed facing the Romanian, conveys the distilled, metaphorical nature of a poetry that expresses a strong sense of ancestral continuity and apocalyptic visions of the world.Originally published in 1976.

Letters of Ted Hughes


Ted Hughes - 2007
    This selection of letters begins when Hughes was seventeen, and documents the course of a life at once resolutely private but intensely attuned to other lives (including a readership comprising both adults and children); a life pared down to essentials and yet eventful, peripatetic, at times publicly controversial.

Holding the Man


Timothy Conigrave - 1995
    Winner of the United Nations Human Rights Award for Nonfiction, HOLDING THE MAN has been adapted into a play opening in America in September 2007. The playwright who adapted the book for stage refers to this a a memoir of striking and unapologetic honesty.

Selections from Leaves of Grass


Walt Whitman - 1961
    With an introduction by Walter Lowenfels.

Here Is New York


E.B. White - 1948
    White's stroll around Manhattan remains the quintessential love letter to the city, written by one of America's foremost literary figures. The New York Times has named Here is New York one of the ten best books ever written about the metropolis, and The New Yorker calls it "the wittiest essay, and one of the most perceptive, ever done on the city.