He had published a volume of poetry (The Marble Faun), had written a few book reviews, and had contributed sketches to the University of Mississippi student newspaper. He had served a stint in the Royal Canadian Air Corps and while working in a New Haven bookstore had become acquainted with the wife of the writer Sherwood Anderson.In his first six months in New Orleans, where the Andersons were living, Faulkner made his initial foray into serious fiction writing. Here in one volume are the pieces he wrote while in the French Quarter. These were published locally in the Times-Picayune and in the Double Dealer.The pieces in New Orleans Sketches broadcast seeds that would take root in later works. In their themes and motifs these sketches and stories foreshadow the intense personal vision and style that would characterize Faulkner's mature fiction. As his sketches take on parallels with Christian liturgy and as they portray such characters as an idiot boy similar to Benjy Compson, they reveal evidence of his early literary sophistication.In praise of New Orleans Sketches, Alfred Kazin wrote in the New York Times Book Review that "the interesting thing for us now, who can see in this book the outline of the writer Faulkner was to become, is that before he had published his first novel he had already determined certain main themes in his work."In his trailblazing introduction, Carvel Collins often called "Faulkner's best-informed critic," illuminates the period when the sketches were written as the time that Faulkner was making the transition from poet to novelist."For the reader of Faulkner," Paul Engle wrote in the Chicago Tribune, "the book is indispensable. Its brilliant introduction . . . is full both of helpful information . . . and of fine insights." "We gain something more than a glimpse of the mind of a young genius asserting his power against a partially indifferent environment," states the Book Exchange (London). "The long introduction . . . must rank as a major literary contribution to our knowledge of an outstanding writer: perhaps the greatest of our times."

    They may be set in Africa, England, Germany, or France; their themes may range from the sexual dilemma of a too-attractive woman to the perilous initiation into manhood of a young boy; their tone may be dryly ironic, cuttingly satiric, brilliantly realistic, or powerfully tragic. But whatever the mood or place, long after the stories have ended the people linger in one's mind: the aging rake of the title piece and his insensitive doll-like bride; the compulsive housekeeper, estranged from her untidy husband and yearning for him; the sheltered young wife experiencing the horror of a swarm of locust on her husband's farm; pitiful Mr. Brooke, filling his empty days with dreams of the delightful Marnie; the two British travelers gripped by a gnawing paranoia as they face the evil and egoism of postwar Germany. Each demonstrates again and again the very special qualities of heart and mind that have one Doris Lessing a unique place in modern fiction.

    A brooding atmosphere of horror, a disturbing and subversive propensity for delirium haunts the violent gestures and chilly irony of these tales. Full of menace, the air they breathe is stirred only by the Fohn, the warm west wind of the Alps that inclines otherwise respectable citizens to vent the spleen and angst of life's last vanities.

    This is a classic timeless collection of advice and teachings about the importance of love and compassion, individual responsibility and awareness of the problems in everyday life. Whoever you are, whatever your beliefs, the Dalai Lama’s words have the power to calm and inspire.

    A mammoth balloon is inflated over the city with much talk by the natives after the artifact; Indians storm the city in spite of the excellent hand-sanded table (birch veneer on black wrought iron legs); two emphatic creatures named Edward and Pia exist in instant replays and talk in stereo static: a tiny President (forty-eight inches tall at the shoulder) may or may not cause intermittent and mass unconsciousness; and Kellerman, "gigantic with gin, runs through the park at noon with his naked father slung under one arm." Meaning may emerge, blur forth, but in this glittering clatterbang of existence no overview is possible ("The moon hates us").With elegance and wicked glee, the author has produced hitherto buried delights in the "Isle of Vernacular." Each fragment has its visual and verbal surprise. Baffling, brilliant, and very special, this is Bertie Wooster's "Guernica."

    An English clergyman and his family are gathered together with some friends in their cottage, Higher Crowstairs, to celebrate the baptism of one of their daughters. During the evening three strangers knock on the door asking for shelter and they will eventually join the party, creating havoc and misunderstanding that will be resolved only at the end of the story.

    This volume includes four fine examples, including The Canterville Ghost, the comical tale of a spirit who terrorized the residents of Canterville Chase for three centuries. When the manor is acquired by a no-nonsense American family with no use for the supernatural, hilarity ensues.Three other stories feature "The Sphinx Without a Secret," a tale of an enigmatic woman who carries a mystery's key to her grave; "The Model Millionaire," recounting the exploits of a "delightful, ineffectual young man with a perfect profile and no profession"; and "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime," in which an aristocrat learns that he is destined to commit murder. Rounding out the volume are Wilde's lyrical Poems in Prose: "The Artist," "The Doer of Good," "The Disciple," "The Master," "The House of Judgment," and "The Teacher of Wisdom."

    The former was awarded the Somerset Maugham Award.

    . . Viskovitz is each of these animals and many more, possessed by their behaviors, their neuroses, their vanities. And the gorgeous and impossible Ljuba, the object of Viskovitz’s desire, is in turn a sow, a bitch, a gazelle. There is an animal passion between them that lasts from story to story, but it is the fullness of the human condition that is portrayed most vividly in these hilarious metamorphoses. Dazzling beginnings lead into plots full of surprises, ranging from slapstick to Western, from cautionary tale to thriller. Scientific jargon is turned into wordplay and witty aphorism; theatrical reversals and philosophical insights abound. You’re an Animal, Viskovitz! is a triumph of comic inventiveness and intelligence unlike anything we’ve seen before.

    A man makes films without a camera. A married couple take turns to sit in an electric chair. Cathy Sweeney’s wonderfully inventive debut collection offers snapshots of an unsettling, dislocated world. Surprising and uncanny, funny and transgressive, these stories only look like distortions of reality.“Cathy Sweeney’s stories have already attracted a band of fanatical devotees, and this first collection is as marvellous as we could have hoped for. A unique imagination, a brilliant debut.”—Kevin Barry“I loved this collection. It vibrates with a glorious strangeness! Magnificently weird, hugely entertaining, deeply profound.”—Danielle McLaughlin“In Modern Times, Cathy Sweeney gives us fables of the present that are funny, vertiginous and melancholy.”—David Hayden

    This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

    . . THE PRESIDENT'S SHADOW There are stories no one knows. Hidden stories. I find those stories for a living. To most, it looks like Beecher White has an ordinary job. A young staffer with the National Archives in Washington, D.C., he's responsible for safekeeping the government's most important documents . . . and, sometimes, its most closely held secrets. But there are a powerful few who know his other role. Beecher is a member of the Culper Ring, a 200-year-old secret society founded by George Washington and charged with protecting the Presidency.Now the current occupant of the White House needs the Culper Ring's help. The alarming discovery of the buried arm has the President's team in a rightful panic. Who buried the arm? How did they get past White House security? And most important: What's the message hidden in the arm's closed fist? Indeed, the puzzle inside has a clear intended recipient, and it isn't the President. It's Beecher, himself. Beecher's investigation will take him back to one of our country's greatest secrets and point him toward the long, carefully hidden truth about the most shocking history of all: family history.

    In Frenzy, a reserved and respectable man draws his sister-in-law into a paranoid conviction---that his wife is having an affair. In the title novella, a successful but embittered novelist delivers a merciless account of her dying mother's love affair with a much younger teenage boy. "Suffused with delirious tension and characters more substantial than in most novels twice its size" (The Village Voice), Her Body Knows is a disquieting journey into the nature of infidelity and desire.

    There are 13 total, 11 of which are not available anywhere else, including the new Library of America edition. Interest in Cheever's work has been renewed with the publication of a new biography, John Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey. Readers of Cheever, both new and old, will be fascinated by this essential collection.

    Here, Vollmann's gritty style perfectly serves his examination of sex, violence, and corruption.