His cravings take him to Paris at age eighteen to try his hand at art, then back to London to study medicine. But even so, nothing can sate his nagging hunger for experience. Then he falls obsessively in love, embarking on a disastrous relationship that will change his life forever.…Marked by countless similarities to Maugham’s own life, his masterpiece is “not an autobiography,” as the author himself once contended, “but an autobiographical novel; fact and fiction are inexorably mingled; the emotions are my own.”

    He is set adrift in the Bay, eventually being picked up by Wolf Larsen.Larsen is the captain of a seal-hunting schooner, the Ghost. Brutal and cynical, yet also highly intelligent and intellectual, he rules over his ship and terrorizes the crew with the aid of his exceptionally great physical strength.

    Christopher Newman, a 'self-made' American millionaire in France, falls in love with the beautiful aristocratic Claire de Bellegarde. Her family, however, taken aback by his brash American manner, rejects his proposal of marriage. When Newman discovers a guilty secret in the Bellegardes' past, he confronts a moral dilemma: Should he expose them and thus gain his revenge? James's masterly early work is at once a social comedy, a melodramatic romance and a realistic novel of manners.

    In this shocking tale of sexual deception, Gautier draws readers into the bedrooms and boudoirs of a French château in a compelling exploration of desire and sexual intrigue, and gives voice to a longing which is larger in scope, namely, the wish for completeness in oneself.

    This collection includes the following tales:"The Young King""The Birthday of the Infanta" "The Fisherman and his Soul""The Star-child"Readers of all ages will be delighted by these fanciful tales.

     The six novels, published in order of importance, are: • Nineteen Eighty-Four (the most important dystopian novel ever written, together with Huxley's Brave New World, and Zamyatin's "We" • Animal Farm (1945) • Burmese Days (1934) • Coming Up for Air (1939) • A Clergyman's Daughter (1935) • Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) His three non fiction books are: • Homage to Catalonia (1938), about the Spanish Civil War. • Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) The last book of the collection is called "ESSAYS: From Hitler, Franco & the Atomic Bomb; to Tolstoi, Dickens & Twain". Orwell was an acclaimed analyst of his country's reality during World War II and beyond (including the beginning of the cold war), which he reflects in his many articles and pamphlets collected in this book. He also did very deep literary and personal analysis of men like Mark Twain, Adolf Hitler, or even Tolstoi. The following is the list of essays. 1. THE SPIKE 2. A HANGING (1931) 3. BOOKSHOP MEMORIES (1936) 4. SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT (1936) 5. SPILLING THE SPANISH BEANS (1937) 6. MARRAKECH (1939) 7. BOYS' WEEKLIES AND FRANK RICHARDS'S REPLY (1940) 8. CHARLES READE (1940) 9. THE ART OF DONALD MCGILL (1941) 10. WELLS, HITLER AND THE WORLD STATE (1941) 11. RUDYARD KIPLING (1942) 12. MARK TWAIN–THE LICENSED JESTER (1943) 13. POETRY AND THE MICROPHONE (1943) 14. W B YEATS (1943) 15. ARTHUR KOESTLER (1944) 16. BENEFIT OF CLERGY: SOME NOTES ON SALVADOR DALI (1944) 18. ANTISEMITISM IN BRITAIN (1945) 19. FREEDOM OF THE PARK (1945) 20. FUTURE OF A RUINED GERMANY (1945) 21. GOOD BAD BOOKS 22. NONSENSE POETRY 23. NOTES ON NATIONALISM (1945) 24. REVENGE IS SOUR (1945) 25. THE SPORTING SPIRIT 26. YOU AND THE ATOMIC BOMB (1945) 27. A GOOD WORD FOR THE VICAR OF BRAY 28. A NICE CUP OF TEA (1946) 29. BOOKS VS. CIGARETTES 30. CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK REVIEWER 31. DECLINE OF THE ENGLISH MURDER 32. HOW THE POOR DIE 33. PLEASURE SPOTS 34. POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 35. SOME THOUGHTS ON THE COMMON TOAD 36. THE PREVENTION OF LITERATURE 37. WHY I WRITE (1946) 38. LEAR, TOLSTOY AND THE FOOL 39. SUCH, SUCH WERE THE JOYS (1947) 40. WRITERS AND LEVIATHAN (1948)

    A novel mingling mysticism, madness, sadistic cruelty and nascent sexuality, it gives a scathing insight into the effects of forced vocations and the unnatural life of the convent. A succès de scandale at the end of the eighteenth century, it has attracted and unsettled readers ever since. For Diderot's novel is not simply a story of a young girl with a bad habit; it is also a powerfully emblematic fable about oppression and intolerance.This new translation includes Diderot's all-important prefatory material, which he placed, disconcertingly, at the end of the novel, and which turns what otherwise seems like an exercise in realism into what is now regarded as a masterpiece of proto-modernist fiction.

    Published posthumously in 1869, Paris Spleen was a landmark publication in the development of the genre of prose poetry—a format which Baudelaire saw as particularly suited for expressing the feelings of uncertainty, flux, and freedom of his age—and one of the founding texts of literary modernism.

    Sagan's second novel tells the story of Dominique, a bored twenty-year-old law student at the Sorbonne in mid-1950's Paris, who embarks on a love affair with a middle-aged man.

    Includes stunning illustrations by Christoph Niemann. "A novelist who writes in a universal language." --The New York TimesIn The Archer we meet Tetsuya, a man once famous for his prodigious gift with a bow and arrow but who has since retired from public life, and the boy who comes searching for him. The boy has many questions, and in answering them Tetsuya illustrates the way of the bow and the tenets of a meaningful life. Paulo Coelho's story suggests that living without a connection between action and soul cannot fulfill, that a life constricted by fear of rejection or failure is not a life worth living. Instead one must take risks, build courage, and embrace the unexpected journey fate has to offer.With the wisdom, generosity, simplicity, and grace that have made him an international best seller, Paulo Coelho provides the framework for a rewarding life: hard work, passion, purpose, thoughtfulness, the willingness to fail, and the urge to make a difference.

    Embellished with the author's lyrical prose, here is the story of Harvard-educated, aspiring aesthete Anthony Patch and his beautiful wife, Gloria. As they await the inheritance of his grandfather's fortune, their reckless marriage sways under the influence of alcohol and avarice. A devastating look at the nouveau riche, and the New York nightlife, as well as the ruinous effects of wild ambition, The Beautiful and the Damned achieved stature as one of Fitzgerald's most accomplished novels. Its distinction as a classic endures to this day. Pocket Book's Enriched Classics present the great works of world literature enhanced for the contemporary reader. Special features include critical perspectives, suggestions for further read, and a unique visual essay composed of period photographs that help bring every word to life.

    Preface by André Gide. Translated by Stuart Gilbert.

    His two earliest, and perhaps most accessible, successes—A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners—are here brought together in one volume. Both works reflect Joyce’s lifelong love-hate relationship with Dublin and the Irish culture that formed him.In the semi-autobiographical Portrait, young Stephen Dedalus yearns to be an artist, but first must struggle against the forces of church, school, and society, which fetter his imagination and stifle his soul. The book’s inventive style is apparent from its opening pages, a record of an infant’s impressions of the world around him—and one of the first examples of the “stream of consciousness” technique.Comprising fifteen stories, Dubliners presents a community of mesmerizing, humorous, and haunting characters—a group portrait. The interactions among them form one long meditation on the human condition, culminating with “The Dead,” one of Joyce’s most graceful compositions centering around a character’s epiphany. A carefully woven tapestry of Dublin life at the turn of the last century, Dubliners realizes Joyce’s ambition to give his countrymen “one good look at themselves.” Kevin J. H. Dettmar is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He is the author or editor of a half-dozen books on James Joyce, modernist literature, and rock music. He is currently finishing a term as President of the Modernist Studies Association.--back cover

    First published in 1759, it was an instant bestseller and has come to be regarded as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment. What Candide does for chivalric romance, the other tales in this selection--Micromegas, Zadig, The Ingenu, and The White Bull--do for science fiction, the Oriental tale, the sentimental novel, and the Old Testament. The most extensive one-volume selection currently available, this new edition includes a new verse translation of the story Voltaire based on Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale: What Pleases the Ladies and opens with a revised introduction that reflects recent critical debates, including a new section on Candide.

    Expected to redeem himself in this magical land of opportunity, young Karl is swept up instead in a whirlwind of dizzying reversals, strange escapades, and picaresque adventures.Although Kafka never visited America, images of its vast landscape, dangers, and opportunities inspired this saga of the "golden land." Here is a startlingly modern, fantastic and visionary tale of America "as a place no one has yet seen, in a historical period that can't be identified," writes E. L. Doctorow in his new foreword. "Kafka made his novel from his own mind's mythic elements," Doctorow explains, "and the research data that caught his eye were bent like rays in a field of gravity."