Frankenstein. The Scarlet Letter. You’re familiar with these pillars of classic literature. You have seen plenty of Frankenstein costumes, watched the film adaptations, and may even be able to rattle off a few quotes, but do you really know how to read these books? Do you know anything about the authors who wrote them, and what the authors were trying to teach readers through their stories? Do you know how to read them as a Christian? Taking into account your old worldview, as well as that of the author?   In this beautiful cloth-over-board edition bestselling author, literature professor, and avid reader Karen Swallow Prior will guide you through Frankenstein. She will not only navigate you through the pitfalls that trap readers today, but show you how to read it in light of the gospel, and to the glory of God.   This edition includes a thorough introduction to the author, context, and overview of the work (without any spoilers for first-time readers), the full original text, as well as footnotes and reflection questions throughout to help the reader attain a fuller grasp of Frankenstein.   The full series currently includes: Heart of Darkness, Sense and Sensibility, Jane Eyre, and Frankenstein. Make sure to keep an eye out for the next classics in the series.

    A contemporary man, John Thornburn (a meek, non-violent and unpredictable artist) and woman, Derval (his tough, confrontational, strong and warrior-like lover) time travel to ancient Ireland to avenge a Viking attack. Packed with fascinating details of historical time and place in Irish history and delicately balanced on the border between realism and fantasy, the story centers around one of the most famous and beautiful illuminated manuscripts in history, the legendary but entirely real Book of Kells. Celtic history blends with magical fantasy for a strange and immersive tale of adventure.

    But her newfound independence is short-lived. In Nazi-occupied Paris, Chagall's status as a Jewish artist has made them all targets, yet his devotion to his art blinds him to their danger. When Ida falls in love and Chagall angrily paints an empty wedding chair (The Bridal Chair) in response, she faces an impossible choice: Does she fight to forge her own path outside her father's shadow, or abandon her ambitions to save Chagall from his enemies and himself? Brimming with historic personalities from Europe, America and Israel, The Bridal Chair is a stunning portrait of love, fortitude, and the sharp divide between art and real life.

    As Martin writes, sages are the "primary keepers and transmitters of wisdom, culture, values, and spirituality." Martin's free-verse interpretation captures the ancient spirit of Lao Tzu's text, yet speaks directly to modern readers. The text is accompanied by a visual interpretation of the Tao in more than 50 original ink-brush drawings. Like the Parent's Tao and Couple's Tao before it, the Sage's Tao has the hallmarks of a classic. "You have ceased trying /To tie up all loose ends./You have discovered/That life does not need to be neat/You have more questions than answers,/And this is a great delight to you./You trust the mystery of life/Without having to possess it." - from the book

    He falls in love with Jane, the oldest Bennet girl. Everything goes well—for a while. Then the handsome bachelor’s proud best friend, Mr. Darcy, ruins everything.Elizabeth Bennet has never hated anyone as much as she hates Mr. Darcy. How could she ever forgive the man who has ruined her sister’s happiness? She knows everything she needs to know about him. He is proud, hateful, conceited, and horrid—and he wants to marry her.Elizabeth and Darcy’s memorable, witty battle of hearts and minds has made Pride and Prejudice a readers’ favorite for almost two hundred years.Readability Note: This Townsend Library Classic has been carefully edited for clarity and readability.Source: townsendpress.com

    The two were almost polar opposites: Rilke in his twenties, delicate and unknown; Rodin in his sixties, carnal and revered. Yet they fell into an instantaneous friendship. Transporting readers to early twentieth-century Paris, Rachel Corbett’s You Must Change Your Life is a vibrant portrait of Rilke and Rodin and their circle, revealing how deeply Rodin’s ideas about art and creativity influenced Rilke’s classic Letters to a Young Poet.

    

    How does an artist accomplish such an achievement, connecting deeply with an audience never met? In this groundbreaking book, one of our culture’s beloved artists offers a detailed account of her own creative process, inspirations, and unexpected connections. Patti Smith, a National Book Award-winning author, first presents an original and beautifully crafted tale of obsession—a young skater who lives for her art, a possessive collector who ruthlessly seeks his prize, a relationship forged of need both craven and exalted. She then takes us on a second journey, exploring the sources of her story. We travel through the South of France to Camus’s house, and visit the garden of the great publisher Gallimard where the ghosts of Mishima, Nabokov, and Genet mingle. Smith tracks down Simone Weil’s grave in a lonely cemetery, hours from London, and winds through the nameless Paris streets of Patrick Modiano’s novels. Whether writing in a café or a train, Smith generously opens her notebooks and lets us glimpse the alchemy of her art and craft in this arresting and original book on writing.The Why I Write series is based on the Windham-Campbell Lectures, delivered annually to commemorate the awarding of the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes at Yale University.

    Known for his moody, shadowy illustrations, Colan was a natural fit as artist on Batman when he came to DC in the 1980s. His run of stories in the pages of both BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS included appearances by some of Batman’s greatest foes, including Man-Bat, The Monk, Rupert Thorne and more.

    Put a map at the start of a book, and we know an adventure is going to follow. Displaying this truth with beautiful full-color illustrations, The Writer’s Map is an atlas of the journeys that our most creative storytellers have made throughout their lives. This magnificent collection encompasses not only the maps that appear in their books but also the many maps that have inspired them, the sketches that they used while writing, and others that simply sparked their curiosity.   Philip Pullman recounts the experience of drawing a map as he set out on one of his early novels, The Tin Princess. Miraphora Mina recalls the creative challenge of drawing up ”The Marauder’s Map” for the Harry Potter films. David Mitchell leads us to the Mappa Mundi by way of Cloud Atlas and his own sketch maps. Robert Macfarlane reflects on the cartophilia that has informed his evocative nature writing, which was set off by Robert Louis Stevenson and his map of Treasure Island. Joanne Harris tells of her fascination with Norse maps of the universe. Reif Larsen writes about our dependence on GPS and the impulse to map our experience. Daniel Reeve describes drawing maps and charts for The Hobbit film trilogy. This exquisitely crafted and illustrated atlas explores these and so many more of the maps writers create and are inspired by—some real, some imagined—in both words and images.   Amid a cornucopia of 167 full-color images, we find here maps of the world as envisaged in medieval times, as well as maps of adventure, sci-fi and fantasy, nursery rhymes, literary classics, and collectible comics. An enchanting visual and verbal journey, The Writer’s Map will be irresistible for lovers of maps, literature, and memories—and anyone prone to flights of the imagination.

    The design of this anthology is inspired by the structure of a sonnet: 14 Poems for 14 Themes Love; Parting and Sorrow; Inspiration; Mystery and Enigmas; Humour and Curiosities; Rapture; A Door Opens, A Door Closes; Memory; Tales and Songs; Nature; Cities; Solitude; Contemplation; and Animals. There are poems for every mood and occasion, and alongside the more famous works, are some lesser known gems of English poetry.Included are masterpieces by Shakespeare, Dickinson, Hart Crane, T.S. Eliot, E.E. Cummings, Walt Whitman, Robert Browning, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Yeats, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Christina Rossetti, and many other outstanding poets. Please view the preview of this book for a full listing.At Elsinore Books we pride ourselves on creating beautiful Kindle Books, and devote great attention to formatting, and ease of navigation. This book contains a cleanly-styled contents page that permits easy movement between poems. You can return at any time to the contents page by clicking on the title of each poem.The Best of Poetry Series:Volume 1: The Best of Poetry: Thoughts that Breathe and Words that BurnVolume 2: The Best of Poetry: Shakespeare, Muse of Fire Foreword Anthologies of English verse are as abundant as mushrooms after rain. So why create another?Our defence amounts to this: the kind of anthology that we wanted to own did not exist – a collection in which the poems were as carefully arranged as selected; where Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” could ignite the beauty of Hart Crane’s “Brooklyn Bridge”; where the enigmas of Browning’s “Meeting at Night”, and Hardy’s “Once at Swanage” might unravel each other; and the doubts besetting Anne Gregory in Yeats’s poem, find answers in Thomas Moore’s “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms”. In this collection, we have tried to place poems together that will strike fire off one another, and bring new light to familiar lines. We decided to structure the anthology as a sort of sonnet sequence, with fourteen poems for fourteen themes. A two-poem prologue and epilogue bring the collection to exactly two-hundred poems. In selecting which poems to include, our aim was to present the best-loved poems in the English language alongside some less commonly anthologized masterpieces. Committed as we were to a definite fourteen by fourteen structure, there were of course, many wonderful poems that we were unable to include. Shorter, lyrical pieces have generally been favoured over the longer canonical works of English poetry. Each theme in this anthology is introduced by a famous definition of poetry. Taken together, these definitions give some idea of the beauty, enchantment, and richness that poetry can offer. But it is in the poems themselves that the real treasure is to be found. We hope you will enjoy reading them.Rudolph Amsel and Teresa Keyne

    (In fact, he says, in certain situations reading the book is the worst thing you could do). Using examples from such writers as Graham Greene, Oscar Wilde, Montaigne, and Umberto Eco, he describes the varieties of "non-reading"—from books that you've never heard of to books that you've read and forgotten—and offers advice on how to turn a sticky social situation into an occasion for creative brilliance. Practical, funny, and thought-provoking, How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read is in the end a love letter to books, offering a whole new perspective on how we read and absorb them. It's a book for book lovers everywhere to enjoy, ponder, and argue about—and perhaps even read.Pierre Bayard is a professor of French literature at the University of Paris VIII and a psychoanalyst. He is the author of Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? and of many other books. Jeffrey Mehlman is a professor of French at Boston University and the author of a number of books, including Emigré New York. He has translated works by Derrida, Lacan, Blanchot, and other authors.

    Hilarious comedy, fast moving drama, romance spiced with wit and charm - Miss Heyer combines all this with the period conversation and manners she knows to perfection.These five books will give hours of entertainment and lasting pleasure.

    The narrator, an anonymous graduate student, sets off on the trail of a French novelist named Paul Michel, who is currently confined to an asylum. Engineering his hero's release, the narrator finds himself enmeshed in bizarre love triangle, of which the three vertices are himself, the novelist, and the late Michel Foucault. Sex, it seems, can be made safe, but the oddball intimacy of reading cannot.

    He has run the toughest city in America with an independence and show of ego that first brought him great success—and eventually threatened it. Yet while Bloomberg is internationally known and admired, few people know the man behind the carefully crafted public persona.In Mike Bloomberg, Joyce Purnick explores Mr. Bloomberg's life from his childhood in the suburbs of Boston, to his rise on Wall Street and the creation of Bloomberg L.P., to his mayoral record and controversial gamble on a third term. Drawing on her deep knowledge of New York City politics, and interviews with Bloomberg's friends, family, colleagues, and the mayor himself, she creates a textured portrait of one of the more complex men of our era.