A Treasury of Irish Fairy and Folk Tales


Various - 2016
    Its pages are animated with colorful tales of the fairy folk in all their many guises: the changeling, the banshee, the headless dullahan, the leprechaun, the merrow, and the ever-mischievous pooka. In addition, this volume includes tales of ghosts, witches and fairy doctors, priests and saints, encounters with the devil, titans of Ireland's historical past, as well as popular treasure legends.Contents: The trooping fairies. The cave fairies --Popular notions considering the Sidhe race --Changelings --The solitary fairies. The lepracaun, the cluricaun, and the Far Darrig --The pooka --The banshee and the dullahan --Ghosts --Witches and fairy doctors --T'yeer-na-n-oge --Priests and saints --The devil --Giants --Rocks and stones --Treasure legends --Legends of the western islands --Kings, queens, princesses, earls, and robbers

Carried Away: A Personal Selection of Stories


Alice Munro - 2006
    The stories brought together here span a quarter century, drawn from some of her earliest books, The Beggar Maid and The Moons of Jupiter, through her recent best-selling collection, Runaway. Here are such favorites as “Royal Beatings” in which a young girl, her father, and stepmother release the tension of their circumstances in a ritual of punishment and reconciliation; “Friend of My Youth” in which a woman comes to understand that her difficult mother is not so very different from herself; and “The Albanian Virgin," a romantic tale of capture and escape in Central Europe that may or may not be true, told by an elderly married woman to her younger friend who is on a desperate adventure of her own..Munro’s incomparable empathy for her characters, the depth of her understanding of human nature, and the grace and surprise of her narrative add up to a richly layered and capacious fiction. Like the World War I soldier in the title story, whose letters from the front to a small-town librarian he doesn’t know change her life forever, Munro’s unassuming characters insinuate themselves in our hearts and take permanent hold.Carried Away, Alice Munro's Best and My Best Stories contain the same 17 works: Royal beatings -- The beggar maid -- The turkey season -- The moons of Jupiter -- The progress of love -- Miles City, Montana -- Friend of my youth -- Meneseteung -- Differently -- Carried away -- The Albanian virgin -- A wilderness station -- Vandals -- Hateship, friendship, courtship, loveship, marriage -- Save the reaper -- Runaway -- The bear came over the mountain.

soft thorns


bridgett devoue - 2017
    our darkest times are where we grow the most, so in this book, i share mine, and together, we learn how to heal.

Selected Poems


Ted Berrigan - 1994
    Reflecting a new editorial approach, this volume demonstrates the breadth of Ted Berrigan's poetic accomplishments by presenting his most celebrated, interesting, and important work. This major second-wave New York School poet is often identified with his early poems, especially "The Sonnets, " but this selection encompasses his full poetic output, including the later sequences "Easter Monday" and "A Certain Slant of Sunlight, " as well as many of his uncollected poems. The Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan provides a new perspective for those already familiar with his remarkable wit and invention, and introduces new readers to what John Ashbery called the "crazy energy" of this iconoclastic, funny, brilliant, and highly innovative writer.Praise for" The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan: ""This is a great, great book for all seasons of the mind and heart."--Robert Creeley"Thanks to this invaluable "Collected Poems, " one can hear, as never before, Ted Berrigan dreaming his dream."--"The Nation"""The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan "is not only one of the most strikingly attractive books recently published, but is also a major work of 20th-century poetry. . . . It is a book that will darken with the grease of my hands. There is no better way to praise it than by saying, 'If you enjoy poetry, you should have it.'" --"Bloomsbury Review ""It's a must-have, a poetic knockout."--"Time Out New York"

The Major Works: Including Endymion, the Odes and Selected Letters


John Keats - 2001
    It brings together a unique combination of Keats's poetry and prose - all the major poems, complemented by a generous selection of Keats's letters - to give the essence of his work and thinking.In his tragically short life Keats wrote an astonishing number of superb poems; his stature as one of the foremost poets of the Romantic movement remains unassailable. This volume contains all the poetry published during his lifetime, including Endymion in its entirety, the Odes, Lamia, and both versions of Hyperion. The poetry is presented in chronological order, illustrating the staggering speed with which Keats's work matured. Further insight into his creative process is given by reproducing, in their original form, a number of poems that were published posthumously.Keats's letters are admired almost as much as his poetry and were described by T. S. Eliot as certainly the most notable and most important ever written by any English poet. They provide the best biographical detail available and shed invaluable light on Keats's poems.

The Museum of Innocence


Orhan Pamuk - 2008
    It is 1975, a perfect spring in Istanbul. Kemal, scion of one of the city’s wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encounters Füsun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. Once the long-lost cousins violate the code of virginity, a rift begins to open between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbul bourgeosie—a world, as he lovingly describes it, with opulent parties and clubs, society gossip, restaurant rituals, picnics, and mansions on the Bosphorus, infused with the melancholy of decay—until finally he breaks off his engagement to Sibel. But his resolve comes too late. For eight years Kemal will find excuses to visit another Istanbul, that of the impoverished backstreets where Füsun, her heart now hardened, lives with her parents, and where Kemal discovers the consolations of middle-class life at a dinner table in front of the television. His obsessive love will also take him to the demimonde of Istanbul film circles (where he promises to make Füsun a star), a scene of seedy bars, run-down cheap hotels, and small men with big dreams doomed to bitter failure. In his feckless pursuit, Kemal becomes a compulsive collector of objects that chronicle his lovelorn progress and his afflicted heart’s reactions: anger and impatience, remorse and humiliation, deluded hopes of recovery, and daydreams that transform Istanbul into a cityscape of signs and specters of his beloved, from whom now he can extract only meaningful glances and stolen kisses in cars, movie houses, and shadowy corners of parks. A last change to realize his dream will come to an awful end before Kemal discovers that all he finally can possess, certainly and eternally, is the museum he has created of his collection, this map of a society’s manners and mores, and of one man’s broken heart.A stirring exploration of the nature of romantic attachment and of the mysterious allure of collecting, The Museum of Innocence also plumbs the depths of an Istanbul half Western and half traditional—its emergent modernity, its vast cultural history. This is Orhan Pamuk’s greatest achievement.

The Murmur of Bees


Sofía Segovia - 2015
    Disfigured and covered in a blanket of bees, little Simonopio is for some locals the stuff of superstition, a child kissed by the devil. But he is welcomed by landowners Francisco and Beatriz Morales, who adopt him and care for him as if he were their own. As he grows up, Simonopio becomes a cause for wonder to the Morales family, because when the uncannily gifted child closes his eyes, he can see what no one else can—visions of all that’s yet to come, both beautiful and dangerous. Followed by his protective swarm of bees and living to deliver his adoptive family from threats—both human and those of nature—Simonopio’s purpose in Linares will, in time, be divined.Set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution and the devastating influenza of 1918, The Murmur of Bees captures both the fate of a country in flux and the destiny of one family that has put their love, faith, and future in the unbelievable.

The Essential Tales and Poems


Edgar Allan Poe - 2008
    Here are some of the remarkable features of "Barnes & Noble Classics" New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. "Barnes & Noble Classics "pulls together a constellation of influences--biographical, historical, and literary--to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Creator of the modern detective story, innovative architect of the horror genre, and a poet of extraordinary musicality, Edgar Allan Poe remains one of America's most popular and influential writers. His tales and poems brim with psychological depth, almost painful intensity, and unexpected--and surprisingly modern--flashes of dark humor and irony. This anthology offers an exceptionally generous selection of Poe's short stories. It includes his famed masterpieces, such as "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter," featuring Poe's great detective, Dupin; his insightful studies of madness "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart"; "The Gold-Bug," his delightful exercise in "code-breaking"; and important but lesser-known tales, such as "Bon-Bon," "The Assignation," and "King Pest." Also included are some of Poe's most beloved poems, haunting lyrics of love and loss, such as "Annabel Lee," nightmare phantasmagories such as "The Raven," and his grand experiment in translating sound into words, "The Bells."Benjamin F. Fisher, Professor of English, University of Mississippi, is a longtime enthusiast of the works of Poe. He has published books, articles, and notes about Poe, and in American, Victorian, and Gothic studies, and serves on editorial boards for several professional journals. He has also been acclaimed for outstanding teaching.

The Conquest of Happiness


Bertrand Russell - 1930
    First published in 1930, it pre-dates the current obsession with self-help by decades. Leading the reader step by step through the causes of unhappiness and the personal choices, compromises and sacrifices that (may) lead to the final, affirmative conclusion of 'The Happy Man', this is popular philosophy, or even self-help, as it should be written.

Dizzy in Your Eyes: Poems about Love


Pat Mora - 2010
    Each of the teens in these 50 original poems, written using a variety of poetic forms, will be recognizable to the reader as the universal emotions, ideas, impressions, and beliefs float across the pages in these gracefully told verses.Also included are the author’s footnotes on the various types of poetic forms used throughout to help demystify poetry and showcase its accessibility, which makes this a perfect classroom tool for teachers as well as an inspiration to readers who may wish to try their own hand at writing.

A Coney Island of the Mind


Lawrence Ferlinghetti - 1958
    The title of this book is taken from Henry Miller's "Into the Night Life" and expresses the way Lawrence Ferlinghetti felt about these poems when he wrote them during a short period in the 1950's—as if they were, taken together, a kind of Coney Island of the mind—a kind of circus of the soul.

The Body Where I Was Born


Guadalupe Nettel - 2011
    And survive she did, but not unscathed. This intimate narrative echoes the voice of the narrator's younger self, a sharp, sensitive girl keen to life's hardships.With bare language and smart humor, both delicate and unafraid, the narrator strings a strand of touching moments together to create a portrait of an unconventional childhood that crushed her, scarred her, mended her, tore her apart and ultimately made her whole.

The Complete Stories


Clarice Lispector - 2015
    Now, for the first time in English, are all the stories that made her a Brazilian legend: from teenagers coming into awareness of their sexual and artistic powers to humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies to old people who don’t know what to do with themselves. Lispector’s stories take us through their lives—and ours.From one of the greatest modern writers, these stories, gathered from the nine collections published during her lifetime, follow an unbroken time line of success as a writer, from her adolescence to her death bed.

The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa


Robert Hass - 1994
    The seventeen-syllable form is rooted in a Japanese tradition of close observation of nature, of making poetry from subtle suggestion. Infused by its great practitioners with the spirit of Zen Buddhism, the haiku has served as an example of the power of direct observation to the first generation of American modernist poets like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and also as an example of spontaneity and Zen alertness to the new poets of the 1950s. This definitive collection brings together in fresh translations by an American poet the essential poems of the three greatest haiku masters: Matsuo Basho in the seventeenth century; Yosa Buson in the eighteenth century; and Kobayashi Issa in the early nineteenth century. Robert Hass has written a lively and informed introduction, provided brief examples by each poet of their work in the haibun, or poetic prose form, and included informal notes to the poems. This is a useful and inspiring addition to the Essential Poets series.

Multiple Choice


Alejandro Zambra - 2014
    Now, at the height of his powers, Zambra returns with a book that is the natural extension of these qualities: Multiple Choice.   Written in the form of a standardized test, Multiple Choice invites the reader to complete virtuoso language exercises and engage with short narrative passages via multiple-choice questions that are thought-provoking, usually unanswerable, and often absurd. It offers a new kind of reading experience, one where the reader participates directly in the creation of meaning. Full of humor, melancholy, and anger, Multiple Choice is about love and family; privacy and the limits of closeness; how a society is affected by the legacies of the past; and the conviction that, rather than learning to think, we are trained to obey and repeat. Serious in its literary ambition but playful in its execution, Multiple Choice confirms Alejandro Zambra as one of the most important writers working in any language.