If I sit still and don't do anything, the world goes on beating like a slack drum, without meaning. We must be moving, working, making dreams to run toward; the poverty of life without dreams is too horrible to imagine."-- Sylvia Plath, from "Notebooks, February 1956"Renowned for her poetry, Sylvia Plath was also a brilliant writer of prose. This collection of short stories, essays, and diary excerpts highlights her fierce concentration on craft, the vitality of her intelligence, and the yearnings of her imaginaton. Featuring an introduction by Plath's husband, the late British poet Ted Hughes, these writings also reflect themes and images she would fully realize in her poetry. "Jonny Panic and the Bible of Dreams" truly showcases the talent and genius of Sylvia Plath.

    Yet few know of his career as a journalist who covered world events from the Great Depression to Vietnam. Now, this distinctive collection offers a portrait of the artist as citizen, deeply engaged in the world around him. In addition to the complete text of Steinbeck's last published book, America and Americans , this volume brings together for the first time more than fifty of Steinbeck's finest essays and journalistic pieces on Salinas, Sag Harbor, Arthur Miller, Woody Guthrie, the Vietnam War and more. This edition is edited by Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw and Steinbeck biographer Jackson J. Benson.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

    The twenty stories in this collection are a fresh, exuberant celebration of the new American South — a land of high school band contests, where good old boys from Vicksurg are reunited in Vietnam and petty nostalgia and the constant pain of disappointed love prevail. Airships is a striking demonstration of Barry Hannah's mature and original talent.

    It was a New York Times bestseller; the paper's Book Review named it one of the Ten Best Books of 2015; and NPR, Time, Entertainment Weekly, The Guardian, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and other outlets gave the book rave reviews.Evening in Paradise is a careful selection from the remaining Berlin stories--a jewel box follow-up for Lucia Berlin's hungry fans.Foreword: The story is the thing / by Mark Berlin --The musical vanity boxes --Sometimes in summer --Andado: a Gothic romance --Dust to dust --Itinerary --Lead Street, Albuquerque --NoeÌ⁸l. Texas. 1956 --The adobe house with a tin roof --A foggy day --Cherry blossom time --Evening in Paradise --La Barca de la Ilusion --My life is an open book --The wives --NoeÌ⁸l, 1974 --The pony bar, Oakland --Daughters --Rainy day --Our brother's keeper --Lost in the Louvre --Sombra --Luna nueva --A note on Lucia Berlin

    With her own inexorable but utterly unpredictable logic and her almost uncanny ability to conjure the strange states of mind and emotion that constitute our daily consciousness, Eisenberg pulls us as if by gossamer threads through her characters—a tormented woman whose face determines her destiny; a group of film actors shocked to read a book about their past; a privileged young man who unexpectedly falls into a love affair with a human rights worker caught up in an all-consuming quest that he doesn't understand.In Eisenberg’s world, the forces of money, sex, and power cannot be escaped, and the force of history, whether confronted or denied, cannot be evaded. No one writes better about time, tragedy and grief, and the indifferent but beautiful universe around us.

    From their "carpenter gothic" rented house, Paul sets himself up as a media consultant for Reverend Ude, an evangelist mounting a grand crusade that conveniently suits a mining combine bidding to take over an ore strike on the site of Ude's African mission. At the still center of the breakneck action--revealed in Gaddis's inimitable virtuoso dialoge--is Paul's wife, Liz, and over it all looms the shadowy figure of McCandless, a geologist from whom Paul and Liz rent their house. As Paul mishandles the situation, his wife takes the geologist to her bed and a fire and aborted assassination occur; Ude issues a call to arms as harrowing as any Jeremiad--and Armageddon comes rapidly closer. Displaying Gaddis's inimitable virtuoso dialogue, and his startling treatments of violence and sexuality, Carpenter's Gothic "shows again that Gaddis is among the first rank of contemporary American writers" (Malcolm Bradbury, "The Washington Post Book World" ). "An unholy landmark of a novel--an extra turret added on to the ample, ingenious, audacious Gothic mansion Gaddis has been building in American letters" --Cynthia Ozick, "The New York Times Book Review" "Everything in this compelling and brilliant vision of America--the packaged sleaze, the incipient violence, the fundamentalist furor, the constricted sexuality--is charged with the force of a volcanic eruption. "Carpenter's Gothic" will reenergize and give shape to contemporary literature." --Walter Abish

    Or how about when you got stood up on that tinder date and go home disappointed, only to realize it was all a trick so he'd know where you live? Then there's those letters your dead wife keeps writing you... There can be no light without darkness, pleasure without pain, or love without loss. 17 authors have teamed up to collect all our favorite supernatural and psychological horror stories about love.Jealous murders, monstrous doppelgangers, heart-rending romances, devils and angels, cannibals and virtual worlds - over 350 pages of your most desperate longings and worst nightmares all rolled into one. Shocking twists and absolute mind-fuckery will thrill and terrify you to the last page!

    This book contains the complete novels of Jane Austen.- Lady Susan- Sense and Sensibility- Pride and Prejudice- Mansfield Park- Emma- Persuasion- Northanger Abbey- Love And Friendship And Other Early Works

    Screenwriter, director, and star of the acclaimed film Me and You and Everyone We Know, Miranda July brings her extraordinary talents to the page in a startling, sexy, and tender collection.

    The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty - A 30-minute Instaread SummaryInside this Instaread Summary: - Overview of the entire book- Introduction to the important people in the book- Summary and analysis of all the chapters in the book- Key Takeaways of the book- A Reader's PerspectivePreview of this summary: Chapter OneCecilia's husband, John-Paul, is in Chicago on business. She is a busy mother and part-time Tupperware consultant. Her twelve-year-old daughter, Esther, is currently obsessed with the Berlin Wall. Cecilia has a piece of the wall from a trip she took to Germany several years ago. While in the attic searching for it, she finds a mysterious envelope with her name on it. A note on it says that it should only be opened in the event of her husband's death. She does not open it. When she mentions the letter to John-Paul on the phone, she is troubled by his awkward silence.Chapter TwoTess and Felicity are cousins. Felicity was always overweight until recently, when she joined Weight Watchers and lost forty pounds. Tess, her husband, Will, and Felicity own a marketing business together in Melbourne. Tess is worried about her mother, who has just broken her ankle, and her six-year old son, Liam, who is being bullied at school. Will and Felicity call Tess into a meeting to tell her they have fallen in love. Furious, Tess says she will move back to Sydney with Liam to help her mother. She believes that her husband became attracted to Felicity when she lost weight. She tosses cold coffee in their faces....

    

    Obsessed with 'making things good again', they spin the quiet terrors of family life into a fantastical frenzy that careens well and truly out of control. As A. M. Homes's incendiary novel unfolds, the Kodacolor hues of the American good life become nearly hallucinogenic: from a strange and hilarious encounter on the floor of the pantry with a Stepford-wife neighbour, to a house-cleaning team in space suits, to a hostage situation at the school. Homes lays bare the foundations of marriage and family life, and creates characters outrageously flawed, deeply human and entirely believable.

    9 Comedic space opera tales of big spaceships, poor life decisions, and lots of Pew! From fights against the Hive, to the quest for the perfect coffee bean, to helping the little folk in a big, bad universe, Pew! Pew! has the tales to keep you entertained and maybe bust a gut while you’re at it.

    The person is genderless, racially ambiguous, and refuses to speak. One family takes the strange visitor in and nicknames them Pew.As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. Pew listens and observes while experiencing brief flashes of past lives or clues about their origins. As days pass, the void around Pew’s presence begins to unnerve the community, whose generosity erodes into menace and suspicion. Yet by the time Pew’s story reaches a shattering and unsettling climax at the Forgiveness Festival, the secret of their true nature—as a devil or an angel or something else entirely—is dwarfed by even larger truths.Pew, Catherine Lacey’s third novel, is a foreboding, provocative, and amorphous fable about the world today: its contradictions, its flimsy morality, and the limits of judging others based on their appearance. With precision and restraint, one of our most beloved and boundary-pushing writers holds up a mirror to her characters’ true selves, revealing something about forgiveness, perception, and the faulty tools society uses to categorize human complexity.

    The fables are imperishably illustrated, and are supplemented by Mr. Thurber's own pictorial interpretations of famous poems in a wonderful and joyous assemblage.