Searoad is the story of a particular place that could be any place, and of a people so distinctly drawn they could be any of us.

    They own vast lands and profitable businesses, they employ their neighbors, and they influence the government. A prolific and eccentric group, they include several millionaires, a mass murderer, a spiritual seeker who climbs into the mountains looking for God, a wealthy noctambulist who dies of a chicken scratch.Bellefleur traces the lives of several generations of this unusual family. At its center is Gideon Bellefleur and his imperious, somewhat psychic, very beautiful wife, Leah, their three children (one with frightening psychic abilities), and the servants and relatives, living and dead, who inhabit the mansion and its environs. Their story offers a profound look at the world's changeableness, time and eternity, space and soul, pride and physicality versus love. Bellefleur is an allegory of caritas versus cupiditas, love and selflessness versus pride and selfishness. It is a novel of change, baffling complexity, mystery.Written with a voluptuousness and startling immediacy that transcends Joyce Carol Oates's early works, Bellefleur is widely regarded as a masterwork—a feat of literary genius.

    from taking the shortest cut towards securing for herself the easiest possible existence.’ It is narrated by different narrators, including Conrad's regular narrator, Charles Marlow, who describe and attempt to interpret various episodes in Flora’s life and is the only book to focus on a female character.Excerpt:I cannot say that any particular moral complexion has been put on this novel but I do not think that any body had detected in it an evil intention. And it is only for their intentions that men can be held respon sible. The ultimate effects of whatever they do are far beyond their control. In doing this book my in tention was to interest people in my Vision of things which is indissolubly allied to the style in which it is expressed. In other words I wanted to write a cer tain amount of pages in prose, which, strictly speaking, is my proper business. I have attended to it conscien tiously with the hope of being entertaining or at least not insufferably boring to my readers. I can not suf ficiently insist upon the truth that when I sit down to write my intentions are always blameless however de plorable the ultimate effect of the act may turn out to be.

    William Styron traces the betrayals and infidelities—the heritage of spite and endlessly disappointed love—that afflict the members of a Southern family and that culminate in the suicide of the beautiful Peyton Loftis.

    But his haughty and manipulative mother is against the match and enlists the help of her confessor to come between them. Schedoni, previously a leading figure of the Inquisition, is a demonic, scheming monk with no qualms about the task, whether it entails abduction, torture - or even murder. The Italian secured Ann Radcliffe's position as the leading writer of Gothic romance of the age, for its atmosphere of supernatural and nightmarish horrors, combined with her evocation of sublime landscapes and chilling narrative.

    It takes Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose and their niece, Rachel, on a sea voyage from London to a resort on the South American coast. “It is a strange, tragic, inspired book whose scene is a South America not found on any map and reached by a boat which would not float on any sea, an America whose spiritual boundaries touch Xanadu and Atlantis” (E. M. Forster).

    But since its original prewar translation there has been no completely new version in English. Now, Penguin brings Proust's masterpiece to new audiences throughout the world, beginning with Lydia Davis's internationally acclaimed translation of the first volume, Swann's Way.Swann's Way is one of the preeminent novels of childhood: a sensitive boy's impressions of his family and neighbors, all brought dazzlingly back to life years later by the taste of a madeleine. It also enfolds the short novel "Swann in Love," an incomparable study of sexual jealousy that becomes a crucial part of the vast, unfolding structure of In Search of Lost Time. The first volume of the work that established Proust as one of the finest voices of the modern age — satirical, skeptical, confiding, and endlessly varied in its response to the human condition — Swann's Way also stands on its own as a perfect rendering of a life in art, of the past re-created through memory.

    “I cannot write any sort of story,” said Tennessee [to Gore Vidal] “unless there is at least one character in it for whom I have physical desire.” These transgressive Tales of Desire, including “One Arm,” “Desire and the Black Masseur,” “Hard Candy,” and “The Killer Chicken and the Closet Queen,” show the iconic playwright at his outrageous best.

    The first volume of Alexandre Dumas' two-part interpretation of the story of Robin Hood, popularized for Nineteenth Century audiences by Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, set in England in 1162-66.In this book, Dumas tells the story of Robin Hood's youth: how he is delivered by an unknown man to be raised by poor but honest foresters, his great skill as an archer, how he comes into conflict with the Baron [sic] of Nottingham, how he meets Friar Tuck, the Maid Marian, Little John, Will Scarlett, and others, how he is declared an outlaw by the King, and decamps, with his followers, into Sherwood Forest to wage war against the Baron.

    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

    It tells of a young woman’s passionate love, held like a fortress against the corrupting evil of a totalitarian state.We the Living is not a story of politics, but of the men and women who have to struggle for existence behind the Red banners and slogans. It is a picture of what those slogans do to human beings. What happens to the defiant ones? What happens to those who succumb? Against a vivid panorama of political revolution and personal revolt, Ayn Rand shows what the theory of socialism means in practice.

    She quickly overcomes their fears, and achieves popularity by the practical results of her work. She is especially successful with a strong, uncouth bee-hunter. Zane Grey's handling of these primitive characters is robust and understanding."Zane Grey is a gifted artist who draws scenes of the southwest in unforgettable stories." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board)

    The Short Stories, introduced here with a revealing preface by the author, chronicles Hemingway's development as a writer, from his earliest attempts in the chapbook Three Stories and Ten Poems, published in Paris in 1923, to his more mature accomplishments in Winner Take Nothing. Originally published in 1938 along with The Fifth Column, this collection premiered "The Capital of the World" and "Old Man at the Bridge," which derive from Hemingway's experiences in Spain, as well as "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," which figure among the finest of Hemingway's short fictions.

    It reveals the purpose of the moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleaders. It also deals with the problem of redheads.

    Anne's romantic soul, her idealism, and her adventurous spirit often lead her into mishaps, but she always survives, learning from her experience, and the read does too, while enjoying her marvelous adventures. Fiercely independent and outspoken, Anne is not afraid of conflicts with her elders - this, in an age (the early 1900's) when childeren were "seen and not heard." But Anne's bright intelligence, honesty, and resourcefulness are impossible to defeat, and she carries the day. Her story spoke to the readers of the time, as it does still, to the young, and the young at heart, today. Anne of Green Gables, the first novel, introduces our lively heroine at age eleven, fresh from an orphanage, when she must win the right to stay at Green Gables with the taciturn Matthew Cuthbert and his reserved sister, Marilla, and takes her into her teens. In Anne of Avonlea, she is the village schoolteacher and the story takes her up to her preparations to enter college. Finally, Anne's House of Dreams, the most romantic, and, many believe, the best of the Anne books, finds Anne, now a lovely young woman, on the verge of her marriage to a young doctor whom she has known and loved for years, and describes the fulfillment of her dreams of romance and career, in a village peopled with memorable characters. This volume is uniquely illustrated with period drawings that evoke the era in which Anne was created and were taken from books and magazines of the day. One can do no better than to quote an editorial from one of those magazines, The Housewife, in describing Anne: "Droll one minute, pathetic the next; staid and wise as a grandmother one minute, bubbling over with impish mischief the next," but always "lovable." Contemporary readers will find her just as engaging, as they follow her from lonely waif to fulfilled young woman.