For Hemingway fans The Complete Short Stories is an invaluable treasury.

    But soon after her arrival, Mary falls into an adulterous affair with a young Japanese nobleman, scandalizing the British community. Casting her out of the European community, her compatriots tear her away from her small daughter. A woman abandoned and alone, Mary learns to survive over forty tumultuous years in Asia, including two world wars and the cataclysmic Tokyo earthquake of 1923.A bestseller in England, this bittersweet story of love and betrayal in the Far East is the source of the Masterpiece Theatre miniseries.

    That time is the period between the two World Wars, and Barnes' novel unfolds in the decadent shadows of Europe's great cities, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna—a world in which the boundaries of class, religion, and sexuality are bold but surprisingly porous. The outsized characters who inhabit this world are some of the most memorable in all of fiction—there is Guido Volkbein, the Wandering Jew and son of a self-proclaimed baron; Robin Vote, the American expatriate who marries him and then engages in a series of affairs, first with Nora Flood and then with Jenny Petherbridge, driving all of her lovers to distraction with her passion for wandering alone in the night; and there is Dr. Matthew-Mighty-Grain-of-Salt-Dante-O'Connor, a transvestite and ostensible gynecologist, whose digressive speeches brim with fury, keen insights, and surprising allusions. Barnes' depiction of these characters and their relationships (Nora says, "A man is another person—a woman is yourself, caught as you turn in panic; on her mouth you kiss your own") has made the novel a landmark of feminist and lesbian literature. Most striking of all is Barnes' unparalleled stylistic innovation, which led T. S. Eliot to proclaim the book "so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it." Now with a new preface by Jeanette Winterson, Nightwood still crackles with the same electric charge it had on its first publication in 1936.

    For just a handful of money, they savagely beat Paul’s wife and daughter, leaving his wife dead and his daughter comatose. Grief-stricken and forced to reevaluate his views, Benjamin becomes disillusioned with society and plots his revenge on the perpetrators, whom the police are unable to bring to justice. Armed with a revolver and total disregard for his own safety, he sets out to even the score.Adapted into the 1974 feature film starring Charles Bronson, Death Wish is now a new major motion picture starring Bruce Willis, Vincent D’Onofrio, Elisabeth Shue, Dean Norris, Camila Morrone and Kimberly Elise, written by Joe Carnahan and directed by Eli Roth.

    Narrating a twisted tale of a backstage double murder, Lee provides a fascinating look behind the scenes of burlesque, richly populated by the likes of strippers Lolita LaVerne and Gee Gee Graham, comic Biff Brannigan and Siggy the g-string salesman. This is a world where women struggle to earn a living performing bumps and grinds, have gangster boyfriends, sip beer between acts and pay their own way at dinner.Femmes Fatales restores to print the best of women’s writing in the classic pulp genres of the mid-20th century. From mystery to hard-boiled noir to taboo lesbian romance, these rediscovered queens of pulp offer subversive perspectives on a turbulent era. Enjoy the series: Bedelia; Bunny Lake Is Missing; By Cecile; The G-String Murders; The Girls in 3-B; Laura; The Man Who Loved His Wife; Mother Finds a Body; Now, Voyager; Return to Lesbos; Skyscraper; Stranger on Lesbos; Stella Dallas; Women's Barracks.

    and the hucksters who feed upon them. Diego, a seventeen-year-old illegal Mexican immigrant, owes his salvation to master grifter Thomas Schell. Together with Schell's gruff and powerful partner, they sail comfortably through hard times, scamming New York's grieving rich with elaborate, ingeniously staged séances -- until an impossible occurrence changes everything.While "communing with spirits," Schell sees an image of a young girl in a pane of glass, silently entreating the con man for help. Though well aware that his otherworldly "powers" are a sham, Schell inexplicably offers his services to help find the lost child -- drawing Diego along with him into a tangled maze of deadly secrets and terrible experimentation.At once a hypnotically compelling mystery and a stunningly evocative portrait of Depression-era New York, The Girl in the Glass is a masterly literary adventure from a writer of exemplary vision and skill.

    At once a love story & a harrowing account of one man’s long walk home, Cold Mountain introduces a new talent in American literature.Based on local history & family stories passed down by Frazier’s great-great-grandfather, Cold Mountain is the tale of a wounded Confederate soldier, Inman, who walks away from the ravages of the war & back home to his prewar sweetheart, Ada. His odyssey thru the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South interweaves with Ada’s struggle to revive her father’s farm, with the help of an intrepid young drifter named Ruby. As their long-separated lives begin to converge at the close of the war, Inman & Ada confront the vastly transformed world they’ve been delivered.Frazier reveals insight into human relations with the land & the dangers of solitude. He also shares with the great 19th century novelists a keen observation of a society undergoing change. Cold Mountain recreates a world gone by that speaks to our time.

    When he stumbles upon a mystery involving a disappearing toll-gate keeper, nothing could keep the adventure-loving captain from investigating.But winning her will be his greatest yet…The plot thickens when John encounters the enigmatic Lady Nell Stornaway and soon learns that rescuing her from her unsavory relatives makes even the most ferocious cavalry charge look like a particularly tame hand of loo. Between hiding his true identity from Nell and the arrival in the neighborhood of some distinctly shady characters, Captain Staple finds himself embarked on the adventure-and romance-of a lifetime.

    Bertie White, quiet and conservative, dreams of getting married and having children. In 1951, their childhood worlds collide in Atlantic City. Keeping in touch as pen pals, they reunite over the years ... always near the ocean.Powerful and moving, this novel follows Cee Cee and Bertie's extraordinary friendship over the course of thirty years as they transform from adolescents into adults. A bestselling novel that became a hugely successful film, Beaches is funny, heartbreaking, and a tale that should be a part of every woman's library.

    Looking back on the hardships of his early life, where difficult days are faced with courage but the valleys swell with the sound of Welsh voices, it becomes clear that there is nowhere so green as the landscape of his own memory. An immediate bestseller on publication in 1939, How Green Was My Valley quickly became one of the best-loved novels of the twentieth century. Poetic and nostalgic, it is an elegy to a lost world.Richard Dafydd Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd (1906-1983), better known by his pen name Richard Llewellyn, claimed to have been born in St David's, Pembrokeshire, Wales; after his death he was discovered to have been born of Welsh parents in Hendon, Middlesex. His famous first novel How Green Was My Valley (1939) was begun in St David's from a draft he had written in India, and was later adapted into an Oscar-winning film by director John Ford. None But the Lonely Heart, his second novel, was published in 1943, and subsequently made into a film starring Cary Grant and Ethel Barrymore. As well as novels including Green, Green My Valley Now (1975) and I Stand on a Quiet Shore (1982), Llewellyn wrote two highly successful plays, Poison Pen and NooseIf you enjoyed How Green Was My Valley, you might like Barry Hines' A Kestrel for a Knave, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'Vivid, eloquent, poetical, glowing with an inner flame of emotion'The Times Literary Supplement

    But he understood that Jennie, because she dared to love him, had fused past and present into the delightful delicate magic of "now."And tomorrow? Could Jennie triumph over tomorrow too?

    Read it aloud with someone you love, then send it to a friend. But be sure to keep a copy for yourself, because you'll want to read it again and again.Elizabeth Forsythe HaileyRaney is a small-town Baptist. Charles is a liberal from Atlanta. And RANEY is the story of their marriage. Charming, wise, funny, and truthful, it is a novel for everyone to love.A real jewel.RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH

    The main story is simple: released after thirty years in the Soviet camps, Ivan Grigoryevich must struggle to find a place for himself in an unfamiliar world. But in a novel that seeks to take in the whole tragedy of Soviet history, Ivan’s story is only one among many. Thus we also hear about Ivan’s cousin, Nikolay, a scientist who never let his conscience interfere with his career, and Pinegin, the informer who got Ivan sent to the camps.Then a brilliant short play interrupts the narrative: a series of informers steps forward, each making excuses for the inexcusable things that he did—inexcusable and yet, the informers plead, in Stalinist Russia understandable, almost unavoidable.And at the core of the book, we find the story of Anna Sergeyevna, Ivan’s lover, who tells about her eager involvement as an activist in the Terror famine of 1932–33, which led to the deaths of three to five million Ukrainian peasants. Here Everything Flows attains an unbearable lucidity comparable to the last cantos of Dante’s Inferno.

    It's a black comedy set in San Francisco in 1942. The central character, C. Card, is no Sam Spade, but actually does do detective work of a sort, when he's not off dreaming of Babylon.

    At first their new life is full of promise: The wheat is high, the dugout is warm and cozy, and a new baby is born to share in their happiness. Then disaster strikes, and David must go east for the winter to find work. Molly is left alone with the baby -- with nothing but her own courage to face the dangers of the harsh prairie winter.