World Enough and Time


Robert Penn Warren - 1950
    Now all the documents are in hand to reconstruct Beaumont's life story -- his crime, his trial, his ultimate sin and punishment -- and the historian-narrator of World Enough and Time sets about doing just that. Based on the famous murder case known as the Kentucky Tragedy, World Enough and Time is, like its precursor All the King's Men, a fictional wonder that personifies history, philosophy, politics, and passion.

Slow Learner: Early Stories


Thomas Pynchon - 1984
    The collection consists of five short stories: 'The Small Rain', 'Lowlands', 'Entropy', 'Under the Rose', and 'The Secret Integration', as well as an introduction written by Pynchon himself for the 1984 publication. The five stories were originally published individually in various literary magazines but in 1984, after Pynchon had achieved greater recognition, Slow Learner was published to collect and copyright the stories into one volume. The introduction also offers a rare insight into Pynchon's own views on his work and influences.

The Collected Poems, Vol. 2: 1939-1962


William Carlos Williams - 1967
    'And when the second and final colume of Williams' 'Collected Poems' is published, it should become even more apparent that he is this century's major American poet.' --Larry Kart, 'Chicago Tribune'

Second Skin


John Hawkes - 1964
    The past: the suicides of his father, wife and daughter, the murder of his son-in-law, a brutal rape, and subsequent mutiny at sea. The present: caring for his granddaughter on a "northern" island where he works as an artificial inseminator of cows, and attempts to reclaim the innocence with which he faced the tragedies of his earlier life. Combining unflinching descriptions of suffering with his sense of beauty, Hawkes is a master of nimble and sensuous prose who makes the awful and mundane fantastic, and occasionally makes the fantastic surreal.

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway


Ernest Hemingway - 1925
    For Hemingway fans The Complete Short Stories is an invaluable treasury.

Barren Ground


Ellen Glasgow - 1925
    Dorinda Oakley is a passionate, intelligent, and independent young woman struggling to define herself.

No Nature: New and Selected Poems


Gary Snyder - 1992
    . . . It helps us to go on, having Gary Snyder in our midst."--Los Angeles Times. Snyder is the author of many volumes of poetry and prose, including The Practice of the Wild and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Turtle Island. Reading tour.

The Long Valley


John Steinbeck - 1938
    Set in the idyllic Salinas Valley in California, where simple people farm the land and struggle to find a place for themeselves in the world, these stories reflect many of the concerns key to Steinbeck as a writer; the tensions between town and city, labourers and owners, past and present. Included here are the celebrated tales, THE MURDERER and THE CHRYSANTHEMUMS.

Music for Chameleons


Truman Capote - 1980
    Taking place in a small Midwestern town in America, it offers chilling insights into the mind of a killer and the obsession of the man bringing him to justice. Also in this volume are six short stories and seven ‘conversational portraits’ including a touching one of Marilyn Monroe, the ‘beautiful child’ and a hilarious one of a dope-smoking cleaning lady doing her rounds in New York.

Old New York: Four Novellas


Edith Wharton - 1924
    Originally published in 1924 and long out of print, these tales are vintage Wharton, dealing boldly with such themes as infidelity, illegitimacy, jealousy, the class system, and the condition of women in society Included in this remarkable quartet are False Dawn, The Old Maid, The Spark, and New Year's Day.

The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter


Katherine Anne Porter - 1965
    This volume brings together the collections Flowering Judas; Pale Horse, Pale Rider; and The Leaning Tower as well as four stories not available elsewhere in book form.Go little book... --Flowering Judas and other stories: María Concepción ; Virgin Violeta ; The martyr ; Magic ; Rope ; He ; Theft ; That tree ; The jilting of Granny Weatherall ; Flowering Judas ; The cracked looking-glass ; Hacienda --Pale horse, pale rider: Old mortality ; Noon wine ; Pale horse, pale rider --The leaning tower and other stories: The old order : The source ; The journey ; The Witness ; The circus ; The last leaf ; The fig tree ; The grave. The downward path to wisdom ; A day's work ; Holiday ; The leaning tower

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love


Raymond Carver - 1981
    Alternate-cover edition can be found here In his second collection, Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated and beloved short-story writers in American literature—a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark.

Houseboat Days


John Ashbery - 1977
    "Wet Casements," "Syringa," "Loving Mad Tom," and the long "Fantasia on 'The Nut-Brown Maid, '" which concludes the book, are among the riches in a collection of dazzling eloquence and power.

A Modern Instance


William Dean Howells - 1882
    R. Osgood & Co. The novel is about the deterioration of a once loving marriage under the influence of capitalistic greed. It is the first American novel by a canonical author to seriously consider divorce as a realistic outcome of marriage.

Forgetting Elena


Edmund White - 1973
    For, on the privileged island community where Forgetting Elena takes place, manners are everything. Or so it seems to White's excruciatingly self-conscious young narrator who desperately wants to be accepted in this world where everything from one's bathroom habits to the composition of "spontaneous" poetry is subject to rigid conventions.