Some of them were entirely lost…a great chastening is upon them unlike any the ancient Christian world has ever seen.” - Alcuin of York, Letter to Arno King Horic is dead. The oaths that once bonded the Danes and Northmen in the islands of Aquitaine have broken. Hasting's new land is imperiled by fearsome challengers and old foes alike. A rumor from the continent will shatter the brittle veneer of his strength and expose his deepest wound from the past. His greatest trial will not be fought with a sword, ax, or shield, but with his heart. A supposed son of Ragnar Lodbrok, and referred to in the Gesta Normannorum as the Scourge of the Somme and Loire, his life exemplified the qualities of the ideal Viking. Join author and historian C.J. Adrien on an adventure that explores the early life and adventures of the Viking Hasting and his crew.

    Each book describes a classic novel and drama by explaining themes, elaborating on characters, and discussing each author's unique literary style, use of language, and point of view. Extensive illustrations and imaginative, enlightening use of graphics help to make each book in this series livelier, easier, and more fun to use than ordinary literature plot summaries. An unusual feature, "Mind Map" is a diagram that summarizes and interrelates the most important details that students need to understand about a given work. Appropriate for middle and high school students.

    Djebar, too, tackles cross-cultural issues just by writing in French of an Arab society (the actual act of writing contrasting with the strong oral traditions of the indigenous culture), as a woman who has seen revolution in a now post-colonial country, and as an Algerian living in exile.In this new novel, Djebar brilliantly plays these contradictions against the bloody history of Carthage, a great civilization the Berbers were once compared to, and makes it both a tribute to the loss of Berber culture and a meeting-point of culture and language. As the story of one woman's experience in Algeria, it is a private tale, but one embedded in a vast history.A radically singular voice in the world of literature, Assia Djebar's work ultimately reaches beyond the particulars of Algeria to embrace, in stark yet sensuous language, the universal themes of violence, intimacy, ostracism, victimization, and exile.

    Now she’s set her eyes on a backwater burg—where, while posing as an innocent (albeit drop-dead gorgeous) newcomer to town, she means to sniff out old grudges and engineer new opportunities, deftly playing different people and different interests against each other the better, as always, to make a killing. But then something snaps: the master manipulator falls prey to a pure and wayward passion.Aimée has become the avenging angel of her own nihilism, exacting the destruction of a whole society of destroyers. An unholy original, Jean-Patrick Manchette transformed the modern detective novel into a weapon of gleeful satire and anarchic fun. In Fatale he mixes equal measures of farce, mayhem, and madness to prepare a rare literary cocktail that packs a devastating punch.

    In My Fantoms Richard Holmes, the celebrated biographer of Shelley and Coleridge, has found a brilliantly effective new way to bring this great but too-little-known writer into English. My Fantoms assembles seven stories spanning the whole of Gautier’s career into a unified work that captures the essence of his adventurous life and subtle art. From the erotic awakening of “The Adolescent” through “The Poet,” a piercing recollection of the mad genius Gérard de Nerval, the great friend of Gautier’s youth, My Fantoms celebrates the senses and illuminates the strange disguises of the spirit, while taking readers on a tour of modernity at its most mysterious. ”What ever would the Devil find to do in Paris?” Gautier wonders. “He would meet people just as diabolical as he, and find himself taken for some naïve provincial…”Tapestries, statues, and corpses come to life; young men dream their way into ruin; and Gautier keeps his faith in the power of imagination: “No one is truly dead, until they are no longer loved.”

    A pioneer of the nouveau roman (or new novel), a literary movement that sought to free the novel from the confines of plot, characterization, and time, she was recently honored by the presentation of her complete works in the prestigious Pleiade series (other authors in the series include Honore de Balzac, Ernest Hemingway, and Franz Kafka).George Braziller is delighted to have been publishing all of Sarraute's work in America since 1958.

    By turns shockingly honest, incredibly funny, and clearly unhinged, Rupert's defense includes rants about the properly formed insult and men who wear comfortable sweaters. It also visits the memory-sites of Rupert and Mira's short-lived affair: her apartment, their favorite cafés and restaurants, and the city's public squares.With each story Rupert attaches to these places his defense becomes a little more outlandish, while he becomes increasingly convinced that his innocence is beyond doubt. When he reaches the end of his defense, delivering the decisive blow against his accusers and describing the scene of the crime, the full depth of Rupert's depravity is finally revealed.Rupert: A Confession is a brilliantly composed monologue that fully exposes—despite the misdirection and bizarre revelations of its teller—the innermost workings of a confused mind. Recalling Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men, Rupert: A Confession is simultaneously offensive, funny, and compelling, and it serves as a perfect introduction to one of the most talented and controversial writers at work in the Netherlands today.

    But when athletic Chloé suddenly drowns, Gabriel is left to grapple with the mysterious circumstances of her death. Brokenhearted, he pours out his grief in a bereavement group and is consoled by photographer Emma. While the two grow closer, Gabriel can’t help but feel Chloé’s presence everywhere he goes. And as revelations about Chloé slowly emerge, he begins to wonder, is Emma really that different?From prize-winning and bestselling author Amélie Antoine comes a dark and evocative novel that will keep readers guessing until the final moments—will Gabriel be able to move on with Emma, or will the mystery of Chloé’s death consume him?

    They met twenty years ago at a New Year’s Eve party in Paris, a city where they both felt out of place—he as a recent arrival from the provinces, and she as an immigrant from the island of Mauritius. They quickly fell in love, married, and moved to a village in southwestern France, to live on the shores of the Atlantic with their little girl, Laura.In order to earn a living, Adam has left behind his love of painting to become an architect, and Anita has turned her desire to write into a job freelancing for a local newspaper. Over time, the monotony of daily life begins to erode the bonds of their marriage. The arrival of Adèle, an undocumented immigrant from Mauritius whom they hire to care for Laura, sparks artistic inspiration for both Adam and Anita, as well as a renewed energy in their relationship. But this harmony proves to be short-lived, brought down by their separate transgressions of Adèle’s privacy and a subsequently tragic turn of events.With the careful observation, vivid description, and emotional resonance that are the hallmarks of her previous novel, The Last Brother, in Waiting for Tomorrow Nathacha Appanah investigates the life of the artist, the question of cultural differences within a marriage, and the creation and the destruction of a family.

     A few days before Noble Norfleet's eighteenth birthday, his family suffers a violent catastrophe. The sole survivor, Noble throws himself into a reckless affair with his Spanish teacher, whose husband is fighting in Vietnam. When Noble graduates, he enlists as well and, while serving as an army medic, experiences a mysterious vision that seems tied to uncanny events in his recent past. Not until thirty years later -- after a life short on friends and troubled by a compulsion to worship women's bodies -- is Noble challenged to rethink the decades-old mystery of his family tragedy. Faced with an ominous choice, Noble finally comes to accept an enormous duty he's long tried to ignore. Soon, perhaps for the first time, his future seems hopeful.

    Symbolist poets and writers — Stéphane Mallarmé and Maurice Maeterlinck among them — defended the play's literary brilliance. Beyond its notoriety, the drama's haunting poetic imagery, biblical cadences, and febrile atmosphere have earned it a reputation as a masterpiece of the Aesthetic movement of fin de siècle England.Written originally in French in 1892, this sinister tale of a woman scorned and her vengeance was translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas. The play inspired some of Aubrey Beardsley's finest illustrations, and an abridged version served as the text for Strauss' renowned opera of the same name. This volume reprints the complete text of the first English edition, published in 1894, and also includes "A Note on Salomé" by Robert Ross, Wilde's lifelong friend and literary executor. Students, lovers of literature and drama, and admirers of Oscar Wilde and his remarkable literary gifts will rejoice in this inexpensive edition.

    One of Bataille’s overtly political works, it explores the ambiguity of sex as a subversive force, bringing violence, power, and death together in a terrifying unity.

    In the cut-throat world of weekly trash mags, Nina thrives on the adrenalin of out-bidding her rivals for scandalous photo sets, scoring exclusive rights to Australia's A-list weddings and having the most influential celebrity managers on speed-dial. But in her personal life, things aren't quite as glossy. Just as she's back on the single scene, all her friends start getting up the duff faster than you can say, 'Welcome to Nappy Valley'. While Nina spends her days managing her magazine's multi-million-dollar budget and stalking Kim Kardashian's every move, they're managing their minuscule maternity leave allowance and stalking their local daycare waiting list. Suddenly she feels like she's being rejected from a club she doesn't even want to join. With a reality TV show in the works and a Facebook feed overflowing with endless baby updates, Nina heads to New York on an impromptu girls' trip to get away from it all - but little does she know that things are about to get a whole lot more complicated...

    He observes his customers as they come and go – the young man who drinks beer as he reads Primo Levi, the fellow who from time to time strips down and plunges into the nearby Seine, the few regulars who eat and drink there on credit – sizing them up with great accuracy and empathy. Pierre doesn’t look outside more than necessary; he prefers to let the world come to him. Soon, however, the café must close its doors, and Pierre finds himself at a loss. As we follow his stream of thoughts over three days, Pierre’s humanity and profound solitude both emerge. The Waitress Was New is a moving portrait of human anguish and weakness, of understated nobility and strength. Lire est un plaisir describes Dominique Fabre as a "magician of the everyday."

    Heir to an immense aristocratic fortune, mental and physical mutant Moravagine is a monster, a man in pursuit of a theorem that will justify his every desire. Released from a hospital for the criminally insane by his starstruck psychiatrist (the narrator of the book), who foresees a companionship in crime that will also be an unprecedented scientific collaboration, Moravagine travels from Moscow to San Antonio to deepest Amazonia, engaged in schemes and scams as, among other things, terrorist, speculator, gold prospector, and pilot. He also enjoys a busy sideline in rape and murder. At last, the two friends return to Europe—just in time for World War I, when "the whole world was doing a Moravagine."This new edition of Cendrars's underground classic is the first in English to include the author's afterword, "How I Wrote Moravagine."