As warm and intelligent as it is ribald and cunning, this collection of Thom Gunn's is his richest yet.

    It plunges you into the reckless, dangerous world of the Santangelo crime family. It introduces you to Gino Santangelo, the street kid who makes it all the way to the top. And then brings you Lucky—his sensual, stunningly beautiful, and passionate daughter; a woman who dares to win her father’s empire for herself; a woman unafraid of taking…CHANCES.

    It is populated by memorable and complex characters like Gunnar of Hlidarendi, a powerful warrior with an aversion to killing, and the not-so-villainous Mord Valgardsson. Full of dreams, strange prophecies, violent power struggles, and fragile peace agreements, Njal's Saga tells the compelling story of a fifty-year blood feud that, despite its distance from us in time and place, is driven by passions familiar to us all. This Penguin Classics edition includes an introduction, chronology, index of characters, plot summary, explanatory notes, maps, and suggestions for further reading.

     As she contemplates the pleasure of artistic labor, finding solace and safety within the woods, and the joyful and rhythmic beating of wings, Oliver intimately shares with her readers her quiet discoveries, boundless curiosity, and exuberance for the grandeur of our world. This radiant collection of her work, with some pieces published here for the first time, reaffirms Oliver as a passionate and prolific observer whose thoughtful meditations on spiders, writing a poem, blue fin tuna, and Ralph Waldo Emerson inspire us all to discover wonder and awe in life's smallest corners.

    Arriving anonymously at a leper colony in the Congo, he is diagnosed as the mental equivalent of a 'burnt-out case', a leper mutilated by disease and amputation. Querry slowly moves towards a cure, his mind getting clearer as he works for the colony. However, in the heat of the tropics, no relationship with a married woman, however blameless, will ever be taken as innocent.

    Burroughs has had a range of influence rivalled by few living writers. This meticulously assembled volume of his correspondence vividly documents the personal and cultural history through which Burroughs developed, revealing clues to illuminate his life and keys to open up his texts. More than that, they also show how in the period 1945-1959, letter-writing was itself integral to his life and to his fiction-making. These letters reveal the extraordinary route that took Burroughs from narrative to anti-narrative, from Junky to Naked Lunch and the discovery of cut-ups, a turbulent journey crossing two decades and three continents. The letters track the great shifts in Burroughs' crucial relationship with Allen Ginsberg, from lecturing wise man ("Watch your semantics young man") to total dependence ("Your absence causes me, at times, acute pain.") to near-estrangement ("I sometimes feel you have mixed me up with someone else doesn't live here anymore."). They show Burroughs' initial despair at the obscenity of his own letters, some of which became parts of Naked Lunch, and his gradual recognition of the work's true nature ("It's beginning to look like a modern Inferno.") They reveal the harrowing lows and ecstatic highs of his emotions, and lay bare the pain of coming to terms with a childhood trauma ("Such horror in bringing it out I was afraid my heart would stop."). It is a story as revealing of his fellow Beats as it is of Burroughs: he writes of Kerouac and Cassady in the midst of the journey immortalized as On the Road ("Neal is, of course, the very soul of this voyage into pure, abstract, meaningless motion."), and to Ginsberg as he was writing Howl ("I sympathize with your feelings of depression, beatness: 'We have seen the best of our time.'"). And throughout runs the unmistakable Burroughs voice, the u

    Includes "There's a certain slant of light," "Because I could not stop for death," "It was not death for I stood up."

    In one of the three sketches, which form part of this collection, the author brilliantly reveals himself to the world in a schizophrenic piece titled 'Saadat Hasan' calling 'Manto the writer' a liar, a thief and a failure! And in another titled 'In a Letter to Uncle Sam', Manto superbly couches his anti-imperialistic views in an innocent letter from a poor nephew to a capitalist and prosperous uncle in America.

    

    Though written in a simple language, they manage to create vivid imagery and capture the essence of mountain life. Some of his writings that are featured in the book are Once Upon A Mountain Time, Sounds I Like To Hear, How Far Is The River, and After The Monsoon.Rain In The Mountains: Notes From The Himalayas covers the everyday life of the author with descriptive words and lucid writing.CONTENTSSECTION I - ONCE UPON A MOUNTAIN TIMEOnce Upon A Mountain TimeVoting at BarlowganjMiss Bun and OthersA Station for ScandalIt Must be the Mountains (Play)SECTION II - MOUNTAINS IN MY BLOODHow Far is the RiverFour Boys on a GlacierGrowing up with TreesMountains in my BloodA Mountain StreamA Lime Tree in the HillsA New FlowerThe Joy of FlowerSounds I like to HearDragon in the TunnelHill of the FairiesThe Open RoadThese I Have LovedA Dream of GardensA Sweet SavourGreat Trees I Have KnownPicninc at Fox-BurnA Wayside TeashopAll About my WalkaboutsGreat Spirits of the TreesBirdsong in the MountainsMeetings on the Tehri RoadGuests who Fly in from the ForestUp at Sisters BazaarSECTION III - NOTES BY THE WAYSIDESECTION IV - MOUNTAINS ARE KIND TO WRITERSIn Search of a Winter GardenThe Old LamaThe Night Roof Blew OffMountains are Kind to WritersBest of All WindowsA Knock at the DoorSounds of the SeaAll My Writing DaysThe Trail to the BankWhere the Grass Grows GreenerBetter to Have a Bird in a BushCoaxing a Garden from Himalyan SoilWhere Rivers MeetAfter the MonsoonThe Road to Anjani SainSECTION V - TIME TO CLOSE THE WINDOWEpilogue

    His love affair with punk comes full circle as he learns to hate it and then learns to love it again. The pieces in this book take us from his Southern roots, his brief stay in St. Louis, and his journey to California on a quest for punk bliss. Sinister finds himself in Oakland, where he gets exactly what he wanted, but it may just kill him. From recounts of specific shows to metaphorical dreams of Abraham Lincoln to the tragic stories of circus elephants, All Blacked Out & Nowhere to Go mixes tragedy and comedy into a book that's louder and faster than any book of its kind.

    Anyone who comes in contact with it is overcome with greed. For centuries, this treasure has been hoarded deep below the oceans surface. To steal it, one has to get past the creature! One groups quest for the cursed riches is retold in this striking graphic novel adaptation.

    B. White Naturalist, philosopher, champion of self-reliance and moral independence, Henry David Thoreau remains not only one of our most influential writers but also one of our most contemporary. This unique and comprehensive edition gathers all of Thoreau's most significant works, including his masterpiece, Walden (reproduced in its entirety); A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; selections from Cape Cod and The Maine Woods; as well as "Walking," "Civil Disobedience," "Slavery in Massachusetts," "A Plea for Captain John Brown," and "Life Without Principle." Taken together, they reveal the astounding range, subtlety, artistry, and depth of thought of this true American original.Includes a Modern Library Reading Group Guide

    She's divorced. She wears a charm bracelet and high heels and red toreador pants. And the way she raises her kids is a scandal. But as time passes, the neighbors start having second thoughts about Nora. The women’s apprehension evolves into admiration. The men’s lust evolves into awe. The children are drawn to her in ways they can't explain. And everyone on this little street in 1959 Long Island seems to sense the possibilities and perils of a different kind of future when they look at Nora Silk...This extraordinary novel by the author of The River King and Local Girls takes us back to a time when the exotic both terrified and intrigued us, and despite our most desperate attempts, our passions and secrets remained as stubbornly alive as the weeds in our well-trimmed lawns.

    The boundaries between what is real and what is fantasy are dissolving to increasingly dangerous effect. And then he falls in love with Alice . . .WHAT HAPPENS NOW is a mesmerizing story about love, fear and faith. Atmospheric, suspenseful and spiked with black humour, it confirms Jeremy Dyson as one of the most exciting and original writers of his generation.