As he grows older, Geryon escapes his abusive brother and affectionate but ineffectual mother, finding solace behind the lens of his camera and in the arms of a young man named Herakles, a cavalier drifter who leaves him at the peak of infatuation. When Herakles reappears years later, Geryon confronts again the pain of his desire and embarks on a journey that will unleash his creative imagination to its fullest extent. By turns whimsical and haunting, erudite and accessible, richly layered and deceptively simple, Autobiography of Red is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist coming to terms with the fantastic accident of who he is."A profound love story . . . sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender." -- The New York Times Book Review"A deeply odd and immensely engaging book. . . . [Carson] exposes with passionate force the mythic underlying the explosive everyday."  -- The Village VoiceA NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEARNational book Critics Circle Award Finalist

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    His fiction is an acknowledged influence on entire generations of writers, ranging from H.P. Lovecraft to James Branch Cabell, from Clark Ashton Smith to Lin Carter. Although many of his most famous stories are longer in length, the miniature portraits of Fifty-One Tales (originally published in 1915 and sometimes reprinted under the title The Food of Death) are an ideal introduction to Dunsany. Nowhere is the jewel-like quality of his prose more evident than in the short tales, seminal works which runs the gamut from whimsy to fantasy to social satire.CONTENTS:"The Assignation" "Charon" "The Death of Pan" "The Sphinx at Gizeh" "The Hen" "Wind and Fog" "The Raft Builders" "The Workman" "The Guest" "Death and Odysseus" "Death and the Orange" "The Prayer of the Flowers" "Time and the Tradesman" "The Little City" "The Unpasturable Fields" "The Worm and the Angel" "The Songless Country" "The Latest Thing" "The Demagogue and the Demi-Monde" "The Giant Poppy" "Roses" "The Man with the Golden Ear-rings" "The Dream of King Karna-Vootra" "The Storm" "A Mistaken Identity" "The True History of the Hare and the Tortoise" "Alone the Immortals" "A Moral Little Tale" "The Return of Song" "Spring in Town" "How the Enemy Came to Thlūnrāna" "A Losing Game" "Taking Up Piccadilly" "After the Fire" "The City" "The Food of Death" "The Lonely Idol" "The Sphinx in Thebes (Massachusetts)" "The Reward" "The Trouble in Leafy Green Street" "Furrow-Maker" "Lobster Salad" "The Return of the Exiles" "Nature and Time" "The Song of the Blackbird" "The Messengers" "The Three Tall Sons" "Compromise" "What We Have Come To" "The Tomb of Pan" "The Poet Speaks With Earth" (English version only) "The Mist" (American version only)

    After plans to elope with her lover to Australia and train as a nurse in London lead to nothing, she joins a traveling theater group and succumbs to the charms of the dark, passionate Italian Ciccio.This edition also contains pictures, personal notes, and other critical primary source material.

    The lyrical passages and poetic images, the wry humor, the tall-tale extravagance, and the homely realism of the 'Kalevala' come through with extraordinary effectiveness.

    She thinks she sees through everyone and rules over a family of dependents with knowing cynicism. But there are two people in Redborough who resist her. One is Hester, a young relation with a personality as strong as Catherine's, and as determined to find a role for herself. The other is Edward, who Catherine treats like a son. Conflict between the young and the old is inevitable, and in its depiction of the complex relationships that develop between the three principal characters, Hester is a masterpiece of psychological realism. In exploring the difficulty of understanding human nature, it is also a compulsive story of financial and sexual risk-taking that inevitably results in a searing climax.Margaret Oliphant is one of the great Victorian novelists, and this edition re-establishes her importance.

    Her story of a woman incarcerated in a madhouse by her abusive husband dramatizes the effect of the English marriage laws, which made women virtually the property of their husbands.

    Revised reissue.

    500 copies. Out of print.Description: Contains all six chapters of the novel together for the first time. It is probable that all through those early years Ambrose's father had been charming his son's heart, drawing him forth from the gehenna-valley of this life into which he had fallen, as one draws forth a beast that has fallen into some deep and dreadful place. Various are the methods recommended. There is the way of what is called moral teaching, the way of physiology and the way of a masterly silence; but Mr. Meyrick's was the strange way of incantation. He had, in a certain manner, drawn the boy aside from that evil traffic of the valley, from the stench of the turmoil, from the blows and the black lechery, from the ugly fight in the poisonous smoke, from all the amazing and hideous folly that practical men call life, and had set him in that endless procession that forever and forever sings its litanies in the mountains, going from height to height on its great quest. Ambrose's soul had been caught in the sweet thickets of the woods; it had been bathed in the pure water of blessed fountains; it had knelt before the altars of the old saints, till all the earth was become a sanctuary, all life was a rite and ceremony, the end of which was the attainment of the mystic sanctity -- the achieving of the Graal. For this -- for what else? -- were all things made. It was this that the little bird sang of in the bush, piping a few feeble, plaintive notes of dusky evenings, as if his tiny heart were sad that it could utter nothing better than such sorry praises. This also celebrated the awe of the white morning on the hills, the breath of the woods at dawn. This was figured in the red ceremony of sunset, when flames shone over the dome of the great mountain, and roses blossomed in the far plains of the sky. This was the secret of the dark places in the heart of the woods. This the mystery of the sunlight on the height; and every little flower, every delicate fern, and every reed and rush was entrusted with the hidden declaration of this sacrament. For this end, final and perfect rites had been given to men to execute; and these were all the arts, all the far-lifted splendor of the great cathedral; all rich carven work and all glowing colors; all magical utterance of word and tones: all these things were the witnesses that consented in the One Offering, in the high service of the Graal.

    The novel follows Victoria's progress from spoilt daughter of indulgent aristocrats, through a period of abuse and captivity, to a career of deepening criminality conducted under Satan's watchful eye. Charlotte Dacre's narrative deftly displays her heroine's movement from the vitalized position of Ann Radcliffe's heroines to a fully conscious commitment to vice that goes beyond that of 'Monk' Lewis's deluded Ambrosio. The novel's most daring aspect is its anatomy of Victoria's intense sexual attraction to her Moorish servant Zofloya that transgresses taboos both of class and race. A minor scandal on its first publication, and a significant influence on Byron and Shelley, Zofloya has been unduly neglected. Contradicting idealized stereotypes of women's writing, the novel's portrait of indulged desire, gratuitous cruelty, and monumental self-absorption retains considerable power to disturb.

    A magical island... And Two People Bewitched By Love....The Channel Islands were divided in allegiance between France and England. Of French blood, and yet subjects of Queen Victoria, the islanders were curious hybrid creatures. But now, in 1888, England is slowly stretching out her arms to them.Colin du Frocq is eight years old, and his dreams are of the sea that surrounds his home. By day he steals away and takes to the sea in any boat that is sailing. At night he lies in bed listening to the waves beating against the shore. Then one night, in a wild storm, a ship drives onto the nearby cliffs and a strange man enters Colin's life, changing Colin's course forever.A twist of fate brought Ranulph back to a springtime place that had forgotten him. A proud and beautiful woman offered him refuge, even though she did not understand why, as she trembled before his gaze.Now Ranulph could feel the spell of the Island twisting around him, binding him to the world of love and companionship he had rejected forever.A storm-wracked sea had brought him home. It was the magnificent fury of another storm that taught him the splendor of life and the power of love.

    In a satanic bargain, Melmoth exchanges his soul for immortality. The story of his tortured wanderings through the centuries is pieced together through those who have been implored by Melmoth to take over his pact with the devil. Influenced by the Gothic romances of the late 18th century, Maturin's diabolic tale raised the genre to a new and macabre pitch. Its many admirers include Poe, Balzac, Oscar Wilde and Baudelaire.

    First introduced into the West in 1704, the stories of The Thousand and One Nights are most familiar to American readers in sanitized children's versions. This modern edition, based on Richard F. Burton's unexpurgated translation, restores the lushness of the original Arabic. Here are the famous adventures of Sinbad, "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," and "Aladdin and the Magic Lamp." Here too are less familiar stories, such as "Prince Behram and the Princess Al-Datma," a delightful early version of The Taming of the Shrew, and "The Wily Dalilah and her Daughter Zaynab," a hilarious tale about two crafty women who put an entire city of men in their place. Intricate and imaginative, these stories-within-stories told over a thousand and one nights continue to captivate readers as they have for centuries. "Arabian Nights: The Marvels and Wonders of The Thousand and One Nights, Volume 2 of 2, Adapted By Jack Zipes"

    Fanny Burney's unusual love story and deft social satire was much admired on its first publication in 1782 for its subtle interweaving of comedy, humanity, and social analysis. Controversial in its time, this eighteenth-century novel seems entirely fresh in relation to late twentieth-century concerns.

    M. Barnard." Louisa May Alcott's novel of romance and sexual intrigue is one of her lesser-known gems. Its tone and characterizations strike a markedly different chord from her best-known works, such as "Little Women" and "Little Men," and it remains a popular addition to her oeuvre.