The Last Man


Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - 1826
    With intriguing portraits of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, the novel offers a vision of the future that expresses a reaction against Romanticism, and demonstrates the failure of the imagination and of art to redeem the doomed characters.

Sanditon: Jane Austen's Last Novel Completed


Jane Austen - 1975
    This is its completion, praised for its delicacy, wit and discretion.When Charlotte Heywood, eldest daughter of a family of fourteen, is invited to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Parker of Sanditon, she accepts with alacrity, intrigued to visit the once quiet town being promoted by Mr. Parker as the newly fashionable resort for sea-bathing.As a guest of the Parkers, Charlotte is introduced to the full range of Sanditon polite society, from Lady Denham to her impoverished ward Clara and from the feckless Sidney Parker to his hypochondriac sisters. A heroine whose clear-sighted common sense is often at war with romance, she cannot help observing around her both folly and romance in many guises, but can she herself resist the attractions of the heart?

A Hero of Our Time


Mikhail Lermontov - 1840
    In the character of its protagonist, Pechorin, the archetypal Russian antihero, Lermontov's novel looks forward to the subsequent glories and passion of Russian literature that it helped, in great measure, to make possible.

Exile and the Kingdom


Albert Camus - 1957
    Translated from the French by Justin O'Brien.The six works featured in this volume are: "The Adulterous Woman" ("La Femme adultère") "The Renegade or a Confused Spirit" ("Le Renégat ou un esprit confus") "The Silent Men" ("Les Muets") "The Guest" ("L'Hôte") "Jonas or the Artist at Work" ("Jonas ou l’artiste au travail") "The Growing Stone" ("La Pierre qui pousse")

Collected Short Stories: Volume 1


W. Somerset Maugham - 1951
    The collection contains thirty stories that take us from the islands of the Pacific Ocean to England, France and Spain. They all reveal Maugham's acute and often sardonic observation of human foibles and his particular genius for exposing the bitter reality of human relationships.Somerset Maugham learnt his craft from Maupassant, and these stories display the remarkable talent that made him an unsurpassed storyteller.

...And Ladies of the Club


Helen Hooven Santmyer - 1982
    A true classic, it is sure to enchant, enthrall, and intrigue readers for years to come.

Age of Iron


J.M. Coetzee - 1990
    A classics professor, Mrs. Curren has been opposed to the lies and brutality of apartheid all her life, but has lived insulated from its true horrors. Now she is suddenly forced to come to terms with the iron-hearted rage that the system has wrought. In an extended letter addressed to her daughter, who has long since fled to America, Mrs. Curren recounts the strange events of her dying days. She witnesses the burning of a nearby black township and discovers the bullet-riddled body of her servant's son. A teenage black activist hiding in her house is killed by security forces. And through it all, her only companion, the only person to whom she can confess her mounting anger and despair, is a homeless man, an alcoholic, who one day appears on her doorstep. Brilliantly crafted and resonant with metaphor, Age of Iron is "a superbly realized novel whose truths cut to the bone." (The New York Times Book Review)

I Am Legend and Other Stories


Richard Matheson - 1954
    Every other man, woman, and child on Earth has become a vampire, and they are all hungry for Neville's blood.By day, he is the hunter, stalking the sleeping undead through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn.How long can one man survive in a world of vampires?I am legend --Buried talents --The near departed --Prey --Witch war --Dance of the dead --Dress of white silk --Mad house --The funeral --From shadowed places --Person to person.

Heroes, Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths


Bernard Evslin - 1966
      The world of Greek mythology contains some of the most exciting and imaginative stories ever told. In Heroes, Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths, bestselling author Bernard Evslin shares his passion for these fabulous tales and the eternal themes they so beautifully express. In this accessible overview, you’ll get to know the iconic gods, heroes, and tragic figures: Zeus, the all-powerful king of the gods; Hera, his cunning and jealous wife; King Midas, whose touch could turn anything into gold; the sculptor Pygmalion, who falls in love with his own creation; and many more.   With each story, Evslin brings new life to these legendary characters and the magical world they inhabit. Translated into multiple languages, and with more than ten million copies sold, this invaluable resource has become a classic in itself.  ContainsThe gods- Zeus- Hera- Athene- Poseidon- Hades- Demeter- Birth of the twins- Artemis- Apollo - Sons of Apollo- Hermes- Hephaestus - Aphrodite Nature myths- Prometheus- Pandora- Phaethon- Orpheus- Narcissus and Echo- Eros and Psyche- ArionDemigods. - Perseus- Daedalus- Theseus- AtalantaFables- Midas- Pygmalion

The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake


Breece D'J Pancake - 1983
    In 1983 Little, Brown and Company's posthumous publication of this book electrified the literary world with a force that still resounds across two decades. A collection of stories that depict the world of Pancake's native rural West Virginia with astonishing power and grace, The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake has remained continuously in print and is a perennial favorite among aspiring writers, participants in creative writing programs, and students of contemporary American fiction. "Trilobites", the first of Pancake's stories to be published in The Atlantic, elicited an extraordinary immediate response from readers and continues to be widely anthologized.

The Box Man


Kōbō Abe - 1973
    Wandering the streets of Tokyo and scribbling madly on the interior walls of his box, he describes the world outside as he sees or perhaps imagines it, a tenuous reality that seems to include a mysterious rifleman determined to shoot him, a seductive young nurse, and a doctor who wants to become a box man himself. The Box Man is a marvel of sheer originality and a bizarrely fascinating fable about the very nature of identity.Translated from the Japanese by E. Dale Saunders.

The Street of Crocodiles


Bruno Schulz - 1933
    Most memorable - and most chilling - is the portrait of the author's father, a maddened shopkeeper who imports rare birds' eggs to hatch in his attic, who believes tailors' dummies should be treated like people, and whose obsessive fear of cockroaches causes him to resemble one. Bruno Schulz, a Polish Jew killed by the Nazis in 1942, is considered by many to have been the leading Polish writer between the two world wars.Bruno Schulz's untimely death at the hands of a Nazi stands as one of the great losses to modern literature. During his lifetime, his work found little critical regard, but word of his remarkable talents gradually won him an international readership. This volume brings together his complete fiction, including three short stories and his final surviving work, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. Illustrated with Schulz's original drawings, this edition beautifully showcases the distinctive surrealist vision of one of the twentieth century's most gifted and influential writers.

I Thought My Father Was God and Other True Tales from NPR's National Story Project


Paul Auster - 2001
    One hundred and eighty voices - male and female, young and old, from all walks of life and all over the country - talk intimately to the reader. Combining great humor and pathos this remarkable selection of stories from the thousands submitted to NPR's Weekend All Things Considered National Story Project gives the reader a glimpse of America's soul in all its diversity.

Imperial Earth


Arthur C. Clarke - 1975
    Titan, an independent republic, was originally colonized from Earth three generations earlier. Duncan's initial challenge is to prepare, physically and intellectually, for the 500-million-mile trip to Earth. Once there, he is caught up in a sweep of new experiences, including the social and political whirl in Washington, a strange visit to a carefully preserved ancient city once prominent in the 20th century, and a search for and meeting with a woman he loved since she visited Titan years before.

The Roald Dahl Omnibus: Perfect Bedtime Stories for Sleepless Nights


Roald Dahl - 1986
    Bawdy, funny, touching, and downright outrageous, there's simply no one else like Roald Dahl.This volume is a diabolical collection of 28 of Dahl's best stories. Shiver to classics like The Man From the South, Taste, Royal Jelly and The Great Switcheroo and hard-to-find gems like Poison, The Wish and Neck. It's the perfect remedy for a sleepless night. From Someone Like YouTasteLamb to the SlaughterMan from the SouthThe SoldierDip in the PoolGalloping FoxleySkinPoisonWishNeckSound MachineNunc DimittisGreat Automatic GrammatizatorClaud's DogRatcatcherRumminsMr HoddyMr FeaseyFrom Kiss KissLandladyWilliam and MaryThe Way Up to HeavenRoyal JellyGeorgy PorgyGenesis and CatastropheEdward the ConquerorPigChampion of the WorldFrom Switch BitchGreat SwitcherooLast ActBitch