books tagged “General fiction”

books tagged “General fiction”

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  • The Age of Innocence
    by Edith Wharton
    ISBN 1593080743 (1-59308-074-3)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Book summary:

    Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences-biographical, historical, and literary-to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Winner of the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton's masterful portrait of desire and betrayal during the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York, a time when society people "dreaded scandal more than disease."This is Newland Archer's world as he prepares to marry the beautiful but conventional May Welland. But when the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York after a disastrous marriage, Archer falls deeply in love with her. Torn between duty and passion, Archer struggles to make a decision that will either courageously define his life-or mercilessly destroy it.Maureen Howard is a critic, teacher, and writer of fiction. Her seven novels include Bridgeport Bus, Natural History, and A Lover's Almanac. Her memoir, Facts of Life, won the National Book Critics' Circle Award. She has taught at Yale and Columbia University. [via]

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  • The Art Of War
    by Sun Tzu, Thomas F. Cleary
    ISBN 1590302257 (1-59030-225-7)
    Softcover, Shambhala Pubns

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    Book summary:

    The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    A clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease. So wrote Sun Tzu 2,500 years ago, and kings, soldiers, and statesmen have been turning to the Chinese master for his astute observations ever since.

    Sun Tzus incisive blueprint for battlefield strategy is as relevant to todays combatants in business, politics, and everyday life as it once was to the warlords of ancient China. The Art of War is one of the most useful books ever written on leading with wisdom, an essential tool for modern corporate warriors battling to gain the advantage in the boardroom and for anyone struggling to gain the upper hand in confrontations and competitions.



    Here Lionel Giless famed 1910 translation, laced with commentary from illustrious Chinese experts, is brought up to date with relevant quotations from Western writers and thinkers. This new edition offers Sun Tzus timeless classic, both with and without annotation, making it more accessible to aspiring leaders and military strategists than ever before.



    Dallas Galvin, a writer and journalist specializing in international affairs and the arts, has reported on military affairs in Latin America and Asia and produced documentaries for the NATO Alliance.

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  • The Art of War
    by Chinese Masters, Sun Tzu, Dallas Galvin, Lionel Giles
    ISBN 1593081723 (1-59308-172-3)
    Hardcover, Fine Communications

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    Book summary:

    The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    A clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease. So wrote Sun Tzu 2,500 years ago, and kings, soldiers, and statesmen have been turning to the Chinese master for his astute observations ever since.

    Sun Tzus incisive blueprint for battlefield strategy is as relevant to todays combatants in business, politics, and everyday life as it once was to the warlords of ancient China. The Art of War is one of the most useful books ever written on leading with wisdom, an essential tool for modern corporate warriors battling to gain the advantage in the boardroom and for anyone struggling to gain the upper hand in confrontations and competitions.



    Here Lionel Giless famed 1910 translation, laced with commentary from illustrious Chinese experts, is brought up to date with relevant quotations from Western writers and thinkers. This new edition offers Sun Tzus timeless classic, both with and without annotation, making it more accessible to aspiring leaders and military strategists than ever before.



    Dallas Galvin, a writer and journalist specializing in international affairs and the arts, has reported on military affairs in Latin America and Asia and produced documentaries for the NATO Alliance.

    [via]

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  • Rogers, Thomas: At the Shores
    At the Shores
    by Thomas Rogers
    ISBN 1590511506 (1-59051-150-6)
    Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc

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  • Lewis, Sinclair: Babbitt
    Babbitt
    by Sinclair Lewis
    ISBN 1591020239 (1-59102-023-9)
    Softcover, Prometheus Books

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    Book summary:

    Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences-biographical, historical, and literary-to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. In the small midwestern city of Zenith, George Babbitt seems to have it all: a successful real-estate business, a devoted wife, three children, and a house with all the modern conveniences. Yet, dissatisfied and lonely, he's begun to question the conformity, consumerism, and competitiveness of his conservative, and ultimately cultureless middle-class community. His despairing sense that something, many things are missing from his life leads him into a flirtation with liberal politics and a fling with an attractive and seemingly "bohemian" widow. But he soon finds that his attempts at rebellion may cost more than he is willing to pay. The title of Sinclair Lewis's 1922 satire on American materialism added a new word to our vocabulary. "Babbittry" has come to stand for all that's wrong with a world where the pursuit of happiness means the procurement of things-a world that substitutes "stuff" for "soul." [via]

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  • Battle Royale 1
    by Masayuki Taguchi
    ISBN 1591823145 (1-59182-314-5)
    Softcover, Tokyopop

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    In the near future, a random class of 9th graders has been chosen to compete on The Program, a popular game show that requires its contestants to battle to the death on a top-secret island. Included in this class are Shuuya Nanahara, Noriko Nakagawa, Shogo Kawada, Kazuo Kiriyama, and Mitsuko Souma. Five students that couldn't be more different, yet now find themselves sharing a common plight. Abandoned, and with no hope of escape, they must kill each other and the rest of their class, until only one of them is left living. Unwilling to slaughter his fellow classmates for the amusement of others, Shuuya forms an alliance to fight back and deliver a counter-punch to the government that ruined their lives. However, he must be careful, for there are some students who are determined to "win" this cruel game. [via]

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  • Bleak House
    by Charles Dickens, Tatiana M. Holway
    ISBN 1593083114 (1-59308-311-4)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Bleak House is a satirical look at the Byzantine legal system in London as it consumes the minds and talents of the greedy and nearly destroys the lives of innocents--a contemporary tale indeed. Dickens's tale takes us from the foggy dank streets of London and the maze of the Inns of Court to the peaceful countryside of England. Likewise, the characters run from murderous villains to virtuous girls, from a devoted lover to a "fallen woman," all of whom are affected by a legal suit in which there will, of course, be no winner. The first-person narrative related by the orphan Esther is particularly sweet. The articulate reading by the acclaimed British actor Paul Scofield, whose distinctive broad English accent lends just the right degree of sonority and humor to the text, brings out the color in this classic social commentary disguised as a Victorian drama. However, to abridge Dickens is, well, a Dickensian task, the results of which make for a story in which the author's convoluted plot lines and twists of fate play out in what seems to be a fast-forward format. Listeners must pay close attention in order to keep up with the multiple narratives and cast of curious characters, including the memorable Inspector Bucket and Mr. Guppy. Fortunately, the publisher provides a partial list of characters on the inside jacket. (Running time: 3 hours; 2 cassettes) [via]

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  • Canterbury Tales
    by Geoffrey Chaucer, Robert W. Hanning, Peter Tuttle
    ISBN 1593083122 (1-59308-312-2)
    Softcover, Barnes & Noble

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    › Find signed collectible books: 'Canterbury Tales'
    Book summary:

    The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    • New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
    • Biographies of the authors
    • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
    • Footnotes and endnotes
    • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
    • Comments by other famous authors
    • Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
    • Bibliographies for further reading
    • Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    Pilgrims on their way to worship at the shrine of Saint Thomas à Becket in Canterbury stop at the Tabard Inn. Representing a cross-section of medieval English society, the group includes a knight and his squire, a prioress, a friar, a miller, and a wife. To amuse themselves on their journey, they agree that each will tell a tale. These storiesby turns bawdy, hilarious, scurrilous, romantic, heroic, and movingreveal a great deal about the tellers and the world they live in, which, despite the distance of six hundred years, seems remarkably like our own. Indeed, the structure of The Canterbury Tales and the sophisticated, intricate interplay between the stories, their narrators, and the general narrator (himself a complex comic character) give the book its strikingly modern flavor.

     

    Often called the first book of poetry written in English, Chaucers masterpiece is also the first anthology of English short fiction, one that will resonate with readers for as long as folly and courage, deceit and generosity, love and jealousy remain part of the human personality.

     

    Robert W. Hanning is Professor of English at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1961. He has published The Vision of History in Early Britain, The Individual in Twelfth-Century Romance, The Lais of Marie de France (co-translated with Joan Ferrante), and Castiglione: the Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture (co-edited with David Rosand), as well as many articles on Chaucers poetry and other medieval and Renaissance subjects.

     

    Peter Tuttle's most recent poetry is Looking for a Sign in the West, published by Back Short in 2003.

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  • The Complete Sherlock Holmes
    by Arthur Conan Doyle, Kyle Freeman
    ISBN 1593080344 (1-59308-034-4)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Book summary:

    The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume II, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    The Complete Sherlock Holmes comprises four novels and fifty-six short stories revolving around the worlds most popular and influential fictional detective—the eccentric, arrogant, and ingenious Sherlock Holmes. He and his trusted friend, Dr. Watson, step from Holmess comfortable quarters at 221b Baker Street into the swirling fog of Victorian London to combine detailed observation and vast knowledge with brilliant deduction. Inevitably, Holmes rescues the innocent, confounds the guilty, and solves the most perplexing puzzles known to literature.

    Volume II of The Complete Sherlock Holmes begins with The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, tired of writing about Holmes, had killed him off at the end of “The Final Problem, the last tale in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (found in Volume I of The Complete Sherlock Holmes). Public demand for new Holmes stories was so great, however, that Conan Doyle eventually resurrected him. The first story in The Return, “The Adventure of the Empty House, features Conan Doyles infamously inventive explanation of how Holmes escaped what seemed like certain death.

    This volume also includes two other collections of Holmes stories, His Last Bow and The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes; Conan Doyles final full-length Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear; a pair of parodies, “The Field Bazaar and “How Watson Learned the Trick; and two essays about the “private life of the beloved sleuth.

     

    Kyle Freeman, a Sherlock Holmes enthusiast for many years, earned two graduate degrees in English literature from Columbia University, where his major was twentieth-century British literature.
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  • Count of Monte Cristo
    by Alexandre Dumas
    ISBN 1593080883 (1-59308-088-3)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Book summary:

    The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    Dashing young Edmond Dantès has everything. He is engaged to a beautiful woman, is about to become the captain of a ship, and is well liked by almost everyone. But his perfect life is shattered when he is framed by a jealous rival and thrown into a dark prison cell for 14 years.

    The greatest tale of betrayal, adventure, and revenge ever written, The Count of Monte Cristo continues to dazzle readers with its thrilling and memorable scenes, including Dantèss miraculous escape from prison, his amazing discovery of a vast hidden treasure, and his transformation into the mysterious and wealthy Count of Monte Cristo—a man whose astonishing thirst for vengeance is as cruel as it is just.

    Luc Sante is the author of Low Life, Evidence, and The Factory of Facts. He teaches writing and the history of photography at Bard College.

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  • Daisy Miller
    by Henry James
    ISBN 1592243002 (1-59224-300-2)
    Softcover, Wildside Pr

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    It was in Rome during the autumn of 1877; a friend then living there but settled now in a South less weighted with appeals and memories happened to mention -- which she might perfectly not have done -- some simple and uninformed American lady of the previous winter, whose young daughter, a child of nature and of freedom, accompanying her from hotel to hotel, had "picked up" by the wayside, with the best conscience in the world, a good-looking Roman, of vague identity, astonished at his luck, yet (so far as might be, by the pair) all innocently, all serenely exhibited and introduced: this at least till the occurrence of some small social check, some interrupting incident, of no great gravity or dignity, and which I forget I had never heard, save on this showing, of the amiable but not otherwise eminent ladies, who weren't in fact named, I think, and whose case had merely served to point a familiar moral; and it must have been just their want of salience that left a margin for the small pencil-mark inveterately signifying, in such connections, "Dramatize, dramatize!" The result of my recognizing a few months later the sense of my pencil-mark was the short chronicle of DAISY MILLER. -- Henry James [via]

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  • Daisy Miller And Washington Square
    by Henry James
    ISBN 1593081057 (1-59308-105-7)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Book summary:

    Daisy Miller and Washington Square, by Henry James, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    Strikingly modern in its psychological insight, social observation and stylistic innovation, Henry Jamess fiction continues to attract and intrigue readers a century after its initial appearance. This volume offers two of his most popular and critically admired novellas: Daisy Miller and Washington Square.

    In Daisy Miller, James paints a vivid portrait of a vibrant young American girl visiting Europe for the first time. Lovely, flirtatious, eager for experience, Daisy meets a wealthy American, Mr. Winterbourne, and a penniless but passionate Italian. Her complex encounters with them and others allow James to explore one of his favorite themes, the effect of Americans and Europeans on each other.

    Washington Squares Catherine Sloper is Daisy Millers opposite. Neither pretty nor charming, she lives with her wealthy, widowed, tyrannical father, Dr. Austin Sloper, who can barely conceal his disdain for his shy, awkward daughter. When a handsome suitor, Morris Townsend, comes calling, Catherines father refuses to believe he is anything other than a heartless fortune hunter and sets out to destroy her romance.

    Jennie A. Kassanoff is Assistant Professor of English at Barnard College. Her articles have appeared in Arizona Quarterly and PMLA. Her book, Edith Wharton and the Politics of Race, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

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  • Dead Souls
    by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol, Constance Black Garnett, Jeffrey Meyers
    ISBN 1593080921 (1-59308-092-1)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics  series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    Russias first major novel, and perhaps still its most popular, Nikolai Gogols Dead Souls is a comic epic of greed and gluttony that is admired not only for its colorful cast of characters and devastating satire, but also for its sense of moral fervor.

    The anti-hero of the novel is a man named Chichikov, who hatches a brilliant plan to get rich quick. He will journey through Russia and buy up, at reduced rates, the recently deceased serfs of landowners, who now wont have to pay government taxes on the ‘dead souls. With this list of fictitious serfs as collateral, Chichikov can buy an estate and begin amassing his fortune. What follows is a series of grotesquely humorous transactions with Russian landowners, each more queer and repellant than the last. Although Gogol spends much of the novel exposing the evils of the Russian gentry through absurd and hilarious satire, he also expresses a passionate love for his country that resonates with readers even today.

    A stylistic tour de force, encompassing an astonishing range of voices from delicate, intimate lyricism to robust, bawdy ribaldry, Dead Souls is an intensely felt anatomy of the human condition.

    Jeffrey Meyers, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, has published forty-three books, including biographies of Ernest Hemingway, Robert Frost, D. H. Lawrence, Joseph Conrad, and George Orwell. He also wrote the Introductions and Notes to the Barnes & Noble Classics editions of Edith Whartons The House of Mirth and Rudyard Kiplings Kim.

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  • Dracula
    by Bram Stroker, Brooke Allen
    ISBN 1593080042 (1-59308-004-2)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Dracula, by Bram Stoker, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    Count Dracula has inspired countless movies, books, and plays. But few, if any, have been fully faithful to Bram Stoker's original, best-selling novel of mystery and horror, love and death, sin and redemption. Dracula chronicles the vampire's journey from Transylvania to the nighttime streets of London. There, he searches for the blood of strong men and beautiful women while his enemies plot to rid the world of his frightful power.

    Today's critics see Dracula as a virtual textbook on Victorian repression of the erotic and fear of female sexuality. In it, Stoker created a new word for terror, a new myth to feed our nightmares, and a character who will outlive us all.
     
    Brooke Allen is a book critic whose work has appeared in numerous publications including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Criterion, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hudson Review. A collection of her essays, Twentieth-Century Attitudes, will be published in 2003.
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  • Fairy Tales
    by H.C. Andersen, Marte Hvam Hult, Jack David Zipes
    ISBN 1593082606 (1-59308-260-6)
    Softcover, Fine Communications

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    Book summary:

    Fairy Tales, by Hans Christian Andersen, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
    Who has not laughed at the emperors new clothes, thrilled to the song of the nightingale, or sympathized with the ugly duckling? In the 170 years since they first began to appear, Hans Christian Andersens Fairy Tales have entranced and bewitched millions of readers, adults and children alike.
     
    Writing in the midst of a Europe-wide rebirth of national literature, Anderson broke new ground with his fairy tales in two important ways. First, he composed them in the vernacular, mimicking the language he used in telling them to children aloud. Second, he set his tales in his own land and time, giving rise to his loving descriptions of the Danish countryside. In contrast to such folklorists as the Brothers Grimm, Andersons tales are grounded in the real and often focus on the significance of small or overlooked things.
     
    Here are all of Andersens collected tales, many—such as “The Little Mermaid, “The Red Shoes, and “The Steadfast Tin Soldier—still popular through modern adaptations, and others, including “The Flying Trunk and “The Most Incredible Thing, well worth rediscovering.
     
    Jack Zipes is professor of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota. A specialist in folklore and fairy tales, he has authored numerous books of criticism over the last thirty years and edited several major anthologies, including the Norton Anthology of Childrens Literature (2005).
     
    Marte Hvam Hult holds a Ph.D. in Scandinavian languages and literatures from the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Framing a National Narrative: The Legend Collections of Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and a forthcoming translation of Asbjørnsens Huldreeventyr.
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  • Far from the Madding Crowd
    by Thomas Hardy, Jonathan A. Cook
    ISBN 1593082231 (1-59308-223-1)
    Softcover, Barnes & Noble

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    Far From the Maddening Crowd, by Thomas Hardy, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    The first of Thomas Hardys great novels, Far From the Madding Crowd established the author as one of Britains foremost writers. It also introduced readers to Wessex, an imaginary county in southwestern England that served as the pastoral setting for many of the authors later works.

    Far From the Madding Crowd tells the story of beautiful Bathsheba Everdene, a fiercely independent woman who inherits a farm and decides to run it herself. She rejects a marriage proposal from Gabriel Oak, a loyal man who takes a job on her farm after losing his own in an unfortunate accident. He is forced to watch as Bathsheba mischievously flirts with her neighbor, Mr. Boldwood, unleashing a passionate obsession deep within the reserved man. But both suitors are soon eclipsed by the arrival of the dashing soldier, Frank Troy, who falls in love with Bathsheba even though hes still smitten with another woman. His reckless presence at the farm drives Boldwood mad with jealousy, and sets off a dramatic chain of events that leads to both murder and marriage.

    A delicately woven tale of unrequited love and regret, Far from the Madding Crowd is also an unforgettable portrait of a rural culture that, by Hardys lifetime, had become threatened with extinction at the hands of ruthless industrialization.

    Jonathan A. Cook has a B.A. from Harvard College and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is the author of Satirical Apocalypse: An Anatomy of Melvilles The Confidence Man, and has published numerous articles on the works of Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and other nineteenth-century writers.

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  • Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden
    by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Jill Muller
    ISBN 1593082770 (1-59308-277-0)
    Softcover, Barnes & Noble

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    The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    Though Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote more than forty books, none remains so popular as her miraculous and magical masterpiece, The Secret Garden. Has any story ever dared to begin by calling its heroine, “the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen and, just a few sentences later, “as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived? Mary Lennox is the “little pig, sent to Misselthwaite Manor, on the Yorkshire moors, to live with her uncle after her parents die of cholera. There she discovers her sickly cousin Colin, who is equally obnoxious and imperious. Both love no one because they have never been loved. They are the books spiritual secret gardens, needing only the right kind of care to bloom into lovely children.

    Mary also discovers a literal secret garden, hidden behind a locked gate on her uncles estate, neglected for the ten years since Colins birth and his mothers death. Together with a local child named Dickon, Mary and Colin transform the garden into a paradise bursting with life and color. Through their newfound mutual love of nature, they nurture each other, until they are brought back to health and happiness.

    With Charles Robinson's original illustrations.
     
    Jill Muller was born in England and educated at Mercy College and Columbia University. She currently teaches at Mercy College and Columbia University. She is the author of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Victorian Catholicism, in addition to articles on Joyce, Newman, Hopkins, and the medieval women mystics.
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  • Frankenstein
    by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
    ISBN 1593080050 (1-59308-005-0)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Frankenstein, loved by many decades of readers and praised by such eminent literary critics as Harold Bloom, seems hardly to need a recommendation. If you haven't read it recently, though, you may not remember the sweeping force of the prose, the grotesque, surreal imagery, and the multilayered doppelgänger themes of Mary Shelley's masterpiece. As fantasy writer Jane Yolen writes of this (the reviewer's favorite) edition, "The strong black and whites of the main text [illustrations] are dark and brooding, with unremitting shadows and stark contrasts. But the central conversation with the monster--who owes nothing to the overused movie image & but is rather the novel's charnel-house composite--is where [Barry] Moser's illustrations show their greatest power ... The viewer can all but smell the powerful stench of the monster's breath as its words spill out across the page. Strong book-making for one of the world's strongest and most remarkable books." Includes an illuminating afterword by Joyce Carol Oates. [via]

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  • Kohn, Rebecca: The Gilded Chamber
    The Gilded Chamber
    by Rebecca Kohn
    ISBN 159071024X (1-59071-024-X)
    Hardcover, Rugged Land

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  • The House of Mirth
    by Edith Wharton
    ISBN 1593081537 (1-59308-153-7)
    Softcover, Barnes & Noble

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    "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth," warns Ecclesiastes 7:4, and so does the novel by Edith Wharton that takes its title from this call to heed. New York at the turn of the century was a time of opulence and frivolity for those who could afford it. But for those who couldn't and yet wanted desperately to keep up with the whirlwind, like Wharton's charming Lily Bart, it was something else altogether: a gilded cage rather than the Gilded Age.

    One of Wharton's earliest descriptions of her heroine, in the library of her bachelor friend and sometime suitor Lawrence Selden, indicates that she appears "as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing room." Indeed, herein lies Lily's problem. She has, we're told, "been brought up to be ornamental," and yet her spirit is larger than what this ancillary role requires. By today's standards she would be nothing more than a mild rebel, but in the era into which Wharton drops her unmercifully, this tiny spark of character, combined with numerous assaults by vicious society women and bad luck, ultimately renders Lily persona non grata. Her own ambivalence about her position serves to open the door to disaster: several times she is on the verge of "good" marriage and squanders it at the last moment, unwilling to play by the rules of a society that produces, as she calls them, "poor, miserable, marriageable girls.

    Lily's rather violent tumble down the social ladder provides a thumbnail sketch of the general injustices of the upper classes (which, incidentally, Wharton never quite manages to condemn entirely, clearly believing that such life is cruel but without alternative). From her start as a beautiful woman at the height of her powers to her sad finale as a recently fired milliner's assistant addicted to sleeping drugs, Lily Bart is heroic, not least for her final admission of her own role in her downfall. "Once--twice--you gave me the chance to escape from my life and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward," she tells Selden as the book draws to a close. All manner of hideous socialite beasts--some of whose treatment by Wharton, such as the token social-climbing Jew, Simon Rosedale, date the book unfortunately--wander through the novel while Lily plummets. As her tale winds down to nothing more than the remnants of social grace and cold hard cash, it's hard not to agree with Lily's own assessment of herself: "I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else." Nevertheless, it's even harder not to believe that she deserved better, which is why The House of Mirth remains so timely and so vital in spite of its crushing end and its unflattering portrait of what life offers up. --Melanie Rehak [via]

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  • Howards End
    by Mary Gordon, E. M. Forster
    ISBN 1593080220 (1-59308-022-0)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Margaret Schlegel, engaged to the much older, widowed Henry Wilcox, meets her intended the morning after accepting his proposal and realizes that he is a man who has lived without introspection or true self-knowledge. As she contemplates the state of Wilcox's soul, her remedy for what ails him has become one of the most oft-quoted passages in literature:

    Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
    Like all of Forster's work, Howards End concerns itself with class, nationality, economic status, and how each of these affects personal relationships. It follows the intertwined fortunes of the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, and the Wilcox family over the course of several years. The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes, on the other hand, can't be bothered with the life of the mind or the heart, leading, instead, outer lives of "telegrams and anger" that foster "such virtues as neatness, decision, and obedience, virtues of the second rank, no doubt, but they have formed our civilization." Helen, after a brief flirtation with one of the Wilcox sons, has developed an antipathy for the family; Margaret, however, forms a brief but intense friendship with Mrs. Wilcox, which is cut short by the older woman's death. When her family discovers a scrap of paper requesting that Henry give their home, Howards End, to Margaret, it precipitates a spiritual crisis among them that will take years to resolve.

    Forster's 1910 novel begins as a collection of seemingly unrelated events--Helen's impulsive engagement to Paul Wilcox; a chance meeting between the Schlegel sisters and an impoverished clerk named Leonard Bast at a concert; a casual conversation between the sisters and Henry Wilcox in London one night. But as it moves along, these disparate threads gradually knit into a tightly woven fabric of tragic misunderstandings, impulsive actions, and irreparable consequences, and, eventually, connection. Though set in the early years of the 20th century, Howards End seems even more suited to our own fragmented era of e-mails and anger. For readers living in such an age, the exhortation to "only connect" resonates ever more profoundly. --Alix Wilber [via]

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  • The Iliad
    by Ennis Rees, Homer, Bruce M. King
    ISBN 1593082320 (1-59308-232-0)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    The Iliad, by Homer, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    • New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
    • Biographies of the authors
    • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
    • Footnotes and endnotes
    • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
    • Comments by other famous authors
    • Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
    • Bibliographies for further reading
    • Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

    The epic song of Ilion (an old name for Troy), The Iliad recreates a few dramatic weeks near the end of the fabled Trojan War, ending with the funeral of Hector, defender of the doomed city. Through its majestic verses stride the fabled heroes Priam, Hector, Paris, and Aeneas for Troy; Achilles, Ajax, Menelaus, Agamemnon, Patroclus, and Odysseus for the Greeks; and the beautiful Helen, over whom the longstanding war has been waged. Never far from the center of the story are the quarreling gods: Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite.

    The Iliad is the oldest Greek poem and perhaps the best-known epic in Western literature, and has inspired countless works of art throughout its long history. An assemblage of stories and legends shaped into a compelling single narrative, The Iliad was probably recited orally by bards for generations before being written down in the eighth century B.C. A beloved fixture of early Greek culture, the poem found eager new audiences when it was translated into many languages during the Renaissance. Its themes of honor, power, status, heroism, and the whims of the gods have ensured its enduring popularity and immeasurable cultural influence.

    Bruce M. King studied at the University of Chicago, and has taught classics and humanities at Columbia University, Reed College, and the University of Chicago. Recently a Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies, King focuses on archaic and classical Greek literature and philosophy. He is currently a Blegen Research Fellow at Vassar College.
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  • The Illustrated Art of War
    by Sun-Tzu, Thomas F. Cleary
    ISBN 1590301854 (1-59030-185-4)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Sun Tzu's Art of War just got better. The Illustrated Art of War enlivens Thomas Cleary's complete translation, including commentaries, with full-color reproductions of paintings and statuary from China and Japan. Talk about martial art--these depictions show full battles scenes, the Chinese god of war, weaponry, processions--even an ancient map. --Brian Bruya [via]

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  • Jude the Obscure
    by Thomas Hardy, Amy M. King
    ISBN 1593080352 (1-59308-035-2)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences-biographical, historical, and literary-to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Virginia Woolf called him "the greatest tragic writer among English novelists," but Thomas Hardy was so distressed by the shocked outrage that greeted Jude the Obscure in 1895 that he decided to quit writing novels.  For in telling the story of Jude Fawley, whose many attempts to rise above his class are crushed by society or the forces of nature, Hardy had attacked Victorian society's most cherished institutions-marriage, social class, religion, and higher education.  A poor villager, Jude Fawley longs to study at the elite University of Christminster, but his ambitions are thwarted by class prejudice-and an earthy country girl who tricks him into marriage by pretending to be pregnant.   Entrapped in a loveless marriage, he becomes a stonemason and falls in love with his cousin-the intellectual, free-spirited Sue Bridehead, who is also unhappy in marriage.  Sue leaves her husband to live with Jude and eventually bears his children out of wedlock.  Their poverty and the weight of society's disapproval begin to take their toll on the couple, forcing them into a shattering downward spiral that ends in one of the most shocking scenes in all of literature. A stunning masterpiece, Jude the Obscure is Hardy's bleakest and most personal novel.Amy M. [via]

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  • Kim
    by Rudyard Kipling
    ISBN 1593081928 (1-59308-192-8)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    One of the particular pleasures of reading Kim is the full range of emotion, knowledge, and experience that Rudyard Kipling gives his complex hero. Kim O'Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier stationed in India, is neither innocent nor victimized. Raised by an opium-addicted half-caste woman since his equally dissolute father's death, the boy has grown up in the streets of Lahore:

    Though he was burned black as any native; though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain sing-song; though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar; Kim was white--a poor white of the very poorest.
    From his father and the woman who raised him, Kim has come to believe that a great destiny awaits him. The details, however, are a bit fuzzy, consisting as they do of the woman's addled prophecies of "'a great Red Bull on a green field, and the Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and'--dropping into English--'nine hundred devils.'"

    In the meantime, Kim amuses himself with intrigues, executing "commissions by night on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion." His peculiar heritage as a white child gone native, combined with his "love of the game for its own sake," makes him uniquely suited for a bigger game. And when, at last, the long-awaited colonel comes along, Kim is recruited as a spy in Britain's struggle to maintain its colonial grip on India. Kipling was, first and foremost, a man of his time; born and raised in India in the 19th century, he was a fervid supporter of the Raj. Nevertheless, his portrait of India and its people is remarkably sympathetic. Yes, there is the stereotypical Westernized Indian Babu Huree Chander with his atrocious English, but there is also Kim's friend and mentor, the Afghani horse trader Mahub Ali, and the gentle Tibetan lama with whom Kim travels along the Grand Trunk Road. The humanity of his characters consistently belies Kipling's private prejudices, and raises Kim above the mere ripping good yarn to the level of a timeless classic. --Alix Wilber [via]

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  • King Solomon's Mines
    by Henry Rider Haggard, Benjamin Ivry
    ISBN 1593082754 (1-59308-275-4)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    King Solomon's Mines, by H. Rider Haggard, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    One of the best-selling novels of the nineteenth century, King Solomons Mines has inspired dozens of adventure stories, including Edgar Rice Burroughss Tarzan books and the Indiana Jones movies. Vivid and enormously action-packed, H. Rider Haggards tale of danger and discovery continues to shock and thrill, as it has since it was first presented to the public and heralded as “the most amazing book ever written.

    The story begins when renowned safari hunter Allan Quartermain agrees to help Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good search for King Solomons legendary cache of diamonds. Eager to find out what is true, what is myth, and what is really buried in the darkness of the mines, the tireless adventurers delve into the Saharas treacherous Veil of Sand, where they stumble upon a mysterious lost tribe of African warriors. Finding themselves in deadly peril from that countrys cruel king and the evil sorceress who conspires behind his throne, the explorers escape, but what they seek could be the most savage trap of all—the forbidden, impenetrable, and spectacular King Solomons Mines.

    Benjamin Ivry is the author of biographies of Arthur Rimbaud, Francis Poulenc, and Maurice Ravel. His poetry collection Paradise for the Portuguese Queen appeared in 1998.

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  • The Last of the Mohicans
    by James Fenimore Cooper, Stephen Railton
    ISBN 1593080654 (1-59308-065-4)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    During the fierce French and Indian wars, an adroit scout named Hawkeye and his companion Chingachgook weave through the spectacular and dangerous wilderness of upstate New York, fighting to save the beautiful Munro sisters from the Huron renegade Magua.

    The Last of the Mohicans is the most popular of James Fenimore Coopers five Leatherstocking Tales. With its death-defying chases and teeth-clenching suspense, this American classic established many archetypes of American frontier fiction.

    An engrossing “Western by Americas first great novelist, The Last of the Mohicans is a story of survival and treachery, love and deliverance.

    Stephen Railton, Professor of English at the University of Virginia, has written books on Cooper, Mark Twain, and the American Renaissance, and has created major websites on Twain, Uncle Toms Cabin, and American culture.
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  • A Long December
    by Donald Harstad
    ISBN 1590710134 (1-59071-013-4)
    Hardcover, Perseus Distribution Services

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    The people of Nation County, Iowa-a heartland town straight out of a Coen Brothers movie or a John Cougar Mellencamp song-practice a unique brand of American stoicism. You betcha. And they rely upon their public servants to shield them from the horrors of the outside world. Carl Houseman, deputy sheriff of the 750-square-mile county, dedicates his life to keeping his citizenry so secure that you can leave the door unlocked at home and walk his streets with a big hello and a smile to every stranger. On Houseman's watch, the mounting terrors of the new world order stay far away.

    But December 2001 could change all of that. Outsiders are everywhere. The meat plant is now kosher and there are more Jewish fellows per capita than any other place in the country. Hispanic and other foreign workers, with dubious immigration papers, have taken jobs from the locals. Eighteen other languages are now spoken within the tiny region, and Carl and company can't speak a single one.

    Then the eighty-odd-year-old Heinman brothers' call comes in from their farm down in Frog Hollow. They've witnessed an execution-style killing not one hundred yards from their pig feeders. The victim's awful dead and half his head's been blown off. The boys haven't seen nothing like it since Normandy. When Carl gets to the scene, he believes them.

    What follows is a masterful police procedural thriller-think Joe Wambaugh crossed with Fargo-written with a singular and authentic voice that has electrified readers around the world.
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  • Lord Jim
    by Joseph Conrad
    ISBN 1593080840 (1-59308-084-0)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924) was one of the most remarkable figures in English literature. Born in Poland, and originally named Josef Teodor Konrad Walecz Korzeniowski, he went to sea at the age of seventeen and eventually joined the crew of an English vessel, becoming a British citizen in the process. He retired from the sea in 1894 and took up the pen, writing all his works in English, a language he had only learned as an adult. Despite this, he was a master stylist, both lush and precise. His outsider's eye gave him special insights into the moral dangers of the great age of European empires. In his prefactory note to this novel, Conrad said, "When this novel first appeared in book form a notion got about that I had been bolted away with. Some reviewers maintained that the work starting as a short story had got beyond the writer's control. One or two discovered internal evidence of the fact, which seemed to amuse them. They pointed out the limitations of the narrative form. They argued that no man could have been expected to talk all that time, and other men to listen so long. It was not, they said, very credible. . . . After thinking it over for something like sixteen years, I am not so sure about that. Men have been known, both in the tropics and in the temperate zone, to sit up half the night 'swapping yarns.' This, however, is but one yarn, yet with interruptions affording some measure of relief. . . ." [via]

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  • The Lynne Truss Treasury: Columns and Three Comic Novels
    by Lynne Truss
    ISBN 1592401368 (1-59240-136-8)
    Softcover, Gotham Books

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    Lynne Truss debuted in America as a guffaw-inducing grammarian, but her British audience has known her for years as a critically acclaimed novelist and columnist. Her previous works are now available stateside in one volume, complete with a new preface.

    With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed, a raucous comedy of errors, follows the exploits of Osborne Lonsdale, who writes a weekly column called "Me and My Shed" for a floundering gardening magazine. When the publication is taken over by a gung-ho management team, Lonsdale must learn to cope with his new coworkers.

    In Tennyson's Gift and Going Loco, Truss turns a fiendishly clever eye to the literary world. Tennyson's Gift is an imaginative cocktail of Victorian seriousness and farce that re-imagines the world of the nineteenth-century English poet laureate, placing him in the midst of eccentric company that includes dodgy Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll). Going Loco features a critic trying to write a definitive account of the doppelgänger in gothic fiction, amidst the chaos of her domestic life, including paranoia that her cleaning lady is taking over her life.

    Making the Cat Laugh is a riotous collection of columns about single life. Truss comments on dating, secondhand smoking, shopping, holidays, and people who ask, "How's the novel going?" All the while, she continues an eighteen-year quest to make her cat laugh. Reportedly, the feline remains unimpressed.

    A feast of wit, The Lynne Truss Treasury will delight fans of Eats, Shoots & Leaves. [via]

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  • Madame Bovary
    by Gustave Flaubert, Chris Kraus, Eleanor Marx Aveling
    ISBN 1593080522 (1-59308-052-2)
    Softcover, Barnes & Noble

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    Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    The publication in 1857 of Madame Bovary, with its vivid depictions of sex and adultery, incited a backlash of immorality charges. The novel tells the story of Emma Bovary, a doctors wife bored and unfulfilled by marriage and motherhood. She embarks upon a series of affairs in search of passion and excitement, but is unable to achieve the splendid life for which she yearns. Instead, she finds herself trapped in a downward spiral that inexorably leads to ruin and self-destruction.

    Along with Tolstoys Anna Karenina, Flauberts tragic novel stands as a brilliant portrayal of infidelity, an incisive psychological portrait of a woman torn between duty and desire. Written with acute attention to telling detail, Madame Bovary not only exposes the emptiness of one womans bourgeois existence and failure to fill that void with fantasies, sex, and material objects. Emmas thirst for life mirrors the universal human impulse for idealized fulfillment.
     
    Chris Kraus is the author of the novels I Love Dick, Aliens & Anorexia, and Torpor, and a collection of essays, Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness. She is co-editor, with Sylvere Lotringer and Hedi El Kholti, of the independent press Semiotext(e). She teaches in the graduate program of the San Francisco Art Institute.
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  • Dumas, Alexandre: The Man in the Iron Mask
    The Man in the Iron Mask
    by Alexandre Dumas
    ISBN 1592247164 (1-59224-716-4)
    Softcover, Wildside Pr

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    The Man in the Iron Mask, by Alexander Dumas, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    France in the 1660s is a boiling cauldron of plots and counter-plots as King Louis XIV struggles to extend his power and transform himself into the “Sun King. Locked within the dreaded Bastille prison may be his enemies ultimate weapon: an anonymous prisoner forced to wear an iron mask so that none may see his face—and learn his astonishing secret. But soon the famed dArtagnan and the Three Musketeers are swept into the action—but not on the same side! Will they actually be forced to fight each other?

     

    As much a tale of mystery and political intrigue as a swashbuckling adventure, The Man in the Iron Mask is the final novel in Alexandre Dumass series of dArtagnan romances. The story follows the heroic young man from the country who, along with his three comrades, becomes a powerful influence on the course of French history. Yet what seems to be the most fantastic aspect of the story is based on fact. During Louis XIVs reign, a mysterious masked prisoner did dwell in the Bastille and his identity remains a question to this day.

     

    Barbara T. Cooper is Professor of French at the University of New Hampshire. A member of the editorial boards of Nineteenth-Century French Studies and Les Cahiers Alexandre Dumas, she specializes in nineteenth-century French drama and in works by Dumas.

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  • Mansfield Park
    by Jane Austen
    ISBN 1593081545 (1-59308-154-5)
    Softcover, Barnes & Noble

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    Though Jane Austen was writing at a time when Gothic potboilers such as Ann Ward Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto were all the rage, she never got carried away by romance in her own novels. In Austen's ordered world, the passions that ruled Gothic fiction would be horridly out of place; marriage was, first and foremost, a contract, the bedrock of polite society. Certain rules applied to who was eligible and who was not, how one courted and married and what one expected afterwards. To flout these rules was to tear at the basic fabric of society, and the consequences could be terrible. Each of the six novels she completed in her lifetime are, in effect, comic cautionary tales that end happily for those characters who play by the rules and badly for those who don't. In Mansfield Park, for example, Austen gives us Fanny Price, a poor young woman who has grown up in her wealthy relatives' household without ever being accepted as an equal. The only one who has truly been kind to Fanny is Edmund Bertram, the younger of the family's two sons.

    Into this Cinderella existence comes Henry Crawford and his sister, Mary, who are visiting relatives in the neighborhood. Soon Mansfield Park is given over to all kinds of gaiety, including a daring interlude spent dabbling in theatricals. Young Edmund is smitten with Mary, and Henry Crawford woos Fanny. Yet these two charming, gifted, and attractive siblings gradually reveal themselves to be lacking in one essential Austenian quality: principle. Without good principles to temper passion, the results can be disastrous, and indeed, Mansfield Park is rife with adultery, betrayal, social ruin, and ruptured friendships. But this is a comedy, after all, so there is also a requisite happy ending and plenty of Austen's patented gentle satire along the way. Describing the switch in Edmund's affections from Mary to Fanny, she writes: "I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that everyone may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people." What does not vary is the pleasure with which new generations come to Jane Austen. --Alix Wilber [via]

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  • Jacobs, William W.: Many Cargoes
    Many Cargoes
    by William W. Jacobs
    ISBN 1592248713 (1-59224-871-3)
    Softcover, Wildside Pr

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  • The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
    by Franz Kafka, Donna Freed, Jason Baker
    ISBN 1593080298 (1-59308-029-8)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, by Franz Kafka, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     
    Virtually unknown during his lifetime, Franz Kafka is now one of the worlds most widely read and discussed authors. His nightmarish novels and short stories have come to symbolize modern mans anxiety and alienation in a bizarre, hostile, and dehumanized world. This vision is most fully realized in Kafkas masterpiece, The Metamorphosis, a story that is both harrowing and amusing, and a landmark of modern literature.

    Bringing together some of Kafkas finest work, this collection demonstrates the richness and variety of the authors artistry. The Judgment, which Kafka considered to be his decisive breakthrough, and The Stoker, which became the first chapter of his novel Amerika, are here included. These two, along with The Metamorphosis, form a suite of stories Kafka referred to as The Sons, and they collectively present a devastating portrait of the modern family.



    Also included are In the Penal Colony, a story of a torture machine and its operators and victims, and A Hunger Artist, about the absurdity of an artist trying to communicate with a misunderstanding public. Kafkas lucid, succinct writing chronicles the labyrinthine complexities, the futility-laden horror, and the stifling oppressiveness that permeate his vision of modern life.

    Jason Baker is a writer of short stories living in Brooklyn, New York.

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  • Kherdian, David: Monkey
    Monkey
    by David Kherdian
    ISBN 1590302583 (1-59030-258-3)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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  • The Mysterious Affair at Styles
    by Agatha Christie
    ISBN 1594121141 (1-59412-114-1)
    Hardcover, Mud Puddle Books

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  • Northanger Abbey
    by Jane Austen, Alfred MacAdam
    ISBN 1593082649 (1-59308-264-9)
    Softcover, Barnes & Noble

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    Book summary:

    Though Northanger Abbey is one of Jane Austen's earliest novels, it was not published until after her death--well after she'd established her reputation with works such as Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility. Of all her novels, this one is the most explicitly literary in that it is primarily concerned with books and with readers. In it, Austen skewers the novelistic excesses of her day made popular in such 18th-century Gothic potboilers as Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers all figure into Northanger Abbey, but with a decidedly satirical twist. Consider Austen's introduction of her heroine: we are told on the very first page that "no one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine." The author goes on to explain that Miss Morland's father is a clergyman with "a considerable independence, besides two good livings--and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters." Furthermore, her mother does not die giving birth to her, and Catherine herself, far from engaging in "the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush" vastly prefers playing cricket with her brothers to any girlish pastimes.

    Catherine grows up to be a passably pretty girl and is invited to spend a few weeks in Bath with a family friend. While there she meets Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor, who invite her to visit their family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Austen amuses herself and us as Catherine, a great reader of Gothic romances, allows her imagination to run wild, finding dreadful portents in the most wonderfully prosaic events. But Austen is after something more than mere parody; she uses her rapier wit to mock not only the essential silliness of "horrid" novels, but to expose the even more horrid workings of polite society, for nothing Catherine imagines could possibly rival the hypocrisy she experiences at the hands of her supposed friends. In many respects Northanger Abbey is the most lighthearted of Jane Austen's novels, yet at its core is a serious, unsentimental commentary on love and marriage, 19th-century British style. --Alix Wilber [via]

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  • Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
    by Joseph Conrad
    ISBN 1593081936 (1-59308-193-6)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, Joseph Conrads Nostromo is an immensely exciting tale of love, revolution, and politics set in the mythical South American country of Costaguana during the 1890s.

    Ten years after his father is murdered by a brutal dictator, Englishman Charles Gould arrives in Costaguana to reopen the family silver mine. But instead of ushering in a shining era of prosperity and progress, the return of the silver engenders a new cycle of violence as Costaguana erupts in civil war, initiated by rival warlords determined to seize the mine and its riches. In desperation, Gould turns to the only man who can save the mines treasure—Nostromo, the incorruptible head of the local dockworkers, who protects the silver from rebel forces by taking it out to sea. But disaster strikes, burdening Nostromo with a terrible secret that forever alters the fate of everyone involved with the mine.

    A stunning monument to futility, Nostromo reveals how honor, idealism, and loyalty are inadequate defenses against the inexorable assault of corruption and evil.

    Brent Edwards is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Rutgers University.  He is author of The Practice of Diaspora (Harvard University Press, 2003) and co-editor of Uptown Conservation: The New Jazz Studies (Columbia University Press, 2004).

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  • The Odyssey
    by Homer, Robert Squillace, George Herbert Palmer
    ISBN 1593080093 (1-59308-009-3)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    The Odyssey, by Homer, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    Long before The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Harry Potter, the ancient Greek poet Homer established the standard for tales of epic quests and heroic journeys with The Odyssey. Crowded with characters, both human and non-human, and bursting with action, The Odyssey details the adventures of Odysseus, king of Ithaca and hero of the Trojan War, as he struggles to return to his home and his waiting, ever-faithful wife, Penelope.

    Along the way he encounters the seductive Circe, who changes men into swine; the gorgeous water-nymph, Calypso, who keeps him a prisoner of love for seven years; the terrible, one-eyed, man-eating giant Cyclops; and a host of other ogres, wizards, sirens, and gods. But when he finally reaches Ithaca after ten years of travel, his trials have only begun. There he must battle the scheming noblemen who, thinking him dead, have demanded that Penelope choose one of them to be her new husbandand Ithacas new king.



    Often called the second work of Western literature (The Iliad, also by Homer, being the first), The Odyssey is not only a rousing adventure drama, but also a profound meditation on courage, loyalty, family, fate, and undying love. More than three thousand years old, it was the first story to delineate carefully and exhaustively a single character arc  a narrative structure that serves as the foundation and heart of the modern novel. Robert Squillaces revision of George Herbert Palmers classic prose translation captures the drama and vitality of adventure, while remaining true to the original Homeric language.



    Robert Squillace teaches in the Cultural Foundations division of New York Universitys General Studies Program. He has published numerous essays on literature and the book Modernism, Modernity and Arnold Bennett.

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  • Persuasion
    by Jane Austen, George Stade, Susan Ostrov Weisser
    ISBN 1593080484 (1-59308-048-4)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Anne Elliot, heroine of Austen's last novel, did something we can all relate to: Long ago, she let the love of her life get away. In this case, she had allowed herself to be persuaded by a trusted family friend that the young man she loved wasn't an adequate match, social stationwise, and that Anne could do better. The novel opens some seven years after Anne sent her beau packing, and she's still alone. But then the guy she never stopped loving comes back from the sea. As always, Austen's storytelling is so confident, you can't help but allow yourself to be taken on the enjoyable journey. [via]

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  • The Portrait of a Lady
    by Henry James
    ISBN 1593080964 (1-59308-096-4)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    Widely regarded as Henry Jamess greatest masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady features one of the authors most magnificent heroines: Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American who becomes a victim of her provincialism during her travels in Europe.

    As the story begins, Isabel, resolved to determine her own fate, has turned down two eligible suitors. Her cousin, who is dying of tuberculosis, secretly gives her an inheritance so that she can remain independent and fulfill a grand destiny, but the fortune only leads her to make a tragic choice and marry Gilbert Osmond, an American expatriate who lives in Florence. Outwardly charming and cultivated, but fundamentally cold and cruel, Osmond only brings heartbreak and ruin to Isabels life. Yet she survives as she begins to realize that true freedom means living with her choices and their consequences.

    Richly complex and nearly aesthetically perfect, The Portrait of a Lady brilliantly portrays the clash between the innocence and exuberance of the New World and the corruption and wisdom of the Old.

    Gabriel Brownstein is the author of a collection of stories—The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Apt 3W—which won the 2002 PEN/Hemingway Award. His essays, reviews, and criticism have appeared in the Boston Globe, the New Leader, Scribners British Writers, and on Nerve.com.

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  • Pride and Prejudice
    by Jane Austen, Carol Howard
    ISBN 1593080204 (1-59308-020-4)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

    Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, "Call me Ishmael," the first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. And certainly what Melville did for whaling Austen does for marriage--tracing the intricacies (not to mention the economics) of 19th-century British mating rituals with a sure hand and an unblinking eye. As usual, Austen trains her sights on a country village and a few families--in this case, the Bennets, the Philips, and the Lucases. Into their midst comes Mr. Bingley, a single man of good fortune, and his friend, Mr. Darcy, who is even richer. Mrs. Bennet, who married above her station, sees their arrival as an opportunity to marry off at least one of her five daughters. Bingley is complaisant and easily charmed by the eldest Bennet girl, Jane; Darcy, however, is harder to please. Put off by Mrs. Bennet's vulgarity and the untoward behavior of the three younger daughters, he is unable to see the true worth of the older girls, Jane and Elizabeth. His excessive pride offends Lizzy, who is more than willing to believe the worst that other people have to say of him; when George Wickham, a soldier stationed in the village, does indeed have a discreditable tale to tell, his words fall on fertile ground.

    Having set up the central misunderstanding of the novel, Austen then brings in her cast of fascinating secondary characters: Mr. Collins, the sycophantic clergyman who aspires to Lizzy's hand but settles for her best friend, Charlotte, instead; Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr. Darcy's insufferably snobbish aunt; and the Gardiners, Jane and Elizabeth's low-born but noble-hearted aunt and uncle. Some of Austen's best comedy comes from mixing and matching these representatives of different classes and economic strata, demonstrating the hypocrisy at the heart of so many social interactions. And though the novel is rife with romantic misunderstandings, rejected proposals, disastrous elopements, and a requisite happy ending for those who deserve one, Austen never gets so carried away with the romance that she loses sight of the hard economic realities of 19th-century matrimonial maneuvering. Good marriages for penniless girls such as the Bennets are hard to come by, and even Lizzy, who comes to sincerely value Mr. Darcy, remarks when asked when she first began to love him: "It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley." She may be joking, but there's more than a little truth to her sentiment, as well. Jane Austen considered Elizabeth Bennet "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print". Readers of Pride and Prejudice would be hard-pressed to disagree. --Alix Wilber [via]

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  • Hope, Anthony: The Prisoner of Zenda
    The Prisoner of Zenda
    by Anthony Hope
    ISBN 1592248993 (1-59224-899-3)
    Hardcover, Wildside Pr

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  • Twain, Mark: Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins
    Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins
    by Mark Twain, Darryl Pinckney
    ISBN 159308255X (1-59308-255-X)
    Softcover, Barnes & Noble

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  • Queen Lucia
    by E. F. Benson
    ISBN 1592245137 (1-59224-513-7)
    Softcover, Wildside Pr

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    Book summary:

    "There is some irony in the fact that Benson, the creator of everything from plays to sober biographies, is best remembered for his series of LUCIA novels, delicious satires of the pretensions and foibles of provincial middle-class life in Britain in the 1920s and '30s. Still, given Benson's droll send-ups of the bitter battles waged by matrons desperate to live out their fantastical versions of upper-class elegance and wit, and his shrewd readings of the ways in which our longings can make us both bizarre and sometimes appealing, it's very likely an irony he would have savored. . . . Queen Lucia, the first in the series, follows Mrs. Lucas (Lucia to her most intimate friends) through a lengthy and often hilarious campaign to derail the career of a would-be rival to the throne of cultural arbiter. The plot, however, is less important than the pratfalls. The six Lucia novels form a kind of epic portrait of striving gone mod, and it's good to have them appearing once again." -- Kirkus [via]

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  • Robinson Crusoe
    by Daniel Defoe
    ISBN 1593080115 (1-59308-011-5)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    Widely regarded as the first English novel, Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe is one of the most popular and influential adventure stories of all time. This classic tale of shipwreck and survival on an uninhabited island was an instant success when first published in 1719 and has inspired countless imitations.

    In his own words, Robinson Crusoe tells of the terrible storm that drowned all his shipmates and left him marooned on a deserted island. Forced to overcome despair, doubt, and self-pity, he struggles to create a life for himself in the wilderness. From practically nothing, Crusoe painstakingly learns how to make pottery, grow crops, domesticate livestock, and build a house. His many adventures are recounted in vivid detail, including a fierce battle with cannibals and his rescue of Friday, the man who becomes his trusted companion.

    Full of enchanting detail and daring heroics, Robinson Crusoe is a celebration of courage, patience, ingenuity, and hard work.

    L. J. Swingle is Professor Emeritus of English Literature at the University of Kentucky, where his primary field of study is the intellectual contexts of British Romanticism as reflected in the works of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poets and novelists.

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  • Roots
    by Alex Haley, Michael Eric Dyson
    ISBN 1593154496 (1-59315-449-6)
    Softcover, Vanguard Pr

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    One of the most important books and television series ever to appear, Roots, galvanized the nation, and created an extraordinary political, racial, social and cultural dialogue that hadnt been seen since the publication of Uncle Toms Cabin. The book sold over one million copies in the first year, and the miniseries was watched by an astonishing 130 million people. It also won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Roots opened up the minds of Americans of all colors and faiths to one of the darkest and most painful parts of Americas past. 

    Over the years, both Roots and Alex Haley have attracted controversy, which comes with the territory for trailblazing, iconic books, particularly on the topic of race. Some of the criticism results from whether Roots is fact or fiction and whether Alex Haley confused these two issues, a subject he addresses directly in the book. There is also the fact that Haley was sued for plagiarism when it was discovered that several dozen paragraphs in Roots were taken directly from a novel, The African, by Harold Courlander, who ultimately received a substantial financial settlement at the end of the case. 

    But none of the controversy affects the basic issue. Roots fostered a remarkable dialogue about not just the past, but the then present day 1970s and how America had fared since the days portrayed in Roots. Vanguard Press feels that it is important to publish Roots: The 30th Anniversary Edition to remind the generation that originally read it that there are issues that still need to be discussed and debated, and to introduce to a new and younger generation, a book that will help them understand, perhaps for the first time, the reality of what took place during the time of Roots.
     
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  • Hope, Anthony: Rupert of Hentzau -- From the Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim
    Rupert of Hentzau -- From the Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim
    by Anthony Hope
    ISBN 1592248691 (1-59224-869-1)
    Hardcover, Wildside Pr

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  • Kipling, Rudyard: The Second Jungle Book
    The Second Jungle Book
    by Rudyard Kipling
    ISBN 1592243185 (1-59224-318-5)
    Softcover, Wildside Pr

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    Here are the stories and songs of Kipling's second JUNGLE BOOK: tales of Mowgli and his Seeonee Wolf-Pack and, of course, Akela the wolf; of Bagheera, the panther; Kaa, the Rock Python; Baloo, the Bear; and so many others. They are the tales of Mowgli, the lost boy raised by wolves in the jungles of India, brought up on a diet of Jungle Law, loyalty, and fresh meat from the kill, and they have captivated children and adults alike for generations. There is no better place to learn the life of the wolf pack and the natural order -- the natural justice -- of life in the jungle. And who could ever forget Mowgli's enemy, Shere Khan, the bragadocious Bengal tiger? To say nothing of Rikki-tikki-tavi, the mongoose?This second volume presents the further adventures of Mowgli, including the tale of his biological parents, cast out by their village for their connection to a demon child. . . . [via]

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  • Sense And Sensibility
    by Jane Austen, Laura Engel
    ISBN 1593080492 (1-59308-049-2)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Though not the first novel she wrote, Sense and Sensibility was the first Jane Austen published. Though she initially called it Elinor and Marianne, Austen jettisoned both the title and the epistolary mode in which it was originally written, but kept the essential theme: the necessity of finding a workable middle ground between passion and reason. The story revolves around the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. Whereas the former is a sensible, rational creature, her younger sister is wildly romantic--a characteristic that offers Austen plenty of scope for both satire and compassion. Commenting on Edward Ferrars, a potential suitor for Elinor's hand, Marianne admits that while she "loves him tenderly", she finds him disappointing as a possible lover for her sister:

    Oh! Mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward's manner in reading to us last night! I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it with so much composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. I could hardly keep my seat. To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!
    Soon, however, Marianne meets a man who measures up to her ideal: Mr Willoughby, a new neighbour. So swept away by passion is Marianne that her behaviour begins to border on the scandalous. Then Willoughby abandons her; meanwhile, Elinor's growing affection for Edward suffers a check when he admits he is secretly engaged to a childhood sweetheart. misfortunes and the lessons they draw before coming finally to the requisite happy ending forms the heart of the novel. Though Marianne's disregard for social conventions and willingness to consider the world well-lost for love may appeal to modern readers, it is Elinor whom Austen herself most evidently admired; a truly happy marriage, she shows us, exists only where sense and sensibility meet and mix in proper measure. --Alix Wilber, Amazon.com [via]

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  • Silas Marner
    by George Elliot
    ISBN 1591940486 (1-59194-048-6)
    Softcover, Townsend Pr

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    This Townsend Library classic has been carefully edited to be more accessible to today's students. It includes a background note about the book, an author's biography, and a lively afterword. Acclaimed by educators nationwide, the Townsend Library is helping millions of young adults discover the pleasure and power of reading. [via]

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  • Ibsen, Henrik: Six Plays By Henrik Ibsen
    Six Plays By Henrik Ibsen
    by Henrik Ibsen
    ISBN 1593080611 (1-59308-061-1)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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  • Sons and Lovers
    by D. H. Lawrence
    ISBN 1593080131 (1-59308-013-1)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Sons and Lovers, by D. H. Lawrence, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    Called the most widely-read English novel of the twentieth century, D. H. Lawrences largely autobiographical Sons and Lovers tells the story of Paul Morel, a young artist growing into manhood in a British working-class community near the Nottingham coalfields. His mother Gertrude, unhappily married to Pauls hard-drinking father, devotes all her energies to her son. They develop a powerful and passionate relationship, but eventually tensions arise when Paul falls in love with a girl and seeks to escape his family ties. Torn between his desire for independence and his abiding attachment to his loving but overbearing mother, Paul struggles to define himself sexually and emotionally through his relationships with two women—the innocent, old-fashioned Miriam Leivers, and the experienced, provocatively modern Clara Dawes.

    Heralding Lawrences mature period, Sons and Lovers vividly evokes the all-consuming nature of possessive love and sexual attraction. Lushly descriptive and deeply emotional, it is rich in universal truths about human relationships.

    Victoria Blake is a freelance writer. She has worked at The Paris Review and contributed to the Boulder Daily Camera, small literary presses in the United States, and English-language publications in Bangkok, Thailand. She currently lives and works in San Diego, California.

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  • Swann's Way
    by Marcel Proust, C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, Elizabeth Dalton
    ISBN 1593082959 (1-59308-295-9)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Swann's Way, by Marcel Proust, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    • New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
    • Biographies of the authors
    • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
    • Footnotes and endnotes
    • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
    • Comments by other famous authors
    • Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
    • Bibliographies for further reading
    • Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    Swanns Way is the first novel of Marcel Prousts seven-volume magnum opus À la rechercheé du temps perdu, or Remembrance of Things Past. Following Charles Swanns opening ruminations about the nature of sleep is one of twentieth-century literatures most famous and influential scenes: the eating of the madeleine soaked in a decoction of lime-flowers, the associative act from which the remainder of the narrative unfurls. After elaborate reminiscences about Swanns childhood in Paris and rural Combray, Proust describes his protagonists exploits in nineteenth-century privileged Parisian society and his obsessive love for young socialite Odette de Crécy.

     

    Filled with searing, insightful, and humorous criticisms of French society, this novel showcases Prousts innovative prose style, characterized by lengthy, intricate sentences that elongate, stop, and reverse time. With narration that alternates between first and third person, Swanns Way unconventionally introduces Prousts recurring themes of memory, love, art, and the human experienceand for nearly a century readers have deliciously savored each moment.

     

    Elizabeth Dalton is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Barnard College. She has published fiction and criticism in the New Yorker, Partisan Review, Commentary, and the New York Times Book Review.

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  • A Tale of Two Cities
    by Charles Dickens, Gillen D'Arcy Wood
    ISBN 1593080557 (1-59308-055-7)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Book summary:

    A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . . With these famous words, Charles Dickens plunges the reader into one of historys most explosive eras—the French Revolution. From the storming of the Bastille to the relentless drop of the guillotine, Dickens vividly captures the terror and upheaval of that tumultuous period. At the center is the novels hero, Sydney Carton, a lazy, alcoholic attorney who, inspired by a woman, makes the supreme sacrifice on the bloodstained streets of Paris.

    One of Dickenss most exciting novels, A Tale of Two Cities is a stirring classic of love, revenge, and resurrection.

    Gillen DArcy Wood received his Ph.D in English from Columbia University in 2000 and is currently an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of The Shock of the Real: Romanticism and Visual Culture, 1760–1860.

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  • The Three Musketeers: Being the First of the D'artagnan Romances; and Twenty Years After, a Sequel
    by Alexandre Dumas
    ISBN 1592248624 (1-59224-862-4)
    Softcover, Wildside Pr

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    Book summary:

    The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    • New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
    • Biographies of the authors
    • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
    • Footnotes and endnotes
    • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
    • Comments by other famous authors
    • Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
    • Bibliographies for further reading
    • Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    Mixing a bit of seventeenth-century French history with a great deal of invention, Alexandre Dumas tells the tale of young DArtagnan and his musketeer comrades, Porthos, Athos and Aramis. Together they fight to foil the schemes of the brilliant, dangerous Cardinal Richelieu, who pretends to support the king while plotting to advance his own power. Bursting with swirling swordplay, swooning romance, and unforgettable figures such as the seductively beautiful but deadly femme fatale, Milady, and DArtagnans equally beautiful love, Madame Bonacieux, The Three Musketeers continues, after a century and a half of continuous publication, to define the genre of swashbuckling romance and historical adventure.

     

    Barbara T. Cooper is Professor of French at the University of New Hampshire. She is a member of the editorial boards of Nineteenth-Century French Studies and the Cahiers Alexandre Dumas and specializes in nineteenth-century French drama and works by Dumas.

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  • The Wind in the Willows
    by Kenneth Grahame, Gardner McFall
    ISBN 1593082657 (1-59308-265-7)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Book summary:

    The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    When Mole decides he has had enough tiresome spring-cleaning for one day, the scrappy nonesuch throws down his broom and bolts out of his house looking for fun and adventure. He quickly finds it in the form of the Water Rat, who takes the wide-eyed Mole boating and introduces him to the mysteries of life on the river and in the Wild Wood. Mole also meets Rattys good friends: the kindly, solid Badger and the irrepressible Toad. Soon, the quartets escapades—including car crashes, a sojourn in jail, and a battle with the weasels who try to take over Toad Hall—become the talk of the animal kingdom.

    Filled with familiar human types disguised as animals, Kenneth Grahames The Wind in the Willows, like all exemplary childrens literature, has always appealed greatly to grown-ups as well. Though first published in 1908, when “motor-cars were new and rare, The Wind in the Willows presents surprisingly contemporary—and uproariously funny—portraits of speed-crazed Mr. Toad, generous Badger, poetic Ratty, and newly-emancipated Mole. And lurking all the while within the humor and good spirits, Grahames deeply felt commentary on courage, generosity, and above all, friendship.

    Gardner McFall is the author of two childrens books and a collection of poetry. She teaches childrens literature at Hunter College in New York City.

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