Early short stories by Thomas Pynchon, introduced by the author and praised as "an exhilarating spectacle of greatness discovering its powers" by the New Republic.Thomas Pynchon's literary career was launched not with the release of his widely acclaimed...

An American classic and the inspiration for the motion picture starring Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow.It’s here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmith’s five-book Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom Ripley, a young striver seeking...

"Besides Homer, there is Hesiod." These words still contain much truth today. Hesiod is a very important poet, and for this reason his two surviving poems, Theogony and Works and Days, deserve to be presented as accurately and attractively as possible. R...

The many meanings of economy are the ground for the mediation and lament of Ledger, Susan Wheeler's fourth book. In its Greek origins, economy referred to the stewardship of a household and, as it developed, the word also came to include aspects of...

"I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman." In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare had a sister--a sister equal to Shakespeare in talent, and equal in genius, but...

"All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds" It was the indifferent shrug and callous inertia that this "optimism" concealed which so angered Voltaire, who found the "all for the best" approach a patently inadequate response to suffering, to...

"It was I who removed de P- this morning." With these chilling words Victor Haldin shatters the solitary, industrious existence of Razumov, his fellow student at St Petersburg University. Razumov aims to overcome the denial of his noble birth by a...

“First-rate research collaborates with first-rate imagination. . . . Superb.”—The Boston GlobeParis, 1940. The civilized, upper-class life of film producer Jean Casson is derailed by the German occupation of Paris, but Casson learns that with enough...

The second revision in sixty years, this sublime collection ranges over the verse, stories, essays, and journalism of one of the twentieth century's most quotable authors.In this new twenty-first-century edition, devoted admirers will be sure to find...

Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novelFour travelers come to the ringworld. . . Louis Wu: human and old; bored with having lived too fully for far too many years. Seeking a challenge, and all too capable of handling it.Nessus: a trembling...

Though generally overlooked during her lifetime, Emily Dickinson's poetry has achieved acclaim due to her experiments in prosody, her tragic vision and the range of her emotional and intellectual explorations.

“A book you won’t be able to put down. A Bangladeshi immigrant in London is torn between the kind, tedious older husband with whom she has an arranged marriage (and children) and the fiery political activist she lusts after. A novel that’s...

The Booker Prize winning author's sweeping saga of three generations of women"One of the most accomplished writers of fiction of our day" (The Washington Post ) follows the lives and loves of three women--Lorna, Molly, and Ruth--from World War II-era...

The Chrysalids is set in the future after a devastating global nuclear war. David, the young hero of the novel, lives in a tight-knit community of religious and genetic fundamentalists, who exist in a state of constant alert for any deviation from what...

Classic horror stories by one of masters of the form. Full of bone-chilling tales, this collection includes "The Birds," the basis for the Alfred Hitchcock film of the same title, and other creepy classics. Daphne du Maurier wrote some of the most...

Discover #1 New York Times-bestselling Patrick Rothfuss’ epic fantasy series, The Kingkiller Chronicle.“I just love the world of Patrick Rothfuss.” —Lin-Manuel MirandaOVER 1 MILLION COPIES SOLD!DAY ONE: THE NAME OF THE WINDMy name is Kvothe.I have stolen...

Dollars, dolors. Callings and contrivances. King Zulu. Comus.Sephardic ju-ju and verses. Voodoo mojo, Special Forces.Henry formed a group named Professor Longhair and hisShuffling Hungarians. After so much renunciationAnd invention, is this the image of...

"EXPAND[S] OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THIS FASCINATING LITERARY CHARACTER." —STEVEN RATINER, THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLDKnown (with Philip Larkin) as the most distinctly English of the postwar British poets, Ted Hughes was a boundlessly curious reader and...

The internationally acclaimed bestselling author of Smilla's Sense of Snow returns with this "engrossing, beautifully written tale of suspense . . . captivating" (The Miami Herald).Set in Denmark in the here and now, Peter Hoeg's The Quiet Girl centers...

A New York Times Notable Book of 2007From Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa comes The Bad Girl, a "...splendid, suspenseful, and irresistible [novel]. . . A contemporary love story that explores the mores of the urban 1960s--and 70s and 80s...