On a spring morning in 1932, young Karl and Mary Adare arrive by boxcar in Argus, North Dakota. After being orphaned in a most peculiar way, they seek refuge in the butcher shop of their aunt Fritzie and her husband, Pete; ordinary Mary, who will cause...

Ask the Dust is a virtuoso performance by an influential master of the twentieth-century American novel. It is the story of Arturo Bandini, a young writer in 1930s Los Angeles who falls hard for the elusive, mocking, unstable Camilla Lopez, a Mexican...

From first to last, poetry was part of Edith Wharton’s writing life. While rarely (after early youth) her primary focus, it always served her as a medium for recording the most vivid impressions and emotions, an intimate journal of longings and regrets...

Reta Winters, 44-year-old author of light summertime fiction and mother of three beautiful teenage daughters, has always considered herself happy, even blessed. That is, until her oldest daughter Norah mysteriously abandons college to become a panhandler...

Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every page of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the...

It is impossible to imagine what American poetry in the twentieth century might look like without the magnanimity of the late James Laughlin, poet and publisher of New Directions. Among Laughlin's closest friends was poet Hayden Carruth, who served as...

Joseph Conrad's dark satire on English societyIn the only novel Conrad set in London, The Secret Agent communicates a profoundly ironic view of human affairs. The story is woven around an attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894 masterminded by...

Pura Belpré Author Award Honor - American Library Association (ALA) Bilingual English/Spanish. From the Bellybutton of the Moon is renowned poet Francisco X. Alarcón's collection of 22 poems inspired by his touching recollections of childhood summers in...

A “maverick’s maverick,” Yvor Winters chose a poetic path that led him away from the free-verse fashions of his time to champion traditional literary form. This new selection, edited by his former student Thom Gunn, presents all of the essential poems of...

A beloved figure in his own era——a household name for such poems as “Barbara Frietchie” and “The Barefoot Boy”—John Greenleaf Whittier remains an emotionally honest, powerfully reflective voice. A Quaker deeply involved in the struggle against slavery...

Poet, journalist, and crime novelist, Kenneth Fearing wrote poems filled with the jargon of advertising and radio broadcasts and tabloid headlines, sidewalk political oratory, and the pop tunes on the jukebox. Seeking out what he called “the new and...

Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes, and Nod is a little head, And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies is a wee one's trundle-bed. Eugene Field's classic bedtime poem—about three children’s adventures sailing in a wooden shoe—is brought to life...

From bestselling artist Sylvia Long comes an enchanting collection of over seventy-five classic Mother Goose rhymes. Imbued with the artist's love of nature and overflowing with charming details, this spectacular compilation includes such timeless...

Darkness threatens to overtake Earthsea. As the world and its wizards are losing their magic, Ged—powerful Archmage, wizard, and dragonlord—embarks on a sailing journey with highborn young prince, Arren. They travel far beyond the realm of death to...

From Coretta Scott King Award–winning creator Ashley Bryan comes a luminously illustrated primer on celebrated African American poets, from A to Z.“And God stepped out on space,And he looked around and said:I’m lonely—I’ll make me a world.”—James Weldon...

Here is a delightful look at childhood, written by master poet and storyteller Robert Louis Stevenson. In this collection of sixty-six poems, Stevenson recalls the joys of his childhood, from sailing boats down a river, to waiting for the lamplighter, to...

This honest and poignant young adult poetry collection addresses many different experiences of what it means to be black.The quintessential African American, a proud, lonely, vulnerable yet independent human being who has forged out of hardship that...

The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years -- except Biff, the Messiah's best bud, who...

In this humorous poem, Custard the cowardly dragon saves the day when a pirate threatens Belinda and her pet animals.

Written to be read aloud by two voices--sometimes alternating, sometimes simultaneous--here is a collection of irresistible poems that celebrate the insect world, from the short life of the mayfly to the love song of the book louse. Funny, sad, loud, and...