"The Star Rover" is the story of San Quentin death-row inmateDarrell Standing, who escapes the horror of prison life--and longstretches in a straitjacket--by withdrawing into vivid dreams ofpast lives, including incarnations as a French nobleman and anEnglishman in medieval Korea. Based on the life and imprisonment ofJack London's friend Ed Morrell, this is one of the author's mostcomplex and original works. As Lorenzo Carcaterra argues in hisIntroduction, "The Star Rover" is "written with energy and force,brilliantly marching between the netherworlds of brutality andbeauty." This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the textof the first American edition, published in 1915.

'Although it's difficult to believe, the sixties are not fictional; they actually happened' (Author's Afterword) Stephen King, whose first novel, Carrie, was published in 1974, the year before the last US troops withdrew from Vietnam, is the first hugely popular writer of the TV generation. Images from that war - and the protests against it - had flooded America's living rooms for a decade. Hearts in Atlantis is composed offive linked stories set in the years from 1960 to 1999. Each story is deeply rooted in the sixties, and each is haunted by the Vietnam War. Full of danger, full of suspense, most of all full of heart, Hearts in Atlantis will take some readers to a place they have never been...and others to a place they have never been able to completely leave.

On the 150th anniversary of its publication, a new edition ofthe nature classic First published in 1854, Henry David Thoreau'sgroundbreaking book has influenced generations of readers andcontinues to inspire and inform anyone with an open mind and a loveof nature. With Bill McKibben providing a newly revisedIntroduction and helpful annotations that place Thoreau firmly inhis role as cultural and spiritual seer, this beautiful edition ofWalden for the new millennium is more accessible and relevant thanever. " Thoreau] says so many pithy and brilliant things, andoffers so many piquant, and, we may add, so many just, comments onsociety as it is, that this book is well worth the reading, bothfor its actual contents and its suggestive capacity." --A. P.Peabody, North American Review, 1854 " Walden] still seems to methe best youth's companion yet written by an American, for itcarries a solemn warning against the loss of one's valuables, itadvances a good argument for traveling light and trying newadventures,

An exciting new edition of the complete works of Shakespearewith these features: Illustrated with photographs from NewYork Shakespeare Festival productions, vivid readable readableintroductions for each play by noted scholar David Bevington, alively personal foreword by Joseph Papp, an insightful essay on theplay in performance, modern spelling and pronunciation, up-to-dateannotated bibliographies, and convenient listing of keypassages.

A dying man cautiously unravels the mysteries of memory and creation. Vadim is a Russian emigre who, like Nabokov, is a novelist, poet and critic. There are threads linking the fictional hero with his creator as he reconstructs the images of his past from young love to his serious illness.

Pronounced obscene when it was first published in 1915, " TheRainbow" is the epic story of three generations of the Brangwens, aMidlands family. A visionary novel, considered to be one ofLawrence's finest, it explores the complex sexual and psychologicalrelationships between men and women in an increasinglyindustrialized world. "Lives are separate, but life iscontinuous--it continues in the fresh start by the separate life ineach generation," wrote F. R. Leavis. "No work, I think, haspresented this perception as an imaginatively realized truth morecompellingly than "The Rainbow.""

Inspired by the long-standing affair between Frieda, Lawrence'sGerman wife, and an Italian peasant who eventually became her thirdhusband, Lady Chatterley's Lover is the story of ConstanceChatterley, who, while trapped in an unhappy marriage to anaristocratic mine owner whose war wounds have left him paralyzedand impotent, has an affair with Mellors, the gamekeeper. FrankKermode calls the book Lawrence's "great achievement" and Anais Nindescribes it as "artistically . . . his best novel." This ModernLibrary Paperback Classics edition includes the tran* of thejudge's decision in the famous 1959 obscenity trial that allowedthe novel to be published in the United States.

When Sir Francis Drake returned to England in 1580, manyquestions concerning his momentous voyage were left unanswered—hisjournals were impounded and his men were forbidden, on pain ofdeath, to divulge where they had been. Drawing on newly uncoveredevidence, geographer and maritime historian Samuel Bawlfmasterfully reconstructs Francis Drake’s historic round-the-worldexpedition, exploring the drama surrounding the voyage and offeringintriguing insights into life at sea in the sixteenth century. Butit is Bawlf’s assertion of Drake’s whereabouts in the summer of1579 that gives the book even greater originality: from anintensive study of maps of the period, Bawlf shows with certaintythat Drake sailed all the way to Alaska—much farther than anyonehas heretofore imagined—thereby rewriting the history ofexploration in North America.

Upon its publication in 1857, "Little Dorrit" immediatelyoutsold any of Dickens's previous books. The story of WilliamDorrit, imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea Prison, and his daughterand helpmate, Amy, or Little Dorrit, the novel charts the progressof the Dorrit family from poverty to riches. In his Introduction,David Gates argues that "intensity of imagination is the gift fromwhich Dickens's other great attributes derive: his eye and ear, hisnear-universal empathy, his ability to entertain both a sense ofthe ridiculous and a sense of ultimate significance." This ModernLibrary Paperback Classic is set from the text of the 1857edition.

Set in sixteenth-century England, Mark Twain’s classic “talefor young people of all ages” features two identical-looking boys—aprince and a pauper—who trade clothes and step into each other’slives. While the urchin, Tom Canty, discovers luxury and power,Prince Edward, dressed in rags, roams his kingdom and experiencesthe cruelties inflicted on the poor by the Tudor monarchy. AsChristopher Paul Curtis observes in his Introduction, The Princeand the Pauper is “funny, adventurous, and exciting, yet alsochock-full of . . . exquisitely reasoned harangues againstsociety’s ills.” This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the Mark TwainProject edition, which is the approved text of the Center forScholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association.

Fashioned from the same experiences that would inspire themasterpiece Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi isMark Twain’s most brilliant and most personal nonfiction work. Itis at once an affectionate evocation of the vital river life in thesteamboat era and a melancholy reminiscence of its passing afterthe Civil War, a priceless collection of humorous anecdotes andfolktales, and a unique glimpse into Twain’s life before he beganto write. Written in a prose style that has been hailed as among thegreatest in English literature, Life on the Mississippi established Twain as not only the most popular humorist of his timebut also America’s most profound chronicler of the humancomedy.

Twenty-two-year-old Karla is thrilled to be hired as anentertainer on the Sound of Music cruise ship where the rum punchis 80 percent Kool-Aid, the ice sculp- tures are plastic, and her"fake it till you make it" M.O. seems adventuresome. Karla is lessthrilled when her new boyfriend, Jack, suggests that they form asinging duo on land, but by now faking enthusiasm has become a wayof life. She and Jack buy backing tracks, crib lyrics from theradio, and embark on a not-as-glamorous-as-it-should-be careerperforming in the luxury hotel bars of the Middle East and China.But after a thousand and one nights on the road, Karla and Jackfind themselves struggling to keep their act both personal andprofessional together. Funny, fast-paced, and incisive, A Thousandand One Nights captures the performances, large and small, we useto make it through life.

After traveling the world to exotic lands, Alexandra, Jane,and Sukie–now widowed but still witches–return to the Rhode Islandseaside t own of Eastwick, “the scene of their primes,” site oftheir enchanted mischief more than three decades ago. DiabolicalDarryl Van Horne is gone, and what was once a center of license andliberation is now a “haven of wholesomeness” populated by hockeymoms and househusbands acting out against the old ways of their ownabsent, experimenting parents. With spirits still willing but fleshweaker, the three women must confront a powerful new counterspellof conformity. In this wicked and wonderful novel, John Updike isat his very best–a legendary master of literary magic up to his olddelightful tricks.

Defoe's account of the bubonic plague that swept London in 1665remains as vivid as it is harrowing. Based on Defoe's own childhoodmemories and prodigious research, A Journal of the Plague Yearwalks the line between fiction, history, and reportage. Inmeticulous and unsentimental detail it renders the daily life of acity under siege; the often gruesome medical precautions andpractices of the time; the mass panics of a frightened citizenry;and the solitary travails of Defoe's narrator, a man who decides toremain in the city through it all, chronicling the course of eventswith an unwavering eye. Defoe's Journal remains perhaps thegreatest account of a natural disaster ever written. This ModernLibrary Paperback Classic is set from the original editionpublished in 1722.

New chronology and further reading. Edited with an introduction by Marilyn Butler.

Shakespeare became famous as a dazzling poet before most peopleeven knew that he wrote plays. His sonnets are the Englishlanguage's most extraordinary anatomy of love in all itsdimensions-desire and despair, longing and loss, adoration anddisgust. To read them is to confront morality and eternity in thesame breath. Produced under the editorial supervision of JonathanBate and Eric Rasmussen, two of today's most accomplishedShakespearean scholars, The Sonnets and Other Poems includes all ofShakespeare's sonnets, the long narrative poems "Venus and Adonis"and "The Rape of Lucrece," and several other shorter works.Incorporating definitive texts and authoritative notes from WilliamShakespeare: Complete Works, this unique volume also includes anexpanded Introduction by Jonathan Bate that places the poems inliterary and historical context and illuminates their relationshipto Shakespeare's dramatic writing. Also featured are key factsabout the individual selections; an index of the first lines of thesonnets; a chron

Vintage Readers are a perfect introduction to some of thegreatest modern writers presented in attractive, accessiblepaperback editions. “It was Nabokov’s gift to bring paradise wherever he alighted.”—John Updike, The New York Review of Books Novelist, poet, critic, translator, and, above all, a peerlessimaginer, Vladimir Nabokov was arguably the most dazzling prosestylist of the twentieth century. In novels like Lolita, Pale Fire,and Ada, or Ardor, he turned language into an instrument ofecstasy. Vintage Nabokov includes sections 1-10 of his most famous andcontroversial novel, Lolita; the stories “The Return of Chorb,”“The Aurelian,” “A Forgotten Poet,” “Time and Ebb,” “Signs andSymbols,” “The Vane Sisters,” and “Lance”; and chapter 12 from hismemoir Speak, Memory.

One of the last plays Shakespeare penned on his own, TheWinter’s Tale is a transcendent work of death and rebirth,exploring irrational sexual jealousy, the redemptive world ofnature, and the magical power of art. Under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Bate and EricRasmussen, two of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars,this Modern Library series incorporates definitive texts andauthoritative notes from William Shakespeare: Complete Works. Eachplay includes an Introduction as well as an overview ofShakespeare’s theatrical career; commentary on past and currentproductions based on interviews with leading directors, actors, anddesigners; scene-by-scene analysis; key facts about the work; achronology of Shakespeare’s life and times; and black-and-whiteillustrations. Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers,these modern and accessible editions from the Royal ShakespeareCompany set a new standard in Shakespearean literature for thetwenty-first century