Tom Sawyer is as clever, imaginative, and resourceful as he isreckless and mischievous, whether conning his friends into paintinga fence or helping to catch a murderer. Twain's novel sparkles withhis famous humor, but it is also woven with a subtle awareness ofthe injustices and complexities of the old South that Twain somemorably portrays.
The Sorrow Gondola was the great Swedish poet TomasTranstromer's first collection of poems after his stroke in 1990.Translated by Michael McGriff, Transtromer's great work isavailable in its first single-volume English edition.
In 1880 Dostoevsky completed "The Brothers Karamazov," theliterary effort for which he had been preparing all his life.Compelling, profound, complex, it is the story of a patricide andof the four sons who each had a motive for murder: Dmitry, thesensualist, Ivan, the intellectual; Alyosha, the mystic; andtwisted, cunning Smerdyakov, the bastard child. Frequently lurid,nightmarish, always brilliant, the novel plunges the reader into asordid love triangle, a pathological obsession, and a grippingcourtroom drama. But throughout the whole, Dostoevsky searhes forthe truth--about man, about life, about the existence of God. Aterrifying answer to man's eternal questions, this monumental workremains the crowning achievement of perhaps the finest novelist ofall time.
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Stories that trace the decline and fall of a marriage, ahistory made up of the happiness of growing children and sharedlife, and the sadness of growing estrangement and themisunderstandings of love.
For this novel of French bourgeois life in all its ingloriousbanality, Flaubert invented a paradoxically original and whollymodern style. His heroine, Emma Bovary, a bored provincialhousewife, abandons her husband to pursue the libertine Rodolphe ina desperate love affair. A succA]s de scandale in its day, "MadameBovary" remains a powerful and arousing novel. Translated with anIntroduction by Geoffrey Wall New Preface by MichA]le Roberts
They meet by chance on Copacabana Beach:Tristao Raposo, a poor black teen from the Rio slums, surviving dayto day on street smarts and the hustle, and Isabel Leme, anupper-class white girl, treated like a pampered slave by her absentthough very powerful father. Convinced that fate brought themtogether, betrayed by families who threaten to tear them apart,Tristao and Isabel flee to the farthest reaches of Brazil's wildwest -- unaware of the astonishing destiny that awaits them . . .Spanning twenty-two years, from the mid-sixties to the lateeighties, BRAZIL surprises and embraces the reader with itscelebration of passion, loyalty, and New World innocence. "A tourde force . . . Spectacular." -- Time "Updike's novel, as tender asit is erotic, becomes a magnificently wrought love story . . . .Beautifully written." -- Detroit Free Press "From the Paperbackedition."
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.
Pip, a poor orphan being raised by a cruel sister, does not havemuch in the way of great expectations between his terrifyingexperience in a graveyard with a convict named Magwitch and hishumiliating visits with the eccentric Miss Havisham's beautiful butmanipulative niece, Estella, who torments him until he is elevatedto wealth by an anonymous benefactor. Full of unforgettablecharacters, Great Expectations is a tale of intrigue, unattainablelove, and all of the happiness money can't buy. Great Expectationshas the most wonderful and most perfectly worked-out plot for anovel in the English language, according to John Irving, and J.Hillis Miller declares, Great Expectations is the most unified andconcentrated expression of Dickens's abiding sense of the world,and Pip might be called the archetypal Dickens hero.
A magnificent drama of vengeance, infidelity, and retribution,Anna Karenina portrays the moving story of people whose emotionsconflict with the dominant social mores of their time. Sensual,rebellious Anna falls deeply and passionately in love with thehandsome Count Vronsky. When she refuses to conduct the discreetaffair that her cold, ambitious husband (and Russian high society)would condone, she is doomed. Set against the tragic love of Annaand Vronsky, the plight of the melancholy nobleman KonstantineLevin unfolds. In doubt about the meaning of life, haunted bythoughts of suicide, Levin's struggles echo Tolstoy's own spiritualcrisis. But Anna's inner turmoil mirrors the own emotionalimprisonment and mental disintegration of a woman who dares totransgress the strictures of a patriarchal world. In Anna KareninaLeo Tolstoy brought to perfection the novel of social realism andcreated a masterpiece that bared the Russian soul. A magnificent drama of vengeance, infidelity, and retribution,Anna Kareni
In this striking tragedy of political conflict, Shakespeareturns to the ancient Roman world and to the famous assassination ofJulius Caesar by his republican opponents. The play is one oftumultuous rivalry, of prophetic warnings–“Beware the ides ofMarch”–and of moving public oratory, “Friends, Romans, countrymen!”Ironies abound and most of all for Brutus, whose fate it is tolearn that his idealistic motives for joining the conspiracyagainst a would-be dictator are not enough to sustain the movementonce Caesar is dead. Each Edition Includes: · Comprehensive explanatory notes · Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship · Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enablingcontemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English · Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performancehistories · An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, alongwith an extensive filmography From the Paperback edition.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a novel that is itself thesubject of one of literature's most enduring mysteries. The storyrecounts the troubled romance of Rosa Bud and the book's eponymouscharacter, who later vanishes. Was Drood murdered, and if so bywhom? All clues point to John Jasper, Drood's lugubrious uncle, whocoveted Rosa. Or did Drood orchestrate his own disappearance? AsCharles Dickens died before finishing the book, the ending isintriguingly ambiguous. In his Introduction, Matthew Pearlilluminates the 150-year-long quest to unravel" "The Mystery ofEdwin Drood and lends new insight into the novel, the literarymilieu of 1870s England, and the private life of Charles Dickens.This Modern Library edition includes new endnotes and a fulltran* of "The Trial of John Jasper for the Murder of EdwinDrood," the 1914 mock court case presided over and argued by thelikes of G. K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw. Now diehardfans, new readers, and armchair detectives have another opportunityto solve the mys
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,
Hesse's novel of two medieval men, one quietly content with hisreligion and monastic life, the other in fervent search of moreworldly salvation. This conflict between flesh and spirit, betweenemotional and contemplative man, was a life study for Hesse. It isa theme that transcends all time. The Hesse Phenomenon "has turnedinto a vogue, the vogue into a torrent. . .He has appealed both to.. . an underground and to an establishment. . .and to thedisenchanted young sharing his contempt for our industrialcivilization."--"The New York Times Book Review"
On Christmas Eve, a party of friends descends on a purportedlyhaunted country retreat, charged with the task of discoveringevidence of the supernatural. Sequestered in their rooms for theholiday, the friends reconvene on Twelfth Night at a great feastand share their stories of spectral encounter. “Conducted” byCharles Dickens and counting Elizabeth Gaskell and Wilkie Collinsamong its contributors, The Haunted House examinesquintessentially Victorian themes–sex and longing, nostalgia andloss–in ways that continue to resonate today. Ingeniously conceivedand written, and spiked with flashes of Dickensian humor, thisvolume is a strange and sheer delight.
"A GOLD MINE FOR SCHOLARS." *Deidre Carmody The New York TimesNow, in this extraordinary literary uncovering, the original firsthalf of Mark Twain's American masterpiece is available for thefirst time ever to a general readership. Lost for more than acentury, the passages reinstated in this edition reveal a noveleven more controversial than the version Twain published in 1885and provide an invaluable insight into his creative process. Abreakthrough of unparalleled impact, this comprehensive edition ofan American classic is the final rebuttal in the tireless debate of"what Twain really meant." " A] MASTERLY RESTORATION . . . I wishthis new version of Huckleberry Finn would be distributed to allthe nation's classrooms as the basic text and lead to a badlyneeded reconsideration of the questions it raises." *James A.McPherson Chicago Tribune "THOUGHTFULLY RESPECTS TWAIN'SINTENTIONS." *Gary Lee Stonum The Cleveland Plain Dealer With aForeword and Addendum by Victor Doyno "From the Paperbackedition."
Robert Prentice has spent all his life attempting to escape hismother's stifling presence. His mother, Alice, for her part,struggles with her own demons as she attempts to realize her dreamsof prosperity and success as a sculptor. As Robert goes off tofight in Europe, hoping to become his own man, Richard Yatesportrays a soldier in the depths of war striving to live up to hisheroic ideals. With haunting clarity, Yates crafts an unforgettableportrait of two people who cannot help but hope for more even aslife challenges them both.
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.
