In the 1680s the slave trade in the Americas is still in itsinfancy. Jacob Vaark is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, witha small holding in the harsh North. Despite his distaste fordealing in “flesh,” he takes a small slave girl in part payment fora bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This isFlorens, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm.Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lina, anolder servant woman at her new master's house, and later from thehandsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes ridinginto their lives.

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

In a society dominated by religion and bound by ties of strictfamily loyalty, two teenagers are trapped by their secret love. Asa dangerous vendetta spills onto the streets, the young lovers areforced to risk all to be together in Shakespeare’s fast-pacedtragedy of thwarted love. 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 generalreaders, these modern and accessible editions from the RoyalShakespeare Company set

Professor Chen Han-seng has a unique and remarkable life. Hewaseducated in a well-known Dong Lin School in Wuxi where hewas born;later, he went to the United States to study history atPomonaCollege in southern California where he enrolled underthewesternized name, Geoffrey Chu Chen, and graduated with honorsin1920. He then went to study at the University of Chicago andbecamean assistant to Professor Andrew C. McLaughlin who taughtAmericanConstitution History. In 1921, he received his Master'sDegree withthe title of the thesis——"The Conference of Ambassa-dors in London,1912-13, and the Creation of the Albanian State:A DiplomaticStudy."

'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.

Naguib Mahfouz's haunting novella of post-revolutionary Egyptcombines a vivid pychological portrait of an anguished man with thesuspense and rapid pace of a detective story. After four years in prison, the skilled young thief Said Mahranemerges bent on revenge. He finds a world that has changed in moreways than one. Egypt has undergone a revolution and, on a morepersonal level, his beloved wife and his trusted henchman, whoconspired to betray him to the police, are now married to eachother and are keeping his six-year-old daughter from him. But inthe most bitter betrayal, his mentor, Rauf Ilwan, once a firebrandrevolutionary who convinced Said that stealing from the rich in aunjust society is an act of justice, is now himself a rich man, arespected newspaper editor who wants nothing to do with thedisgraced Said. As Said's wild attempts to achieve his idea ofjustice badly misfire, he becomes a hunted man so driven by hatredthat he can only recognize too late his last chance atredemption.

"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.

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

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.

At the beginning of Amy Tan's fourth novel, two packets ofpapers written in Chinese calligraphy fall into the hands of RuthYoung. One bundle is titled Things I Know Are True and the other,Things I Must Not Forget. The author? That would be theprotagonist's mother, LuLing, who has been diagnosed withAlzheimer's disease. In these documents the elderly matriarch, bornin China in 1916, has set down a record of her birth and familyhistory, determined to keep the facts from vanishing as her minddeteriorates. A San Francisco career woman who makes her living by ghostwritingself-help books, Ruth has little idea of her mother's past or trueidentity. What's more, their relationship has tended to be an angryone. Still, Ruth recognizes the onset of LuLing's decline--alongwith her own remorse over past rancor--and hires a translator todecipher the packets. She also resolves to "ask her mother to tellher about her life. For once, she would ask. She would listen. Shewould sit down and not be in a hurry or have

In this gripping and suspenseful novella from the EgyptianNobel Prize-winner, three young friends survive interrogation bythe secret police, only to find their lives poisoned by suspicion,fear, and betrayal. At a Cairo cafe in the 1960s, a legendaryformer belly dancer lovingly presides over a boisterous family ofregulars, including a group of idealistic university students. Oneday, amid reports of a wave of arrests, three of the studentsdisappear: the excitable Hilmi, his friend Ismail, and Ismail'sbeautiful girlfriend Zaynab. When they return months later, theyare apparently unharmed and yet subtly and profoundly changed. Itis only years later, after their lives have been further shattered,that the narrator pieces together the young people's horrificstories and learns how the government used them against oneanother. In a riveting final chapter, their torturer himself entersthe Cafe and sits among his former victims, claiming a right tojoin their society of the disillusioned. Now translated intoEnglish

A continuation of the major series of individual Shakespeareplays from the world renowned Royal Shakespeare Company, edited bytwo brilliant, younger generation Shakespearean scholars JonathanBate and Eric Rasmussen Incorporating definitive text and cutting-edge notes from WilliamShakespeare: Complete Works-the first authoritative, modernizededition of Shakespeare's First Folio in more than 300 years-thisremarkable series of individual plays combines Jonathan Bate'sinsightful critical analysis with Eric Rasmussen's textualexpertise.

The masterpiece of Joseph Conrad's later years, theautobiographical short novel "The Shadow-Line "depicts a young manat a crossroads in his life, facing a desperate crisis that marksthe "shadow-line" between youth and maturity. This brief butintense story is a dramatically fictionalized account of Conrad'sfirst command as a young sea captain trapped aboard a becalmed,fever-wracked, and seemingly haunted ship. With no wind in sightand his crew disabled by malaria, the narrator discovers that themedicine necessary to save the sick men is missing and its absencehas been deliberately concealed. Meanwhile, his increasinglyfrightened first mate is convinced that the malignant ghost of theprevious captain has cursed them. Suspenseful, atmospheric, anddeceptively simple, Conrad's tale of the sea reflects the complexthemes of his most famous novels, "Lord Jim "and "Heart ofDarkness. "

CLASSICS are more than books that have stood the test of time.They are stories that impart timeless themes, that containuniversal truths, and that provide rich literary experiences yearalter year and generation after generation. However, many classicsmay he inaccessible to contemporary readers. Obsolete words,outmoded expressions, difficult sentence construction, andunfamiliar settings can place classics out of reach of manystudents, especially those with special needs. Unabridged audiobookversions can help bridge the gap between works of literature andthe students in your classrooms.

Oscar Wilde's story of a fashionable young man who sells hissoul for eternal youth and beauty is one of his most popular works.Written in Wilde's characteristically dazzling manner, full ofstinging epigrams and shrewd observations, the tale of DorianGray's moral disintegration caused something of a scandal when itfirst appeared in 1890. Wilde was attacked for his decadence andcorrupting influence, and a few years later the book and theaesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trialsoccasioned by Wilde's homosexual liaisons, trials that resulted inhis imprisonment. Of the book's value as autobiography, Wilde notedin a letter, "Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry whatthe world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be--in other ages,perhaps."

In many ways this is a wonderful novel with interesting,alive, characters. The medical aspects are absorbing and relevant,and the plot, the story, is grandiose, immense, and fascinating.Before you read the book, read the author's acknowledgements at theend. Irving's grandfather was a leading gynecologist, and he hadhis medical facts checked by experts. (There are other interestingtidbits in the acknowledgements.) John Irving is obviously a masternovelist and he has lavished intense energy and creativity on thisbook. I just cannot help carping a bit. My qualm is that the"political" aspects are all a little too pat and comforting. Amongthe many characters we have the active, involved, and livelycripple (opps, sorry, I mean "differently abled person"); theabusive husband; the dignified, poor but honest negroes; thelovable orphans; the tough but ultimately gentle and sexuallyconfused lesbian; the sad but dedicated and kindly illegalabortionists; and so on. For anyone other than a devoutanti-abortion

An immediate bestseller when it was first published in December1843, A Christmas Carol has endured ever since as a perennialYuletide favorite. Charles Dickens's beloved tale about the miserlyEbenezer Scrooge, who comes to know the meaning of kindness,charity, and goodwill through a haunting Christmas Eve encounterwith four ghosts, is a heartwarming celebration of the spirit ofChristmas. This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition alsoincludes two other popular Christmas stories by Dickens: "TheChimes," in which a man, persuaded by hypocritical cant that thepoor deserve their misery, is shown what his pessimisticresignation might lead to in a vision conjured by the pealing ofbells, and "The Haunted Man," Dickens's last Christmas tale, whichfeatures one of his great comic families, the Tetterbys.