(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) If William Shakespeare hadnever written a single play, if his reputation rested entirely uponthe substantial and sterling body of nondramatic verse he leftbehind, he would still hold the position he does in the hierarchyof world literature. The strikingly modern ?sonnets-intimate,baroque, and expansive at once; the invigorating narratives drawnfrom classical subjects; and the flawless lyricism represented by apoem like "The Phoenix and the Turtle"-permanently deepen ourunderstanding of the multiplicity and extravagant energy of ourgreatest poet.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Shakespeare's four greatesttragedies were written in a remarkably short period of time,between 1598 and 1606. "Hamlet," "Othello," "Macbeth," and "KingLear" are each so singular an achievement that any rereading ofthem reinforces the awe and almost idolatrous worship that thismost uncanny of the world's great writers invariably inspires. Inthese four plays, Shakespeare engages the problem that is centralto tragedy and crucial to any human community--the problem ofviolence and revenge--on an unprecedented scale. No other literarytexts have been more instrumental in deepening our knowledge ofourselves as individuals and as a civilization. This authoritativeedition of the plays is supplemented with footnotes,bibliographies, a detailed chronology of Shakespeare's life andtimes, and a substantial introduction in which Tony Tannerdiscusses each play individually while setting each in context.

Ravishingly beautiful and emotionally incendiary, TarBaby is Toni Morrison’s reinvention of the love story. JadineChilds is a black fashion model with a white patron, a whiteboyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son isa black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires.As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from theCaribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all thenuances of obligation and betrayal between blacks and whites,masters and servants, and men and women.

Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises fourremarkable novels that explore social class in America and theinner lives of young Americans. As powerful and relevant today asit on its initial publication, them chronicles the tumultuous livesof a family living on the edge of ruin in the Detroit slums, fromthe 1930s to the 1967 race riots. Praised by The Nation for her“potent, life-gripping imagination,” Oates traces the aspirationsand struggles of Loretta Wendall, a dreamy young mother who isfilled with regret by the age of sixteen, and the subsequentdestinies of her children, Maureen and Jules, who must fight tosurvive in a world of violence and danger. Winner of the National Book Award, them is an enthralling novelabout love, class, race, and the inhumanity of urban life. It is,raves The New York Times, “a superbly accomplished vision.” Them is the third novel in the Wonderland Quartet. The books thatcomplete this acclaimed series, A Garden of Earthly Delights,Expensive Peo

With the publication of her first novel, THE HEART IS A LONELYHUNTER, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literarysensation. With its profound sense of moral isolation and itscompassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novelis considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece firstpublished by Houghton Mifflin in 1940. At its center is thedeaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various typesof misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearnsfor escape from small town life. When Singer's mute companion goesinsane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, thebook's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace inher music. Wonderfully attuned to the spiritual isolation thatunderlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racialtensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettablestory that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and themistreated -- and, through Mick Kelly, gives voice to the quiet,in

Here are the best of Hawthorne's short stories. There aretwenty-four of them -- not only the most familiar, but also manythat are virtually unknown to the average reader. The selection wasmade by Professor Newton Arvin of Smith College, a recognizedauthority on Hawthorne and a distinguished literary critic as well.His fine introduction admirably interprets Hawthorne's mind andart.

A vibrant, new complete Shakespeare that brings readers closerthan ever before possible top Shakespeare's plays as they werefirst acted. The Norton Shakespeare, Based on the Oxford Editioninvites readers to rediscover Shakespeare-the working man of thetheater, not the universal bard-and to rediscover his plays as*s to be performed, not works to be immortalized. Combiningthe freshly edited texts of the Oxford Edition with livelyintroductions by Stephen Greenblatt and his co-editors, glossariesand annotations, and an elegant single-column page (that of theNorton Anthologies), this complete Shakespeare invites contemporaryreaders to see and read Shakespeare afresh. Greenblatt's fullintroduction creates a window into Shakespeare world-the culture,demographics, commerce, politics, and religion of early-modernEngland-Shakespeare's family background and professional life, theElizabethan industries of theater and printing, and the subsequentcenturies of Shakespeare textual editing.

Gathered together in one hardcover volume: three timeless novelsfrom the founding father of science fiction. The first great novelto imagine time travel, "The Time Machine" (1895) follows itsscientist narrator on an incredible journey that takes him finallyto Earth's last moments--and perhaps his own. The scientist whodiscovers how to transform himself in "The Invisible Man" (1897)will also discover, too late, that he has become unmoored fromsociety and from his own sanity. "The War of the Worlds"(1898)--the seminal masterpiece of alien invasion adapted by OrsonWelles for his notorious 1938 radio drama, and subsequently byseveral filmmakers--imagines a fierce race of Martians whodevastate Earth and feed on their human victims while theirvoracious vegetation, the red weed, spreads over the ruined planet.Here are three classic science fiction novels that, more than acentury after their original publication, show no sign of losingtheir grip on readers' imaginations.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) In "The Mill on the Floss,"George Eliot re-creates her own childhood through the story of thewild, gifted Maggie Tulliver and her spoiled, selfish brother.Though tragic in its outcome, this tenderly comic novel combinesvivid vignettes of family life with a magnificent portrait of theheroine and an acute critique of Victorian sexual politics. Eliothad no peer when it came to finding the drama at the heart ofnormal lives lived in tandem with the gigantic rhythms of natureitself, and in "The Mill on the Floss" she shows us once again howthoroughly the art of fiction can satisfy our deepest mental andemotional cravings.

This complete collection includes all the published stories ofEudora Welty. There are forty-one stories in all, including theearlier collections A Curtain of Green, The Wide Net, The GoldenApples, and The Bride of the Innisfallen, as well as previouslyuncollected stories. With a Preface written by the Authorespecially for this edition.

Mild, harmless and ugly to behold, the impoverished Pons is anageing musician whose brief fame has fallen to nothing. Living aplacid Parisian life as a bachelor in a shared apartment with hisfriend Schmucke, he maintains only two passions: a devotion to finedining in the company of wealthy but disdainful relatives, and adedication to the collection of antiques. When these relativesbecome aware of the true value of his art collection, however,their sneering contempt for the parasitic Pons rapidly falls awayas they struggle to obtain a piece of the weakening man'sinheritance. Taking its place in the Human Comedy as a companion toCousin Bette, the darkly humorous "Cousin Pons" is among of thelast and greatest of Balzac's novels concerning French urbansociety: a cynical, pessimistic but never despairing considerationof human nature.

An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attendedAmerica's westward expansion, Blood Meridianbrilliantly subvertsthe conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." Based on historical events that took place on theTexas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of theKid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into thenightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the marketfor their scalps is thriving.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) The story of HesterPrynne-found out in adultery, pilloried by her Puritan community,and abandoned, in different ways, by both her partner in sin andher vengeance-seeking husband-possesses a reality heightened byHawthorne's pure human sympathy and his unmixed devotion to hissupposedly fallen but fundamentally innocent heroine. In its moralforce and the beauty of its conciliations, "The Scarlet Letter"rightly deserves its stature as the first great novel written by anAmerican, the novel that announced an American literature equal toany in the world.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Three classic crime novels by amaster of the macabre appear here together in hardcover for thefirst time. Suave, agreeable, and completely amoral, PatriciaHighsmith's hero, the inimitable Tom Ripley, stops at nothing--noteven murder-- to accomplish his goals. In achieving for himself theopulent life that he was denied as a child, Ripley shows himself tobe a master of illusion and manipulation and a disturbinglysympathetic combination of genius and psychopath. As Highsmithnavigates the mesmerizing tangle of Ripley's deadly and sinistergames, she turns the mystery genre inside out and takes us into themind of a man utterly indifferent to evil. The Talented Mr.RipleyIn a chilling literary hall of mirrors, Patricia Highsmithintroduces Tom Ripley. Like a hero in a latter-day Henry Jamesnovel, is sent to Italy with a commission to coax a prodigal youngAmerican back to his wealthy father. But Ripley finds himself veryfond of Dickie Greenleaf. He wants to be like him--exactly likehim.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Virginia Woolf said of EmilyBronte that her writing could "make the wind blow and the thunderroar," and so it does in Wuthering Heights. Catherine Earnshaw,Heathcliff, and the windswept moors that are the setting of theirmythic love are as immediately stirring to the reader of today asthey have been for every generation of readers since the novel wasfirst published in 1847. With an introduction by KatherineFrank.

Hermann Hesse's classic novel "Siddhartha" has delighted,inspired, and influenced generations of readers, writers, andthinkers. Though set in a place and time far removed from theGermany of 1922, the year of the book's debut, the novel is infusedwith the sensibilities of Hesse's time, synthesizing disparatephilosophies-Eastern religions, Jungian archetypes, Westernindividualism-into a unique vision of life as expressed through oneman's search for meaning. It is the story of the quest ofSiddhartha, a wealthy Indian Brahmin who casts off a life ofprivilege and comfort to seek spiritual fulfillment and wisdom. Onhis journey, Siddhartha encounters wandering ascetics, Buddhistmonks, and successful merchants, as well as a courtesan namedKamala and a simple ferryman who has attained enlightenment.Traveling among these people and experiencing life's vitalpassages-love, work, friendship, and fatherhood-Siddharthadiscovers that true knowledge is guided from within. SusanBernofsky's magnificent new translation br

“It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t knowit.” So begins the new novel, his first since winning the NobelPrize, from the universally acclaimed author of Snow and My Name IsRed.It is 1975, a perfect spring in Istanbul. Kemal, scion of oneof the city’s wealthiest families, is about to become engaged toSibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encountersFüsun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. Once thelong-lost cousins violate the code of virginity, a rift begins toopen between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbulbourgeosie—a world, as he lovingly describes it, with opulentparties and clubs, society gossip, restaurant rituals, picnics, andmansions on the Bosphorus, infused with the melancholy ofdecay—until finally he breaks off his engagement to Sibel. But hisresolve comes too late.For eight years Kemal will find excuses tovisit another Istanbul, that of the impoverished backstreets whereFüsun, her heart now hardened, lives with her parents, and w

"One of the most noble and moving plays of our generation, athrenody of hope deceived and deferred but never extinguished;a play suffused with tenderness for the whole humanperplexity; with phrases that come like a sharp stab ofbeauty and pain."

Gordon Comstock is a poor young man who works in a grubbyLondon bookstore and spends his evenings shivering in a rentedroom, trying to write. He is determined to stay free of the "moneyworld" of lucrative jobs, family responsibilities, and the kind ofsecurity symbolized by the homely aspidistra plant that sits inevery middle-class British window.

With passion, wit, and good common sense, the celebrated poetMary Oliver tells of the basic ways a poem is built-meter andrhyme, form and diction, sound and sense. Drawing on poems fromRobert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and others, Oliver imparts anextraordinary amount of information in a remarkably short space."Stunning" (Los Angeles Times). Index.