Key Features: Study methods Introduction to the text Summaries with critical notes Themes and techniques Textual analysis of key passages Author biography Historical and literary background Modern and historical critical approaches Chronology Glossary of literary terms --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

As a young man in the summer of 1897, Jack London joined theKlondike gold rush. From that seminal experience emerged thesegripping, inimitable wilderness tales, which have endured as someof London' s best and most defining work. With remarkable insightand unflinching realism, London describes the punishing adversitythat awaited men in the brutal, frozen expanses of the Yukon, andthe extreme tactics these adventurers and travelers adopted tosurvive. As Van Wyck Brooks observed, " One felt that the storieshad been somehow lived- that they were not merely observed- thatthe author was not telling tales but telling his life." Thisedition is unique to the Modern Library, featuring twenty-threecarefully chosen stories from London' s three collected Northlandvolumes and his later Klondike tales. It also includes two maps ofthe region, and notes on the text.

I Married a Communist is the story of the rise and fall of IraRingold, a big American roughneck who begins life as a teenageditch-digger in 1930s Newark, becomes a big-time 1940s radio star,and is destroyed, as both a performer and a man, in the McCarthywitchhunt of the 1950s. In his heyday as a star--and as a zealous,bullying supporter of "progressive" political causes--Ira marriesHollywood's beloved silent-film star, Eve Frame. Their glamoroushoneymoon in her Manhattan townhouse is shortlived, however, and itis the publication of Eve's scandalous bestselling expose thatidentifies him as "an American taking his orders from Moscow." Inthis story of cruelty, betrayal, and revenge spilling over into thepublic arena from their origins in Ira's turbulent personal life,Philip Roth--who "Commonweal" calls the "master chronicler of theAmerican twentieth century--has written a brilliant fictionalprotrayal of that treacherous postwar epoch when the anti-Communistfever not only infected national politics but tra

Joyce Carol Oates's Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkablenovels that explore social class in America and the inner lives ofyoung Americans. In Expensive People, Oates takes a provocative andsuspenseful look at the roiling secrets of America's affluentsuburbs. Set in the late 1960s, this first-person confession isnarrated by Richard Everett, a precocious and obese boy who seeshimself as a minor character in the alarming drama unfolding aroundhim. Fascinated by yet alienated from his attractive, self-absorbedparents and the privileged world they inhabit, Richard incisivelyanalyzes his own mismanaged childhood, his pretentious privateschooling, his "successful-executive" father, and his elusivemother. In an act of defiance and desperation, eleven-year-oldRichard strikes out in a way that presages the violence ofever-younger Americans in the turbulent decades to come. A NationalBook Award finalist, "Expensive People" is a stunning combinationof social satire and gothic horror. "You cannot put this novel a

From the inexhaustible imagination of Ian McEwan--a master ofcontemporary fiction and author of the Booker Prize-winningnational bestseller Amsterdam --an enchanting work of fictionthat appeals equally to children and adults. First published in England as a children's book, TheDaydreamer marks a delightful foray by one of our greatestnovelists into a new fictional domain. In these seven exquisitelyinterlinked episodes, the grown-up protagonist Peter Fortunereveals the secret journeys, metamorphoses, and adventures of hischildhood. Living somewhere between dream and reality, Peterexperiences fantastical transformations: he swaps bodies with thewise old family cat; exchanges existences with a cranky infant;encounters a very bad doll who has come to life and is out forrevenge; and rummages through a kitchen drawer filled with uselessobjects to discover some not-so-useless cream that actually makespeople vanish. Finally, he wakes up as an eleven-year-old inside agrown-up body and embarks on the truly fantast

Our Mutual Friend was the last novel Charles Dickenscompleted and is, arguably, his darkest and most complex. The basicplot is vintage Dickens: an inheritance up for grabs, a murder, arocky romance or two, plenty of skullduggery, and a host ofunforgettable secondary characters. But in this final outing theauthor's heroes are more flawed, his villains more sympathetic, andthe story as a whole more harrowing and less sentimental. The moodis set in the opening scene in which a riverman, Gaffer Hexam, andhis daughter Lizzie troll the Thames searching for drowned menwhose pockets Gaffer will rifle before turning the body over to theauthorities. On this particular night Gaffer finds a corpse that islater identified as that of John Harmon, who was returning fromabroad to claim a large fortune when he was apparently murdered andthrown into the river. Harmon's death is the catalyst for everything else that happensin the novel. It seems the fortune was left to the young man on thecondition that he marry a girl he'd

Book De*ion The handsome Morris Townsend would do anything to win the hand ofplain Catherine Sloper--even if it means pretending that he lovesthe homely ingenue, not her opulent wealth. Includes a newAfterword by the author of "The Hours." Reissue.

《地球杀场》是一部英雄史诗般的科幻小说。故事发生在公元三千年的时候，地球已被外星入侵者——塞库洛统治了若干个世纪。塞库洛用毒气毁灭地球人类，对捕获到的幸存者施以暴虐；他们依靠庞大的星系矿业公司，主宰着银河系。 在洛基山脉的一个贫瘠荒凉的小山村，幸存的人类过着野蛮人的生活。乔尼·泰勒决定出走山庄，去寻找乐土，不幸落入塞库洛的魔爪。在其他幸存者：苏格兰人、中国人、俄国人的帮助之下，乔尼巧妙地与宇宙间邪恶势力周旋，并运用人类的智慧，战胜了塞库洛和别的企图瓜分地球的外星入侵者。

(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) Shakespeare'shistories--containing within their crowded tableaux all of thetragedies, confusions, and beauties of human life--are not onlydrama of the highest order. They also serve as windows throughwhich generations have made themselves familiar with crucialepisodes in English history. For an Elizabethan England that hadalready emerged onto the stage of world power and was hungry tounderstand the sources and nature of its identity, Shakespeareprovided a grandeur born of the transforming power of his art. Thisvolume contains Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3; Richard III; and KingJohn. The texts, authoritatively edited by Sylvan Barnet, aresupplemented with textual notes, bibliographies, a detailedchronology of Shakespeare's life and times, and a substantialintroduction in which Tony Tanner discusses each play individuallyand in the context of Shakespeare's work.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Dostoevsky's most revolutionarynovel, "Notes from Underground" marks the dividing line betweennineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visionsof self each century embodied. One of the most remarkablecharacters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former officialwho has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In fullretreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive,self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack onsocial utopianism and an assertion of man's essentially irrationalnature. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevskytranslations have become the standard, give us a brilliantlyfaithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedyand tormented comedy of the original.

Letting Go is Roth's first full-length novel, published justafter Goodbye, Columbus, when he was twenty-nine. Set in 1950sChicago, New York, and Iowa city, Letting Go presents as brillianta fictional portrait as we have of a mid-century America defined bysocial and ethical constraints and by moral compulsionsconspicuously different from those of today. Newly discharged fromthe Korean War army, reeling from his mother's recent death, freedfrom old attachments and hungrily seeking others, Gabe Wallach isdrawn to Paul Herz, a fellow graduate student in literature, and toLibby, Paul's moody, intense wife. Gabe's desire to be connected tothe ordered andquot; world of feelingandquot; that he finds inbooks is first tested vicariously by the anarchy of the Herzes'struggles with responsible adulthood and then by his own eager loveaffairs. Driven by the desire to live seriously and act generously,Gabe meets an impassable test in the person of Martha Reganhart, aspirited, outspoken, divorced mother of two, a formidable

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) From the acclaimed translators of"War and Peace," "Crime and Punishment," and "The BrothersKaramazov, "a brilliant translation of Nikolai Gogol's shortfiction. Collected here are Gogol's finest tales--stories thatcombine the wide-eyed, credulous imagination of the peasant withthe sardonic social criticism of the city dweller--allowing readersto experience anew the unmistakable genius of a writer who pavedthe way for Dostoevsky and Kafka. All of Gogol's most memorablecreations are here: the minor official who misplaces his nose, thedowntrodden clerk whose life is changed by the acquisition of asplendid new overcoat, the wily madman who becomes convinced that adog can tell him everything he needs to know. The wholly uniqueblend of the mundane and the supernatural that Gogol craftedestablished his reputation as one of the most daring and inventivewriters of his time.

In this classic collision of the New World with Old Europe,James weaves a fable of thwarted desire that shifts between comedy,tragedy, romance, and melodrama.

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.

传说，夜深人静时分，走过那条小路的人，一定会满脸惊怖，血流满面，死在路上。她不信，一个人去了。最终怎么样呢？她死前拼尽全力说了两句话：“一定要死的！逃不掉的！”怪象环生，生灵罹难，一切都源于50年前的怀冤觅死的那个女生？何健飞、田音榛、阿强、李老伯、冬蕗、张君行、谭星莞带你走上这趟不归路

One of Shakespeare's most thought-provoking comedies in whichhigh-born Lord Bertram learns humility and the true worth of hiswife.

The shortest and probably earliest of Shakespeare's comedies, The Comedy of Errors is the story of identical twin brotherswho are raised apart-and then mistaken for each other.

Stephen Lewis, a successful writer of children's books, isconfronted with the unthinkable: his only child, three-year-oldKate, is snatched from him in a supermarket. In one horrifyingmoment that replays itself over the years that follow, Stephenrealizes his daughter is gone. With extraordinary tenderness andinsight, Booker Prize-winning author Ian McEwan takes us into thedark territory of a marriage devastated by the loss of a child.Kate's absence sets Stephen and his wife, Julie, on diverging pathsas they each struggle with a grief that only seems to intensifywith the passage of time. Eloquent and passionate, the novelconcludes in a triumphant scene of love and hope that gives fullrein to the author's remarkable gifts. The winner of the WhitbreadPrize, The Child in Time is an astonishing novel by one of thefinest writers of his generation.

(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) Introduction by JohnCarey

Every year, Ceyala "Lala" Reyes' family--aunts, uncles,mothers, fathers, and Lala's six older brothers--packs up threecars and, in a wild ride, drive from Chicago to the LittleGrandfather and Awful Grandmother's house in Mexico City for thesummer. Struggling to find a voice above the boom of her brothersand to understand her place on this side of the border and that,Lala is a shrewd observer of family life. But when she startstelling the Awful Grandmother's life story, seeking clues to howshe got to be so awful, grandmother accuses Lala of exaggerating.Soon, a multigenerational family narrative turns into a whirlwindexploration of storytelling, lies, and life. Like the cherished"rebozo," or shawl, that has been passed down through generationsof Reyes women, Caramelo is alive with the vibrations of history,family, and love.