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

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

Slaughterhous-Five is one of the world's great anti-warbooks. Centering on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden, BillyPilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of ourown fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraidto know.

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.

Includes The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of MarieRogêt, and The Purloined Letter Between 1841 and 1844, Edgar Allan Poe invented the genre ofdetective fiction with three mesmerizing stories of a young Frencheccentric named C. Auguste Dupin. Introducing to literature theconcept of applying reason to solving crime, these tales broughtPoe fame and fortune to live on. Years later, Dorothy Sayers woulddescribe “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” as “almost a completemanual of detective theory and practice.” Indeed, Poe’s shortmysteries inspired the creation of countless literary sleuths,among them Sherlock Holmes. Today, the Dupin stories still standout as unique, utterly engrossing page-turners. This Modern Library edition reproduces the definitive texts ofthe three tales. It includes an enlightening Introduction bynovelist Matthew Pearl and an Appendix, “The EarliestDetectives.”

These four landmark novels of nineteenth-century Americanliterature have gained a permanent place in our culture as greatclassics. They are not only part of our national heritage, butmasterpieces of world literature whose deep and lasting influenceis felt to this day. The Scarlet Letter vividly records America'smoral and historical roots in Puritan New England and masterfullyre-creates a society's preoccupation with sin, guilt, and pride.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn carries readers along on Huck'sunforgettable journey down the Mississippi in America's foremostcomic epic--the first great novel in a truly American voice. TheRed Badge of Courage re-creates the brutal reality of war and itspsychological impact on a young Civil War soldier in one of themost moving and widely read American novels. Billy Budd, Sailor,and Other Stories joins the world's great tragic literature as adoomed seaman becomes the innocent victim of a clash between socialauthority and individual freedom.

"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.

Mike Gayle has carved a whole new literary niche out of the male confessional novel. He's a publishing phenomenon'EVENING STANDARD 'Delightfully observant nostalgia.., will strike a chord with both sexes' SHE 'A warm, funny romantic comedy' DAILY MAIL 'Gayle's chatty style sustains a cracking pace' THE TIMES "Thirty means only going to the pub if there,s somewhere to sit down, Thiity means owning at least one classical CD, even if it's New That's What I Call Classical Vol 6. Thirty means calling off the search for the perfect partner because now, after al! thee years in the wilderness, you've finally found what you've been looking for." Unlike most people Matt Beckford is actually looking forward to turning thirty. After struggling through most of his twenties he thinks his career, finances and love life are finally sorted. But when he splits up with his girlfriend, he realises that life has different plans for him.and Matt temporarily moves back home to his parents. Within hours,his mum and dad

A new selection for the NEA's Big Read program A compact selection of Poe's greatest stories and poems, chosenby the National Endowment for the Arts for their Big Readprogram. This selection of eleven stories and seven poems contains suchfamously chilling masterpieces of the storyteller's art as "TheTell-tale Heart," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Cask ofAmontillado," and "The Pit and the Pendulum," and suchunforgettable poems as "The Raven," "The Bells," and "Annabel Lee."Poe is widely credited with pioneering the detective story,represented here by "The Purloined Letter," "The Mystery of MarieRoget," and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." Also included is his essay "The Philosophy of Composition," inwhich he lays out his theory of how good writers write, describinghow he constructed "The Raven" as an example.

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

Concerned for her family's financial welfare and eager toexpand her own horizons, Agnes Grey takes up the position ofgoverness, the only respectable employment for an unmarried womanin the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, Agnes cannot anticipatethe hardship, humiliation, and loneliness that await her in thebrutish Bloomfield and haughty Murray households. Drawn from AnneBronte's own experiences, "Agnes Grey" depicts the harsh conditionsand class snobbery that governesses were often forced to endure. AsBarbara A. Suess writes in her Introduction, "Bronte provides aportrait of the governess that is as sympathetic as her fictionalindictment of the shallow, selfish moneyed class is biting."

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

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.

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."

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

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.

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.

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

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

These controversial epic poems demonstrate Milton's genius forfusing sense and sound, classicism and innovation, narrative anddrama in profound explorations of the moral problems of God'sjustice-and what it truly means to be human.