Dumas's most popular novel has long been a favorite withchildren, and its swashbuckling heroes are well known from many afilm and TV adaptation. Set in 17th-century France, this tale ofthe adventures of D'Artagnan and the three musketeers is the finestexample of its author's brilliantly inventive storytellinggenius.

After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recentlymoved back to the United States with his English wife and fourchildren (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americansbelieved they had been abducted by aliens--as he later put it, "itwas clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new andimproved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hourdental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not aluxury item. Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Brysonhallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimesdisconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. The result is abook filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt toreacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extendedif at times bemused love letter to the homeland he has returned toafter twenty years away.

Shakespeare’s greatest achievement in nondramatic verse washis collection of 154 magnificent sonnets that portray a tumultuousworld of love, rivalry, and conflict among a poet, an aristocraticyoung man, a rival poet, and a mysterious “dark lady.” Moreprofound than other Elizabethan sonnet sequences and neversurpassed as archetypes of the form, these poems explore almostevery imaginable emotional complexity related to love andfriendship. Some poems are dark, bitter, and self-hating, othersexpress idealism with unmatchable eloquence–and all are ofquintessential beauty, part of the world’s great literaryheritage. In addition to his sonnets, Shakespeare published two long poemsearly in his career: Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.Immediately popular in Shakespeare’s time, they display a richnessthat can also reward us with insights into the powerful imagery ofhis plays. Rounding out this volume are two minor poems, “A Lover’sComplaint” and “The Phoenix and Turtle,”

(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 One of the most remarkablecharacters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former officialwho has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence.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.

Book De*ion Toni Morrison's new novelis a Faulknerian symphony of passion and hatred, power andperversity, color and class that spans three generations of blackwomen in a fading beach town. In life, Bill Cosey enjoyed the affections of many women, who woulddo almost anything to gain his favor. In death his hold on them maybe even stronger. Wife, daughter, granddaughter, employee,mistress: As Morrison's protagonists stake their furious claim onCosey's memory and estate, using everything from intrigue tooutright violence, she creates a work that is shrewd, funny,erotic, and heart-wrenching. Amazon.com The first page of Toni Morrison's novel Love is a soft introductionto a narrator who pulls you in with her version of a tale of theocean-side community of Up Beach, a once popular ocean resort.Morrison introduces an enclave of people who react to one man--BillCosey--and to each other as they tell of his affect on generationsof characters living in the seaside community. One clear truthhere, told time and ag

In this, his final adventure, Buchan's hero Richard Hannay becomes embroiled in one of the most hazardous escapades of his life. Two men are honour bound to help the tormented Valdemar Haraldsen, and a third decides to mastermind the whole affair out o-f sheer love of adventure and a dislike of villains. In the final event, the fate of Haraldsen and his three redoubtable defenders rests on the undaunted bravery of two children. Buchan is one of the best-loved story-tellers of histime, and this thriller reflects a fundamental faith in the magnanimity of human nature that is both inspiring and refreshing.

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."

If there ever has been a groundbreaking edition that likewisereturns the reader to the original Shakespeare text, it will be theApplause Folio Texts. If there has ever been an accessible versionof the Folio, it is this edition, set for the first time in modernfonts. The Folio is the source of all other editions. The Foliotext forces us to re-examine the assumptions and prejudices whichhave encumbered over four hundred years of scholarship andperformance. Notes refer the reader to subsequent editorialinterventions, and offer the reader a multiplicity ofinterpretations. Notes also advise the reader on variations betweenFolios and Quartos. The heavy mascara of four centuries ofShakespearean glossing has by now glossed over the originalcountenance of Shakespeare's work. Never has there been a Folioavailable in modern reading fonts. While other complete Folioeditions continue to trade simply on the facsimile appearance ofthe Elizabethan "look," none of them is easily and practicallyutilized in general Shakespeare

"Nineteen Eighty-Four" revealed George Orwell as one of thetwentieth century's greatest mythmakers. While the totalitariansystem that provoked him into writing it has since passed intooblivion, his harrowing cautionary tale of a man trapped in apolitical nightmare has had the opposite fate: its relevance andpower to disturb our complacency seem to grow decade by decade. InWinston Smith's desperate struggle to free himself from anall-encompassing, malevolent state, Orwell zeroed in on tendenciesapparent in every modern society, and made vivid the universalpredicament of the individual.

“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

Written in 1852, this grand indictment of Victorian society--on its surface a mystery story-- deals with the themes of thevagaries of the High Court of Chancery and misplaced children. Fromthe Inside Flap Introduction by Barbara Hardy

In No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy simultaneouslystrips down the American crime novel and broadens its concerns toencompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodilycontemporary as this morning’s headlines.

(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) Introduction by JohnBayley

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Alexandre Dumas's epic novel ofjustice, retribution, and self-discovery--one of the mostenduringly popular adventure tales ever written--in a newly revisedtranslation. This beloved novel tells the story of Edmond Dantes,wrongfully imprisoned for life in the supposedly impregnable seafortress, the Chateau d'If. After a daring escape, and afterunearthing a hidden treasure revealed to him by a fellow prisoner,he devotes the rest of his life to tracking down and punishing theenemies who wronged him. Though a brilliant storyteller, Dumas wasgiven to repetitions and redundancies; this slightly streamlinedversion of the original 1846 English translation speeds thenarrative flow while retaining most of the rich pictorialde*ions and all the essential details of Dumas's intricatelyplotted and thrilling masterpiece.

In a beleaguered city where rats and roving gangs terrorizethe streets, where government has broken down and meaninglessviolence holds sway, a woman -- middle-aged and middle-class -- isbrought a twelve-year-old girl and told that it is herresponsibility to raise the child. This book, which the author hascalled "an attempt at autobiography," is that woman's journal -- aglimpse of a future only slightly more horrendous than our present,and of the forces that alone can save us from totaldestruction.

Set in a topsy-turvy world like a holiday revel, this comedydevises a romantic plot around separated twins, misplaced passions,and mistaken identity. Juxtaposed to it is the satirical story of aself-deluded steward who dreams of becoming “Count Malvolio” onlyto receive his comeuppance at the hands of the merrymakers hewishes to suppress. The two plots combine to create a farce touchedwith melancholy, mixed throughout with seductively beautifulexplorations on the themes of love and time, and the play ends, notwith laughter, but with a clown’s sad song. 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

Book De*ion The work of the world's greatest dramatist is edited byoutstanding scholars and presented here, along with an extensiveoverview of Shakespeare's life, world and theater, a special noteon the sources from which Shakespeare derived this work, dramaticcriticism, commentaries, and much more.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Britain's three-hundred-yearrelationship with the Indian subcontinent produced much fiction ofinterest but only one indisputable masterpiece: E. M. Forster's "APassage to India," published in 1924, at the height of the Indianindependence movement. Centering on an ambiguous incident between ayoung Englishwoman of uncertain stability and an Indian doctoreager to know his conquerors better, Forster's book explores, withunexampled profundity, both the historical chasm between races andthe eternal one between individuals struggling to ease theirisolation and make sense of their humanity.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) From one of the most brilliantand influential thinkers of the twentieth century-two novels, sixshort stories, and a pair of essays in a single volume. In both hisessays and his fiction, Albert Camus (1913--1960) de-ployed hislyric eloquence in defense against despair, providing anaffirmation of the brave assertion of humanity in the face of auniverse devoid of order or meaning. "The Plague"-written in 1947and still profoundly relevant-is a riveting tale of horror,survival, and resilience in the face of a devastating epidemic."The Fall" (1956), which takes the form of an astonishingconfession by a French lawyer in a seedy Amsterdam bar, is ahaunting parable of modern conscience in the face of evil. The sixstories of "Exile and the Kingdom "(1957) represent Camus at theheight of his narrative powers, masterfully depicting hischaracters-from a renegade missionary to an adulterous wife -atdecisive moments of revelation. Set beside their fictionalcounterparts, Camus's famous essays

Seventeen interlinked tales by the winner of the 1988 NobelPrize for Literature follow such themes as betrayal, intrigue,obsessive love, social injustice, reincarnations, and wrongsrighted or made worse. Reprint. K.