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

A fascinating look at the history and grandeur of bullfighting,Death in the Afternoon is also a deeper contemplation on the natureof cowardice and bravery, sport and tragedy, and is enlivenedthroughout by Hemingway's pungent commentary on life andliterature. Seen through his eyes, bullfighting becomes an art, arichly choreographed ballet, with performers who range from awkwardamateurs to masters of great grace and cunning.

In the "brilliant novel" ("The New York Times") V.S. Naipaultakes us deeply into the life of one man--an Indian who, uprootedby the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in anisolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independentAfrican nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbingvision yet of what happens in a place caught between thedangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past andtraditions.

Joyce Carol Oates's Wonderland Quartet comprises fourremarkable novels that explore social class in America and theinner lives of young Americans. In "A Garden of Earthly Delights,"Oates presents one of her most memorable heroines, Clara Walpole,the beautiful daughter of Kentucky-born migrant farmworkers.Desperate to rise above her haphazard existence of violence andpoverty, determined not to repeat her mother's life, Clarastruggles for independence by way of her relationships with fourvery different men: her father, a family man turned itinerantlaborer, smoldering with resentment; the mysterious Lowry, whorescues Clara as a teenager and offers her the possibility of love;Revere, a wealthy landowner who provides Clara with stability; andSwan, Clara's son, who bears the psychological and spiritual burdenof his mother's ambition. A masterly work from a writer with "theuncanny ability to give us a cinemascopic vision of her America"("National Review"), "A Garden of Earthly Delights "is the openingstanza i

As he roams the US, Mexico, Morocco, Paris and London, Kerouacrecords life on the road in prose of pure poetry. Standing on theengine of a train as it rushes past fields of prickly cactus;witnessing his first bullfight in Mexico while high on opium;meditating on a sunlit roof in Tangiers or falling in love withMontmartre - Kerouac reveals both the endless diversity of humanlife and his own particular philosophy of self-fulfillment.

With his first groundbreaki'ng book, Soul Prints, Marc Gafni taught readers how to tread a lifelong path of meaning by realizing their true, unique selves. Now, in The Mystery of Love, the profound philosopher and beloved spiritual teacher invites readers to the next step on the journey, addressing with passion, wisdom, and genuine humility the all-important issues of love, creativity, and our erotic connection to the universe. In the tradition of M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled and Gary Zukov's The Seat of the Soul, The Mystery of Love speaks pene-tratingly to the age-old desire to move beyond emptiness and alienation and touch the full eros of living. Gafni, with clarity, bril- liance, and great compassion, re-frames our understandings of the erotic and the sensual in a way that invites us to live with passion and love in all facets of our lives. While drawn from the ancient wisdom texts of the Kabbalist tradi-tion, The Mystery of Love speaks to all readers who seek a passionate, joyful, yet

The bestselling tale of Romanov intrigue from the author of"The Kitchen Boy" Book groups and historical fiction buffs havemade Robert Alexanderas two previous novels word-of-mouth favoritesand national bestsellers. Set against a backdrop of ImperialRussiaas twilight, "The Romanov Bride" has the same enduringappeal. The Grand Duchess Elisavyetaas story begins like a fairytaleaa German princess renowned for her beauty and kind heartmarries the Grand Duke Sergei of Russia and enters the Romanovaslavish court. Her husband, however, rules his wife as he doesMoscowawith a cold, hard fist. And, after a peaceful demonstrationbecomes a bloodbath, the fires of the revolution link Elisavyetaasdestiny to that of Pavelaa young Bolshevikaforever.

Bellow evokes all the rich colour and exotic customs of a highlyimaginary Africa in this comic novel about a middle-aged Americanmillionaire who, seeking a new, more rewarding life, descends uponan African tribe. Henderson's awesome feats of strength and hisunbridled passion for life earns him the admiration of the tribe -but it is his gift for making rain that turns him from mere herointo messiah. A hilarious, often ribald story, "Henderson the RainKing" is also a profound look at the forces that drive a manthrough life.

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.

Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen, is part of the Barnes Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordableprices to the student and the general reader, including newscholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully craftedextras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes Noble Classics: New introductions commissioned from today's top writers andscholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporaryhistorical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes andendnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems,books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired bythe work Comments by other famous authors Study questions tochallenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographiesfor further reading Indices Glossaries, when appropriateAlleditions are beautifully designed and are printed to superiorspecifications; some include illustrations of historical interest.Barnes Noble Classics pulls together a constellation ofinfluences—bi

'It is the sum of myself, as far as the written word can go' -Kerouac on "The Town and the City". Kerouac's debut novel is agreat coming of age story which can be read as the essentialprelude to his later classics. Inspired by grief over his father'sdeath and gripped by determination to write the Great AmericanNovel, he draws largely on his own New England childhood.

This Norton Critical Edition of Twain's classic tale is based on the 1876 first American edition,widely recognized as the most authoritative text published in the author's lifetime. The novel is accompanied by a preface, original illustrations, explanatory annotations, "A Note on the Text," and a list of textual variants. "Backgrounds and Sources" includes both standard materials and lesser-known works--together they provide a rich context for The Adveutures of Tom Sawyer. Materials are organized the-matically and center on biographical backgrounds, nineteenth-century education, nineteenth-century medicine, social and regional contexts, literary contexts, and the composition of the novel. Especially noteworthy are Twain's "Miss Clapp's School,"his seldom-seen satiric piece on school exercises that fore-shadows a similarly satiric scene in the novel, and K. Patrick Ober's "Fire in a Liquid Form," a discussion of the popular Perry Davis's Pain Killer and other nineteenth-century nostrums. "Criticism"

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.

As a top columnist and stokck picker for The Motley Fool,Sheard pioneered a popular approach to investing using straightforward formuast thar later became the basis of his bestselling book The Unemotional investor.Now he turns his considerable investing and writing skills to a new and vital topic:how to achieve financial independence,stop working ,and lead the life you've always dreamed of. 作者简介: Robert Sheard is an internationally recognized investment writer.He was a senior writer for The Motley Fool for several years before opening his own money management firm,Sheard & Davey Advisors,LLC(sheard-davey.com).His research has been profiled in SmartMoney magazine,the Los Angeles Times,The Miami Herald,the San Jose Mercury News,the Houston Chronicle,The South China Morning Post,and a number of other newspapers and Internet forums.His first book,The Unemotional Inuestor(Simon & Schuster,1998)was a New Youk Times and Business Week best-seller,a number one nonfiction bestseller at Amazon.com,an

In the hopeful 1950s, Frank and April Wheeler appear to be amodel cou-ple: bright, beautiful, talented, with two young childrenand a starter home in the suburbs. Perhaps they married too youngand started a family too early. Maybe Frank's job is dull. AndApril never saw herself as a housewife.Yet they have always livedon the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner.But now that certainty is about to crumble. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, RichardYates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritualbirthright, betraying not only each other, but their bestselves.

The early masterpiece of V. S. Naipaul’s brilliant career, AHouse for Mr. Biswas is an unforgettable story inspired byNaipaul's father that has been hailed as one of the twentiethcentury's finest novels. In his forty-six short years, Mr. Mohun Biswas has been fightingagainst destiny to achieve some semblance of independence, only toface a lifetime of calamity. Shuttled from one residence to anotherafter the drowning death of his father, for which he isinadvertently responsible, Mr. Biswas yearns for a place he cancall home. But when he marries into the domineering Tulsi family onwhom he indignantly becomes dependent, Mr. Biswas embarks on anarduous–and endless–struggle to weaken their hold over him andpurchase a house of his own. A heartrending, dark comedy ofmanners, A House for Mr. Biswas masterfully evokes a man’s questfor autonomy against an emblematic post-colonial canvas.

Begun in the autumn of 1957 and published posthumously in 1964,Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast captures what it meantto be young and poor and writing in Paris during the 1920s. Acorrespondent for the Toronto Star, Hemingway arrived inParis in 1921, three years after the trauma of the Great War and atthe beginning of the transformation of Europe's cultural landscape:Braque and Picasso were experimenting with cubist forms; JamesJoyce, long living in self-imposed exile from his native Dublin,had just completed Ulysses; Gertude Stein held court at 27rue de Fleurus, and deemed young Ernest a member of ruegénération perdue; and T. S. Eliot was a bank clerk in London.It was during these years that the as-of-yet unpublished youngwriter gathered the material for his first novel, The Sun AlsoRises, and the subsequent masterpieces that followed.

Edited with an Introduction by David Galloway.

" Zamyatin's] intuitive grasp of the irrational side oftotalitarianism- human sacrifice, cruelty as an end in itself-makesWe] superior to Huxley's Brave New World]."-George Orwell Aninspiration for George Orwell's "1984" and a precursor to the workof Philip K. Dick and Stanislaw Lem, We is a classic of dystopianscience fiction ripe for rediscovery. Written in 1921 by theRussian revolutionary Yevgeny Zamyatin, this story of the thirtiethcentury is set in the One State, a society where all live for thecollective good and individual freedom does not exist. The noveltakes the form of the diary of state mathematician D-503, who, tohis shock, experiences the most disruptive emotion imaginable: lovefor another human being.At once satirical and sobering-and nowavailable in a powerful new modern translation-We speaks to all whohave suffered under repression of their personal and artisticfreedom. "One of the greatest novels of the twentiethcentury."-Irving Howe

In this thoughtful and moving novel, four men find themselvesinextricably bound together by their past histories. The aged JudgeClane dreams of resurrecting the confederacy, while his grandson,Jester, is involuntarily drawn to Sherman, a volatile black orphanwho feels the sharp sting of racial injustice, especially when hefinds out the truth about his parentage. Through the eyes of theseindividuals Carson McCullers explores the roots of racial prejudiceand the dual moralities of the town's leading whites.

'Cesar Montero was dreaming about elephants. He'd seen them atthe movies on Sunday...' Only moments later, Cesar is led away bypolice as they clear the crowds away from the man he has justkilled. But Cesar is not the only man to be riled by the rumoursbeing spread in his Colombian hometown - under the cover ofdarkness, someone creeps through the streets sticking maliciousposters to walls and doors. Each night the respectable townsfolkretire to their beds fearful that they will be the subject of thefollowing morning's lampoons. As paranoia seeps through the townand the delicate veil of tranquility begins to slip, can theperpetrator be uncovered before accusation and violence leave theinhabitants' sanity in tatters?

In this bestselling compilation of essays, written in theclear-eyed, uncompromising language for which he is famous, Orwelldiscusses with vigor such diverse subjects as his boyhoodschooling, the Spanish Civil War, Henry Miller, Britishimperialism, and the profession of writing.