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.

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.

This new collection of Sandburgs finest and most representativepoetry draws on all of his previous volumes and includes fourunpublished poems about Lincoln. The Hendricks comprehensiveintroduction discusses how Sandburgs life and beliefs colored hiswork and why it continues to resonate so deeply with americanstoday. Edited and with an Introduction by George and WilleneHendrick.

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

The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his nativeRussian and the crowning achievement of that period in his literarycareer. It is also his ode to Russian literature, evoking the worksof Pushkin, Gogol, and others in the course of its narrative: thestory of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished e migre poetliving in Berlin, who dreams of the book he will someday write--abook very much like The Gift itself.

Revised introduction; new chronology and further reading Translated with an Introduction by Paul Turner.

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.

Since its publication in 1911, The Secret GaMen has delighted generations of readers with its timeless appeal. It has been translated into dozens of languages and has been reworked into plays and films. The text of this Norton Critical Edition is based on the first edition and is accompanied by explanatoU annotations. Frances Hodgson Burnett published more than fifty novels (most for adults, but also Little LorJ Faetlero)') and thirteen plays. She was the highest-paid and most famous woman writer of her time; from the age of eighteen, she never experienced rejection of her work by a publisher. Born and raised in England and transplanted to the United States as a teenager during the waning days of the Civil War, Burnett made her home in both countries today both countries claim her as their own. "Backgrounds and Contexts" and "Letters" inform readers about various aspects of Burnett's life and work and include her own writings on gardens and their spiritual healing. Four illustrations suggest her p

Tragic tale of a retarded man and the friend who loves and tries to protect him.

Laurence is a young ex-sailor who can't resist the lure of the good life, and when he finds a job as chauffeur to the wealthy Mr and Mrs Bannister, his occasional work leaves him free to indulge. Bannister himself is bitter - his twisted leg keeps him on the sidelines while his ravishingly beautiful wife endures his moods with saintly patience. Or does she? It's the Bannisters' closest friend, Grisby, who starts stirring, getting Laurence to agree to a crazy plot. It will net him thousands, no strings attached. But is it all too easy?

Joyce Carol Oates's Wonderland Quartet comprises fourremarkable novels that explore social class in America and theinner lives of young Americans. Spanning from the Great Depressionto the turbulent Vietnam War era, "Wonderland" is the epic accountof Jesse Vogel, a boy who emerged from a family tragedy with hislife spared but his world torn apart. Orphaned after watching hisfather murder his entire family, Jesse embarks on a personalodyssey that takes him from a Dickensian foster home to college andgraduate school to the pinnacle of the medical profession. As anadult, Jesse must summon the strength to reach across the"generation gap" and rescue his endangered teenaged daughter, whohas fallen into the drug-infused 1960s counterculture. Hailed byLibrary Journal as "the greatest of Oates's novels," "Wonderland"is the capstone of a magnificent literary excursion that plungesbeneath the glossy surface of American life. "Wonderland" is thefinal novel in Joyce Carol Oates's Wonderland Quartet. The booksthat co

Written with burning intensity in the last years of Roberto Bolano's life, "2666" has been greeted across the world as the great writer's masterpiece, surpassing everything in imagination, beauty and scope. It is a novel on an astonishing scale from a passionate visionary. 'The best book of 2008 ...A masterpiece, the electrifying literary event of the year' - "Time". 'Readers who have snacked on Haruki Murakami will feast on Roberto Bolano'- "Sunday Times". 'Bolano makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of view on the world' - "Guardian".

This is the story of an artist as an aging man, strugglingthrough the wreckage of Japan's World War II experience. Ishiguro'sfirst novel.

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.

Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, "Callme Ishmael," the first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride andPrejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. Andcertainly what Melville did for whaling Austen does formarriage--tracing the intricacies (not to mention the economics) of19th-century British mating rituals with a sure hand and anunblinking eye. As usual, Austen trains her sights on a countryvillage and a few families--in this case, the Bennets, the Philips,and the Lucases. Into their midst comes Mr. Bingley, a single manof good fortune, and his friend, Mr. Darcy, who is even richer.Mrs. Bennet, who married above her station, sees their arrival asan opportunity to marry off at least one of her five daughters.Bingley is complaisant and easily charmed by the eldest Bennetgirl, Jane; Darcy, however, is harder to please. Put off by Mrs.Bennet's vulgarity and the untoward behavior of the three youngerdaughters, he is unable to see the true worth of the older girls,Jane and Elizabeth

Stevenson’s brooding historical romance demonstrates his mostabiding theme—the elemental struggle between good and evil—as itunfolds against a hauntingly beautiful Scottish landscape, amid thefierce loyalties and violent enmities that characterized Scottishhistory. When two brothers attempt to split their loyalties betweenthe warring factions of the 1745 Jacobite rising, one family findsitself tragically divided. Stevenson’s remarkably vividcharacterizations create an acutely moving, psychologically complexwork; as Andrea Barrett points out in her Introduction, “Thebrothers’ characters, not the historical facts, shape thedrama.” This Modern Library Paperback Classic includes illustrationsreproduced from the original edition.

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

From Ernest Hemingway's Preface: 'There are many kinds ofstories in this book. I hope you will find some that you like - Ingoing where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, andseeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument youwrite with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know Ihad to put it on the grindstone and hammer it into shape and put awhetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, thanto have it bright and shining, and nothing to say, or smooth andwell-oiled in the closet, but unused.' This is a collection ofHemingway's first forty-nine short stories, featuring a briefintroduction by the author and lesser known as well as familiartales, including "Up in Michigan", "Fifty Grand", and "The Light ofthe World", and the "Snows of Kilimanjaro", "Winner Take Nothing"and "Men Without Women" collections.

Now in his mid-thirties, Nathan Zuckerman, a would-be reclusedespite his newfound fame as a bestselling author, ventures ontothe streets of Manhattan in the final year of the turbulentsixties. Not only is he assumed by his fans to be his own fictionalsatyr, Gilbert Carnovsky ("Hey, you do all that stuff in thatbook?"), but he also finds himself the target of admonishers,advisers, and sidewalk literary critics. The recent murders ofRobert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., lead an unsettledZuckerman to wonder if "target" may be more than a figure ofspeech. In Zuckerman Unbound--the second volume of the trilogy andepilogue "Zuckerman Bound"--the notorious novelist Nathan Zuckermanretreats from his oldest friends, breaks his marriage to a virtuouswoman, and damages, perhaps irreparably, his affectionateconnection to his younger brother...and all because of his greatgood fortune

A national bestseller, Snobbery examines the discriminatingqualities in all of us. With dishy detail, Joseph Epstein skewersall manner of elitism in contemporary America. He offers his archobservations of the new footholds of snobbery: food, fashion,high-achieving children, schools, politics, being with-it,name-dropping, and much more. Clever, incisive, and immenselyentertaining, Snobberyexplores the shallows and depths of statusand taste -- with enviable results.

The Everyman's Library Pocket Poets hardcover series ispopular for its compact size and reasonable price which does notcompromise content. Poems: Shakespeare contains selections fromShakespeare's work, including his sonnets, his narrative poems"Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece," songs and speeches,and an index of first lines.