Among the greatest novels of the twentieth century and the basis for director David Lean’s Academy Award-winning film, A Passage to India tells of the clash of cultures in British India after the turn of the century. In exquisite prose, Forster reveals the menace that lurks just beneath...  more

Among the greatest novels of the twentieth century and the basis for director David Lean’s Academy Award-winning film, A Passage to India tells of the clash of cultures in British India after the turn of the century. In exquisite prose, Forster reveals the menace that lurks just beneath the surface of ordinary life, as a common misunderstanding erupts into a devastating affair.

This complex tale of self-discovery — considered by the author to be his best work — traces the path of an aging idealist, Lambert Strether. Arriving in Paris with the intention of persuading his young charge to abandon an obsession with a French woman and return home, Strether...  more

This complex tale of self-discovery — considered by the author to be his best work — traces the path of an aging idealist, Lambert Strether. Arriving in Paris with the intention of persuading his young charge to abandon an obsession with a French woman and return home, Strether reaches unexpected conclusions.

Beginning with a chance encounter with the beautiful Eliza June Watermark and ending, four days and 900 pages later, with the Events of November 17, this is the story of Gurion Maccabee, age ten: a lover, a fighter, a scholar, and a truly spectacular talker. Expelled from three Jewish...  more

Beginning with a chance encounter with the beautiful Eliza June Watermark and ending, four days and 900 pages later, with the Events of November 17, this is the story of Gurion Maccabee, age ten: a lover, a fighter, a scholar, and a truly spectacular talker. Expelled from three Jewish day-schools for acts of violence and messianic tendencies, Gurion ends up in the Cage, a special lockdown program for the most hopeless cases of Aptakisic Junior High. Separated from his scholarly followers, Gurion becomes a leader of a very different sort, with righteous aims building to a revolution of troubling intensity. The Instructions is an absolutely singular work of fiction by an important new talent. Combining the crackling voice of Philip Roth with the encyclopedic mind of David Foster Wallace, Adam Levin has shaped a world driven equally by moral fervor and slapstick comedy—a novel that is muscular and exuberant, troubling and empathetic, monumental, breakneck, romantic, and unforgettable.

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs--yet he reserves his heart...  more

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs--yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty-one years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.

First published in Hungary in 1986 after a five-year battle with censors, A Book of Memories is both a confessional autobiographical novel and psychological inquest into the repressed nightmares of Europe's recent past. The novel revolves around several multilayered, elaborately linked...  more

First published in Hungary in 1986 after a five-year battle with censors, A Book of Memories is both a confessional autobiographical novel and psychological inquest into the repressed nightmares of Europe's recent past. The novel revolves around several multilayered, elaborately linked narratives. The first, set against the backdrop of 1970s East Berlin, is that of an emotionally tormented young Hungarian writer who is enmeshed in an amorous triad with a German poet and an aging temperamental actress. The second narrative is a novel the narrator is composing about a turn-of-the-century German aesthete, whose anti-bourgeois transgressions and hypersensitivity mirror those of his creator. A final voice is that of a childhood friend who, after the narrator's death, offers his own perspective on their friendship and on the events that shaped their lives. With a hypnotic attention to sensuous detail conveyed in a prose as lush as it is elegantly precise, Pter Ndas's work is certain to endure both as a brilliant inquiry into the varieties of sexual, artistic, and political passion, and as an important moral expression of the public and private soul of twentieth-century Europe.

The historic events in Russia from 1903 to 1943 form the chaotic background of the story, it's the human drama as seen through the eyes of Yurii Zhivago that gives it meaning. As Yurii becomes a prisoner of the Partisans, separated from his wife and family and then from his great love, Lara,...  more

The historic events in Russia from 1903 to 1943 form the chaotic background of the story, it's the human drama as seen through the eyes of Yurii Zhivago that gives it meaning. As Yurii becomes a prisoner of the Partisans, separated from his wife and family and then from his great love, Lara, his brooding intelligence finds courage and dignity far beyond that of any political ideology. Introduction by John Bayley.

The author of the classic bestsellers The Secret History and The Little Friend returns with a brilliant, highly anticipated new novel. A young boy in New York City, Theo Decker, miraculously survives an explosion that takes the life of his mother. Alone and determined to avoid being taken in by...  more

The author of the classic bestsellers The Secret History and The Little Friend returns with a brilliant, highly anticipated new novel. A young boy in New York City, Theo Decker, miraculously survives an explosion that takes the life of his mother. Alone and determined to avoid being taken in by the city as an orphan, Theo scrambles between nights in friends' apartments and on the city streets. He becomes entranced by the one thing that reminds him of his mother: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that soon draws Theo into the art underworld. Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America. It is a story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the enormous power of art.

Richard Papen had never been to New England before his nineteenth year. Then he arrived at Hampden College and quickly became seduced by the sweet, dark rhythms of campus life -- in particular by an elite group of five students, Greek scholars, worldly, self-assured, and, at first glance, highly...  more

Richard Papen had never been to New England before his nineteenth year. Then he arrived at Hampden College and quickly became seduced by the sweet, dark rhythms of campus life -- in particular by an elite group of five students, Greek scholars, worldly, self-assured, and, at first glance, highly unapproachable. Yet as Richard was accepted and drawn into their inner circle, he learned a terrifying secret that bound them to one another... a secret about an incident in the woods in the dead of night where an ancient rite was brought to brutal life... and led to a gruesome death. And that was just the beginning...

Bigger Thomas' violent acts gave him a sense of freedom and identitySet in the 1930's, the portrayal of poverty and feelings of helplessness experienced by people in the inner city is as meaningful today as when it was written.Native Son is the story of Bigger Thomas, a black youth whose tragic...  more

Bigger Thomas' violent acts gave him a sense of freedom and identitySet in the 1930's, the portrayal of poverty and feelings of helplessness experienced by people in the inner city is as meaningful today as when it was written.Native Son is the story of Bigger Thomas, a black youth whose tragic life was drawn from Richard Wright's own experiences and memories of the Chicago ghetto. Although segregated, Wright held that the noisy crowded physical aspect of the urban environment, with its stimulating sense of power, fulfillment, and possible achievement brought forth a more obstreperous reaction than in the South. Vivid, unforgettable and heartbreaking, Wright's masterpiece forces us to witness the inhumanity of our society.The power and compassion of James Earl Jones' performance of Native Son sears this classic work into our memories forever.Richard Wright (1908-1960) left Memphis at 19 to live in Chicago where he became a writer. He grew to be considered not only the leading black author in the United States, but also a major heir of the naturalistic tradition. Wright spent his last years in Paris, where he died in 1960. James Earl Jones is one of this country's greatest artistic resources, as his acclaimed performances on stage, screen and television have proved. He has starred in such films as Dr. Strangelove, The Great White Hope, The Man, Cry the Beloved Country, and A Family Thing, and on Broadway in Othello and Fences, for which he won the Tony Award.

The story of a young woman plunged into a labyrinth where the secrets of her family's past connect to an inconceivable evil: the dark fifteenth-century reign of Vlad the Impaler and a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive through the ages. The search for the truth becomes...  more

The story of a young woman plunged into a labyrinth where the secrets of her family's past connect to an inconceivable evil: the dark fifteenth-century reign of Vlad the Impaler and a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive through the ages. The search for the truth becomes an adventure of monumental proportions, taking us from monasteries and dusty libraries to the capitals of Eastern Europe -- in a feat of storytelling so rich, so hypnotic, so exciting that it has enthralled readers around the world.