Literary

AN Accidental Man

by Iris Murdoch

A scintillating novel of fate, accidents, and moral dilemmas

Set in the time of the Vietnam War, this story concerns the plight of a young American, happily installed in a perfect job in England, engaged to a...

The Good Apprentice

by Iris Murdoch

Edward Baltram is overwhelmed with guilt. His nasty little prank has gone horribly wrong: He has fed his closest friend a sandwich laced with a hallucinogenic drug and the young man has fallen out of a window...

Nuns and Soldiers

by Iris Murdoch & Karen Armstrong

Set in London and in the South of France, this brilliantly structured novel centers on two women: Gertrude Openshaw, bereft from the recent death of her husband, yet awakening to passion; and Anne Cavidge, who...

The Sacred and Profane Love Machine

by Iris Murdoch

A writer of detective fiction who has not recovered from the loss of his wife becomes involved in the life of a neighbor's family.

Argall

by William Vollmann

In Argall, the newest novel in his Seven Dreams series, William T. Vollmann alternates between extravagant Elizabethan language and gritty realism in an attempt to dig beneath the legend surrounding Pocahontas,...

The Jewish Messiah: A Novel

by Arnon Grunberg & Sam Garrett

The new novel by the internationally acclaimed author- "a farce of nuclear proportions"(Vanity Fair)

Arnon Grunberg is one of the most subtly outrageous provocateurs in world literature. The Jewish Messiah, which...

Londonstani

by Gautam Malkani

A talented new writer whose portrayal of the serious business of assimilation and young masculinity is disturbing and hilarious

Hailed as one of the most surprising British novels in recent years, Gautam Malkani's...

The Royal Family

by William Vollmann

Since the publication of his first book in 1987, William T. Vollmann has established himself as one of the most fascinating and unconventional literary figures on the scene today. Named one of the twenty best...

The Descent of Alette

by Alice Notley

A rich odyssey of transformation in the tradition of The Inferno

In The Descent of Alette, Alice Notley presents a feminist epic, a bold journey into the deeper realms. Alette, the narrator, finds herself underground,...

Backlands: The Canudos Campaign

by Euclides Da Cunha, Elizabeth Lowe & Ilan Stavans

An important new translation of a fundamental work of Brazilian literature

Written by a former army lieutenant, civil engineer, and journalist, Backlands is Euclides da Cunha's vivid and poignant portrayal...

The Glimmer Palace

by Beatrice Colin

A celebration of cabaret in Berlin and the birth of cinema, set against the rise and fall of Germany between World War I and World War II

As the clock chimed the turn of the twentieth century, Lilly Nelly...

The Portable Conrad

by Joseph Conrad & Michael Gorra

A great novelist of the sea, a poet of the tropics, a critic of empire and analyst of globalization, a harbinger of the modern spy novel, an unparalleled observer of the moments in which people are stripped...

Early American Writing

by Various & Giles Gunn

Drawing materials from journals and diaries, political documents and religious sermons, prose and poetry, Giles Gunn's anthology provides a panoramic survey of early American life and literature--including...

The Portable Emerson

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement in the early nineteenth century.

The Portable Medieval Reader

by Various

In their introduction to this anthology, James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin remind us that "no area of the past is dead if we are alive to it. The variety, the complexity, the sheer humanity of the...

The Idea of Perfection

by Kate Grenville

Harley Savage is a plain woman, a part-time museum curator and quilting expert with three failed marriages and a heart condition. Douglas Cheeseman is a shy, gawky engineer with jug-handle ears, one marriage...

The Portable Greek Reader

by W. H. Auden

It is commonplace to say that our civilization is built on the ruins of Greece. W. H. Auden’s splendid anthology locates the truth behind the truism, while filling in the gaps in our knowledge of a people...

Gods Go Begging

by Alfredo Vea

“Luminous... a beautiful book.” – Carolyn See

For Vietnam veteran Jesse Pasadoble, now a defense attorney living in San Francisco, the battle still rages: in his memories, in the gang wars erupting...

The Portable Roman Reader

by Various

The Romans conquered most of the known world and detailed their conquests in calm, unapologetic histories. They were a supremely urbane people who longed poetically for the farming life. Valuing toughness and...

The Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader

by Various

Clarence Brown's marvelous collection introduces readers to the most resonant voices of twentieth-century Russia. It includes stories by Chekhov, Gorky, Bunin, Zamyatin, Babel, Nabokov, Solzhenitsyn, and Voinovich;...