Dante

Robert Pinsky

John Freccero

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Massachusetts

A New Verse Translation, Bilingual Edition

A translation of the classic poem about man's spiritual journey

The Inferno of Dante

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Annie Dillard

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Blue Ridge valley. Annie Dillard sets out to see what she can see. What she sees are astonishing incidents of "mystery, death, beauty, violence."

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

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Natalia Ginzburg

Jenny McPhee

Peg Boyers

A masterpiece of European literature that blends family memoir and fiction

An Italian family, sizable, with its routines and rituals, crazes, pet phrases, and stories, doubtful, comical, indispensable, comes to life in the pages of Natalia Ginzburg's Family Lexicon. Giuseppe Levi, the father, is a scientist, consumed by his work and a mania for hiking--when he isn't provoked into angry remonstration by someone misspeaking or misbehaving or wearing the wrong thing. Giuseppe is Jewish, married to Lidia, a Catholic, though neither is religious; they live in the industrial city of Turin where, as the years pass, their children find ways of their own to medicine, marriage, literature, politics. It is all very ordinary, except that the background to the story is Mussolini's Italy in its steady downward descent to race law and world war. The Levis are, among other things, unshakeable anti-fascists. That will complicate their lives.

Family Lexicon is about a family and language--and about storytelling not only as a form of survival but also as an instrument of deception and domination. The book takes the shape of a novel, yet everything is true. "Every time that I have found myself inventing something in accordance with my old habits as a novelist, I have felt impelled at once to destroy [it]," Ginzburg tells us at the start. "The places, events, and people are all real."

Family Lexicon

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Victor Hugo

Lee Fahnestock

Norman MacAfee

Chris Bohjalian

NOW A SIX-PART MINISERIES ON MASTERPIECE ON PBS

The only completely unabridged paperback edition of Victor Hugo's masterpiece--a sweeping tale of love, loss, valor, and passion.

Introducing one of the most famous characters in literature, Jean Valjean--the noble peasant imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread--Les Misérables ranks among the greatest novels of all time. In it, Victor Hugo takes readers deep into the Parisian underworld, immerses them in a battle between good and evil, and carries them to the barricades during the uprising of 1832 with a breathtaking realism that is unsurpassed in modern prose.

Within his dramatic story are themes that capture the intellect and the emotions: crime and punishment, the relentless persecution of Valjean by Inspector Javert, the desperation of the prostitute Fantine, the amorality of the rogue Thénardier, and the universal desire to escape the prisons of our own minds. Les Misérables gave Victor Hugo a canvas upon which he portrayed his criticism of the French political and judicial systems, but the portrait that resulted is larger than life, epic in scope--an extravagant spectacle that dazzles the senses even as it touches the heart.
 
Translated by Lee Fahnestock and Norman Macafee, based on the classic nineteenth-century Charles E. Wilbour translation
 
Inlcudes an Introduction by Lee Fahnestock
and an Afterword by Chris Bohjalian

Les Miserables

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D. H. Lawrence

Kathryn Harrison

Constance Chatterley turns from a sterile marriage to a passionate relationship with a spiritually independent gamekeeper.

Lady Chatterley's Lover

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Shchedrin

James Wood

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Searingly hot in the summer, bitterly cold in the winter, the ancestral estate of the Golovlyov family is the end of the road. There Anna Petrovna rules with an iron hand over her servants and family-until she loses power to the relentless scheming of her hypocritical son Judas. One of the great books of Russian literature, The Golovlyov Family is a vivid picture of a condemned and isolated outpost of civilization that, for contemporary readers, will recall the otherwordly reality of Macondo in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The Golovlyov Family

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Benjamin Labatut

Adrian Nathan West

One of The New York Times Book Review’s “10 Best Books of 2021” Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize A fictional examination of the lives of real-life scientists and thinkers whose discoveries resulted in moral consequences beyond their imagining. When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger—these are some of luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the reader, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, alienate friends and lovers, descend into isolation and insanity. Some of their discoveries reshape human life for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear. At a breakneck pace and with a wealth of disturbing detail, Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to tell the stories of the scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible.

When We Cease to Understand the World

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Euripides

Stephen Esposito

Michael R. Halleran

Anthony Podlecki

Four Plays

English translations of four of Euripides' most popular tragedies, with notes, extensive introductions, and two interpretive essays by Michael R . Halleran.

Medea, Hippolytus, Heracles, Bacchae

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Sophocles

Ruby Blondell

Antigone, King Oidipous and Oidipous at Colonus

English translations of three of Sophocles' Oidipous Cycle: King Oidipous, Oidipous at Colonus, and Antigone. Focus Classical Library provides close translations with notes and essays to provide access to understanding Greek culture.

The Theban Plays

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Diskin Clay

English translation of Euripides' tragedy about the consequences of war and the fate of those defeated in war. Introductory essay; appendix on Euripides' "Trojan Tetrology"; a translation of Gorgias' "In Praise of Helen"; suggestions for further reading.

The Trojan Women

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Janice Galloway

From the corner of a darkened room Joy Stone watches herself. As memories of the deaths of her lover and mother surface unbidden, life for Joy narrows âe" to negotiating each day, each encounter, each second; to finding the trick to keep living. Told with shattering clarity and wry wit, this is a Scottish classic fit for our time.

The Trick Is to Keep Breathing

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Kurt Vonnegut

"A free-wheeling vehicle . . . an unforgettable ride!"--The New York Times 

Cat's Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers, Cat's Cradle is one of the twentieth century's most important works--and Vonnegut at his very best.

"[Vonnegut is] an unimitative and inimitable social satirist."--Harper's Magazine

"Our finest black-humorist . . . We laugh in self-defense."--Atlantic Monthly

Cat's Cradle

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In a frolic of cartoon and comic outbursts against rule and reason, a miraculous weaving of science fiction, memoir, parable, fairy tale and farce, Kurt Vonnegut attacks the whole spectrum of American society, releasing some of his best-loved literary cre

Breakfast of Champions

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Cristina Rivera Garza

Suzanne Jill Levine

Aviva Kana

Fairy tale meets detective drama in this David Lynch-like novel by a writer Jonathan Lethem calls "one of Mexico's greatest . . . we are just barely beginning to catch up to what she has to offer."

A fairy tale run amok, The Taiga Syndrome follows an unnamed Ex-Detective as she searches for a couple who has fled to the far reaches of the earth. A betrayed husband is convinced by a brief telegram that his second ex-wife wants him to track her down--that she wants to be found. He hires the Ex-Detective, who sets out with a translator into a snowy, hostile forest where strange things happen and translation betrays both sense and one's senses. Tales of Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood haunt the Ex-Detective's quest into a territory overrun with the primitive excesses of Capitalism--accumulation and expulsion, corruption and cruelty--though the lessons of her journey are more experiential than moral: that just as love can fly away, sometimes unloving flies away as well. That sometimes leaving everything behind is the only thing left to do.

The Taiga Syndrome

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Jen George

“I'm so happy this collection exists. I feel drunk with love for these stories. They're so funny and weird and true.” —Sheila Heti Five stories―several as long as novellas―introduce the world to Jen George, a writer whose furiously imaginative new voice calls to mind Donald Barthelme and Leonora Carrington no less than Kathy Acker and Chris Kraus. In “Guidance/The Party,” an ethereal alcoholic “Guide” in robes and flowing hair appears to help a thirty-three-year-old woman prepare a party for her belated adulthood; “Take Care of Me Forever” tragically lambasts the medical profession as a ship of fools afloat in loneliness and narcissism; “Instruction” chronicles a season in an unconventional art school called The Warehouse, where students divide their time between orgies, art critiques, and burying dead racehorses. Combining slapstick, surrealism, erotica, and social criticism, Jen George's sprawling creative energy belies the secret precision and unexpected tenderness of everything she writes.

The Babysitter at Rest

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Franz Kafka

Translated by PEN translation award-winner Joachim Neugroschel, The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories has garnered critical acclaim and is widely recognized as the preeminent English-language anthology of Kafka's stories. These translations illuminate one of this century's most controversial writers and have made Kafka's work accessible to a whole new generation. This classic collection of forty-one great short works -- including such timeless pieces of modern fiction as "The Judgment" and "The Stoker" -- now includes two new stories, "First Sorrow" and "The Hunger Artist."

The Metamorphosis, in the Penal Colony and Other Stories

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Jane. Austen

Austen's witty exploration of the perils of mistaking fiction for reality During an eventful season at Bath, young, naïve Catherine Morland experiences the joys of fashionable society for the first time. She is delighted with her new acquaintances: flirtatious Isabella, who shares Catherine's love of Gothic romance and horror, and sophisticated Henry and Eleanor Tilney, who invite her to their father's mysterious house, Northanger Abbey. There, her imagination influenced by novels of sensation and intrigue, Catherine imagines terrible crimes committed by General Tilney. With its broad comedy and irrepressible heroine, this is the most youthful and and optimistic of Jane Austen's works. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Northanger Abbey

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William Hjortsberg

Oversized Paperback (4 to 6 lbs)

The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan

Confident and robust, Jubilee Hitchhiker is an comprehensive biography of late novelist and poet Richard Brautigan, author of Troutfishing in America and A Confederate General from Big Sur, among many others. When Brautigan took his own life in September of 1984 his close friends and network of artists and writers were devastated though not entirely surprised. To many, Brautigan was shrouded in enigma, erratic and unpredictable in his habits and presentation. But his career was formidable, an inspiration to young writers like Hjortsberg trying to get their start. Brautigan's career wove its way through both the Beat–influenced San Francisco Renaissance in the 1950s and the "Flower Power" hippie movement of the 1960s; while he never claimed direct artistic involvement with either period, Jubilee Hitchhiker also delves deeply into the spirited times in which he lived. As Hjortsberg guides us through his search to uncover Brautigan as a man the reader is pulled deeply into the writer's world. Ultimately this is a work that seeks to connect the Brautigan known to his fans with the man who ended his life so abruptly in 1984 while revealing the close ties between his writing and the actual events of his life. Part history, part biography, and part memoir this etches the portrait of a man destroyed by his genius.

Jubilee Hitchhiker

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Ia Genberg

Kira Josefsson

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

An acclaimed Swedish author makes her English language debut with this intoxicating novel in the vein of Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti, about a woman in the throes of a fever remembering the important people in her past, her memories laid bare in vivid detail as her body temperature rises. A woman lies bedridden from a high fever. Suddenly she is struck with an urge to revisit a novel from her past. Inside the book is an inscription: a get-well-soon message from Johanna, an ex-girlfriend who is now a famous television host. As she flips through the book, pages from the woman's own past begin to come alive, scenes of events and people she cannot forget. There are moments with Johanna, and Niki, the friend who disappeared years ago without a phone number or an address and with no online footprint. There is Alejandro, who appears like a storm in precisely the right moment. And Brigitte, whose elusive qualities mask a painful secret. The Details is a novel built around four portraits; the small details that, pieced together, comprise a life. Can a loved one really disappear? Who is the real subject of the portrait, the person being painted or the one holding the brush? Do we fully become ourselves through our connections to others? This exhilarating, provocative tale raises profound questions about the nature of relationships, and how we tell our stories. The result is an intimate and illuminating study of what it means to be human.

The Details

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Tsitsi Dangarembga

'With its searing observations, devastating exploration of the state of "not being", wicked humour and astonishing immersion into the mind of a young woman growing up and growing old before her time, the novel is a masterpiece.' - Madeleine Thien

Nervous Conditions

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2020 'Magnificent' Guardian 'A Masterpiece' New York Times

This Mournable Body

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In late eighteenth-century England, a spirited young woman copes with the suit of a snobbish gentleman as well as the romantic entanglements of three of her four sisters.

Pride and Prejudice

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Zora Neale Hurston

Contains some annotations in pen (pictured).

A Novel

Their Eyes Were Watching God

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John Williams

Stoner author John Williams's first novel is a searing look at a man's relationship with his absent father, and how early trauma manifests throughout one's life John Williams’s first novel is a brooding psychological noir. Arthur Maxley is a young man at the end of his emotional rope. Having dropped out of college, he’s holed up in a big-city hotel, living off an allowance from his family, feeling nothing but alone and doing nothing but drinking to forget it. What’s brought him to this point? Something is troubling him, something is haunting him, something he cannot bring himself either to face or to turn away from. And now his father has come to town, a hail-fellow-well-met kind of guy. They’ve been estranged for years, and yet Arthur wants to meet—and so he does, reeling away from the encounter for a night of drinking and dancing and a final reckoning with the traumatizing past that readers will not soon forget. This edition of Nothing but the Night includes an interview with Nancy Gardner Williams, the author’s widow.

Nothing but the Night

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The Silver Shelf

Browse by categories

Dante

The Inferno of Dante

Annie Dillard

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Natalia Ginzburg

Family Lexicon

Victor Hugo

Les Miserables

D. H. Lawrence

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Shchedrin

The Golovlyov Family

Benjamin Labatut

When We Cease to Understand the World

Euripides

Medea, Hippolytus, Heracles, Bacchae

Sophocles

The Theban Plays

Euripides

The Trojan Women

Janice Galloway

The Trick Is to Keep Breathing

Kurt Vonnegut

Cat's Cradle

Kurt Vonnegut

Breakfast of Champions

Cristina Rivera Garza

The Taiga Syndrome

Jen George

The Babysitter at Rest

Franz Kafka

The Metamorphosis, in the Penal Colony and Other Stories

Jane Austen

Northanger Abbey

William Hjortsberg

Jubilee Hitchhiker

Ia Genberg

The Details

Tsitsi Dangarembga

Nervous Conditions

Tsitsi Dangarembga

This Mournable Body

Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice

Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God

John Williams

Nothing but the Night

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