Deborah Kaplan

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

New York

Originally published in 1992. In an age when genteel women wrote little more than personal letters, how did Jane Austen manage to become a novelist? Was she an isolated genius who rose to fame through sheer talent? Did she draw strength from the support of her family or from women writers who went before her? In Jane Austen among Women, Deborah Kaplan argues that these explanations are either misleading or insufficient. Austen, Kaplan contends, participated actively in a women's culture that promoted female authority and achievement—a culture that not only helped her become a novelist but also influenced her fiction.

Jane Austen among Women

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Margo Jefferson

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

A Memoir

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR * From "one of our most nuanced thinkers on the intersections of race, class, and feminism" (Cathy Park Hong, New York Times bestselling author of Minor Feelings) comes a memoir "as electric as the title suggests" (Maggie Nelson, author of On Freedom).

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, TIME Magazine, Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, Washington Post, Vulture, Buzzfeed, Publishers Weekly

The Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and memoirist Margo Jefferson has lived in the thrall of a cast of others--her parents and maternal grandmother, jazz luminaries, writers, artists, athletes, and stars. These are the figures who thrill and trouble her, and who have made up her sense of self as a person and as a writer. In her much-anticipated follow-up to Negroland, Jefferson brings these figures to life in a memoir of stunning originality, a performance of the elements that comprise and occupy the mind of one of our foremost critics.

In Constructing a Nervous System, Jefferson shatters her self into pieces and recombines them into a new and vital apparatus on the page, fusing the criticism that she is known for, fragments of the family members she grieves for, and signal moments from her life, as well as the words of those who have peopled her past and accompanied her in her solitude, dramatized here like never before. Bing Crosby and Ike Turner are among the author's alter egos. The sounds of a jazz LP emerge as the intimate and instructive sounds of a parent's voice. W. E. B. Du Bois and George Eliot meet illicitly. The muscles and movements of a ballerina are spliced with those of an Olympic runner, becoming a template for what a black female body can be.

The result is a wildly innovative work of depth and stirring beauty. It is defined by fractures and dissonance, longing and ecstasy, and a persistent searching. Jefferson interrogates her own self as well as the act of writing memoir, and probes the fissures at the center of American cultural life.

Constructing a Nervous System

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Horace Walpole

E. J. Clery

A Gothic Story

First published pseudonymously in 1764, The Castle of Otranto purported to be a translation of an Italian story of the time of the crusades. Walpole gives us a series of catastrophes, ghostly interventions, revelations of identity, and exciting contexts. Emma Clery's new introduction and notes make this the definitive edition.

The Castle of Otranto

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George Lamming

In a sleepy fishing village in 1930s Barbados, nine-year-old G. leads a life of quiet mischief. While the village lies tranquil in the shadow of its English landlord, Mr Creighton, and his towering house on the hill, G. makes his own fun, crab catching, teasing preachers, and playing among the pumpkin vines. Yet from this world of boyish pursuits, the precocious G. finds himself slowly awakening to strange goings-on in adult society. All around him, sudden bursts of violence - a devastating flood on the morning of his birthday; the headmaster unduly flogging his schoolmates on Empire day - hint at a brutality and destruction lurking beneath the apparently peaceful order of things. As the mounting wrongs of the present drive the villagers to rise up against Mr Creighton, the fissures in the fa�ade of his Barbadian 'little England' begin to crack open, laying bare the central, bruising secret at the heart of their shared past. And as the world he knows crumbles before his eyes, G. is spurred ever closer to a life-changing decision. Poetic, unsettling, this classic coming-of-age novel is a story of tragic innocence, as a poor village boy comes to consciousness amid the collapse of colonial rule in mid-century Barbados.

In the Castle of My Skin

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Jonathan Swift

Michael Seidel

Originally written as a political satire and now read as an adventure story, the travels of Gulliver include adventures in a land where people were only inches tall, in a land of giants, on an island that floated in the air, and in a country ruled by horses.

Gulliver's Travels

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Thomas Hardy

Violated by one man, forsaken by another, Tess Durbeyfield is the magnificent and spirited heroine of Thomas Hardy's immortal work. Of all the great English novelists, no one writes more eloquently of tragic destiny than Hardy. With the innocent and powerless victim Tess, he creates profound sympathy for human frailty while passionately indicting the injustices of Victorian society. Scorned by outraged readers upon its publication in 1891, Tess of the d'Urbervilles is today one of the enduring classics of nineteenth-century literature.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

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Edith Warton

Candace Waid

Summer

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Jeanette Winterson

Traces the author's lifelong search for happiness as the adopted daughter of Pentecostal parents who raised her through practices of fierce control and paranoia, an experience that prompted her to search for her biological mother.

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

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Edwidge Danticat

The 20th anniversary edition of Edwidge Danticat's groundbreaking debut, now an established classic--revised and with a new introduction by the author, and including extensive bonus materials At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished Haitian village to New York to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti--to the women who first reared her. What ensues is a passionate journey through a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence. In her stunning literary debut, Danticat evokes the wonder, terror, and heartache of her native Haiti--and the enduring strength of Haiti's women--with vibrant imagery and narrative grace that bear witness to her people's suffering and courage.

Breath, Eyes, Memory

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Paule Marshall

Selina Boyce, the daughter of immigrants from Barbados, becomes aware of her passions as she grows to womanhood in Brooklyn and experiences the conflict between two cultures.

Brown Girl, Brownstones

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Lyndon J. Dominique

A Tale

The Woman of Colour is a unique literary account of a black heiress’ life immediately after the abolition of the British slave trade. Olivia Fairfield, the biracial heroine and orphaned daughter of a slaveholder, must travel from Jamaica to England, and as a condition of her father’s will either marry her Caucasian first cousin or become dependent on his mercenary elder brother and sister-in-law. As Olivia decides between these two conflicting possibilities, her letters recount her impressions of Britain and its inhabitants as only a black woman could record them. She gives scathing descriptions of London, Bristol, and the British, as well as progressive critiques of race, racism, and slavery. The narrative follows her life from the heights of her arranged marriage to its swift descent into annulment and destitution, only to culminate in her resurrection as a self-proclaimed “widow” who flouts the conventional marriage plot. The appendices, which include contemporary reviews of the novel, historical documents on race and inheritance in Jamaica, and examples of other women of colour in early British prose fiction, will further inspire readers to rethink issues of race, gender, class, and empire from an African woman’s perspective.

The Woman of Colour

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Aracelis Girmay

A book that is a combination of complex and intimate essays,poems, and interviews that illuminate some of the nuances of personal and collective histories, analyses, practices, and choices surrounding pregnancy, especially in the US.

Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth

An anthology of nonfiction by writers of color that transcends form, So We Can Know is a record of varied and intricate relationships to pregnancy.

So We Can Know

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Emily Jungmin Yoon

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Poems

A piercing debut collection of poems exploring gender, race, and violence from a sensational new talent

In her arresting collection, urgently relevant for our times, poet Emily Jungmin Yoon confronts the histories of sexual violence against women, focusing in particular on Korean so-called "comfort women," women who were forced into sexual labor in Japanese-occupied territories during World War II.

In wrenching language, A Cruelty Special to Our Species unforgettably describes the brutalities of war and the fear and sorrow of those whose lives and bodies were swept up by a colonizing power, bringing powerful voice to an oppressed group of people whose histories have often been erased and overlooked. "What is a body in a stolen country," Yoon asks. "What is right in war."

Moving readers through time, space, and different cultures, and bringing vivid life to the testimonies and confessions of the victims,Yoon takes possession of a painful and shameful history even while unearthing moments of rare beauty in acts of resistance and resilience, and in the instinct to survive and bear witness.

A Cruelty Special to Our Species

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Carmen Maria Machado

Stories

Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction “[These stories] vibrate with originality, queerness, sensuality and the strange.”—Roxane Gay “In these formally brilliant and emotionally charged tales, Machado gives literal shape to women’s memories and hunger and desire. I couldn’t put it down.”—Karen Russell In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store’s prom dresses. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella “Especially Heinous,” Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naïvely assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgängers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes. Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

Her Body and Other Parties

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William Shakespeare

Edward Pechter

Othello

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Toni Morrison

Presents the story of embittered Korean War veteran Frank Money, who struggles against trauma and racism to rescue his medically abused sister and work through identity-shattering memories.

Home

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Amanda Foody

C. L. Herman

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
An Indie Bestseller!
An Indie Next Pick!

The blockbuster co-writing debut of Amanda Foody and Christine Lynn Herman, All of Us Villains begins a dark tale of ambition and magick...

You Fell in Love with the Victors of the Hunger Games.
Now Prepare to Meet the Villains of the Blood Veil.

The Blood Moon rises. The Blood Veil falls. The Tournament begins.

Every generation, at the coming of the Blood Moon, seven families in the remote city of Ilvernath each name a champion to compete in a tournament to the death.

The prize? Exclusive control over a secret wellspring of high magick, the most powerful resource in the world--one thought long depleted.

But this year a scandalous tell-all book has exposed the tournament and thrust the seven new champions into the worldwide spotlight. The book also granted them valuable information previous champions never had--insight into the other families' strategies, secrets, and weaknesses. And most important, it gave them a choice: accept their fate or rewrite their legacy.

Either way, this is a story that must be penned in blood.

The All of Us Villains Duology:
#1) All of Us Villains
#2) All of Our Demise

All of Us Villains

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Christopher Marlowe

"This Norton Critical Edition of The Jew of Malta is based on Christopher Marlowe's Q 1633, the only authoritative text of the play. The tale follows the story of Barabas, an ambitious Jewish merchant in Maltese, who sets on a spiteful quest for revenge after his fortunes are taken from him. The "Context" in the Norton Critical Edition offers an in-depth look through 16th and 17th century cultural contexts, including Turkish and Jewish identities and Marlowe's role in the theater landscape. "Criticism" explores the play through 19th to 21st century criticism, ranging from the play's performance history to character analysis. A chronology and selected bibliography are also included"--

The Jew of Malta

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Tommy Orange

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD WINNER * One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year * A wondrous and shattering novel that follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize.

Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle's death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. Together, this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American--grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism.

Hailed as an instant classic, There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.


There There

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Keneva Kunz

The Penguin Classics list of medieval sagas grows ever more impressive with these two thrilling Norse sagas One of the best-loved works of Icelandic literature, this stirring tale of war and romance follows three generations of strong women, wise leaders, and hotheaded warriors. The only saga rumored to have been written by a woman, it tells of the centuries predating 1245, when magic rites and sorcery clashed with the spread of Christianity throughout a rapidly changing Viking world. 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.

The Saga of the People of Laxardal and Bolli Bollason's Tale

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Jesse L. Byock

Medieval Iceland was unique amongst Western Europe, with no foreign policy, no defence forces, no king, no lords, no peasants and few battles. It should have been a utopia yet its literature is dominated by brutality and killing. The reasons for this, argues Jesse Byock, lie in the underlying structures and cultural codes of the islands' social order. 'Viking Age Iceland' is an engaging, multi-disciplinary work bringing together findings in anthropology and ethnography interwoven with historical fact and masterful insights into the popular Icelandic sagas, this is a brilliant reconstruction of the inner workings of a unique and intriguing society.

Viking Age Iceland

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Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Abdulrazak Gurnah

Chinua Achebe

Barack Obama, via Facebook: "A compelling story of how the transformative events of history weigh on individual lives and relationships."

The Nobel Prize-nominated Kenyan writer's best-known novel, featuring an introduction by Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah

Set in the wake of the Mau Mau rebellion and on the cusp of Kenya's independence from Britain, A Grain of Wheat follows a group of villagers whose lives have been transformed by the 1952-1960 Emergency. At the center of it all is the reticent Mugo, the village's chosen hero and a man haunted by a terrible secret. As we learn of the villagers' tangled histories in a narrative interwoven with myth and peppered with allusions to real-life leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta, a masterly story unfolds in which compromises are forced, friendships are betrayed, and loves are tested.

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.

A Grain of Wheat

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Tadeusz Borowski

Michael Kandel

Jan Kott

Tadeusz Borowski's concentration camp stories were based on his own experiences surviving Auschwitz and Dachau. In spare, brutal prose he describes a world where where the will to survive overrides compassion and prisoners eat, work and sleep a few yards from where others are murdered; where the difference between human beings is reduced to a second bowl of soup, an extra blanket or the luxury of a pair of shoes with thick soles; and where the line between normality and abnormality vanishes.

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

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English Literature✨📚✨

Browse by categories

Deborah Kaplan

Jane Austen among Women

Margo Jefferson

Constructing a Nervous System

Horace Walpole; E. J. Clery

The Castle of Otranto

George Lamming

In the Castle of My Skin

Jonathan Swift; Michael Seidel

Gulliver's Travels

Thomas Hardy

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Edith Warton; Candace Waid

Summer

Jeanette Winterson

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Edwidge Danticat

Breath, Eyes, Memory

Paule Marshall

Brown Girl, Brownstones

Lyndon J. Dominique

The Woman of Colour

Aracelis Girmay

So We Can Know

Emily Jungmin Yoon

A Cruelty Special to Our Species

Carmen Maria Machado

Her Body and Other Parties

William Shakespeare; Edward Pechter

Othello

Toni Morrison

Home

Amanda Foody; C. L. Herman

All of Us Villains

Carmen Maria Machado

Her Body and Other Parties

Christopher Marlowe

The Jew of Malta

Tommy Orange

There There

Keneva Kunz

The Saga of the People of Laxardal and Bolli Bollason's Tale

Jesse L. Byock

Viking Age Iceland

Ngugi wa Thiong'o; Abdulrazak Gurnah; Chinua Achebe

A Grain of Wheat

Tadeusz Borowski; Michael Kandel; Jan Kott

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

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