James Joyce is one of the best authors 5o ever live! 

First of all kudos to the Easton Press for a beautiful, high quality leather bound book. Lovely raised spines, paper that makes me want to touch it again and again, gorgeous real moiré cloth end covers, and sumptuous gilded page edges on all 3 sides, plus a generously sized ribbon marker.

This book is a biography of the forming years of James Joyce. Place and time period must be taken into account, as always what is happening in our world and in our space is definitive in forming our beliefs, ideas, morals, judgments, our immediate and future decisions.
Definitely one of the most difficult literary reads I have encountered to date. It took me over a week to read this book, and it wants reading again in order for me to gain more understanding. It was like walking at a quick pace through the grocery store and knowing I was missing part of what was on the shelves. Joyce seems to ponder things continually, it seems his mind is never at rest, even when he is observing something his mind is thinking, wondering, defining, a multitude of ideas and thoughts about that thing he is observing.

James attends a catholic school from his first school years all the way through college, the reader lives within the canyons of Stephen Dedalus' (ie - James Joyce) mind, indeed Stephen keeps us so close to his impressions, beliefs, emotions, and insights that the reader can catch a glimpse of the top of the canyon walls only intermittently. But this allows the reader to be lead right where the author wants us, we are given such an intimate portrait of the most formative years of Joyce through Stephen. It is impossible to miss understanding how Stephen came to his conclusions and it is impossible to miss the deep intellectual intelligence that James Joyce possessed.

This work is also a walk through history of Ireland from about 1895-1910/1912. A time of the beginning of a huge upheaval in Ireland and movements put in motion that changed the face of the Irish people forever. One wonders if Stephen/Joyce would have taken the same direction in his adult life if he had not been subjected to a far less intensive time during his most formative years. Much to ponder here, and a wonderful study into cause and effect.

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

California

Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man

Treasure Island, Easton Press, Full Leatherbound
Author: Stevenson, Robert Louis
Publisher: The Easton Press
Publication Date: 1994
Type: leather_bound
Condition: good
Jacket condition: None as issued

Notes: Excellent Collector's Edition copy with dark teal leather cover. No significant flaws. No bookplates or ownership markings. Cover corners are square, binding is tight. Full leather cover features 22kt gold cover and spine lettering and decoration, specially milled acid-neutral paper, Smyth-sewn pages with gilded edges, and endsheets of moire silk with a permanent satin ribbon page-marker. From The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written collection. Beautiful copy.

Images shown are photographs of the actual copy you will receive.

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Treasure Island 

A primer for Big Bad City disillusionment, unsparing in its portrayal of New York's debilitating entropy."―The Village Voice. With a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem.

First published in 1933, Miss Lonelyhearts remains one of the most shocking works of 20th century American literature, as unnerving as a glob of black bile vomited up at a church social: empty, blasphemous, and horrific. Set in New York during the Depression and probably West's most powerful work, Miss Lonelyhearts concerns a nameless man assigned to produce a newspaper advice column ― but as time passes he begins to break under the endless misery of those who write in, begging him for advice. Unable to find answers, and with his shaky Christianity ridiculed to razor-edged shards by his poisonous editor, he tumbles into alcoholism and a madness fueled by his own spiritual emptiness.

During his years in Hollywood West wrote The Day of the Locust, a study of the fragility of illusion. Many critics consider it with F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished masterpiece The Last Tycoon (1941) among the best novels written about Hollywood. Set in Hollywood during the Depression, the narrator, Tod Hackett, comes to California in the hope of a career as a painter for movie backdrops but soon joins the disenchanted second-rate actors, technicians, laborers and other characters living on the fringes of the movie industry. Tod tries to seduce Faye Greener; she is seventeen. Her protector is an old man named Homer Simpson. Tod finds work on a film called prophetically “The Burning of Los Angeles,” and the dark comic tale ends in an apocalyptic mob riot outside a Hollywood premiere, as the system runs out of control.

Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust

David Sedaris

Diaries (1977-2002)

One of the most anticipated books of 2017: Boston Globe, New York Times Book Review, New York's "Vulture", The Week, Bustle, BookRiot An NPR Best Book of 2017An AV Club Favorite Book of 2017A Barnes & Noble Best Book of 2017A Goodreads Choice Awards nominee David Sedaris tells all in a book that is, literally, a lifetime in the making. For forty years, David Sedaris has kept a diary in which he records everything that captures his attention-overheard comments, salacious gossip, soap opera plot twists, secrets confided by total strangers. These observations are the source code for his finest work, and through them he has honed his cunning, surprising sentences. Now, Sedaris shares his private writings with the world. Theft by Finding, the first of two volumes, is the story of how a drug-abusing dropout with a weakness for the International House of Pancakes and a chronic inability to hold down a real job became one of the funniest people on the planet. Written with a sharp eye and ear for the bizarre, the beautiful, and the uncomfortable, and with a generosity of spirit that even a misanthropic sense of humor can't fully disguise, Theft By Finding proves that Sedaris is one of our great modern observers. It's a potent reminder that when you're as perceptive and curious as Sedaris, there's no such thing as a boring day.

Theft by Finding

4493c800-917b-467e-a2f4-66b30f965561-1

Leonardo Sciascia

George Scialabba

Archibald Colquhoun

Anthony Oliver

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

A man is shot dead as he runs to catch the bus in the piazza of a small Sicilian town. Captain Bellodi, the detective on the case, is new to his job and determined to prove himself. Bellodi suspects the Mafia, and his suspicions grow when he finds himself up against an apparently unbreachable wall of silence. A surprise turn puts him on the track of a series of nasty crimes. But all the while Bellodi's investigation is being carefully monitored by a host of observers, near and far. They share a single concern: to keep the truth from coming out. This short, beautifully paced novel is a mesmerizing description of the Mafia at work.

The Day of the Owl

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Vladimir Nabokov

Brian Boyd

From one of the 20th century's great writers comes one of the finest autobiographies of our time. Speak, Memory was first published by Vladimir Nabokov in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised and republished in 1966. The Everyman's Library edition includes, for the first time, the previously unpublished "Chapter 16"–the most significant unpublished piece of writing by the master, newly released by the Nabokov estate–which provided an extraordinary insight into Speak, Memory.

Nabokov's memoir is a moving account of a loving, civilized family, of adolescent awakenings, flight from Bolshevik terror, education in England, and émigré life in Paris and Berlin. The Nabokovs were eccentric, liberal aristocrats, who lived a life immersed in politics and literature on splendid country estates until their world was swept away by the Russian revolution when the author was eighteen years old. Speak, Memory vividly evokes a vanished past in the inimitable prose of Nabokov at his best.

Introduction by Brian Boyd

From one of the 20th century's great writers comes one of the finest autobiographies of our time. Speak, Memory was first published by Vladimir Nabokov in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised and republished in 1966. The Everyman's Library edition includes, for the first time, the previously unpublished "Chapter 16"–the most significant unpublished piece of writing by the master, newly released by the Nabokov estate–which provided an extraordinary insight into Speak, Memory. Nabokov's memoir is a moving account of a loving, civilized family, of adolescent awakenings, flight from Bolshevik terror, education in England, and émigré life in Paris and Berlin. The Nabokovs were eccentric, liberal aristocrats, who lived a life immersed in politics and literature on splendid country estates until their world was swept away by the Russian revolution when the author was eighteen years old. Speak, Memory vividly evokes a vanished past in the inimitable prose of Nabokov at his best.

Speak, Memory

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Osman Lins

Gregory Rabassa

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Avalovara

92aca611-0c96-4779-8b05-b850e2e33ca8-0

Ivan Angelo

Ellen Watson

The five interlocking stories in The Tower Of Glass create a singular, powerful account of a nation in turmoil - and a prophetic warning about an oppressive government's need to control not just the society but the mind. Through symbolism, wry humour, and outrageous sexual frankness, Ivan Angelo tells of businessmen and whores, poor working people and Death Squads, truth and illusion, and methods of political manipulation and terror. From the gritty, bawdy story of "Bete the Streetwalker" to the Kafkaesque portrait of a prison made of glass, the fictional pieces demonstrate Angelo's masterful wordplay, and his ability to take formal and structural risks without a false step.

Tower of Glass

58673817-49d7-4ef8-bdb7-6a1b84597f3f-0

Elspeth Barker

Maggie O'Farrell

A Novel

In the tradition of Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a darkly humorous modern classic of Scottish literature about a doomed adolescent growing up in the mid-19th century--featuring a new introduction by Maggie O'Farrell, award-winning author of Hamnet.

Janet lies murdered beneath the castle stairs, attired in her mother's black lace wedding dress, lamented only by her pet jackdaw...

Author Elspeth Barker masterfully evokes the harsh climate of Scotland in this atmospheric gothic tale that has been compared to the works of the Brontës, Edgar Allan Poe, and Edward Gorey. Immersed in a world of isolation and loneliness, Barker's ill-fated young heroine Janet turns to literature, nature, and her Aunt Lila, who offers brief flashes of respite in an otherwise foreboding life. People, birds, and beasts move through the background in a tale that is as rich and atmospheric as it is witty and mordant. The family's motto--Moriens sed Invictus (Dying but Unconquered)--is a well-suited epitaph for wild and courageous Janet, whose fierce determination to remain steadfastly herself makes her one of the most unforgettable protagonists in contemporary literature.

O Caledonia

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Abraham Verghese

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SUBJECT OF A SIX-PART SUPER SOUL PODCAST SERIES HOSTED BY OPRAH WINFREY

From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret

“One of the best books I’ve read in my entire life. It’s epic. It’s transportive . . . It was unputdownable!”—Oprah Winfrey, OprahDaily.com

The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the major word-of-mouth bestseller Cutting for Stone, which has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

A Novel: Oprah's Book Club 2023

OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret

"One of the best books I've read in my entire life. It's epic. It's transportive . . . It was unputdownable!"--Oprah Winfrey, OprahDaily.com

The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the major word-of-mouth bestseller Cutting for Stone, which has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years.


Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India's Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning--and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala's long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl--and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi--will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

The Covenant of Water

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James McBride

From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.

As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.

Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

0387a842-ba81-4959-8d8a-0eb301cf6e28-0

Muriel Spark

Memento Mori is a novel by Scottish author Muriel Spark published by Macmillan in 1959. The title (Latin for "remember you must die"), references a common trope. This is represented in the novel by a series of insidious phone calls made to the elderly Dame Lettie Colston and her acquaintances. The recipients reflect on their past lives while they try to identify who is making the calls and why.

Unforgettably astounding and a joy to read, Memento Mori is considered by many to be the greatest novel by the wizardly Dame Muriel Spark.

Memento Mori

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Wallace Stegner

Terry Tempest Williams

T. H. Watkins

﻿Introduction by Terry Tempest Williams Afterword by T. H. Watkins ﻿Called a “magnificently crafted story . . . brimming with wisdom” by Howard Frank Mosher in The Washington Post Book World, Crossing to Safety has, since its publication in 1987, established itself as one of the greatest and most cherished American novels of the twentieth century. Tracing the lives, loves, and aspirations of two couples who move between Vermont and Wisconsin, it is a work of quiet majesty, deep compassion, and powerful insight into the alchemy of friendship and marriage.

Crossing to Safety

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Like Kafka's The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world. In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude," an imaginary crime that defies definition. Cincinnatus spends his last days in an absurd jail, where he is visited by chimerical jailers, an executioner who masquerades as a fellow prisoner, and by his in-laws, who lug their furniture with them into his cell. When Cincinnatus is led out to be executed, he simply wills his executioners out of existence: they disappear, along with the whole world they inhabit.

Invitation to a Beheading

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William H. Gass

Flann O'brien

"That's a real writer, with the true comic spirit. A really funny book." James Joyce.

At Swim-Two-Birds

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Zadie Smith

Presents a collection of short stories focusing on character development by a group of notable authors and graphic novelists that includes Nick Hornby, Chris Ware, Colm Tâoibâin, and George Saunders.

The Book of Other People

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. Sinclair’s masterpiece is an honest, sometimes brutal, tour de force that opened America’s eyes to the struggles and horrors many immigrants endured.

Welcome to Chicago during the early 1900s. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle portrays the hardships of the immigrant working class in a way that changed literature and history. The story begins with Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkus, who takes a job at Brown’s slaughterhouse to try to earn enough money to stay afloat. His life becomes a constant struggle—he, his young wife, Ona, and the rest of his family eventually falling victim to a slew of unfortunate circumstances including exploitation, abuse, and for some even death.

From unsanitary and unsafe working conditions to poverty wages, the novel revealed to the American public the struggles immigrants encountered in Chicago’s meatpacking industry. Sinclair, a muckraking journalist, penned the bestselling narrative in an attempt to expose the evils of capitalism, and bring to light the extreme adversity these people faced not just in Chicago, but in industrialized cities across the country. By detailing numerous health violations in these workplaces, Sinclair’s novel caused public outrage and eventually led to the passing of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act.

Packaged in handsome, affordable trade editions, Clydesdale Classics is a new series of essential literary works. It features literary phenomena with influence and themes so great that, after their publication, they changed literature forever. From the musings of literary geniuses such as Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter, to the striking personal narratives from Harriet Jacobs in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, this new series is a comprehensive collection of our history through the words of the exceptional few.

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

The Jungle (penguin classics Deluxe)

The "breathtakingly brilliant" novel by the author of Infinite Jest (New York Times) is a deeply compelling and satisfying story, as hilarious and fearless and original as anything Wallace ever wrote. 

The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.

The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace's death, but it is a deeply compelling and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions -- questions of life's meaning and of the value of work and society -- through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time.

"The Pale King is by turns funny, shrewd, suspenseful, piercing, smart, terrifying, and rousing." --Laura Miller, Salon

The Pale King 

Barry López

Moving from fable and historical fiction to contemporary realism, this book of stories from Barry Lopez is erotic and wise, full of irresistible characters doing things they shouldn't do for reasons that are mysterious and irreducible.

In "The Letters of Heaven," a packet of recently discovered 17th-century Peruvian love letters presents a 20th-century man with the paralyzing choice of either protecting or exposing their stunning secret. When some young boys on the lookout for easy money get caught with a truckload of stolen horses, thievery quickly turns into redemption. For a group of convicts, a gathering of birds in the prison yard may be the key to transcendence, both figurative and literal. And, with the title story, Lopez enters a territory of unmitigated evil reminiscent of Conrad. Here are saints who shouldn't touch, but do; sinners who insist on the life of the spirit; a postcard paradise that turns into nightmare.

Light Action in the Caribbean has already been hailed by Russell Banks as "tough-minded, emotionally turbulent, and always intelligent." E. Annie Proulx describes these stories as "subtle and mysterious" and says that a reader "cannot leave Lopez's fictional territory unchanged." This is a book that breaks exciting new ground for Barry Lopez.

From the author of the National Book Award-winning Arctic Dreams comes a masterful work of fiction, a collection of stories that balances the marvelous and the real, intellect and heart, with extraordinary grace.Set variously in Peru, Chine, the Caribbean, California, and the American West, here are tales of men and women exploring the landscapes of their own innocence and desire; confronting violence, estrangement, and the disillusionment of war; or encountering the hope, fierce integrity, defiance, and wisdom of others. A packet of recently discovered seventeenth-century Peruvian love letters presents a twentieth-century man with the paralyzing choice of either protecting or exposing their stunning secret. A man's encounter with a young deaf girl ("eerie in her stillness and independence") rearranges his notions of pity. When some young boys on the lookout for easy money get caught with a truckload of stolen horses, their fates raise questions of justice and redemption. For a group of convicts, a gathering of birds in the prison yard may be the key to transcendence, both figurative and literal. Here are saints who shouldn't touch, but do; sinners who insist on the life of the spirit; a postcard paradise that turns into a nightmare.With "Light Action in the Caribbean," Barry Lopez, whose fiction has been hailed as "haunting... mysterious" (Time) and "superb...exquisitely wrought" (SF Chronicle), carries his central concerns -- place, compassion, memory, the quest of the traveler -- to exciting new frontiers, both geographic and emotional.

Light Action in the Caribbean

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T. C. Boyle

Slight tear to dust jacket otherwise great condition! 

Few authors in America write with the sheer love of story, language, and imagination as T. C. Boyle. His talent and range are manifest in this selection of sixty-eight tales that span his every theme, mood, and nuance, clothed in his hallmark virtuoso prose.Mythical and realistic, farcical and tragic, these stories (written between 1972 and 1997) are grouped under the headings of "Love", "Death", and everything in between. Three of them are previously unpublished: "The Rapture Of The Deep." a galley chef's jaded and mutinous view of Cousteau's endless voyages; "Mexico," an intense tale about an American tourist and his amorous adventures with a tough female boxer; and the comedy and pathos of an old lady's frenzy to defend a houseful of stray squirrels, her "Little Fur People." Four previously uncollected stories include the mini-masterpiece "I Dated Jane Austen." Here is a definitive gift for Boyle fans and for every reader ready to discover the "ferocious, delicious imagination" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) of a "vibrant sensibility fully engaged with American society" (The New York Times.

T. C. Boyle Stories

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Russell Banks

From Publishers Weekly
Two-thirds of the 32 stories in this magnificent collection have appeared before, in the four volumes of short fiction Banks has published over the past 25 years; all, including nine new ones, were chosen by the author as representative of work that "did not on rereading make me cringe." Banks is a born short story writer and confesses he loves the form; in many of the entries here, the impact is all the more powerful for the intense concentration he brings to bear on the desperate lives he so often chooses to chronicle. The best of these tales, many of them set in the sad New Hampshire trailer park that was the basis for an entire collection of linked tales, tell of the anguish of parents and children moving apart, of husbands and wives and lovers facing the grim certainty that nothing in their relationships is going to change or improve. "The Burden," about a man's despairing break with his no-good son; "Quality Time," about a daughter realizing she has finally moved away from her father; "Firewood," about a couple trapped by ruined expectations; and "Queen for a Day," about a small boy's efforts to cheer up his failing mother, are almost unbearably poignant, unflinching glimpses into the dark recesses of life, illuminated by Banks's unfailing compassion and steady eye and ear. These stories, like his wintry northern landscapes, are deeply lived in. Yet Banks can be equally evocative of exotic corners of the world, as in "Djinn" and "The Fish," mysterious fables set in Africa and India. Only in such flights as "Indisposed," an imagining of William Hogarth's wife, or "With Che in New Hampshire," in which he mixes myth and actuality, does Banks seem on more tentative ground. But most of the stories strike home swiftly and surely, reminding a reader again and again of the amplitude of the form in the hands of a master. 

From Library Journal
Banks originally wanted to be a poet but felt he lacked the Muse. Yet poetic imagery informs the novels for which he is best known as well as the short stories in this collection. Presented here are 31 short fictions; 22 have been in previous collections, and nine are recent and uncollected. All of the earlier stories have been revised, and Banks says sagely of his means of selection, "I chose to include only those that did not on rereading make me cringe with embarrassment." The collection is permeated by a wise sadness, and the brilliant use of language stands out against the hard-living, hard-drinking underclass that generally populates these stories, as it does the novels. Take the most recent, "Lobster Night," set in a roughish upstate New York roadhouse trying to upscale itself a little, where "stories" from the characters (being struck by lightning, a bear attack) set a thematic backdrop for a chain of death-related events that leads to a homicide. A lot goes on in a few pages in all the stories here; this is a master writer at his best. Very highly recommended.

The Stories Of

"At his shattering best. . . Banks offers answers that are tough, honest, and inevitable without being simple. . . . A book that is not to be missed." --New York Times

With The Angel on the Roof, acclaimed author Russell Banks offers readers an astonishing collection of thirty years of his short fiction, revised especially for this volume and highlighted by the inclusion of nine new stories that are among the finest he has ever written.

As is characteristic of all of Bank's works, these stories resonate with irony and compassion, honesty and insight, extending into the vast territory of the heart and the world, from working-class New England to Florida and the Caribbean and Africa. Broad in scope and rich in imagination, The Angel on the Roof affirms Russell Banks's place as one of the masters of American storytelling.

The Angel on the Roof

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Andrew Miller

The clearing of a cemetery stokes the fires of revolution in eighteenth-century France in this Costa Prize–winning “novel of ideas disguised as a ghost story” (The New York Times).

Paris, 1785. An ambitious young engineer, Jean-Baptiste Baratte arrives in Paris charged with emptying the overflowing cemetery of Les Innocents, an ancient site whose stench is poisoning the neighborhood’s air and water. A self-styled modern man of reason, Baratte sees his work as a chance to clear away the burden of history. But he soon suspects that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to his own fate―and the demise of the social order. As unrest against the court of Louis XVI mounts, the engineer realizes that the future he had planned may no longer be the one he wants. His assignment sets him on a path of discovery and desire, as well as relentless labor, assault, and sudden death.

“Pure is a compelling, timely novel―with its throb of revolution, of ordinary people arising in anger―a narrative that takes death as its subject yet races with life.”―The Guardian

The clearing of a cemetery stokes the fires of revolution in eighteenth-century France in this Costa Prize-winning "novel of ideas disguised as a ghost story" (The New York Times).

Paris, 1785. An ambitious young engineer, Jean-Baptiste Baratte arrives in Paris charged with emptying the overflowing cemetery of Les Innocents, an ancient site whose stench is poisoning the neighborhood's air and water. A self-styled modern man of reason, Baratte sees his work as a chance to clear away the burden of history. But he soon suspects that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to his own fate--and the demise of the social order. As unrest against the court of Louis XVI mounts, the engineer realizes that the future he had planned may no longer be the one he wants. His assignment sets him on a path of discovery and desire, as well as relentless labor, assault, and sudden death.

"Pure is a compelling, timely novel--with its throb of revolution, of ordinary people arising in anger--a narrative that takes death as its subject yet races with life."--The Guardian

Pure

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Emil Ferris

Emil Ferris's My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is one of the most acclaimed graphic novels of the past decade. Set against the tumultuous political backdrop of late ’60s Chicago, the book is presented as the fictional graphic diary of 10-year-old Karen Reyes as she tries to solve the murder of her beloved and enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor, while the interconnected stories of those around her unfold. Visually, the story is told in Ferris's inimitable style that breathtakingly and seamlessly combines panel-to-panel storytelling and cartoon montages filled with B-movie horror and pulp monster mag iconography.

Set against the tumultuous political backdrop of late ’60s Chicago, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is the fictional graphic diary of 10-year-old Karen Reyes, filled with B-movie horror and pulp monster magazines iconography. Karen Reyes tries to solve the murder of her enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor, while the interconnected stories of those around her unfold. When Karen’s investigation takes us back to Anka’s life in Nazi Germany, the reader discovers how the personal, the political, the past, and the present converge.

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters

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Richard Ford

This trilogy of brilliant novels-The Sports-
writer, Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land charts the life and times of one of the most beloved and enduring characters in modern fiction When we meet Frank Bascombe in The Sportswriter, his unguarded voice instantly wins us over and pulls us into a life that has been irrevocably changed by the loss of a marriage, a career, and the death of his child. We then follow Frank, ever brilliantly and hilariously observant, through Independence Day and The Lay of the Land, witnessing his fortune's rise and his family's fragmentation and reintegration. With finely honed prose and an eye that captures the most subtle nuances of the human condition in all its pathos, humor, beauty, and strangeness, Richard Ford transforms Frank Bascombe's life into a riveting, moving parable of life in America today.

Written and Introduced by Richard Ford

A trilogy of brilliant novels—The Sportswriter, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land—that charts the life and times of Frank Bascombe, one of the most beloved and enduring characters in modern fiction. When we meet Frank Bascombe in The Sportswriter, his unguarded voice instantly wins us over and pulls us into a life that has been irrevocably changed—by the loss of a marriage, a career, a child. We then follow Frank, ever laconic and observant, through Independence Day and The Lay of the Land, witnessing his fortune’s rise and his family’s fragmentation. With finely honed prose and an eye that captures the most subtle nuances of the human condition—all its pathos and beauty and strangeness—Ford transforms this ordinary man’s life into a riveting, moving parable of life in America today.

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JAMES Joyce