Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

While jailed for homosexual offenses, Wilde wrote this long, bitter letter of recrimination to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. It offers fascinating insights into Wilde’s life in prison and the background and psychology of a notorious affair, but its eloquence, passion and literary excellence make it a universal statement about love, injustice and suffering.

The Metamorphosis

by Franz Kafka

Acclaimed graphic artist Peter Kuper presents a brilliant, darkly comic reimagining of Kafka’s classic tale of family, alienation, and a giant bug. Kuper’s electric drawings—which merge American cartooning with German expressionism—bring Kafka’s prose to vivid life, reviving the original story’s humor and poignancy in a way that will surprise and delight readers of Kafka and graphic novels alike. “A brilliant... (more)

The Turn of the Screw

by Henry James

THE TURN OF THE SCREW is the greatest and most subtle of all English-language ghost stories. H.P. Lovecraft praised its "truly potent air of sinister menace" and "mounting tide of fright" and subsequent critics have argued long and hard over the central "problem" of the story: if the motifs of the traditional ghost story, in the hands of a master, are used to probe the deepest depths of the human psyche, do the... (more)

The Old Man and the Sea

by Ernest Hemingway

Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway's magnificent fable is the story of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. It was The Old Man and the Sea that won for Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here, in a perfectly crafted story, is unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man's challenge to the elements in which he lives.

I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS

by Maya Angelou

The store was a microcosm of life; its orderlypattern was comfort, even among the meanest frustrations. But then came the intruders-first in the form of poorwhite childrenwho were bested only by grandmother's dignity. But as the awful,unfathomable mystery of prejudice intruded, so did the unexpected joy of surprise visit by Daddy, the sinful joy of going to Church, the disappointments of a depression Christmas.

The Autobiography of Malcolm XMalcolm X

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

by Malcolm X

Anthem

by Ayn Rand

Available for the first time in trade paperback--this provocative book is "an anthem sung in praise of man's ego"--from the legendary author Ayn Rand Anthem has long been hailed as one of Ayn Rand's classic novels, and a clear predecessor to her later masterpieces, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged . In Anthem , Rand examines a frightening future in which individuals have no name, no independence, and no... (more)

Mythology

Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

by Edith Hamilton, Steele Savage

A new trade paperback edition of Edith Hamilton's world-renowned classic--a book that has enthralled and delighted generations of readers with its timeless tales of gods and heroes. 50 line drawings.

Prozess (The Trial)

by Franz Kafka, Willa Muir, Edwin Muir, George Steiner

Written in 1914, The Trial is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century: the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism,... (more)

Night Trilogy: Book 1

Night

by Elie Wiesel

In Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's memoir Night , a scholarly, pious teenager is wracked with guilt at having survived the horror of the Holocaust and the genocidal campaign that consumed his family. His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur? There are no easy answers... (more)

David Copperfield

by Charles Dickens, Jeremy Tambling

David Copperfield is the story of a young man’s adventures on his journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters he encounters are his tyrannical stepfather, Mr. Murdstone; his formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood; the eternally humble yet treacherous Uriah Heep; frivolous, enchanting Dora; and the... (more)

A Tale of Two Cities

by Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities , by Charles Dickens , is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics : New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and... (more)

Ethan Frome

by Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeenie. But when Zeenie’s vivacious cousin enters their household as a "hired girl," Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent. In one of American fiction’s finest and most intense narratives, Edith... (more)

Five Dialogues

by Plato, G. M. A. Grube

The second edition of Five Dialogues presents G. M. A. Grube's distinguished translations, as revised by John Cooper for Plato, Complete Works. A number of new or expanded footnotes are also included along with an updated bibliography.

Bread Givers: A Novel

by Anzia Yezierska

The classic novel of Jewish immigrants in new trade paperback format and design, with sixteen period photographs. This masterwork of American immigrant literature is set in the 1920s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and tells the story of Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, who rebels against her father's rigid conception of Jewish womanhood. Sarah's struggle towards independence and... (more)

Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Edited and with an Introduction and Notes by Dr Keith Carabine. University of Kent at Canterbury. Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most popular, influential and controversial book written by an American. Stowe s rich, panoramic novel passionately dramatises why the whole of America is implicated in and responsible for the sin of slavery, and resoundingly concludes that only 'repentance, justice and mercy' will prevent... (more)

Breakfast of Champions

by Kurt Vonnegut

Breakfast Of Champions is vintage Vonnegut. One of his favorite characters, aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. The result is murderously funny satire as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.

East of Eden

by John Steinbeck

Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures. We have begun publishing his many works for the first time as blackspine Penguin Classics featuring eye-catching, newly commissioned art. This season we continue with the seven spectacular and influential books East of Eden, Cannery Row, In Dubious Battle, The Long... (more)

Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth

Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth

by Richard Wright

Richard Wright grew up in the woods of Mississippi amid poverty, hunger, fear, and hatred. He lied, stole, and raged at those around him; at six he was a "drunkard," hanging about in taverns. Surly, brutal, cold, suspicious, and self-pitying, he was surrounded on one side by whites who were either indifferent to him, pitying, or cruel, and on the other by blacks who resented anyone trying to rise above the common... (more)

The Outsiders

by S. E. Hinton

When it was first published in 1967, The Outsiders defied convention with its immediate, deeply sympathetic portrayal of Ponyboy and his struggle to find a place for himself in a difficult world. Thirty years later, it speaks to teenagers as powerfully as ever. Even though its almost 2010 the teens in this book speak to us. The times were hard back in those days and to a 14 year old Ponyboy its hard to live. Him,... (more)

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by W. H. Auden, Oscar Wilde