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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man portrays Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, providing an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce. At its center are questions of origin and source, authority and authorship, and the relationship of an artist to his family, culture, and race. Exuberantly inventive, this coming-of-age story is a tour de force of style and technique.
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Identity
by Milan Kundera
There are situations in which we fail for a moment to recognize the person we are with, in which the identity of the other is erased while we simultaneously doubt our own. This also happens with couples--indeed, above all with couples, because lovers fear more than anything else "losing sight" of the loved one. With stunning artfulness in expanding and playing variations on the meaningful moment, Milan Kundera has... (more)
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The Stranger
by Albert Camus
Alternate title: The Outsider.Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."
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Human Traces
by Sebastian Faulks
What is it to be human? This question, as in Birdsong , is at the heart of Human Traces . The story begins in Brittany where a young, poor boy somehow passes his medical exams and goes to Paris, where he attends the lectures of Charcot, the Parisian neurologist who set the world on its head in the 1870s. With a friend, he sets up a clinic in the mysterious mountain district of Carinthia in south-east Austria. ... (more)
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Six Characters in Search of an Author
by Luigi Pirandello
This 1921 intellectual comedy contrasts illusion with reality by introducing six individuals to a bare stage occupied by actors in rehearsal. Proclaiming themselves the incomplete creations of an author’s imagination, the six demand dialog for the story of their lives. A classic dramatic exploration of the many faces of reality. Publisher’s Note.
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The File on H.: A Novel
by Barbara Bray, Ismail Kadare
In the mid 1930s, two young American scholars voyage to the Albanian highlands, the last remaining natural habitat of the oral epic, with one of the world's first tape recorders in hand. Their mission? To discover how Homer could have composed works such as The Iliad and The Odyssey without ever writing them down. Their research puts them at the center of ethnic strife in the Balkans and, mistaken for foreign... (more)
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Amerika
or, The Man Who Disappeared
by Franz Kafka
Text: English (translation) Original Language: German
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The Elephant's Journey
by José Saramago
In 1551, King João III of Portugal gave Archduke Maximilian an unusual wedding present: an elephant named Solomon. The elephant’s journey from Lisbon to Vienna was witnessed and remarked upon by scholars, historians, and ordinary people. Out of this material, José Saramago has spun a novel already heralded as “a triumph of language, imagination, and humor” ( El País ). Solomon and his keeper, Subhro, begin in... (more)
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The Ogre
by Michel Tournier
"The Ogre... is, quite simply, a great novel... <It> bears patently the marks of greatness. It relentlessly pushes individual idiosyncrasy to -- and even beyond -- the point of universality. It covers simultaneously the events inside one head and one continent. It uses documentary knowledge -- minute and encyclopedic knowledge of photography, history, zoology, anthropometry, weaponry -- to illustrate the... (more)
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Medieval Cities
Their Origins and the Revival of Trade
by Henri Pirenne
Henri Pirenne is best known for his provocative argument--known as the "Pirenne thesis" and familiar to all students of medieval Europe--that it was not the invasion of the Germanic tribes that destroyed the civilization of antiquity, but rather the closing of Mediterranean trade by Arab conquest in the seventh century. The consequent interruption of long distance commerce accelerated the decline of the ancient... (more)
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Heidi Grows Up
by Charles Tritten
The sequel to Johanna Spyri's "Heidi", this is a Classic story for children and teens beautifully illustrated in Color & B/W by June Goldsborough.
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A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ...” With these famous words, Charles Dickens plunges the reader into one of history’s most explosive eras — the French Revolution. From the storming of the Bastille to the relentless drop of the guillotine, Dickens vividly captures the terror and upheaval of that tumultuous period. At the center is the novel’s hero, Sydney Carton, a lazy, alcoholic attorney... (more)
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In Praise of Older Women
The Amorous Recollections of András Vajda
by Stephen Vizinczey
"A cool, comic survey of the sexual education of a young Hungarian, from his first encounter, as a twelve-year-old refugee with the American forces, to his unsatisfactory liaison with a reporter's wife in Canada at the belated end of his youth, when he was twenty-three . . . elegantly erotic, with masses of that indefinable quality, style . . . this has the real stuff of immortality."—B. A. Young, Punch "A... (more)
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The Lives of the Artists
by Giorgio Vasari
These biographies of the great quattrocento artists have long been considered among the most important of contemporary sources on Italian Renaissance art. Vasari, who invented the term "Renaissance," was the first to outline the influential theory of Renaissance art that traces a progression through Giotto, Brunelleschi, and finally the titanic figures of Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, and Raphael. This new... (more)
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The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings
The Fellowship of the Ring / The Two Towers / The Return of the King
by J. R. R. Tolkien
Since it was first published in 1954, The Lord of the Rings has been a book people have treasured. Steeped in unrivalled magic and otherworldliness, its sweeping fantasy has touched the hearts of young and old alike. Well over 100 million copies of its many editions have been sold around the world, and occasional collectors' editions become prized and valuable items of publishing.
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Lord of the Flies
by William Golding
The classic tale of a group of English school boys who are left stranded on an unpopulated island, and who must confront not only the defects of their society but the defects of their own natures.
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The Gallic War
Commentarii de Bello Gallico
by Julius Caesar, Olivia E. Coolidge
Caesar (C. Iulius, 102–44 BCE ), statesman and soldier, defied the dictator Sulla; served in the Mithridatic wars and in Spain; pushed his way in Roman politics as a 'democrat' against the senatorial government; was the real leader of the coalition with Pompey and Crassus; conquered all Gaul for Rome; attacked Britain twice; was forced into civil war; became master of the Roman world; and achieved wide-reaching... (more)
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The Imitation Of Christ
by Thomas a Kempis
The secret of the amazing influence and converting power of this little book is the secret of the lives of all the Saints--their nearness to God, and the reflection of His love in their lives and writings. Thomas's theme is the love, mercy, and holiness of God: with vivid clarity he shows man's complete dependence on, and need for, God.
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Art History
by Marilyn Stokstad
For two-semester courses in Art History Survey, Global Art History, and for Introductory Art courses taught from a historical perspective. Exceptional in scholarship and pedagogically in tune with the needs of today's students-rich but never effete-Marilyn Stokstad's Art History is the art history text of choice for a new generation of teachers and students. Presenting a broad view of art through the centuries,... (more)
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Thus Spoke Zarathustra
by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary and subversive thinkers in Western philosophy, and "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" remains his most famous and influential work. It describes how the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor. With blazing intensity and poetic... (more)

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