Literary History & Criticism

An intellectual detective story, this history audiobook directs probing questions at orthodox history, presenting disturbing new evidence that historians have tried - but failed - to explain....

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a modern American classic....

In Thomas Ligotti's first nonfiction outing, an examination of the meaning (or meaninglessness) of life through an insightful, unsparing argument that proves the greatest horrors are not the products of our imagination but instead are found in reality.

In The Kingdom of Cain, crime novelist, screenwriter, and cultural critic Andrew Klavan explores how artists' imaginative engagement with the evil of murder in film and literature can point us to ways of living honestly, beautifully, and even joyfully in a dark world.

Legendary writing teacher and author of The Anatomy of Story John Truby provides a guide to understanding the major genres of the story world.

Mythology succeeds like no other audiobook in bringing to life for the modern listener the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths and legends that are the keystone of Western culture....

While books can be enjoyed for their basic stories, there are often deeper literary meanings beneath the surface. How to Read Literature Like a Professor helps us to discover those hidden truths by looking at literature with the practiced analytical eye—and the literary codes—of a college professor.

A lush exploration of politics, roses, and pleasure, and a fresh take on George Orwell as an avid gardener whose political writing was grounded by his passion for the natural world....

Short Stories in Spanish for Beginners has been written especially for students from beginner to intermediate level, designed to give a sense of achievement, a feeling of progress and, most importantly, enjoyment....

The poems of the Poetic Edda have waited a long time for a modern English translation that would do them justice. Here it is at last (Odin be praised!). These amazing texts from a 13th-century Icelandic manuscript are of huge historical, mythological, and literary importance....

Esteemed translator and best-selling author Stephen Mitchell energizes a heroic tale so old it predates Homer's Iliad by more than a millennium....

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works....

Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures....

This collection of writings from revered Native Americans offers timeless, meaningful lessons on living and learning....

For the last 20 years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us....

The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave is a study of slave making....

Volume 2 of the Nobel Prize-winner’s towering masterpiece: the story of Solzhenitsyn's entrance into the Soviet prison camps, where he would remain for nearly a decade. Features a new foreword by Anne Applebaum....

Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read....

The Heroine’s Journey describes contemporary woman’s search for wholeness in a society where she has been defined according to masculine values....

Joan Didion is revealed at last in this “vivid, engrossing” (Vogue), and outrageously provocative dual biography “that reads like a propulsive novel” (Oprah Daily) revealing the mutual attractions—and antagonisms—of Didion and her fellow literary titan, Eve Babitz.

Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant....

Short Stories in French for Beginners has been written especially for students from beginner to intermediate level, designed to give a sense of achievement, a feeling of progress and most importantly - enjoyment....

Featuring a new introduction by Ken Liu, this revised edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s first full-length collection of essays covers her background as a writer and educator, her thoughts on writing, and her commentary on literary science fiction and fantasy and their future.

A brilliant investigation into the motivations and methods, Dumbledore dives between the lines of the Harry Potter books to create a portrait of the controversial Headmaster....

Weaving together literary and archaeological evidence, Emily Hauser illuminates the rich, intriguing lives of the real women behind Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

Le Guin’s sharp and witty voice is on full display in this collection of twenty-four essays, revised by the author a decade after its initial publication in 1979. The collection covers a wide range of topics and Le Guin’s origins as a writer, her advocacy for science fiction and fantasy as mediums for true literary exploration, the writing of her own major works such as A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness, and her role as a public intellectual and educator.

In Penelope’s Bones, award-winning classicist and historian Emily Hauser pieces together compelling evidence from archaeological excavations and scientific discoveries to unearth the richly textured lives of women in Bronze Age Greece—the era of Homer’s heroes. Here, for the first time, we come to understand the everyday lives and experiences of the real women who stand behind the legends of Helen, Briseis, Cassandra, Aphrodite, Circe, Athena, Hera, Calypso, Penelope, and more.

"Hold tight. The way to go mad without losing your mind is sometimes unruly." So begins La Marr Jurelle Bruce's urgent provocation and poignant meditation on madness in black radical art. Bruce theorizes four overlapping meanings of madness: the lived experience of an unruly mind, the psychiatric category of serious mental illness, the emotional state also known as "rage," and any drastic deviation from psychosocial norms.

Step into the vivid, paradoxical world of G. K. Chesterton—where saints dance with skeptics, riddles reveal truth, and the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Best known for his wit and philosophical insight, Chesterton’s poetry is a rich blend of humor, faith, social commentary, and fierce imagination. From the rousing rhythms of “Lepanto” to the introspective depth of “The Ballad of the White Horse”, this curated selection showcases Chesterton’s signature style: playful yet profound, grounded yet soaring.

The Oxford Handbook of George Orwell offers a wide-ranging reconsideration of Orwell's life and work, focusing on the extensive connections between his novels, essays, diaries, columns, letters, and reviews. Sections on Orwell's professional activities, his main literary influences, his politics, his intellectual fixations, his literary contemporaries, and his legacies structure the book, which moves thematically and topically through the full scope of his output.

A love so deep and unexpected, it hurts in all the right ways. I’m Cassandra Burke. Scientist. Scholar. Human outsider invited to the ancient Vampire city of Nivara to decipher ancient manuscripts. Lumière—my creation—lets vampires walk in the sun. But not everyone thinks that’s a good thing. Some call it freedom. Others call it a betrayal. Vampires are divided—those who crave the light, and those who worship the dark. Now cultists are rising. And the Ancients—banished monsters from a forgotten age—are stirring in their prison beneath Shadowkeep. Oh, and there’s one more ...

The roots of today's environmental catastrophe run deep into humanity's past. Through this unprecedented reading of Homer's Iliad, the award-winning classicist Edith Hall examines how this foundational text both documents the environmental practices of the ancient Greeks and betrays an awareness of the dangers posed by the destruction of the natural landscape. Underlying Homer's account of brutal military operations, alliances, and cataclysmic struggle is a palpable understanding that the direction in which humanity was headed could create a world that was uninhabitable.

Marking the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth, What Matters in Jane Austen? solves the mysteries of Austen’s fictional world. Jane Austen’s novels have been a staple of the English canon since the nineteenth century. Yet critics of the time did not appreciate the true complexity of her work. Nothing, John Mullan argues, is accidental or coincidental in Austen. As Austen herself said, she wrote for readers who have "a great deal of ingenuity themselves."

Gorg Huff is a New York Times Best Selling author with over forty books published in the last twenty odd years. He created the WarSpell Multiverse, a Literary Role-Playing Game or LitRPG multiverse years ago. It now has over a dozen titles, with more coming. The RPG WarSpell is fictional created by Gorg Huff to act as a basis for the books and stories. This book is a book of instructions on how to write in Gorg Huff's WarSpell multiverse. It is hoped that it can also be used as a general guide to writing fantasy fiction and alternate history. ✽✽✽ First, let me state that the existence...

Agatha Christie is renowned for her captivating plots and creative ways of killing off ill-fated victims. And what better way to add intrigue to a story than poison? The surreptitious ways they can be administered and the characteristic symptoms they produce make these killer chemicals the ideal method of murder in a ‘whodunit’. Christie perfected the use of poisons in her plots; her deft and varied use of toxic substances is one of her great strengths as a writer. But how is it that some compounds prove so fatal, and in such tiny amounts?

I’m secretly pregnant. With a vampire’s child. And the fate of an entire city depends on me. We've got to rescue Leo and retake the Heart of the Morning artifact. And we'll need to trick Darian Vex to do it—but he’s not the kind of monster who forgives. He'll want revenge. The final battle is coming. The man I love would die to protect me and our child. The Heart of the Morning—an ancient artifact I alone can wield—has chosen me, the Bloodlight, to decide the fate of them all. This time, I decide who lives… and who turns to ash.

It's July and the Crab is here, for a Happy Birthday cheer Celebrate with a loved one and hold them close or dear If it's their birthday or yours, bake a cake and call them near Now is the time to shout, "THIS IS YOUR DAY" so they hear!

For as long as people have traveled to distant lands, they have brought home objects to certify the journey. More than mere merchandise, these travel souvenirs take on a personal and cultural meaning that goes beyond the object itself. Drawing on several millennia of examples—from the relic-driven quests of early Christians, to the mass-produced tchotchkes that line the shelves of a Disney gift shop—travel writer Rolf Potts delves into a complicated history that explores issues of authenticity, cultural obligation, market forces, human suffering, and self-presentation.

A study of the spiritual practices developed by the nineteenth-century American Transcendentalist movement and a case for their necessity today.

What is silence? In a series of short meditations, novelist and playwright John Biguenet considers silence as a servant of power, as a lie, as a punishment, as the voice of God, as a terrorist’s final weapon, as a luxury good, as the reason for torture—in short, as an object we both do and do not recognize. Concluding with the prospects for its future in a world burgeoning with noise, Biguenet asks whether we should desire or fear silence—or if it is even ours to choose.

From birth to death, we care and are cared for by others. Yet we rarely acknowledge care except when it fails. In Love, Money, Duty, Rachel Adams examines the stories we tell about care, those who do the work, and those who depend on it. These narratives, she argues, help us better understand our complicated feelings about care and the obligations that come with it.

For a century, magazines were the authors of culture and taste, of intelligence and policy — until they were overthrown by the voices of the public themselves online. Here is a tribute to all that magazines were, from their origins in London and on Ben Franklin’s press; through their boom — enabled by new technologies — as creators of a new media aesthetic and a new mass culture; into their opulent days in advertising-supported conglomerates; and finally to their fall at the hands of the internet.

Dive into the mysterious intersections of ghostly phenomena, Gothic fiction, and the rise of spiritualism during the 19th century—a time when séances, spirits, and mysticism captivated public and private imaginations alike. As scientific progress and industrialization upended traditional beliefs, Victorian writers turned to the otherworldly to make sense of a rapidly transforming world. This book traces how their engagement with death, the afterlife, and the metaphysical infused literature with haunting beauty and psychological depth. Blending biography, cultural history, and literary ...

The mall near Mat thew Newton’s childhood home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was one of the state’s first enclosed shopping malls. Like all malls in their heyday, this one was a climate-controlled pleasuredome where strangers converged. It boasted waterfalls, fish ponds, an indoor ice skating rink larger than Rockefeller Center’s, and a monolithic clock tower illuminated year-round beneath a canopy of interconnected skylights. It also became the backdrop for filmmaker George A. Romero’s zombie opus Dawn of the Dead.

Ladd Hamilton's vivid storytelling brings to life the infamous murder of popular Lewiston merchant Lloyd Magruder in the Bitterroot Mountains during the 1860s Idaho-Montana gold rush.

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In P=dt, Outline of a Theory of Power, the author develops the historical dynamics that link hegemonic, imperial powers with tolerance of diversity and dissent from power throughout history. This relationship is expressed in the formula P = d.t. Before and after periods of crisis in two different global systems, this is a zero-sum equilibrium: P - d.t = 0.

Una novela marroquí o Dresde puede esperar, del escritor israelí de origen marroquí Mois Benarroch, es mucho más que una novela: es una profunda meditación sobre la identidad, la memoria y el fracaso de la literatura —y de la sociedad— al intentar contar “el relato marroquí” en Israel. Publicada originalmente en hebreo con el título דרדן יכולה לחכות, esta obra da voz a una multiplicidad de personajes, generaciones y registros, desdibujando las fronteras entre autobiografía, ensayo y ficción. La novela parte del aparente deseo de contar una historia sobre los ...

Every shelf is different and every bookshelf tells a different story. One bookshelf can creak with character in a bohemian coffee shop and another can groan with gravitas in the Library of Congress. Writer and historian Lydia Pyne finds bookshelves to be holders not just of books but of so many other things: values, vibes, and verbs that can be contained and displayed in the buildings and rooms of contemporary human existence.

Why are there so many examples of public figures, entertainers, and normal, everyday people in blackface? And why aren’t there as many examples of people of color in whiteface? This book explains what blackface is, why it occurred, and what its legacies are in the 21st century. There is a filthy and vile thread—sometimes it’s tied into a noose—that connects the first performances of Blackness on English stages, the birth of blackface minstrelsy, contemporary performances of Blackness, and anti-Black racism.