Pointed Roofs

Author	Joseph Conrad
ISBN	0192801694

Mr Verloc, the secret agent, keeps a shop in London's Soho where he lives with his wife Winnie, her infirm mother, and her idiot brother, Stevie. When Verloc is reluctantly involved in an anarchist plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory things go disastrously wrong, and what appears to be "a simple...

Author

Ray Bradbury

One of Ray Bradbury’s most poignant short stories, this also has one his most recognized scenes.

Quietly, somberly describing a smart house after a nuclear holocaust, Bradbury uses this Cold War theme as a vehicle to explore our technological advances and how those same advances can lead...

Author

Kurt Vonnegut

It is the year 2081. Because of Amendments 211, 212, and 213 to the Constitution, every American is fully equal, meaning that no one is stupider, uglier, weaker, or slower than anyone else. The Handicapper General and a team of agents ensure that the laws of equality are enforced.

One April,...

Author	Rebecca West
ISBN	0812971221

"I heard, amazed, his step ring strong upon the stone, for I had felt his absence as a kind of death from which he would emerge ghostlike, impalpable."

Two women await the return of a soldier, Chris, from World War I. His wife, Kitty, is an upper-class woman, still mourning the death of their child....

Author	William Blake
ISBN	0486281221

Once regarded as a brilliant eccentric whose works skirted the outer fringes of English art and literature, William Blake (1757–1827) is today recognized as a major poet, a profound thinker, and one of the most original and exciting English artists. Nowhere is his glorious poetic and pictorial...

Author	Alexander Pope
ISBN	1557429162

I’ve always believed that miracles can happen and that great physical and/or mental suffering can engender greatness. This indeed proved to be the case with this splendid work by Alexander Pope.

I find Pope a fascinating individual. He was a catholic, at a time when legislation was repressive...

Author	Djuna Barnes
ISBN	0811216713

Nightwood, Djuna Barnes' strange and sinuous tour de force, "belongs to that small class of books that somehow reflect a time or an epoch" (TLS). That time is the period between the two World Wars, and Barnes' novel unfolds in the decadent shadows of Europe's great cities, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna—a...

Author	Langston Hughes
ISBN	0679764089

"The ultimate book for both the dabbler and serious scholar--. [Hughes] is sumptuous and sharp, playful and sparse, grounded in an earthy music--. This book is a glorious revelation."--Boston Globe

Spanning five decades and comprising 868 poems (nearly 300 of which have never before appeared...

Author	Lord Byron
ISBN	1406800112

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is a long poem about a traveling young man who journeys across the world to combat his disillusionment with his own society. Since the title character is a "childe", it means he was a noble who forgoes his destiny back home for the exciting unknown. It's also eerily similar...

Author	Lord Byron
ISBN	0140424504

Described as 'Mad, bad and dangerous to know' by one of his lovers, Lady Caroline Lamb, Lord Byron was the quintessential Romantic. Flamboyant, charismatic and brilliant, he remains almost as notorious for his life - as a political revolutionary, sexual adventurer and traveller - as he does for his...

Author	Percy Bysshe Shelley
ISBN	0393977528

"Criticism" reflects the recent renaissance in Shelley studies, the greatest renaissance since 1870-92. All twenty-three essays are new to the Second Edition; among them are the work of Harold Bloom, Stuart Curran, Annette Wheeler Cafarelli, Michael Ferber, James Chandler, and Susan J. Wolfson.

A...

Author	Tobias Smollett
ISBN	1847024920

Does the above book cover for Tobias Smollett's The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle look like an invitation to a frolicking, sexually charged escapade all in the spirit of good, clean fun? That's precisely what the publisher of this edition is aiming for.

Much, much different from...

Author	John Keats
ISBN	0192819313

I felt so 'unfinished' to touch the last page (the last poem, to be more exact) of this bittersweet book. Love and longing, expectation and disappointment, hope and enlightenment, all of which blend in these beautifully written poems. Here is my favorite part in Keats' 'Ode on a Grecian Urn':

"Ah,...

Author	Langston Hughes
ISBN	0060968850

Mule Bone is the only collaboration between Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, two stars of the Harlem Renaissance, and it holds an unparalleled place in the annals of African-American theater. Set in Eatonville, Florida--Hurston's hometown and the inspiration for much of her fiction--this...

Author

Ralph Ellison

As I was reading Ralph Ellison's, "Battle Royal" I found myself wanting to turn away, flip to the next page, do anything to gloss over the disturbing abuse taking place. This then led me to thinking, that society "glossing over the truth" was exactly what Ralph Ellison was trying to portray throughout...

Author	Taylor Mali
ISBN	1452636273

Former middle-school teacher and teachers' advocate Taylor Mali struck a chord with his passionate response to a man at a dinner party who asked him what kind of salary teachers make—a poetic rant that has been seen and forwarded millions of times on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

Based...