Classics I Forgot To Read

The Classics I Forgot To Read Book Club

In choosing our classics we've tried to select titles that had some visibility among readers, but were not necessarily included in the standard high school English class. We've also sampled a range of genres, from mystery to comedy to stream-of-consciousness. So, whether our picks are already gathering dust on your bookshelves or this is your first encounter with the literary canon, we encourage you to join us!

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A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube By Patrick Leigh Fermor, Jan Morris (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Patrick Leigh Fermor, Jan Morris (Introduction by)
$17.95
ISBN: 9781590171653
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Published: NYRB Classics - October 3rd, 2005

November 2022 Selection: This beloved account about an intrepid young Englishman on the first leg of his walk from London to Constantinople is simply one of the best works of travel literature ever written.

At the age of eighteen, Patrick Leigh Fermor set off from the heart of London on an epic journey--to walk to Constantinople. A Time of Gifts is the rich account of his adventures as far as Hungary, after which Between the Woods and the Water continues the story to the Iron Gates that divide the Carpathian and Balkan mountains. Acclaimed for its sweep and intelligence, Leigh Fermor's book explores a remarkable moment in time. Hitler has just come to power but war is still ahead, as he walks through a Europe soon to be forever changed--through the Lowlands to Mitteleuropa, to Teutonic and Slav heartlands, through the baroque remains of the Holy Roman Empire; up the Rhine, and down to the Danube.

At once a memoir of coming-of-age, an account of a journey, and a dazzling exposition of the English language, A Time of Gifts is also a portrait of a continent already showing ominous signs of the holocaust to come.


Sula (Vintage International) By Toni Morrison Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9781400033430
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Published: Vintage - June 8th, 2004

July 2021 Selection: Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. In this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison tells the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. "Extravagantly beautiful. . . . A howl of love and rage, playful and funny as well as hard and bitter." -- The New York Times Nel and Sula's devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal--or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life.


Oliver Twist (Puffin Classics) By Charles Dickens, Garth Nix (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Charles Dickens, Garth Nix (Introduction by)
$8.99
ISBN: 9780141322438
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Published: Puffin Books - June 19th, 2008

June 2021 Selection: The classic story of a young boy who seeks his fortune on the streets of London. After Oliver Twist asks nasty Mr Bumble for more food, he has to flee the workhouse for the streets of London. Here he meets the Artful Dodger, who leads him to Fagin and his gang of pickpockets. When a thieving mission goes wrong, Oliver narrowly avoids prison and finds himself in the care of kind Mr Brownlow. But Fagin and the brutal Bill Sikes go in search of the young orphan, determined to drag him back . . . With an inspirational and light-hearted introduction by Garth Nix, Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens is one of the twelve wonderful classic stories being relaunched in Puffin Classics in March 2008.


A Farewell to Arms: The Hemingway Library Edition By Ernest Hemingway, Patrick Hemingway (Foreword by), Sean Hemingway (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Ernest Hemingway, Patrick Hemingway (Foreword by), Sean Hemingway (Introduction by)
$18.00
ISBN: 9781476764528
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Published: Scribner - July 8th, 2014

May 2021 Selection:

The definitive edition of the classic novel of love during wartime, featuring all of the alternate endings: "Fascinating...serves as an artifact of a bygone craft, with handwritten notes and long passages crossed out, giving readers a sense of an author's process" (The New York Times).

Written when Ernest Hemingway was thirty years old and lauded as the best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield--weary, demoralized men marching in the rain during the German attack on Caporetto; the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion--this gripping, semiautobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep.

Ernest Hemingway famously said that he rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times to get the words right. This edition collects all of the alternative endings together for the first time, along with early drafts of other essential passages, offering new insight into Hemingway's craft and creative process and the evolution of one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Featuring Hemingway's own 1948 introduction to an illustrated reissue of the novel, a personal foreword by the author's son Patrick Hemingway, and a new introduction by the author's grandson Seán Hemingway, this edition of A Farewell to Arms is truly a celebration.


All The King's Men: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize By Robert Penn Warren, Noel Polk Cover Image
$19.99
ISBN: 9780156012959
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Published: Mariner Books Classics - September 3rd, 2002

March 2021 Selection: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this classic book is generally regarded as the finest novel ever written on American politics. It describes the career of Willie Stark, a back-country lawyer whose idealism is overcome by his lust for power.


Silas Marner By George Eliot, David Carroll (Introduction by), David Carroll (Notes by) Cover Image
By George Eliot, David Carroll (Introduction by), David Carroll (Notes by)
$9.00
ISBN: 9780141439754
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Published: Penguin Classics - April 29th, 2003

March 2020 Selection: George Eliot's tale of a solitary miser gradually redeemed by the joy of fatherhood, Silas Marner is edited with an introduction and notes by David Carroll in Penguin Classics. Wrongly accused of theft and exiled from a religious community many years before, the embittered weaver Silas Marner lives alone in Raveloe, living only for work and his precious hoard of money. But when his money is stolen and an orphaned child finds her way into his house, Silas is given the chance to transform his life. His fate, and that of Eppie, the little girl he adopts, is entwined with Godfrey Cass, son of the village Squire, who, like Silas, is trapped by his past. Silas Marner, George Eliot's favourite of her novels, combines humour, rich symbolism and pointed social criticism to create an unsentimental but affectionate portrait of rural life. This text uses the Cabinet edition, revised by George Eliot in 1878. David Carroll's introduction is complemented by the original Penguin Classics edition introduction by Q.D. Leavis. Mary Ann Evans (1819-80) began her literary career as a translator, and later editor, of the Westminster Review. In 1857, she published Scenes of Clerical Life, the first of eight novels she would publish under the name of 'George Eliot', including The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda. If you enjoyed Silas Marner, you might like Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, also available in Penguin Classics. 'I think Silas Marner holds a higher place than any of the author's works. It is more nearly a masterpiece; it has more of that simple, rounded, consummate aspect ... which marks a classical work' Henry James


A Tale of Two Cities By Charles Dickens, Richard Maxwell (Editor), Richard Maxwell (Introduction by), Richard Maxwell (Notes by) Cover Image
By Charles Dickens, Richard Maxwell (Editor), Richard Maxwell (Introduction by), Richard Maxwell (Notes by)
$8.00
ISBN: 9780141439600
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Published: Penguin Classics - May 27th, 2003

February 2020 Selection: 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...'

Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities portrays a world on fire, split between Paris and London during the brutal and bloody events of the French Revolution. After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille the aging Dr Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There, two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil lanes of London, they are all drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror and soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine. This edition uses the text as it appeared in its first serial publication in 1859 to convey the full scope of Dickens's vision, and includes the original illustrations by H.K. Browne ('Phiz'). Richard Maxwell's introduction discusses the intricate interweaving of epic drama with personal tragedy.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.


Doctor Zhivago (Vintage International) By Boris Pasternak, Richard Pevear (Translated by), Larissa Volokhonsky (Translated by) Cover Image
By Boris Pasternak, Richard Pevear (Translated by), Larissa Volokhonsky (Translated by)
$20.00
ISBN: 9780307390950
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Published: Vintage - October 4th, 2011

January 2020 Selection: First published in Italy in 1957 amid international controversy, Doctor Zhivago is the story of the life and loves of a poet/physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds. Set against this backdrop of cruelty and strife is Zhivago's love for the tender and beautiful Lara, the very embodiment of the pain and chaos of those cataclysmic times. Pevear and Volokhonsky masterfully restore the spirit of Pasternak's original--his style, rhythms, voicings, and tone--in this beautiful translation of a classic of world literature.


Candide: Or Optimism (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) By Francois Voltaire, Theo Cuffe (Translated by), Michael Wood (Introduction by), Chris Ware (Illustrator) Cover Image
By Francois Voltaire, Theo Cuffe (Translated by), Michael Wood (Introduction by), Chris Ware (Illustrator)
$17.00
ISBN: 9780143039426
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Published: Penguin Classics - October 25th, 2005

November 2019 Selection: With its vibrant new translation, perceptive introduction, and witty packaging, this new edition of Voltaire's masterpiece belongs in the hands of every reader pondering our assumptions about human behavior and our place in the world. Candide tells of the hilarious adventures of the naïve Candide, who doggedly believes that "all is for the best" even when faced with injustice, suffering, and despair. Controversial and entertaining, Candide is a book that is vitally relevant today in our world pervaded by--as Candide would say--"the mania for insisting that all is well when all is by no means well."


Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass By Lewis Carroll, Hugh Haughton (Editor), John Tenniel (Illustrator) Cover Image
By Lewis Carroll, Hugh Haughton (Editor), John Tenniel (Illustrator)
$11.00
ISBN: 9780141439761
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Published: Penguin Classics - April 29th, 2003

October 2019 Selection: Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read

Original, experimental, and unparalleled in their charm, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There have enchanted readers for generations. The topsy-turvy dream worlds of Wonderland and the Looking-Glass realm are full of the unexpected: A baby turns into a pig, time stands still at a "mad" tea-party, and a chaotic game of chess turns seven-year-old Alice into a queen. These unforgettable tales--filled with sparkling wordplay and unbridled imagination--balance joyous nonsense with poignant moments of longing for the lost innocence of childhood.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators


Mansfield Park By Jane Austen, Kathryn Sutherland (Introduction by), Tony Tanner (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Jane Austen, Kathryn Sutherland (Introduction by), Tony Tanner (Introduction by)
$9.00
ISBN: 9780141439808
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Published: Penguin Classics - April 29th, 2003

July 2019 Selection: Taken from the poverty of her parents' home in Portsmouth, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with her cousin Edmund as her sole ally. During her uncle's absence in Antigua, the Crawford's arrive in the neighbourhood bringing with them the glamour of London life and a reckless taste for flirtation. Mansfield Park is considered Jane Austen's first mature work and, with its quiet heroine and subtle examination of social position and moral integrity, one of her most profound.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.


Looking Backward: 2000-1887 By Edward Bellamy, Cecelia Tichi (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Edward Bellamy, Cecelia Tichi (Introduction by)
$16.00
Unavailable, Out of Stock, or Out of Print
ISBN: 9780140390186
Published: Penguin Classics - December 16th, 1982

June 2019 Selection:It is the year 2000-and full employment, material abundance and social harmony can be found everywhere. This is the America to which Julian West, a young Bostonian, awakens after more than a century of sleep. West's initial sense of wonder, his gradual acceptance of the new order and a new love, and Bellamy's wonderful prophetic inventions - electric lighting, shopping malls, credit cards, electronic broadcasting - ensured the mass popularity of this 1888 novel. But however rich in fantasy and romance, Looking Backward is a passionate attach on the social ills of nineteenth-century industrialism and a plea for social reform and moral renewal. In her introduction, Cecelia Tichi discusses how the novel echoes the anguish and hopes of its own age while it embodies a sustaining myth of the American literary tradition-that man's perfectibility is attainable in the New World.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.


The Sea-Wolf (Modern Library Classics) By Jack London, Gary Kinder (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Jack London, Gary Kinder (Introduction by)
$12.00
ISBN: 9780679783374
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Published: Modern Library - November 14th, 2000

May 2019 Selection: A thrilling epic of a sea voyage and a complex novel of ideas, The Sea-Wolf is a standard-bearer of its genre. It is the vivid story of a gentleman scholar, Humphrey Van Weyden, who is rescued by a seal-hunting schooner after a ferryboat accident in San Francisco Bay. London uses Van Weyden's ordeal at the hands of a schooner's devious crew to explore powerful themes of ambition, courage, and the innate will to survive. The Sea-Wolf also introduces Jack London's most memorable, fully realized character, Wolf Larsen, the schooner's brutal captain, who ruthlessly crushes anyone standing in his way. As Gary Kinder states in his Introduction, "Wolf Larsen is one of the most carefully carved characters in American literature....London, himself, seems as fascinated as the reader with his own creation."


The Jungle By Upton Sinclair, Morris Dickstein (Contributions by) Cover Image
By Upton Sinclair, Morris Dickstein (Contributions by)
$5.95
ISBN: 9780553212457
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Published: Bantam Classics - September 1st, 1981

April 2019 Selection: In this powerful book we enter the world of Jurgis Rudkus, a young Lithuanian immigrant who arrives in America fired with dreams of wealth, freedom, and opportunity. And we discover, with him, the astonishing truth about "packingtown," the busy, flourishing, filthy Chicago stockyards, where new world visions perish in a jungle of human suffering. Upton Sinclair, master of the "muckraking" novel, here explores the workingman's lot at the turn of the century: the backbreaking labor, the injustices of "wage-slavery," the bewildering chaos of urban life. The Jungle, a story so shocking that it launched a government investigation, recreates this startling chapter if our history in unflinching detail. Always a vigorous champion on political reform, Sinclair is also a gripping storyteller, and his 1906 novel stands as one of the most important -- and moving -- works in the literature of social change.


The Heart of the Matter: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) By Graham Greene, James Wood (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Graham Greene, James Wood (Introduction by)
$18.00
ISBN: 9780142437995
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Published: Penguin Classics - September 28th, 2004

March 2019 Selection: Graham Greene's masterpiece, The Heart of the Mattertells the story of a good man enmeshed in love, intrigue, and evil in a West African coastal town. Scobie is bound by strict integrity to his role as assistant police commissioner and by severe responsibility to his wife, Louise, for whom he cares with a fatal pity.

When Scobie falls in love with the young widow Helen, he finds vital passion again yielding to pity, integrity giving way to deceit and dishonor--a vortex leading directly to murder. As Scobie's world crumbles, his personal crisis develops the foundation of a story by turns suspenseful, fascinating, and, finally, tragic.


Look Homeward, Angel By Thomas Wolfe Cover Image
$21.00
ISBN: 9780743297318
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Published: Scribner - October 10th, 2006

January 2019 Selection: The spectacular, history-making first novel about a young man's coming of age by literary legend Thomas Wolfe, first published in 1929 and long considered a classic of twentieth century literature.

A legendary author on par with William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Wolfe published Look Homeward, Angel, his first novel, about a young man's burning desire to leave his small town and tumultuous family in search of a better life, in 1929. It gave the world proof of his genius and launched a powerful legacy.

 

The novel follows the trajectory of Eugene Gant, a brilliant and restless young man whose wanderlust and passion shape his adolescent years in rural North Carolina. Wolfe said that Look Homeward, Angel is "a book made out of my life," and his largely autobiographical story about the quest for a greater intellectual life has resonated with and influenced generations of readers, including some of today's most important novelists. Rich with lyrical prose and vivid characterizations, this twentieth-century American classic will capture the hearts and imaginations of every reader.


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The Awakening and Selected Stories By Kate Chopin, Claire Vaye Watkins (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Kate Chopin, Claire Vaye Watkins (Introduction by)
$9.00
ISBN: 9780142437322
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Published: Penguin Classics - February 4th, 2003

February 2019 Selection: Kate Chopin's groundbreaking depiction of a woman who dares to defy the expectations of society in the pursuit of her desire
When The Awakening was first published in 1899, charges of sordidness and immorality seemed to consign it into obscurity and irreparably damage its author's reputation. But a century after her death, it is widely regarded as Kate Chopin's great achievement. Through careful, subtle changes of style, Chopin shows the transformation of Edna Pontellier, a young wife and mother, who - with tragic consequences - refuses to be caged by married and domestic life, and claims for herself moral and erotic freedom.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.


The Death of the Heart By Elizabeth Bowen Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9780385720175
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Published: Anchor - May 9th, 2000

November 2018 Selection: The Death of the Heart is perhaps Elizabeth Bowen's best-known book. As she deftly and delicately exposes the cruelty that lurks behind the polished surfaces of conventional society, Bowen reveals herself as a masterful novelist who combines a sense of humor with a devastating gift for divining human motivations.

In this piercing story of innocence betrayed set in the thirties, the orphaned Portia is stranded in the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home in London.There she encounters the attractive, carefree cad Eddie. To him, Portia is at once child and woman, and her fears her gushing love. To her, Eddie is the only reaason to be alive. But when Eddie follows Portia to a sea-side resort, the flash of a cigarette lighter in a darkened cinema illuminates a stunning romantic betrayal--and sets in motion one of the most moving and desperate flights of the heart in modern literature.


My Early Life: 1874-1904 By Winston Churchill, William Manchester (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Winston Churchill, William Manchester (Introduction by)
$20.00
ISBN: 9780684823454
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Published: Scribner - June 6th, 1996

October 2018 Selection: Here, in his own words, are the fascinating first thirty years in the life of one of the most provocative and compelling leaders of the twentieth century: Winston Churchill.

As a visionary, statesman, and historian, and the most eloquent spokesman against Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill was one of the greatest figures of the twentieth century. In this autobiography, Churchill recalls his childhood, his schooling, his years as a war correspondent in South Africa during the Boer War, and his first forays into politics as a member of Parliament. My Early Life not only gives readers insights into the shaping of a great leader but, as Churchill himself wrote, "a picture of a vanished age." To fully understand Winston Churchill and his times, My Early Life is essential reading.


True Grit: A Novel By Charles Portis, Donna Tartt (Afterword by) Cover Image
By Charles Portis, Donna Tartt (Afterword by)
$17.00
ISBN: 9781590204597
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Published: The Overlook Press - November 5th, 2010

September 2018 Selection: True Grit is his most famous novel--first published in 1968, and the basis for the movie of the same name starring John Wayne. It tells the story of Mattie Ross, who is just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shoots her father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robs him of his life, his horse, and $150 in cash money. Mattie leaves home to avenge her father's blood. With the one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, the meanest available U.S. Marshal, by her side, Mattie pursues the homicide into Indian Territory. True Grit is eccentric, cool, straight, and unflinching, like Mattie herself. From a writer of true cult status, this is an American classic through and through. This new edition, with a smart new package and an afterword by acclaimed author Donna Tartt, will bring this masterpiece to an even broader audience.


Phineas Finn (Oxford World's Classics) By Anthony Trollope, Simon Dentith (Editor) Cover Image
$11.95
ISBN: 9780199581436
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Published: Oxford University Press, USA - December 17th, 2011

August 2018 Selection: The second novel in Trollope's Palliser series, Phineas Finn's engaging plot embraces matters as diverse as reform, the position of women, the Irish question, and the conflict between integrity and ambition. Through the engaging figure of the handsome Irishman Phineas Finn, Trollope explores the realities of political life, and the clash between compromise and conviction, that is as topical today as it was in the 1860s. In his introduction, Simon Dentith looks at the British political context and the interwoven strands of politics, the rights of women, and their struggle for equality in marriage. He also considers the novel's interesting publishing history and Trollope's own parliamentary ambitions. One appendix outlines the internal chronology of the series, providing a unique understanding of the six novels as a linked narrative, and a second appendix describes the passage of the second Reform Act of 1867, a controversial measure that extended the franchise and was the subject of heated Conservative and Liberal debate. In addition, there is a biography of Trollope and a chronology of his life as well as extensive notes. 


The Right Stuff By Tom Wolfe Cover Image
$20.00
ISBN: 9780312427566
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Published: Picador - March 4th, 2008

July 2018 Selection: Millions of words have poured forth about man's trip to the moon, but until now few people have had a sense of the most engrossing side of the adventure; namely, what went on in the minds of the astronauts themselves - in space, on the moon, and even during certain odysseys on earth. It is this, the inner life of the astronauts, that Tom Wolfe describes with his almost uncanny empathetic powers, that made The Right Stuff a classic.


The Mysterious Island (Modern Library Classics) By Jules Verne, Jordan Stump (Translated by), Caleb Carr (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Jules Verne, Jordan Stump (Translated by), Caleb Carr (Introduction by)
$18.00
Unavailable, Out of Stock, or Out of Print
ISBN: 9780812966428
Published: Modern Library - December 10th, 2002

June 2018 Selection: Based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk, who survived alone for almost five years on an uninhabited island off the coast of Chile, The Mysterious Island is considered by many to be Jules Verne's masterpiece. "Wide-eyed mid-nineteenth-century humanistic optimism in a breezy, blissfully readable translation by Stump" ( Kirkus Reviews), here is the enthralling tale of five men and a dog who land in a balloon on a faraway, fantastic island of bewildering goings-on and their struggle to survive as they uncover the island's secret.


The Painter of Signs By R. K. Narayan, Monica Ali (Introduction by) Cover Image
By R. K. Narayan, Monica Ali (Introduction by)
$22.00
ISBN: 9780143039662
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Published: Penguin Classics - August 29th, 2006

May 2018 Selection: For Raman the sign painter, life is a familiar and satisfying routine. A man of simple, rational ways, he lives with his pious aunt and prides himself on his creative work. But all that changes when he meets Daisy, a thrillingly independent young woman who wishes to bring birth control to the area. Hired to create signs for her clinics, Raman finds himself smitten by a love he cannot understand, much less avoid-and soon realizes that life isn't so routine anymore. Set in R. K. Narayan's fictional city of Malgudi, The Painter of Signs is a wry, bittersweet treasure.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.


The Feast of the Goat: A Novel By Mario Vargas Llosa, Edith Grossman (Translated by) Cover Image
By Mario Vargas Llosa, Edith Grossman (Translated by)
$21.00
ISBN: 9780312420277
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Published: Picador - November 9th, 2002

April 2018 Selection: Haunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic - and finds herself reliving the events of l961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million. Rafael Trujillo, the depraved ailing dictator whom Dominicans call the Goat, controls his inner circle with a combination of violence and blackmail. In Trujillo's gaudy palace, treachery and cowardice have become a way of life. But Trujillo's grasp is slipping. There is a conspiracy against him, and a Machiavellian revolution already underway that will have bloody consequences of its own. In this 'masterpiece of Latin American and world literature, and one of the finest political novels ever written' (Bookforum), Mario Vargas Llosa recounts the end of a regime and the birth of a terrible democracy, giving voice to the historical Trujillo and the victims, both innocent and complicit, drawn into his deadly orbit.