**From the author of National Book Award-nominated Lost in the Funhouse, comes an outrageously farcical adventure that challenges our notions of technology, power, and human nature."[Barth] ran riot over literary rules and conventions, even as he displayed, with meticulous discipline, mastery of and respect for them." —The New York Times**Giles Goat-Boy tells the story of a human boy raised as a goat who comes to believe that he is humanity's prop...

Proving himself yet again a master of every form, Barth conquers in his latest the ruminative short essay—“jeux d’esprits,” as Barth describes them. These mostly one-page tidbits pay homage to Barth’s literary influences while retaining his trademark self-consciousness and willingness to play.

A National Book Award winner, this bawdy, comic trio of novellas finds John Barth injecting his signature wit into three tales many times told: that of Scheherazade, storyteller of the Thousand and One Nights; of Perseus, slayer of Medusa; and of Bellerophon, rider of Pegasus and slayer of the Chimera.

This is Barth's most distinguished masterpiece. This modern classic is a hilarious tribute to all the most insidious human vices, with a hero who is "one of the most diverting . . . to roam the world since Candide.""A feast. Dense, funny, endlessly inventive (and, OK, yes, long-winded) this satire of the eighteenth-century picaresque novel—think Fielding's Tom Jones or Sterne's Tristram Shandy—is also an earnest picture of the pitfalls awaiting innocence as it mak...

“An extraordinary achievement . . . a vision of hell so stern it cannot be chuckled or raged aside.”—The New York Times Book ReviewA classic of postwar American literature, Last Exit to Brooklyn created shockwaves upon its release in 1964 with its raw, vibrant language and startling revelations of New York City's underbelly.The prostitutes, drunks, addicts, and johns of Selby’s Brooklyn are fierce and lonely creatures, desperately searchin...

From the author of the #1 Sci-Fi/Fantasy bestseller, The Dig, comes an all-new Sci-Fi thriller."A highly recommended, character-driven sci-fi novel in the tradition of Robert A. Heinlein." -Kirkus ReviewsNine brilliant scientists travel light years on a one-way trip to an Earth-like planet. Their mission is to study from orbit the two species of intelligent lifeforms on the surface. The first: an isolated people embarking ...

'It doesn't matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.'Fifteen-year-old Morwenna lives in Wales with her twin sister and a mother who spins dark magic for ill. One day, Mori and her mother fight a powerful, magical battle that kills her sister and leaves Mori disabled. Devastated, Mori flees to her long-lost father in England. Adrift, outcast at boarding school, Mori retreats into the worlds she knows best: her magic and he...

Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the bucolic hamlet of Bury. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, he is a compulsive liar and a melancholy weakling. When Lucy accepts employment assisting the majordomo of the remote, forbidding castle of the Baron Von Aux he meets thieves, madmen, aristocrats, and a puppy. He also meets Klara, a delicate beauty who is, unfortunately, already involved with an exceptionally handsome partisan soldier. Thus begins a tale of polite theft, ...

A special 10th anniversary edition of Roy Peter Clark's bestselling guide to writing, featuring five bonus tools.Ten years ago, Roy Peter Clark, America's most influential writing teacher, whittled down almost thirty years of experience in journalism, writing, and teaching into a series of fifty short essays on different aspects of writing. In the past decade, Writing Tools has become a classic guidebook for novices and experts alike and remains one of the...

The New Yorker is, of course, a bastion of superb essays, influential investigative journalism, and insightful arts criticism. But for eighty years, it’s also been a hoot. In fact, when Harold Ross founded the legendary magazine in 1925, he called it “a comic weekly,” and while it has grown into much more**,** it has also remained true to its original mission. Now an uproarious sampling of its funny writings can be found in a hilarious new collection, one as satirical and witty, m...

Award winning essayist Scott Russell Sanders once compared the art of essay writing to "the pursuit of mental rabbits"-a rambling through thickets of thought in search of some brief glimmer of fuzzy truth. While some people persist in the belief that essays are stuffy and antiquated, the truth is that the personal essay is an ever-changing creative medium that provides an ideal vehicle for satisfying the human urge to document truths as we experience them and share them with others-to capt...

From This American Life alum David Rakoff comes a hilarious collection that single-handedly raises self-deprecation to an art form. Whether impersonating Sigmund Freud in a department store window during the holidays, climbing an icy mountain in cheap loafers, or learning primitive survival skills in the wilds of New Jersey, Rakoff clearly demonstrates how he doesn’t belong–nor does he try to.In his debut collection of essays, Rakoff uses his razor-sharp wit and snarky hum...