Few works have so firmly established their position in American literature as The Education of Henry Adams. As a man of extraordinary gifts and learning and a member of one of the greatest American families, Henry Adams wrote an insightful exploration of himself and the tumultuous age in which he lived. In the words of Van Wyck Brooks, he "revealed a phase of American history with unparalleled boldness and truth."In spite of his illustrious background and Harvard schooling...

Few works have captured the seamy side of American urban life with such graphic immediacy as Frank Norris’ McTeague. Heredity and environment play the role of fate in this portrayal of human degradation in turn-of-the-century San Francisco.McTeague, a successful but naive dentist, marries Trina, introduced to him by her cousin Marcus Schouler. When Trina wins $5,000 in a lottery, and increases the sum by shrewd investment, Schouler, who had wanted to marry Trina himself, f...

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel features Amory Blaine, a handsome, wealthy, spoiled, and snobbish young man from the Midwest who attends Princeton University to acquire a refined sense of the proper “social” values. Lacking all sense of purpose, he interests himself primarily in literary cults, vaguely “liberal” student activities, and a series of flirtations with some rather predatory young ladies. Partially autobiographical, This Side of Paradise was credited with having inven...

Williston Bibb Barrett is a rather unusual and inquisitive young Southerner with a special gift for cultivating the possibilities of life. He suffers from occasional bouts of amnesia and disconcerting attacks of déjà vu. He clings to certain old-fashioned notions of behavior, and yet he finds himself constantly impelled to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. And he lives with the secret suspicion that the great world catastrophe that everyone fears will happen has already happened.

Dr. Julie Walker wakes on a summer morning in San Francisco to find a city in chaos. Today Californians are voting on a controversial ballot initiative that will change history. With the future of the state and the nation uncertain, the streets have erupted into violence.Injured, Julie must make her way across the city by foot to the Veterans Administration Hospital, where her sister, recently returned from Afghanistan, is in labor. At the hospital a brutal scene is unfolding as a ...

London in the time of Queen Elizabeth I is a bustling place, its streets crowded with vendors selling goods from all over the world. In the courtyard of St. Paul's Cathedral, Alice Wood competes with other booksellers, hawking pamphlets, plays, and the latest poetry from the continent. It is a lonely life for a hardworking young widow, and she will soon put it aside. When a black-clad stranger visits, speaking in riddles and asking questions about her long-vanished son, Alice will be drawn...

Ellery Queen and Sherlock Holmes match wits to reveal the identity of history's most infamous and depraved killer.Ellery Queen and Sherlock Holmes are the undisputed masters of analytical deduction—their talents and methods strikingly, almost uncannily, alike. Through the strange interlocking of events past and present, the two celebrated detectives meet to focus their razor-sharp intellects—and their brilliant powers of observation—on the mystery of Jack the Ripper.Jack th...

John Lovering Benedict had more than most men—more money, more mansions, more cars, but most of all more women, including three ex-wives with little in common but their extraordinary physiques. For Ellery Queen the question was which one of them had bashed in Benedict's skull with a hunk of iron statuary? The clues were many … but puzzling. All had been planted at the scene of the crime, but by whom, and for what purpose? And who was the last woman in John Benedict's life?

Internationally acclaimed author Angela Davis-Gardner draws inspiration from Puccini's Madame Butterfly to craft this deftly imagined furthering of the famed opera's main characters. Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton and his wife Kate bring a three-year-old Japanese boy home to their Illinois farm. But when their neighbors learn the truth about the boy's heritage, the fallout is devastating. "In its way, it holds its own alongside the modern Western masterpieces of Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCa...

Warren Duffy has returned to America for all the worst reasons; his marriage to a beautiful Welsh woman has come apart; his comic shop in Cardiff has failed; and his Irish-American father has died, bequeathing to Warren his last possession, a roofless, half-renovated mansion in the heart of black Philadelphia. On his first night in his new home, Warren spies two figures in the grass outside; when he screws up the nerve to confront them, they disappear. The next day he encounters ghosts of ...

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.Brace yourself for the Jazz Age! "Flappers and Philosophers" by F. Scott Fitzgerald plunges you into a world of youthful rebellion and restless yearning. Meet flappers who bob their hair and defy expectations, alongside philosophers grappling with love, ambition, and the pursuit of meaning. These eight captivating stories capture the exuberance, disillusionment, and the intoxicating spirit of the 1920s. Get ready for fast cars, fleeting...

A monstrous apparatus has been found on the surface of the moon. It devours and destroys in ways so incomprehensible to humans that a new language must be invented to describe it and a new kind of thinking to understand it. So far, the human guinea pigs sent there in hopes of unraveling the murderous maze have all died terrible deaths—except the last, now on suicide watch. The ideal candidate won’t go insane, even as he feels the end approaching. And now they think they’ve found their man....