In his latest collection, Thomas Beller trains his piercing literary eye on how a single, seismic event indelibly shapes the trajectory of the common and mundane experiences of one’s life. Weaving together a charming set of autobiographical stories, Beller interrogates the randomness and contingencies that separate sadness from joy, death from life. His father escaped the Nazis, only to die in America from cancer when Beller was nine years old. Beller measures how this loss impacted his li...

Reading The Catcher in the Rye has become a rite of passage for young Americans, landing the book on bestseller lists (and banned book lists) each year, even though it was published a half century ago. What is it about J. D. Salinger and his body of work that has left such a lasting mark on American fiction? And who better to answer that question than the current generation of writers?Here are fourteen of the most vital voices in the contemporary American fiction ...

"In the same way Salinger carved out the niche of male adolescence ....Beller approaches that mutable boy-to-man territory."—San Francisco ChronicleWriting with the sparkling wit and insight of his highly praised debut, Seduction Theory ("Brilliantly captures the great expectations and recurring ambivalence of youth."—The New York Times), Thomas Beller continues to plumb the adventures of his hero, Alex Fader, a youthful existentialist an...

Dark, but filled with bright genius, Women in Love is a prophetic masterpiece steeped in eroticism, filled with perceptions about sexual power and obsession that have proven to be timeless and true.

From strip clubs to the Academy Awards to the basketball court—a ride through the landscape of guyhood.Acclaimed fiction writer Thomas Beller digs deep into his own history in this humorous and insightful collection about the state of masculinity. With sharp and engaging eloquence he discourses on T-shirts; being your mother's date at the Academy Awards; life at a bagel factory; the irrational pleasures of old American cars—and the mysterious disappearance of the a...

J.D. Salinger published his first story in The New Yorker at age twenty-nine. Three years later came The Catcher in The Rye, a novel that has sold more than sixty-five million copies and achieved mythic status since its publication in 1951. Subsequent books introduced a new type in contemporary literature: the introspective, hyperarticulate Glass family, whose stage is the Upper East Side. Yet we still know little about Salinger’s personal life and less about his characte...

The Rainbow is a novel by British author D. H. Lawrence, first published by Methuen & Co. in 1915. It follows three generations of the Brangwen family living in Nottinghamshire, particularly focusing on the individual's struggle to growth and fulfilment within the confining strictures of English social life. Lawrence's 1920 novel Women in Love is a sequel to The Rainbow.PlotThe Rainbow tells the story of three generations of the Brangwen family, a dynasty of farmers and craft...

The third published novel of D. H. Lawrence, taken by many to be his earliest masterpiece, tells the story of Paul Morel, a young man and budding artist. Richard Aldington explains the semi-autobiographical nature of his masterpiece:When you have experienced Sons and Lovers you have lived through the agonies of the young Lawrence striving to win free from his old life'. Generally, it is not only considered as an evocative portrayal of working-class life in a mining community, but a...

Alvina Houghton, the daughter of a widowed Midlands draper, comes of age just as her father’s business is failing. In a desperate attempt to regain his fortune and secure his daughter’s proper upbringing, James Houghton buys a theater. Among the traveling performers he employs is Ciccio, a sensual Italian who immediately captures Alvina’s attention. Fleeing with him to Naples, she leaves her safe world behind and enters one of sexual awakening, desire, and fleeting freedom.

A Room with a View is a novel by English writer E. M. Forster, about a young woman in the restrained culture of Edwardian era England. Set in Italy and England, the story is both a romance and a critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century. Merchant-Ivory produced an award-winning film adaptation in 1985. The Modern Library ranked A Room with a View 79th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century (1998). A Room with a View had a lengthy gest...

This is the 12th book in the Extraordinary Voyages Series. The Mysterious Island is a crossover sequel to Verne's famous Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and In Search of the Castaways. The book tells the adventures of five Americans on an uncharted island in the South Pacific. The story begins in the American Civil War, during the siege of Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America. As famine and death ravage the city, five northern prisoners of war decide t...

This carefully crafted ebook: “Tales of the Jazz Age - The Original 1922 Edition” is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents.Tales of the Jazz Age (1922) is the second collection of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1922. It includes two masterpieces as well as several other stories from his earlier career. The story "May Day" depicts a party at a popular club in New York that becomes a night of revelry during which former soldier...