Showing titles in World Literature

The 200th anniversary of the birth of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892), one of the most popular of poets, is celebrated in 2009. Works such as The Charge of the Light Brigade, Crossing the Bar and Tears, Idle Tears have made him an internationally famous figure, and the second most quoted writer of all time (after Shakespeare).

English novelist Barbara Pym’s career was defined, in many senses, by rejection. Her first novel Some Tame Gazelle was turned down by every publisher she sent it out in 1935, finally published only 15 years later. Though she picked up a publisher from there and received modest praise, the publishing industry grew restless and her sales spiralled downwards. By her seventh novel, she had been dropped. This brilliant biography, brimming with Pym’s private diaries and intimate letters, offers a first full insight into Barbara Pym’s life and how it informed her writing.

On an isolated farm in southern Ireland, a decades-old grave houses the dismembered bones of 11 women. Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire of the Irish Gardai is used to bloodshed, but these white bones speak of unimaginable butchery. Not far away, a young American tourist is at the mercy of a sadistic killer. His tools are a boning knife, twine, and a doll fashioned from rags, nails, and fish-hooks. The murder of his victims is secondary only to his pleasure at their pain.

Dante's Divine Comedy is considered to be not only the most important epic poem in Italian literature, but also one of the greatest poems ever written. It consists of 100 cantos, and (after an introductory canto) they are divided into three sections. Each section is 33 cantos in length, and they describe how Dante and a guide travel through Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY The World’s Leading Center for Shakespeare Studies The Folger Shakespeare Library, home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, brings Macbeth to life with this new full-length, full-cast dramatic recording of its definitive Folger Edition. Macbeth, one of...

Soon to be a major new London theatre show, The Witness for the Prosecution follows the hapless Leonard Vole as he learns he has been accused of murdering a wealthy widow in order to get his hands on the inheritance. His predicament is made even worse when he discovers his wife to be the chief...

Patricia Campbell's life has never felt smaller. Her ambitious husband is too busy to give her a goodbye kiss in the morning, her kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she's always a step behind on thank-you notes and her endless list of chores. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a close-knit group of Charleston women united by their love of true crime and paperback fiction. At these meetings they're as likely to talk about the Manson family as they are marriage, motherhood, and neighborhood gossip.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A big sweeping novel of friendship and marriage” (The Washington Post) by the celebrated author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini Leopold Bloom King has been raised in a family shattered—and shadowed—by tragedy. Lonely and adrift, he...

This frank and sometimes controversial diary details one hectic year in the eye of the showbiz storm, cut with a heavy mix of the day-to-day goings-on in Bexhill, where Harry lives at home with his mother, occasional Filipina fiancée Lay Dee and a dog who has a job at the airport. Follow Harry's attempts to become a judge on X Factor and his efforts to meet the Welsh chanteuse Duffy at Warwick Avenue.

The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher...

Thomas Mann's last great novel, first published in 1947 and now newly rendered into English by acclaimed translator John E. Woods, is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil. Mann's protagonist, the composer Adrian Leverkühn, is the flower of German culture, a brilliant, isolated, overreaching figure, his radical new music a breakneck game played by art at the very edge of impossibility. In return for twenty-four years of unparalleled musical accomplishment, he bargains away his soul—and the ability to love his fellow man.

A collection of poems and songs by Robert Burns in an award-winning audio production by Almost Tangible. Set within modern and vivid soundscapes, this audio collection gives Burns' texts new resonance. From the soullessness of a call center through the simple joy of a baby's nursery to the horror of the battlefields and all the way into space, this is a visceral roller-coaster through the poems and songs of Scotland's national bard. Robert Burns like you've never heard him before! Produced with immersive 3D sound, we recommend listening on headphones.

Renowned for his wit, style and sophistication, Noël Coward was one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century. His plays, set in the glittering world of high society in which he lived, are much admired and have remained in the popular theatre repertoire to this day. This collection brings together the very best radio adaptation

Working from existing translations, Thomas Merton composed a series of his own versions of the classic sayings of Chuang Tzu, the most spiritual of Chinese philosophers. Chuang Tzu, who wrote in the fourth and third centuries BC, is the chief authentic historical spokesperson for Taoism and its founder, Lao Tzu (a legendary character known largely through Chuang Tzu’s writings).

Magnolia, South Carolina, 1980: Austin Foster is barely a teenager when her mama dies giving birth to twins, leaving her to pick up the pieces while holding her six siblings together and doing her best to stop her daddy from retreating into his personal darkness.

It’s the 1960s in North Carolina, and Lorraine Delford has it all—an upstanding family, a perfect boyfriend, and an idyllic home complete with a white picket fence. Yet every time she looks through her father’s telescope, she dreams of leaving it all behind to go to space. It’s ambitious, but Lorraine has always been exceptional.

The humorous and moving tale of Miss Shepherd, an eccentric old lady who, by a bizarre series of twists and turns, lived in the author’s garden for many years. Alan Bennett reads his own acclaimed work, recently adapted as a West End smash hit starring Maggie Smith as the eccentric old lady...

Valeria Velez has just pulled off a stunning upset in California's 27th District, ousting ten-term corporatist incumbent Fillian Dunne from his seat in Congress. Young, beautiful, and idealistic, Valeria and her boyfriend/campaign manager Preston Jante are determined to use Valeria's new position to "stop stuffing the maw of the military machine" and return power to the people. But when fugitive hacker Lance Thaddeus uncovers a top-secret Pentagon program combining artificial intelligence with nuclear command-and-control, Valeria might have to choose between her ideals...and her life.

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by The New York Times Book Review, AV Club, Variety, The Boston Globe, The Minnesota Star Tribune, Vulture, Men’s Health, Book Riot, New York Post, Goodreads, AARP, Paste, and more—one of the top psychological thrillers of 2025! From master storyteller...

Includes an introduction written and read by Jesmyn Ward, a foreword written and read by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s granddaughter, Eleanor Lanahan, and an afterword written and read by Professor James L. W. West III The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald’s family...