Samuel Butler was an individualistic Victorian era writer who published a variety of works. He is also known for examining Christian orthodoxy, considerable studies of evolutionary thought, studies of Italian art, and works of literary history as well as criticism. Butler even made prose translations of "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" which remain some of the most popular to this day. His authority on literature came through his posthumous novel, "The...

This early work by Henry James was originally published in 1911 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. Henry James was born in New York City in 1843. One of thirteen children, James had an unorthodox early education, switching between schools, private tutors and private reading.. James published his first story, 'A Tragedy of Error', in the Continental Monthly in 1864, when he was twenty years old. In 1876, he emigrated...

The Spoils of Poynton is a novel by Henry James, first published under the title The Old Things as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1896 and then as a book in 1897. This novel traces the shifting relations among three human beings and a magnificent collection of art, decorative arts, and furniture arrayed like jewels in a country house called Poynton. Mrs. Gereth, a widow of impeccable taste and iron will, formed the collection over decades only...

The Foreigner (1909) tells the story of Kalman Kalmar, a young Ukrainian immigrant working in rural Saskatchewan. It addresses the themes of male maturation, cultural assimilation, and a form of "muscular Christianity" recurring in Connor's popular Western tales. Daniel Coleman's afterword considers the text's departure from Connor's established fiction formulas and provides a unique framework for understanding its depiction of difference.

Joris-Karl Huysmans's cult classic of deviance and decadence that inspired Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, now in a new translation by Theo Cuffe A celebration of deviance, vanity, sensual abandon, and the aesthetics of artifice, Against Nature brings us the nineteenth-century rebel Jean des Esseintes-disaffected, degenerate, and art-obsessed. The last of a proud and noble family, des Esseintes retreats from the world in disgust at bourgeois...

Growing up in the Fiji Islands in the late 1960s, Kalyana Mani Seth is an impressionable, plump young girl suited to the meaning of her name: blissful, blessed, the auspicious one. Her mother educates Kalyana about her Indian heritage, vividly telling tales of mischievous Krishna and powerful Mother Kali, and recounting her grandparents' migration to the tiny, British colony. While the island nation celebrates its recently granted independence, new...

Here is Brodie, an expatriate trader in New Guinea, whose understanding of the sorceries and rituals he now lives with is moving close to respect and wonderment. He watches his visiting daughter, a twelve-year-old, being captivated by this culture of theatre. The place was packed. Tiptoe, over the matt-black heads of the crowd, he could see the performers. He edged closer, but so rapt was everyone that none of them looked around. The figure who held...

If Winton is an aria, Knox is early Rolling Stones.' The GuardianA stunning new novel about longing, regret, redemption and the terrible legacy of decades of secrets buried in an Australian beachside suburb. A house perched impossibly on a cliff overlooking the stunning, iconic Bluebird Beach. Prime real estate, yet somehow not real estate at all, The Lodge is, like those who live in it, falling apart. Gordon Grimes has become the accidental keeper...

In 1942, Danya was asked to do the unthinkable. Already sentenced to death for distributing anti-Fascist literature, German SS Commandant Heinrich Tauber offered her a chance at a reprieve-if she would breed with soldiers under the Lebensborn Program, to produce new Aryan soldiers to replace those Germans killed in Russia. As her wall of resistance weakens against the continuous onslaught from the SS, devilishly handsome and shrewd double agent Arie...

It can be a struggle for anyone-aligning bold dreams with family expectations... Melina is no stranger to that struggle. Being raised in a strong, family-centered Mexican American culture, she has dreams of discovering the world beyond her neighborhood's limited boundaries. Melina loves her family but has decided to break from her family's cultural norms and attend college several hours away in hopes of a different life than she's used to. But trying...