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...

Coconut Dreams explores the lives of the Pinto family through seventeen linked short stories. Starting with a ghost story set in Goa, India in the 1950s, the collection weaves through various timelines and perspectives to focus on two children, Aiden and Ally Pinto. These siblings tackle their adventures in a predominantly white suburb with innocence, intelligence and a timid foot in two distinct cultures. In these stories, Derek Mascarenhas takes...

It's summer in the '60s. Twenty-one testosterone-drenched high school graduates are bussed to a summer job at the Company bush camp Washika. Idealistic, confident, sometimes troubled, they meet their match in tough older bush workers, a devastating forest fire, sand flies and leeches, and occasionally beautiful young women.

Reaching for Independence is both about war and about love. The story is set in the nineteenth century during Greece's chaotic War for Independence from the Ottoman Turks. The fascinating historical figures include Captain Bouboulina, the woman who launched the war to free Greece, two Greek war commanders, Mavrocordatos and Kolokotronis, who opposed each other-nearly causing a civil war-and the famous poet, Lord Byron, who led troops to victory. Real...

In 1891, newlyweds Rannei and Arne Bergstrom arrive in New York City full of hope and awe. They've left behind family, friends, and civilization in Norway in search of fertile farmland and a place to start a family. A fellow passenger on the train west convinces Arne to try his hand at sheep-ranching on The Big Gumbo, an inhospitable piece of earth in South Dakota. Arne is enchanted with the notion of taming the unforgiving landscape, but Rannei dreads...

Ireland in the mid-twentieth century, and Julia and Lydia Esdaile live with their widowed father, Willis, at Knockfane, a country house and farm where the Protestant Esdaile family have lived for centuries. When Willis inexplicably banishes his only son and heir, Edward, he concocts a complex plan to protect and preserve Knockfane for succeeding generations. But time passes, and Willis dies, and soon his intentions are threatened and thwarted by unforeseen...