books to read

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Stephen Chbosky · 2012

“A timeless story for every young person who needs to understand that they are not alone.” —Judy Blume<br/><br/>“Once in a while, a novel comes along that becomes a generational touchstone. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is one of those books.” —R. J. Palacio, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wonder<br/><br/>This #1 New York Times bestselling coming-of-age story with millions of copies in print takes a sometimes heartbreaking, often hysterical, and always honest look at high school in all its glory.<br/><br/>The critically acclaimed debut novel from Stephen Chbosky follows observant “wallflower” Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. Sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.<br/><br/>A #1 New York Times bestseller for more than a year, adapted into a major motion picture starring Logan Lerman and Emma Watson (and written and directed by the author), and an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults (2000) and Best Book for Reluctant Readers (2000), this novel for teen readers (or wallflowers of more-advanced age) will make you laugh, cry, and perhaps feel nostalgic for those moments when you, too, tiptoed onto the dance floor of life.

The Maze Runner Series Complete Collection Boxed Set (5-Book)

James Dashner · 2017

A must-have gift for every collection—from the die-hard Maze Runner fan to the binge reader looking for a new to viewers of the blockbuster movie franchise! This boxed set has all of the paperback books in the #1 New York Times bestselling Maze Runner series: The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials, The Death Cure, The Kill Order, and The Fever Code.<br/><br/>When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He's welcomed to his new home, the Glade, by strangers—boys whose memories are also gone.<br/><br/>Outside the towering stone walls that surround the Glade is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It's the only way out—and no one's ever made it through alive.<br/><br/>Join Thomas and the Gladers in all five books in the Maze Runner series as they uncover the secrets of the maze; discover WICKED, the shadowy organization who put them there; and fight to survive in a new and dangerous world.<br/><br/>Enter the World of the Maze Runner series and never stop running.<br/><br/>"[A] mysterious survival saga that passionate fans describe as a fusion of Lord of the Flies, The Hunger Games, and Lost."—EW

Divergent Series Box Set (Books 1-4)

Veronica Roth · 2016

The Complete Harry Potter Collection (Books 1-7)

J. K. Rowling · 2007

The Hunger Games Trilogy: The Hunger Games / Catching Fire / Mockingjay

Suzanne Collins · 2014

Suzanne Collins's worldwide-bestselling Hunger Games trilogy is now available in a paperback box set! This edition features the books with the classic cover art in a striking new package.<br/>Now available, a paperback box set of the Hunger Games! This box set features the original cover artwork from the ground-breaking, bestselling trilogy. A perfect gift for fans of the books or movies.In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

The Inheritance Games Boxed Set

Jennifer Lynn Barnes · 2022

Shatter Me Series 6-Book Box Set: Shatter Me, Unravel Me, Ignite Me, Restore Me, Defy Me, Imagine Me

Tahereh Mafi · 2021

<p>Juliette can kill with a touch--will she wield her power for good, or will it turn her into the monster she's always feared she truly is? Find out in the New York Times and USA Today bestselling Shatter Me series--all six novels are now available in this paperback box set!</p> <p>One touch is all it takes. One touch, and Juliette Ferrars can bring a grown man to his knees, begging for mercy. One touch, and she can kill.</p> <p>No one knows why Juliette has such incredible power. It feels like a curse, like too great a burden for one person alone to bear. But The Reestablishment sees her as an opportunity. As a deadly weapon. And they'll stop at nothing to shape her into what they want.</p> <p>Juliette has never fought for herself before. But when she's reunited with the one person who ever cared about her, she finds a strength she never knew she had.</p> <p>This bestselling series from powerhouse author Tahereh Mafi showcases relentlessly thrilling action, heart stopping romance, and a war-torn world in which rebellion is the only path to freedom.</p>

Coraline

Neil Gaiman · 2012

This edition of New York Times bestselling and Newbery Medal-winning author Neil Gaiman’s modern classic, Coraline—also an Academy Award-nominated film—is enriched with a foreword from the author, a reader's guide, and more.<br/>"Coraline discovered the door a little while after they moved into the house...."<br/>When Coraline steps through a door to find another house strangely similar to her own (only better), things seem marvelous.<br/>But there's another mother there, and another father, and they want her to stay and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go.<br/>Coraline will have to fight with all her wit and courage if she is to save herself and return to her ordinary life.<br/>Neil Gaiman's Coraline is a can't-miss classic that enthralls readers age 8 to 12 but also adults who enjoy a perfect smart spooky read.

The Plague (Vintage International)

Albert Camus · 2012

“Its relevance lashes you across the face.” —Stephen Metcalf, The Los Angeles Times • “A redemptive book, one that wills the reader to believe, even in a time of despair.” —Roger Lowenstein, The Washington Post  A haunting tale of human resilience and hope in the face of unrelieved horror, Albert Camus' iconic novel about an epidemic ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature.  The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr. Rieux, resist the terror. An immediate triumph when it was published in 1947, The Plague is in part an allegory of France's suffering under the Nazi occupation, and a timeless story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence.

Записки изъ подполья

Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский · 1864

Letters to Milena

Kafka

Aphorisms on love and hate

Nietzie

The Myth of Sisyphus (Vintage International)

Albert Camus · 2018

A Nobel Prize-winning author delivers one of the most influential works of the twentieth century, showing a way out of despair and reaffirming the value of existence.<br/><br/>Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide—the question of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning. With lyric eloquence, Albert Camus brilliantly presents a crucial exposition of existentialist thought.

The Master and the Margarita

Mikhail Bulgakov · 1989

The Idiot (Vintage Classics)

Fyodor Dostoevsky · 2003

<p>Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s masterful translation of <b>The Idiot</b> is destined to stand with their versions of <b>Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov</b><i>, </i>and <b>Demons</b> as the definitive Dostoevsky in English.<br><br>After his great portrayal of a guilty man in <b>Crime and Punishment</b><i>,</i> Dostoevsky set out in <b>The Idiot</b> to portray a man of pure innocence. The twenty-six-year-old Prince Myshkin, following a stay of several years in a Swiss sanatorium, returns to Russia to collect an inheritance and “be among people.” Even before he reaches home he meets the dark Rogozhin, a rich merchant’s son whose obsession with the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna eventually draws all three of them into a tragic denouement. In Petersburg the prince finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with money, power, and manipulation. Scandal escalates to murder as Dostoevsky traces the surprising effect of this “positively beautiful man” on the people around him, leading to a final scene that is one of the most powerful in all of world literature.</p>

Fear and Trembling (Penguin Classics)

Soren Kierkegaard · 1986

<b>The infamous and controversial work that made a lasting impression on both modern Protestant theology and existentialist philosophers such as Sartre and Camus</b><br><br>Writing under the pseudonym of "Johannes de silentio," Kierkegaard expounds his personal view of religion through a discussion of the scene in Genesis in which Abraham prepares to sacrifice his son Isaac at God's command. Believing Abraham's unreserved obedience to be the essential leap of faith needed to make a full commitment to his religion, Kierkegaard himself made great sacrifices in order to dedicate his life entirely to his philosophy and to God. The conviction shown in this religious polemic—that a man can have an exceptional mission in life—informed all Kierkegaard's later writings. His "teleological suspension of the ethical" challenged the contemporary views of Hegel's universal moral system, and was also hugely influential for both protestant theology and the existentialist movement. <br><br> Alastair Hannay's introduction evaluates Kierkegaard's philosophy and the ways in which it conflicted with more accepted contemporary views. This edition also includes detailed notes to complement this groundbreaking analysis of religion, and a new chronology. <br><br>For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Either/Or

Søren Kierkegaard

Le Comte de Monte Cristo

Alexandre Dumas · 1830

Investigations of a Dog

Franz Kafka · 2018

Existentialism Is a Humanism

Jean-Paul Sartre · 2007

Rebecca

Daphne Du Maurier

East of Eden (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

John Steinbeck · 1952

A masterpiece of Biblical scope, and the magnum opus of one of America’s most enduring authors<br/><br/>A Penguin Classic<br/><br/>In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.<br/><br/>The masterpiece of Steinbeck’s later years, East of Eden is a work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. Adapted for the 1955 film directed by Elia Kazan introducing James Dean and read by thousands as the book that brought Oprah’s Book Club back, East of Eden has remained vitally present in American culture for over half a century.<br/><br/>This edition features an introduction by David Wyatt.<br/><br/>For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare · 2018

Trial

Franz Kafka · 1956

Orlando

Virginia Woolf · 1928

The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka · 2009

"The Metamorphosis" (original German title: "Die Verwandlung") is a short novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It is often cited as one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century and is widely studied in colleges and universities across the western world. The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into an insect.

Brothers Karamazov

Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский · 1999

Netochka Nezvanova

Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский · 2006

The Five People You Meet in Heaven: Level 5

Mitch Albom · 2012

The Stranger

Albert Camus · 1989

With the intrigue of a psychological thriller, The Stranger—Camus's masterpiece—gives us the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach. With an Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie; translated by Matthew Ward.<br/><br/>Behind the subterfuge, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd" and describes the condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life.<br/><br/>“The Stranger is a strikingly modern text and Matthew Ward’s translation will enable readers to appreciate why Camus’s stoical anti-hero and devious narrator remains one of the key expressions of a postwar Western malaise, and one of the cleverest exponents of a literature of ambiguity.” —from the Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie<br/><br/>First published in 1946; now in translation by Matthew Ward.

Discourses and Selected Writings (Penguin Classics)

Epictetus · 2008

A new translation of the influential teachings of the great Stoic philosopher<br/><br/>Despite being born into slavery, Greco-Roman philosopher Epictetus became one of the most influential thinkers of his time. Discourses and Selected Writings is a transcribed collection of informal lectures given by the philosopher around AD 108. A gateway into the life and mind of a great intellectual, it is also an important example of the usage of Koine or “common” Greek, an ancestor to Standard Modern Greek.

What Is Existentialism? (Penguin Great Ideas)

Simone De Beauvoir · 2021

The groundbreaking writings on the philosophy of the individual by iconic feminist and social thinker, Simone de Beauvoir<br/><br/>How should we think and act in the world? These writings on the human condition by one of the twentieth century's great philosophers explore the absurdity of our notions of good and evil, and show instead how we make our own destiny simply by being.<br/><br/>Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives--and upended them. Now Penguin brings you a new set of the acclaimed Great Ideas, a curated library of selections from the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

Of Human Freedom

Epictetus · 2010

A Happy Death

Albert Camus · 1995

The first novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author lays the foundation for The Stranger, telling the story of an Algerian clerk who kills a man in cold blood.<br/><br/>In A Happy Death, written when Albert Camus was in his early twenties and retrieved from his private papers following his death in 1960, revealed himself to an extent that he never would in his later fiction. For if A Happy Death is the study of a rule-bound being shattering the fetters of his existence, it is also a remarkably candid portrait of its author as a young man.<br/><br/>As the novel follows the protagonist, Patrice Mersault, to his victim's house -- and then, fleeing, in a journey that takes him through stages of exile, hedonism, privation, and death -it gives us a glimpse into the imagination of one of the great writers of the twentieth century. For here is the young Camus himself, in love with the sea and sun, enraptured by women yet disdainful of romantic love, and already formulating the philosophy of action and moral responsibility that would make him central to the thought of our time.<br/><br/>Translated from the French by Richard Howard

Of Human Freedom

Epictetus · 2010

In this personal and practical guide to moral self-improvement and living a good life, the second-century philosopher Epictetus tackles questions of freedom and imprisonment, stubbornness and fear, family, friendship and love, and leaves an intriguing document of daily life in the classical world. GREAT IDEAS. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

The Book of Disquiet

Fernando Pessoa · 2002

The prizewinning, complete and unabridged translation—“the best English-language version we are likely to see for a long time, if ever” (The Guardian)—of a work of unclassifiable genius: the crowning achievement of Portugal’s modern master<br/><br/>Edited, Translated, and with an Introduction by Richard Zenith, the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Pessoa: A Biography<br/><br/>Winner of the Calouste Gulbenkian Translation Prize for Portuguese Translation<br/><br/>A Penguin Classic<br/><br/>Fernando Pessoa was many writers in one. He attributed his prolific writings to a wide range of alternate selves, each of which had a distinct biography, ideology, and horoscope. When he died in 1935, Pessoa left behind a trunk filled with unfinished and unpublished writings, among which were the remarkable pages that make up his posthumous masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet, an astonishing work that, in George Steiner's words, "gives to Lisbon the haunting spell of Joyce's Dublin or Kafka's Prague."<br/><br/>Published for the first time some fifty years after his death, this unique collection of short, aphoristic paragraphs comprises the "autobiography" of Bernardo Soares, one of Pessoa's alternate selves. Part intimate diary, part prose poetry, part descriptive narrative, captivatingly translated by Richard Zenith, The Book of Disquiet is one of the greatest works of the twentieth century.<br/><br/>“Pessoa is a genius.” —André Aciman

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath · 2005

<p><i>The Bell Jar</i> chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under -- maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made <i>The Bell Jar</i> a haunting American classic.</p> <p>This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.</p>

Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1993

<b>Hailed by <i>Washington Post Book World</i> as “the best [translation] currently available" when it was first published, this second edition of <i>Crime and Punishment </i>has been updated in honor of the 200th anniversary of Dostoevsky’s birth. • <b>ONE OF <i>TIME MAGAZINE</i>'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME</b></b><br><br>With the same suppleness, energy, and range of voices that won their translation of <i>The Brothers Karamazov</i> the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky offer a brilliant translation of <i>Crime and Punishment, </i>Dostoevsky's astounding pyschological thriller, newly revised for his bicentenniel. <br><br>In <i>Crime and Punishment</i>, when Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the tsars, commits an act of murder and theft, he sets into motion a story that is almost unequalled in world literature for its excruciating suspense, its atmospheric vividness, and its depth of characterization and vision. Dostoevsky’s drama of sin, guilt, and redemption transforms the sordid story of an old woman’s murder into the nineteenth century’s profoundest and most compelling philosophical novel.

The Idiot

Fyodor Dostoevsky · 2003

<p>Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s masterful translation of <b>The Idiot</b> is destined to stand with their versions of <b>Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov</b><i>, </i>and <b>Demons</b> as the definitive Dostoevsky in English.<br><br>After his great portrayal of a guilty man in <b>Crime and Punishment</b><i>,</i> Dostoevsky set out in <b>The Idiot</b> to portray a man of pure innocence. The twenty-six-year-old Prince Myshkin, following a stay of several years in a Swiss sanatorium, returns to Russia to collect an inheritance and “be among people.” Even before he reaches home he meets the dark Rogozhin, a rich merchant’s son whose obsession with the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna eventually draws all three of them into a tragic denouement. In Petersburg the prince finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with money, power, and manipulation. Scandal escalates to murder as Dostoevsky traces the surprising effect of this “positively beautiful man” on the people around him, leading to a final scene that is one of the most powerful in all of world literature.</p>

The Problems of Philosophy

Bertrand Russel · 2018

Complete and unabridged edition.<br/>The Problems of Philosophy is a 1912 book by Bertrand Russell, in which Russell attempts to create a brief and accessible guide to the problems of philosophy. Focusing on problems he believes will provoke positive and constructive discussion, Russell concentrates on knowledge rather than metaphysics: If it is uncertain that external objects exist, how can we then have knowledge of them but by probability. There is no reason to doubt the existence of external objects simply because of sense data.<br/>Source: Wikipedia.

Meditations on First Philosophy

René Descartes · 19960418

The Meditations, one of the key texts of Western philosophy, is the most widely studied of all Descartes' writings. This authoritative translation by John Cottingham, taken from the much acclaimed three-volume Cambridge edition of the Philosophical Writings of Descartes, is based upon the best available texts and presents Descartes' central metaphysical writings in clear, readable modern English. As well as the complete text of the Meditations, the reader will find a thematic abridgement of the Objections and Replies (which were originally published with the Meditations) containing Descartes' replies to his critics. These extracts, specially selected for the present volume, indicate the main philosophical difficulties which occurred to Descartes' contemporaries and show how Descartes developed and clarified his arguments in response. This edition contains a new comprehensive introduction to Descartes' philosophy by John Cottingham and the classic introductory essay on the Meditations by Bernard Williams.

Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

Plato · 2002

The second edition of Five Dialogues presents G. M. A. Grube's distinguished translations, as revised by John Cooper for Plato, Complete Works. A number of new or expanded footnotes are also included along with an updated bibliography.

The Consolations of Philosophy

Alain De Botton · 2001

'Witty, thoughtful, entertaining ...a stylish book, which manages to make philosophy both enjoyable and relevant, at the same time providing a very sensible digest of consolations for many of our current psychological ills' - Anthony Clare, "LiteraryReview".

White Nights

Fyodor Dostoevsky · 2020

"White Nights" is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky, originally published in 1848, early in the writer's career. Like many of Dostoevsky's stories, "White Nights" is told in the first person by a nameless narrator. The narrator is a young man living in Saint Petersburg who suffers from loneliness.Contents:White NightsA Faint HeartA Christmas Tree and a WeddingPolzunkovA Little HeroMr. Prohartchin

Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy · 2014

Tolstoy's epic novel of love, destiny and self-destruction, in a gorgeous new clothbound edition from Penguin Classics. Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky. Their subsequent affair scandalizes society and family alike and soon brings jealously and bitterness in its wake. Contrasting with this tale of love and self-destruction is the vividly observed story of Levin, a man striving to find contentment and a meaning to his life - and also a self-portrait of Tolstoy himself. This acclaimed modern translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky won the PEN/ Book of the Month Club Translation Prize in 2001. Their translation is accompanied in this edition by an introduction by Richard Pevear and a preface by John Bayley 'The new and brilliantly witty translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky is a must' - Lisa Appignanesi, Independent, Books of the Year 'Pevear and Volokhonsky are at once scrupulous translators and vivid stylists of English, and their superb rendering allows us, as perhaps never before, to grasp the palpability of Tolstoy's "characters, acts, situations"' - James Wood, New Yorker

Bonjour Tristesse: A Novel

Francoise Sagan · 2008

A sensational 1954 French novel that has become a contemporary classic<br/>Set against the translucent beauty of France in summer, Bonjour Tristesse is a bittersweet tale narrated by Cecile, a seventeen-year-old girl on the brink of womanhood, whose meddling in her father's love life leads to tragic consequences.<br/>Endearing, self-absorbed, seventeen-year-old Cécile is the very essence of untroubled amorality. Freed from the stifling constraints of boarding school, she joins her father—a handsome, still-young widower with a wandering eye—for a carefree, two-month summer vacation in a beautiful villa outside of Paris with his latest mistress. Cécile cherishes the free-spirited moments she and her father share, while plotting her own sexual adventures with a "tall and almost beautiful" law student. But the arrival of her late mother's best friend intrudes upon a young girl's pleasures. And when a relationship begins to develop between the adults, Cécile and her lover set in motion a plan to keep them apart...with tragic, unexpected consequences.<br/>The internationally beloved story of a precocious teenager's attempts to understand and control the world around her, Françoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse is a beautifully composed, wonderfully ambiguous celebration of sexual liberation, at once sympathetic and powerfully unsparing.<br/>This special Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Diane Johnson and a P.S. section with additional insights about the book and author.

When God Was a Woman

Merlin Stone · 1978

Here, archaeologically documented, is the story of the religion of the Goddess. Under her, women's roles were far more prominent than in patriarchal Judeo-Christian cultures. Stone describes this ancient system and, with its disintegration, the decline in women's status. Index; maps and illustrations.

The Second Sex

Simone de Beauvoir · 2012

The essential masterwork that has provoked and inspired generations of men and women. “From Eve’s apple to Virginia Woolf’s room of her own, Beauvoir’s treatise remains an essential rallying point, urging self-sufficiency and offering the fruit of knowledge.” —Vogue This unabridged edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English translation. Vital and groundbreaking, Beauvoir’s pioneering and impressive text remains as pertinent today as when it was first published, and will continue to provoke and inspire generations of men and women to come.

Men Explain Things to Me

Rebecca Solnit · 2023

The Right to Sex

Amia Srinivasan · 2021

Thrilling, sharp, and deeply humane, philosopher Amia Srinivasan's The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century upends the way we discuss—or avoid discussing—the problems and politics of sex.<br/><br/>How should we think about sex? It is a thing we have and also a thing we do; a supposedly private act laden with public meaning; a personal preference shaped by outside forces; a place where pleasure and ethics can pull wildly apart.<br/><br/>How should we talk about sex? Since #MeToo many have fixed on consent as the key framework for achieving sexual justice. Yet consent is a blunt tool. To grasp sex in all its complexity—its deep ambivalences, its relationship to gender, class, race and power—we need to move beyond yes and no, wanted and unwanted.<br/><br/>We do not know the future of sex—but perhaps we could imagine it. Amia Srinivasan’s stunning debut helps us do just that. She traces the meaning of sex in our world, animated by the hope of a different world. She reaches back into an older feminist tradition that was unafraid to think of sex as a political phenomenon. She discusses a range of fraught relationships—between discrimination and preference, pornography and freedom, rape and racial injustice, punishment and accountability, students and teachers, pleasure and power, capitalism and liberation.<br/><br/>The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century is a provocation and a promise, transforming many of our most urgent political debates and asking what it might mean to be free.

Selected Poems

Rumi · 2004

The Way I Used to Be

Amber Smith · 2017

New York Times bestseller! In the tradition of Speak, Amber Smith's extraordinary debut novel “is a heart-twisting, but ultimately hopeful, exploration of how pain can lead to strength” (The Boston Globe).<br/><br/>Eden was always good at being good. Starting high school didn’t change who she was. But the night her brother’s best friend rapes her, Eden’s world capsizes.<br/><br/>What was once simple, is now complex. What Eden once loved—who she once loved—she now hates. What she thought she knew to be true, is now lies. Nothing makes sense anymore, and she knows she’s supposed to tell someone what happened but she can’t. So she buries it instead. And she buries the way she used to be.<br/><br/>Told in four parts—freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior year—this provocative debut reveals the deep cuts of trauma. But it also demonstrates one young woman’s strength as she navigates the disappointment and unbearable pains of adolescence, of first love and first heartbreak, of friendships broken and rebuilt, all while learning to embrace the power of survival she never knew she had hidden within her heart.

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book)

Don Miguel Ruiz · 1997

In The Four Agreements, bestselling author don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, The Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love. • A New York Times bestseller for over a decade • Translated into 50 languages worldwide “This book by don Miguel Ruiz, simple yet so powerful, has made a tremendous difference in how I think and act in every encounter.” — Oprah Winfrey “Don Miguel Ruiz’s book is a roadmap to enlightenment and freedom.” — Deepak Chopra, Author, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success “An inspiring book with many great lessons.” — Wayne Dyer, Author, Real Magic “In the tradition of Castaneda, Ruiz distills essential Toltec wisdom, expressing with clarity and impeccability what it means for men and women to live as peaceful warriors in the modern world.” — Dan Millman, Author, Way of the Peaceful Warrior

The Laws of Human Nature

Robert Greene · 2019

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power comes the definitive new book on decoding the behavior of the people around you<br/><br/>Robert Greene is a master guide for millions of readers, distilling ancient wisdom and philosophy into essential texts for seekers of power, understanding and mastery. Now he turns to the most important subject of all - understanding people's drives and motivations, even when they are unconscious of them themselves.<br/><br/>We are social animals. Our very lives depend on our relationships with people. Knowing why people do what they do is the most important tool we can possess, without which our other talents can only take us so far. Drawing from the ideas and examples of Pericles, Queen Elizabeth I, Martin Luther King Jr, and many others, Greene teaches us how to detach ourselves from our own emotions and master self-control, how to develop the empathy that leads to insight, how to look behind people's masks, and how to resist conformity to develop your singular sense of purpose. Whether at work, in relationships, or in shaping the world around you, The Laws of Human Nature offers brilliant tactics for success, self-improvement, and self-defense.

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

Joseph Murphy · 2008

The 48 Laws of Power

Robert Greene · 2000

Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature.<br/><br/>In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum.<br/><br/>Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.

Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One

Dr. Joe Dispenza · 2013

Discover how to reprogram your biology and thinking, and break the habit of being yourself so you can truly change your mind and life. Best-selling author, international speaker, chiropractor, and renowned researcher of epigenetics, quantum physics, and neuroscience, Dr. Joe Dispenza shares that you are not doomed by your genes and hardwired to be a certain way for the rest of your life. New science is emerging that empowers all human beings to create the reality they choose. In Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, Dr. Joe Dispenza combines the fields of quantum physics, neuroscience, brain chemistry, biology, and genetics to show you what is truly possible and how to recondition the body and create better health. Not only will you be given the necessary knowledge to change your energy and any aspect of yourself, but you will be taught the step-by-step tools to apply what you learn in order to make measurable changes in any area of your life. Chapters include: Foreword by Daniel G. Amen, M.D. Introduction: The Greatest Habit You Can Ever Break Is the Habit of Being Yourself PART I: The Science of You The Quantum You Overcoming Your Environment Overcoming Your Body Overcoming Time Survival vs. Creation PART II: Your Brain and Meditation Three Brains: Thinking to Doing to Being The Gap Meditation, Demystifying the Mystical, and Waves of Your Future PART III: Stepping Toward Your New Destiny The Meditative Process: Introduction and Preparation Open the Door to Your Creative State Step 1: Induction Prune Away the Habit of Being Yourself (Week Two) Step 2: Recognizing Step 3: Admitting and Declaring Step 4: Surrendering Dismantle the Memory of the Old You (Week Three) Step 5: Observing and Reminding Step 6: Redirecting Create a New Mind for Your New Future (Week Four) Step 7: Creating and Rehearsing Demonstrating and Being Transparent: Living Your New Reality Dr. Joe demystifies consciousness and ancient understandings to bridge the gap between science and spirituality. Through his powerful healing workshops and lectures, thousands of people in 24 different countries have used these principles to change from the inside out. Once you break the habit of being yourself and truly change your mind, your life will never be the same! “In this book, I want to share some of what I learned along the way and show you, by exploring how mind and matter are interrelated, how you can apply these principles not only to your body, but to any aspect of your life.” — Dr. Joe Dispenza “Anyone who reads this book and applies the steps will benefit from their efforts. Its cutting-edge content is explained in a simple language that is accessible to anyone, and provides a user-friendly guide for sustained change from the inside out.” — Rollin McCraty, Ph.D., Director of Research, HeartMath Research Center

Normal People: A Novel

Sally Rooney · 2020

<b>NOW AN EMMY-NOMINATED HULU ORIGINAL SERIES • <i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • “A stunning novel about the transformative power of relationships” (<i>People</i>) from the author of <i>Conversations with Friends,</i> “a master of the literary page-turner” (J. Courtney Sullivan).</b><br> <br><b>“[A] novel that demands to be read compulsively, in one sitting.”—<i>The Washington Post</i></b><br><br><b>ONE OF <i>ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY</i>’S TEN BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE</b><br><br><b>TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: <i>People, Slate,</i> The New York Public Library, <i>Harvard Crimson</i></b><br><br>Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life changing begins.<br><br>A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.<br><br><i>Normal People</i> is the story of mutual fascination, friendship, and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t.<br> <br><b>WINNER: The British Book Award, The Costa Book Award, The An Post Irish Novel of the Year, <i>Sunday Times </i>Young Writer of the Year Award</b><br><br><b>BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: <i>The New York Times</i>, <i>The New York Times Book Review, Oprah Daily, Time,</i> NPR, <i>The Washington Post, Vogue, Esquire, Glamour, Elle, Marie Claire, Vox, The Paris Review, Good Housekeeping, Town & Country</i></b>

The Art of Thinking Clearly

Rolf Dobelli · 2014

"A serious examination of the faulty reasoning that leads to repeated mistakes by individuals, businesses, and nations…In this fascinating book, Dobelli does not offer a recipe for happiness but a well-considered treatise on avoiding ‘self-induced unhappiness.’” — Booklist (starred review)<br/>The Art of Thinking Clearly by world-class thinker and entrepreneur Rolf Dobelli is an eye-opening look at human psychology and reasoning — essential reading for anyone who wants to avoid “cognitive errors” and make better choices in all aspects of their lives.<br/>Have you ever: Invested time in something that, with hindsight, just wasn’t worth it? Or continued doing something you knew was bad for you? These are examples of cognitive biases, simple errors we all make in our day-to-day thinking. But by knowing what they are and how to spot them, we can avoid them and make better decisions.<br/>Simple, clear, and always surprising, this indispensable book will change the way you think and transform your decision-making—work, at home, every day. It reveals, in 99 short chapters, the most common errors of judgment, and how to avoid them.

How to Stop Breaking Your Own Heart

Meggan Roxanne · 2024

<b>‘Meggan’s words have the power to make you feel seen, understood, and less alone. This book is the reminder you need that you are worthy of self-love and acceptance.’</b><br><b>Jay Shetty</b>, #1 <i>New York Times</i> best-selling author of <i>Think Like A Monk</i> and host of the On Purpose podcast<br><br>Life can be <b>a lot</b>. How are you supposed to maintain healthy relationships, build a career, keep up with the constant life admin, <i>and</i> prioritize your well-being? It’s so easy to get distracted and lose sight of your path, until one day you realize you’re completely lost, trapped in a cycle of self-sabotage and people pleasing.<br><br><b>You are not alone.</b><br><br>Following her own personal experience of dealing with anxiety and depression, Meggan Roxanne has united a community of 30 million people by sharing ways to navigate everyday struggles. Now she’s using the lessons she’s learned along the way to help you to:<br><br>· overcome negative thought patterns<br>· move away from perfectionism and break free from expectations<br>· say ‘no’ to toxic people and situations and set boundaries<br>· stop keeping yourself small and step into your power<br>· build a life where self-love is non-negotiable.<br><br>You’ll wish you’d read this book sooner.

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman · 2013

*Major New York Times Bestseller<br/>*More than 2.6 million copies sold<br/>*One of The New York Times Book Review's ten best books of the year<br/>*Selected by The Wall Street Journal as one of the best nonfiction books of the year<br/>*Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient<br/>*Daniel Kahneman's work with Amos Tversky is the subject of Michael Lewis's best-selling The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds<br/><br/>In his mega bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, world-famous psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think.<br/><br/>System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation―each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions.<br/><br/>Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives―and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Topping bestseller lists for almost ten years, Thinking, Fast and Slow is a contemporary classic, an essential book that has changed the lives of millions of readers.

Las mujeres que aman demasiado / Women Who Love Too Much (Spanish Edition)

Robin Norwood · 2018

En este libro la autora ofrece un camino para que todas aquellas mujeres que aman demasiado puedan amarse a sí mismas y establezcan una relación de pareja sana, feliz y duradera.<br/><br/>Cómo cambiar nuestra manera de amar y así dejar de sufrir.<br/><br/>«Cuando estar enamorada significa sufrir, es que estamos amando demasiado. Cuando la mayoría de nuestras conversaciones con amigas íntimas son acerca de él, de sus problemas, ideas, acciones y sentimientos, cuando casi todas nuestras frases comienzan con "él...", es que estamos amando demasiado. Cuando disculpamos su mal humor, su indiferencia y sus desaires e intentamos justificarlo o incluso convertirnos en su terapeuta, es que estamos amando demasiado.»<br/><br/>En este libro, del que ya se han vendido más de tres millones de ejemplares, Robin Norwood ayuda a las mujeres adictas a esta clase de amor a reconocer, comprender y cambiar su manera de amar.<br/><br/>A través de historias reveladoras y de un programa de recuperación, ofrece un camino para que puedan amarse a sí mismas y establecer una relación de pareja sana, feliz y duradera.<br/><br/>ENGLISH DESCRIPTION<br/><br/>The #1 New York Times bestseller that asks: are you a woman who loves too much?<br/><br/>Many women find themselves repeatedly drawn into unhappy and destructive relationships with men. They then struggle to make these doomed relationships work. This best-selling book takes a hard look at how powerfully addictive these unhealthy relationships are – but also gives a very specific programme for recovery from the disease of loving too much.

The Practice of Not Thinking

Ryunosuke Koike · 2021

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER<br/><br/>What if we could learn to look instead of see, listen instead of hear, feel instead of touch? Former monk Ryunosuke Koike shows how, by incorporating simple Zen practices into our daily lives, we can reconnect with our five senses and live in a more peaceful, positive way.<br/><br/>When we focus on our senses and learn to re-train our brains and our bodies, we start to eliminate the distracting noise of our minds and the negative thoughts that create anxiety. By following Ryunosuke Koike's practical steps on how to breathe, listen, speak, laugh, love and even sleep in a new way, we can improve our interactions with others, feel less stressed at work and make every day calmer. Only by thinking less, can we appreciate more.

The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness

Morgan Housel · 2020

Doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people.<br/><br/>Money―investing, personal finance, and business decisions―is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don’t make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together.<br/><br/>In The Psychology of Money, award-winning author Morgan Housel shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life’s most important topics.

Women Who Think Too Much: How to Break Free of Overthinking and Reclaim Your Life

Susan Nolen-Hoeksema · 2004

"Groundbreaking research . . . Women Who Think Too Much tells why overthinking occurs, why it hurts people, and how to stop." ―USA Today<br/><br/>It's no surprise that our fast-paced, overly self-analytical culture is pushing many people―especially women―to spend countless hours thinking about negative ideas, feelings, and experiences. Renowned psychologist Dr. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema calls this overthinking, and her groundbreaking research shows that an increasing number of women―more than half of those in her extensive study―are doing it too much and too often, leading to sadness, anxiety, and depression. She challenges the assumption―heralded by so many pop-psychology pundits of the last several decades―that constantly expressing and analyzing our emotions is a good thing.<br/><br/>In Women Who Think Too Much, Nolen-Hoeksema shows us what causes so many women to be overthinkers and provides concrete strategies that can be used to escape these negative thoughts, move to higher ground, and live more productively. Women Who Think Too Much will change lives, and is destined to become a self-help classic.

Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory: Stories

Raphael Bob-Waksberg · 2020

A fabulously off-beat collection of short stories about love—the best and worst thing in the universe—written by the creator of BoJack Horseman with his hallmark scathing dark humor<br/><br/>“Transcendent tragicomedy.... Prepare to be devastated and made whole again.” —The A.V. Club<br/><br/>Featuring:<br/><br/>• A young engaged couple forced to deal with interfering relatives dictating the appropriate number of ritual goat sacrifices for their wedding.<br/><br/>• A pair of lonely commuters who ride the subway in silence, forever, eternally failing to make that longed-for contact.<br/><br/>• A struggling employee at a theme park of U.S. presidents who discovers that love can’t be genetically modified.<br/><br/>And fifteen more tales of humor, romance, whimsy, cultural commentary, and crushing emotional vulnerability.

Girl, Interrupted

Susanna Kaysen · 2013

30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. Her memoir of the next two years is a "poignant, honest ... triumphantly funny ... and heartbreaking story" (The New York Times Book Review). WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR The ward for teenage girls in the McLean psychiatric hospital was as renowned for its famous clientele—Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles—as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary. Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.

The Secret Language of Birthdays: Your Complete Personology Guide for Each Day of the Year

Gary Goldschneider, Joost Elffers · 2013

Over a million copies sold! Discover the significance of your birthday with this wholly unique combination of astrology, numerology, and pure psychic intuition that reveals your strengths and weaknesses while providing practical advice and spiritual guidance.<br/><br/>Many have suspected that your birthday affects your personality and how you relate to others. A perennial bestseller, The Secret Language of Birthdays continues to fascinate readers by describing the characteristics associated with being born on a particular day. The 366 personality profiles are based on astrology, numerology, the Tarot, and Gary Goldschneider’s observations of more than 14,000 people.<br/><br/>The Secret Language of Birthdays highlights your strengths, weaknesses, and major concerns while offering practical advice and spiritual guidance. After you study your profile, it will be hard to resist examining those of family, friends, colleagues, and even celebrities.

Near to the Wild Heart (Ndp; 1225)

Clarice Lispector · 2012

This new translation of Clarice Lispector's sensational first book tells the story of a middle class woman's life from childhood through an unhappy marriage and its dissolution to transcendence.<br/>Near to the Wild Heart, published in Rio de Janeiro in 1943, introduced Brazil to what one writer called “Hurricane Clarice”: a twenty-three-year-old girl who wrote her first book in a tiny rented room and then baptized it with a title taken from Joyce: “He was alone, unheeded, near to the wild heart of life.”<br/>The book was an unprecedented sensation ― the discovery of a genius. Narrative epiphanies and interior monologue frame the life of Joana, from her middle-class childhood through her unhappy marriage and its dissolution to transcendence, when she proclaims: “I shall arise as strong and comely as a young colt.”

Letters to a Young Poet (Penguin Classics)

Rainer Maria Rilke · 2014

Rainer Maria Rilke’s powerfully touching letters to an aspiring young poet.<br/><br/>At the start of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex, suffering, and the nature of advice itself. These profound and lyrical letters have since become hugely influential for generations of writers and artists of all kinds, including Lady Gaga and Patti Smith. With honesty, elegance, and a deep understanding of the loneliness that often comes with being an artist, Rilke’s letters are an endless source of inspiration and comfort. Lewis Hyde’s new introduction explores the context in which these letters were written and how the author embraced his isolation as a creative force. This edition also includes Rilke’s later work The Letter from the Young Worker.<br/><br/>For more than 80 years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Withering Heights

emily bronte

White Nights

Fyodor Dostoevsky · 2024

Embark on a poignant journey through the streets of St. Petersburg with Fyodor Dostoevsky’s "White Nights." This classic novella weaves an intricate tapestry of longing and ephemeral romance, capturing the essence of human emotion in a world where dreams and reality blur.<br/><br/>Meet the nameless narrator, a lonely dreamer who roams the city’s shimmering nights, filled with hope and heartache. His solitary existence takes a turn when he encounters Nastenka, a spirited young woman yearning for love. Their chance meeting unfolds a tender yet tragic tale, exploring themes of unfulfilled desires, the nature of love, and the contrasts between reality and fantasy.<br/><br/>Perfect for fans of classic literature and deep psychological insights, "White Nights" invites readers to reflect on their own experiences of love and isolation. Dostoevsky’s lyrical prose and profound character development resonate with timeless relevance, making this novella a must-read for anyone seeking an introspective escape into the human soul.<br/><br/>Join the ranks of literary enthusiasts and discover why "White Nights" remains a beloved work in the canon of world literature. Immerse yourself in this emotional landscape, and let Dostoevsky's genius illuminate the depths of your heart.

Frankenstein: The 1818 Text (Penguin Classics)

Mary Shelley · 2018

<b>Mary Shelley’s classic novel, presented in its original 1818 text, with an introduction from National Book Critics Circle award-winner Charlotte Gordon</b><br>  <br> <b>Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s <i>The Great American Read</i></b><br>  <br>The original 1818 text of <i>Frankenstein</i> preserves the hard-hitting and politically-charged aspects of Shelley’s original writing, as well as her unflinching wit and strong female voice. This edition also emphasizes Shelley’s relationship with her mother—trailblazing feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who penned <i>A Vindication of the Rights of Woman</i>—and demonstrates her commitment to carrying forward her mother’s ideals, placing her in the context of a feminist legacy rather than the sole female in the company of male poets, including Percy Shelley and Lord Byron.<br>  <br> This edition includes a new introduction and suggestions for further reading by National Book Critics Circle award-winner and Shelley expert Charlotte Gordon, literary excerpts and reviews selected by Gordon, and a chronology and essay by preeminent Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson. <br>  <br>Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Secret History

Donna Tartt · 1992

<b><b><b><b>ONE OF <i>TIME MAGAZINE</i>'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • </b>INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A contemporary literary classic and "a<b>n accomplished psychological thriller ... absolutely chilling" (<i>Village Voice</i>)</b>, f<b>rom the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of <i>The Goldfinch.<br><br></i></b></b></b>One of <i>The Atlantic</i>’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years</b><br><br>Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.<br><br><b>“A remarkably powerful novel [and] a ferociously well-paced entertainment . . . Forceful, cerebral, and impeccably controlled.” —<i>The New York Times</i></b>

The Myth of Sisyphus (Vintage International)

Albert Camus · 2018

A Nobel Prize-winning author delivers one of the most influential works of the twentieth century, showing a way out of despair and reaffirming the value of existence.<br/><br/>Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide—the question of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning. With lyric eloquence, Albert Camus brilliantly presents a crucial exposition of existentialist thought.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Stephen Chbosky · 2012

“A timeless story for every young person who needs to understand that they are not alone.” —Judy Blume<br/><br/>“Once in a while, a novel comes along that becomes a generational touchstone. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is one of those books.” —R. J. Palacio, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wonder<br/><br/>This #1 New York Times bestselling coming-of-age story with millions of copies in print takes a sometimes heartbreaking, often hysterical, and always honest look at high school in all its glory.<br/><br/>The critically acclaimed debut novel from Stephen Chbosky follows observant “wallflower” Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. Sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.<br/><br/>A #1 New York Times bestseller for more than a year, adapted into a major motion picture starring Logan Lerman and Emma Watson (and written and directed by the author), and an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults (2000) and Best Book for Reluctant Readers (2000), this novel for teen readers (or wallflowers of more-advanced age) will make you laugh, cry, and perhaps feel nostalgic for those moments when you, too, tiptoed onto the dance floor of life.

Ariel Poems by Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath · 1966

Plath, Sylvia ; Robert Lowell (Introduction); ARIEL - Poems by Sylvia Plath; Harper & Row; New York; 1966; First Edition; First Printing. States "First Edition" on copyright page. Original price $4.95 of front flap with blurbs by Robert Lowell, Robert Penn Warren, Anne Sexton; and "O666" printed on the lower front flap.

The Death of Ivan Ilych

Lev Tolstoy, Aylmer Maude · 2019

In "The Death of Ivan Ilych," Lev Tolstoy delves into the inevitable and universal theme of death, presenting a poignant critique of artificial bourgeois society and the struggles of the human soul. As Ivan Ilych grapples with a terminal illness, he confronts the existential void and re-evaluates the superficial life he has led. Tolstoy's narrative is a meditation on the nature of life and the inescapable truth of mortality. This masterful novella remains a profound reflection on how we confront and give meaning to our own ending.

Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck · 1993

A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression<br/><br/>They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation.<br/><br/>Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a ranch in the Salinas Valley, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be within their grasp. But even George cannot guard Lennie from the provocations of a flirtatious woman, nor predict the consequences of Lennie's unswerving obedience to the things George taught him.<br/><br/>"A thriller, a gripping tale . . . that you will not set down until it is finished. Steinbeck has touched the quick." —The New York Times

The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman · 2015

<p>A groundbreaking feminist masterpiece and one of the most exquisite horror stories in American literature Diagnosed by her physician husband with a "temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency" after the birth of her child, a woman is urged to rest for the summer in an old colonial mansion. Forbidden from doing work of any kind, she spends her days in the house's former nursery, with its barred windows, scratched floor, and peeling yellow wallpaper. In a private journal, the woman records her growing obsession with the "horrid" wallpaper. Its strange pattern mutates in the moonlight, revealing what appears to be a human figure in the design. With nothing else to occupy her mind, the woman resolves to unlock the mystery of the wallpaper. Her quest, however, leads not to the truth, but into the darkest depths of madness. A masterly use of the unreliable narrator and a scathing indictment of patriarchal medical practices, The Yellow Wallpaper is a true American classic. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.<br></p>

Jane Eyre (Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels)

Charlotte Brontë · 2003

Charlotte Brontë characterized the eponymous heroine of her 1847 novel as being &quot;as poor and plain as myself.&quot; Presenting a heroine with neither great beauty nor entrancing charm was an unprecendented maneuver, but Brontë's instincts proved correct, for readers of her era and ever after have taken Jane Eyre into their hearts. The author drew upon her own experience to depict Jane's struggles at Lowood, an oppressive boarding school, and her troubled career as a governess. Unlike Jane, Brontë had the advantage of a warm family circle that shared and encouraged her literary pursuits. She found immediate success with this saga of an orphan girl forced to make her way alone in the world, from Lowood School to Thornfield, the estate of the majestically moody Mr. Rochester, and beyond. A selection of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

East of Eden (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

John Steinbeck · 1952

A masterpiece of Biblical scope, and the magnum opus of one of America’s most enduring authors<br/><br/>A Penguin Classic<br/><br/>In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.<br/><br/>The masterpiece of Steinbeck’s later years, East of Eden is a work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. Adapted for the 1955 film directed by Elia Kazan introducing James Dean and read by thousands as the book that brought Oprah’s Book Club back, East of Eden has remained vitally present in American culture for over half a century.<br/><br/>This edition features an introduction by David Wyatt.<br/><br/>For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Carmilla

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu · 2023

Step into the world of Gothic mystery and supernatural intrigue with Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's classic masterpiece, Carmilla. This chilling tale of vampirism and dark desires has captivated readers for over a century, and now comes to you in a beautifully republished paperback edition.<br/>In the remote Styrian countryside, young Laura's peaceful existence is shattered when she encounters the enigmatic and beautiful Carmilla. As a bond between the two women forms, Laura is drawn into a nightmarish world of unsettling dreams, haunting shadows, and a sinister presence that refuses to let go.<br/>Immerse yourself in the atmospheric storytelling of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, as he weaves a tale of love, betrayal, and the supernatural, which has inspired countless works of vampire fiction, including Bram Stoker's iconic novel. In Carmilla, you'll discover the original vampire story that pioneered the genre and continues to send shivers down the spines of readers to this day.<br/>What makes this edition special? A meticulously crafted reproduction of the original text, designed for modern readers. An exclusive introduction and about the author section that sheds light on the novel's historical context and enduring legacy. High-quality, acid-free paper for a comfortable and long-lasting reading experience. Modern cover<br/><br/>Dare to uncover the chilling secrets that lie within the pages of Carmilla, and experience the haunting allure of one of the most influential Gothic novels of all time. Add this stunning paperback edition to your collection, and let the gripping tale of passion and darkness envelop you, leaving an indelible mark on your literary soul.<br/>Order your copy of Carmilla today, and embark on a journey that will forever redefine your perception of the vampire mythos.

Dracula

Bram Stoker · 2017

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes horrifying discoveries about his client and his castle. Soon afterwards, a number of disturbing incidents unfold in England: an unmanned ship is wrecked at Whitby; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the imminent arrival of his 'Master'. In the ensuing battle of wits between the sinister Count Dracula and a determined group of adversaries, Bram Stoker created a masterpiece of the horror genre, probing deeply into questions of human identity and sanity, and illuminating dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire.

The Handmaid`s Tale

Barbara Stanners, Michael Stanners

Star

Yukio Mishima · 2019

For the first time in English, a glittering novella about stardom from “one of the greatest avant-garde Japanese writers of the twentieth century” (Judith Thurman, The New Yorker)   Winner of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature All eyes are on Rikio. And he likes it, mostly. His fans cheer, screaming and yelling to attract his attention—they would kill for a moment alone with him. Finally the director sets up the shot, the camera begins to roll, someone yells “action”; Rikio, for a moment, transforms into another being, a hardened young yakuza, but as soon as the shot is finished, he slumps back into his own anxieties and obsessions. Being a star, constantly performing, being watched and scrutinized as if under a microscope, is often a drag. But so is life. Written shortly after Yukio Mishima himself had acted in the film “Afraid to Die,” this novella is a rich and unflinching psychological portrait of a celebrity coming apart at the seams. With exquisite, vivid prose, Star begs the question: is there any escape from how we are seen by others?

The Secret History

Donna Tartt · 1992

<b><b><b><b>ONE OF <i>TIME MAGAZINE</i>'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • </b>INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A contemporary literary classic and "a<b>n accomplished psychological thriller ... absolutely chilling" (<i>Village Voice</i>)</b>, f<b>rom the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of <i>The Goldfinch.<br><br></i></b></b></b>One of <i>The Atlantic</i>’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years</b><br><br>Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.<br><br><b>“A remarkably powerful novel [and] a ferociously well-paced entertainment . . . Forceful, cerebral, and impeccably controlled.” —<i>The New York Times</i></b>

The Ethics of Ambiguity

Simone de Beauvoir · 2018

From the groundbreaking author of The Second Sex comes a radical argument for ethical responsibility and freedom. In this classic introduction to existentialist thought, French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity simultaneously pays homage to and grapples with her French contemporaries, philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, by arguing that the freedoms in existentialism carry with them certain ethical responsibilities. De Beauvoir outlines a series of “ways of being” (the adventurer, the passionate person, the lover, the artist, and the intellectual), each of which overcomes the former’s deficiencies, and therefore can live up to the responsibilities of freedom. Ultimately, de Beauvoir argues that in order to achieve true freedom, one must battle against the choices and activities of those who suppress it. The Ethics of Ambiguity is the book that launched Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist and existential philosophy. It remains a concise yet thorough examination of existence and what it means to be human.

The Crucible: (Penguin Orange Collection)

Arthur Miller · 2016

The Bluest Eye (Vintage International)

Toni Morrison · 2007

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtly and grace.<br/><br/>In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.<br/><br/>Here, Morrison’s writing is “so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry” (The New York Times).

Dracula

Bram Stoker · 2017

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes horrifying discoveries about his client and his castle. Soon afterwards, a number of disturbing incidents unfold in England: an unmanned ship is wrecked at Whitby; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the imminent arrival of his 'Master'. In the ensuing battle of wits between the sinister Count Dracula and a determined group of adversaries, Bram Stoker created a masterpiece of the horror genre, probing deeply into questions of human identity and sanity, and illuminating dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Ocean Vuong · 2019

The Haunting of Hill House

Shirley Jackson · 1959

A child called "it"

David J. Pelzer · 1987

A Little Life

Hanya Yanagihara · 2015

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Truman Capote · 2002

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury · 1953

Bonjour tristesse

Françoise Sagan · 1954

Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus

Mary Shelley · 1818

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde · 2021

Dorian Gray is the subject of a full-length portrait in oil by Basil Hallward, an artist impressed and infatuated by Dorian's beauty; he believes that Dorian's beauty is responsible for the new mood in his art as a painter. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, and he soon is enthralled by the aristocrat's hedonistic world view: that beauty and sensual fulfilment are the only things worth pursuing in life.<br/>Newly understanding that his beauty will fade, Dorian expresses the desire to sell his soul, to ensure that the picture, rather than he, will age and fade. The wish is granted, and Dorian pursues a libertine life of varied amoral experiences while staying young and beautiful; all the while, his portrait ages and records every sin.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee · 2002

Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read<br/>Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South—and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred<br/>One of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father—a crusading local lawyer—risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen · 1813

1984

George Orwell · 1961

<b>Written more than 70 years ago, <i>1984</i> was George Orwell’s chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than ever...<br><br><b>• Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s <i>The Great American Read •</i></b><br></b><br>“<i>The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.</i>”<br><br>Winston Smith toes the Party line, rewriting history to satisfy the demands of the Ministry of Truth. With each lie he writes, Winston grows to hate the Party that seeks power for its own sake and persecutes those who dare to commit thoughtcrimes. But as he starts to think for himself, Winston can’t escape the fact that Big Brother is always watching...<br><br>A startling and haunting novel, <i>1984</i> creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the novel’s hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions—a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.

Animal Farm

George Orwell · 1996

<b>George Orwell's timeless and timely allegorical novel—a scathing satire on a downtrodden society’s blind march towards totalitarianism.<br><br>SOON TO BE A NETFLIX FILM!<br><br></b><i>“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”</i><br><br>A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible. <br><br> When <i>Animal Farm</i> was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation: A Novel

Ottessa Moshfegh · 2019

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Vice, Bustle, The New York Times, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Entertainment Weekly, The AV Club, & Audible A New York Times Bestseller • New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century “One of the most compelling protagonists modern fiction has offered in years: a loopy, quietly furious pillhead whose Ambien ramblings and Xanaxed b*tcheries somehow wend their way through sad and funny and strange toward something genuinely profound.” — Entertainment Weekly “Darkly hilarious . . . [Moshfegh’s] the kind of provocateur who makes you laugh out loud while drawing blood.” —Vogue From one of our boldest, most celebrated new literary voices, a novel about a young woman's efforts to duck the ills of the world by embarking on an extended hibernation with the help of one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature and the battery of medicines she prescribes. Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong? My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.

The Little Prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry · 2000

<p>This beloved, world-famous allegorical classic about a young prince on a quest for knowledge is an essential read for every home library.</p> <p>Combining Richard Howard's translation with restored original full-color art, this definitive English-language edition of The Little Prince will capture the hearts of readers of all ages.</p> <p>Few stories are as widely read and as universally cherished by children and adults alike as The Little Prince. When a pilot crashes in the Sahara Desert, he meets a little boy who asks him to draw a sheep. Gradually the Little Prince reveals more about himself: He comes from a small asteroid, where he lived alone until a rose grew there.</p> <p>But the rose grew demanding, and he was confused by his feelings about her. The story unfolds further from one planet to the next in a thoughtful philosophical exploration of love and the ephemeral.</p>

The Catcher in the Rye

J. D. Salinger · 2001

Girl, Interrupted

Susanna Kaysen · 1994

<b>30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION <b>• </b>NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. Her memoir of the next two years is a "poignant, honest ... triumphantly funny ... and heartbreaking story" (<i>The New York Times Book Review</i>). <br><br><b>WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR <br></b></b><br>The ward for teenage girls in the McLean psychiatric hospital was as renowned for its famous clientele—Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles—as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary. Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. <br><br><i>Girl, Interrupted</i> is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.

Little Women

Louisa May Alcott · 2014

<b>Louisa May Alcott's classic tale of four sisters in a deluxe hardcover edition, with beautiful cover illustrations by Anna Bond, the artist behind world-renowned stationery brand Rifle Paper Co.<br></b><br>Grown-up Meg, tomboyish Jo, timid Beth, and precocious Amy. The four March sisters couldn't be more different. But with their father away at war, and their mother working to support the family, they have to rely on one another. Whether they're putting on a play, forming a secret society, or celebrating Christmas, there's one thing they can't help wondering: Will Father return home safely?