Chaucer
Ackroyd's Brief Lives
Written by Peter Ackroyd

Format: Hardcover, 208 pages
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
On Sale: January 18, 2005
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-50797-4 (0-385-50797-6)

In the first in a new series of brief biographies, historian and novelist Peter Ackroyd brilliantly evokes the medieval world of England and provides an incomparable introduction to the great poet’s works.

Geoffrey Chaucer, who died in 1400, lived a surprisingly eventful life. He served with the Duke of Clarence and... Read more >

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 25th Anniversary Edition
A Novel
Written by Douglas Adams

Format: Hardcover, 224 pages
Publisher: Crown
On Sale: August 3, 2004
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5292-9 (1-4000-5292-0)

How shall we begin?

This is the story of a book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—not an Earth book, never published on Earth and, until the terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or even heard of by any Earthman. Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.

or

This is the story of The Hitchhiker’s Guide... Read more >

The Annotated Sense and Sensibility

Written by Jane Austen
Edited by David M. Shapard

Format: Trade Paperback, 784 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: May 3, 2011
Price: $17.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-39076-9 (0-307-39076-4)

From the editor of the popular Annotated Pride and Prejudice comes an annotated edition of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility that makes this tale of two sisters in love an even more enjoyable read. Here is the complete text of the novel with more than 2,000 annotations on facing pages, including:

-Explanations... Read more >

The Canterbury Tales

Written by Geoffrey Chaucer
Translated by Burton Raffel
Introduction by John Miles Foley

Format: Trade Paperback, 672 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: November 10, 2009
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7845-2 (0-8129-7845-5)

Beyond its importance as a literary work of unvarnished genius, Geoffrey Chaucer’ s unfinished epic poem is also one of the most beloved works in the English language–and for good reason: It is lively, absorbing, perceptive, and outrageously funny. But despite the brilliance of Chaucer’s work, the continual evolution of our... Read more >

The Haunted House

Written by Charles Dickens
Introduction by Wesley Stace

Format: Trade Paperback, 160 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: October 12, 2004
Price: $13.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7306-8 (0-8129-7306-2)

On Christmas Eve, a party of friends descends on a purportedly haunted country retreat, charged with the task of discovering evidence of the supernatural. Sequestered in their rooms for the holiday, the friends reconvene on Twelfth Night at a great feast and share their stories of spectral encounter.

“Conducted” by Charles... Read more >

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Written by Charles Dickens
Introduction by Matthew Pearl

Format: Trade Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: October 6, 2009
Price: $12.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8045-5 (0-8129-8045-X)

The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a novel that is itself the subject of one of literature’ s most enduring mysteries. The story recounts the troubled romance of Rosa Bud and the book’s eponymous character, who later vanishes. Was Drood murdered, and if so by whom? All clues point to John... Read more >

In the Company of the Courtesan
A Novel
Written by Sarah Dunant

Format: Trade Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: February 6, 2007
Price: $13.95
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7404-1 (0-8129-7404-2)

My lady, Fiammetta Bianchini, was plucking her eyebrows and biting color into her lips when the unthinkable happened and the Holy Roman Emperor’s army blew a hole in the wall of God’s eternal city, letting in a flood of half-starved, half-crazed troops bent on pillage and punishment.

Thus begins In the Company... Read more >

The Slaves of Solitude

Written by Patrick Hamilton
Introduction by David Lodge

Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: NYRB Classics
On Sale: February 20, 2007
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-59017-220-9 (1-59017-220-5)

England in the middle of World War II, a war that seems fated to go on forever, a war that has become a way of life. Heroic resistance is old hat. Everything is in short supply, and tempers are even shorter. Overwhelmed by the rigors of the Blitz, middle-aged Miss Roach... Read more >

Dangerous Ambition
Rebecca West and Dorothy Thompson: New Women in Search of Love and Power
Written by Susan Hertog

Format: Hardcover, 512 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
On Sale: November 8, 2011
Price: $30.00
ISBN: 978-0-345-45986-2 (0-345-45986-5)

Born in the 1890s on opposite sides of the Atlantic, friends for more than forty years, Dorothy Thompson and Rebecca West lived strikingly parallel lives that placed them at the center of the social and historical upheavals of the twentieth century. In Dangerous Ambition, Susan Hertog chronicles the separate but intertwined... Read more >

Beowulf and Other Old English Poems

Written by Constance Hieatt

Format: Paperback, 192 pages
Publisher: Bantam Classics
On Sale: August 1, 1988
Price: $4.95
ISBN: 978-0-553-21347-8 (0-553-21347-4)

Written by an unknown poet around the eighth century, this masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon literature transforms legends, history and ancient songs into the richly colored tale of the hero Beowulf. A stirring portrait of a heroic world—somber, vast and magnificent. Read more >

Sidetracks
Explorations of a Romantic Biographer
Written by Richard Holmes

Format: Trade Paperback, 432 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: December 4, 2001
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-75771-9 (0-679-75771-6)

With this collection of short and fascinating biographical pieces, the award-winning biographer of Coleridge and Shelley offers a fascinating glimpse into the mysterious art of biography.

When researching, Richard Holmes has often become captivated by figures peripheral to his main subject, literary forays that he couldn’t resist. These tales—he forbidden love of... Read more >

By Fire, By Water

Written by Mitchell James Kaplan

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Other Press
On Sale: May 18, 2010
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-59051-352-1 (1-59051-352-5)

Luis de Santángel, chancellor to the court and longtime friend of the lusty King Ferdinand, has had enough of the Spanish Inquisition. As the power of Inquisitor General Tomás de Torquemada grows, so does the brutality of the Spanish church and the suspicion and paranoia it inspires. When a dear friend’s... Read more >

Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats

Written by John Keats
Introduction by Edward Hirsch

Format: Trade Paperback, 640 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: February 13, 2001
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-75669-6 (0-375-75669-8)

“I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death,” John Keats soberly prophesied in 1818 as he started writing the blankverse epic Hyperion. Today he endures as the archetypal Romantic genius who explored the limits of the imagination and celebrated the pleasures of the senses but suffered a... Read more >

English Passengers
A Novel
Written by Matthew Kneale

Format: Trade Paperback, 464 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: January 16, 2001
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-49744-2 (0-385-49744-X)

In 1857 when Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley and his band of rum smugglers from the Isle of Man have most of their contraband confiscated by British Customs, they are forced to put their ship up for charter. The only takers are two eccentric Englishmen who want to embark for the other... Read more >

The Lost Girl
A Novel
Written by D.H. Lawrence
Introduction by Lee Siegel

Format: Trade Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: October 21, 2003
Price: $13.95
ISBN: 978-0-8129-6997-9 (0-8129-6997-9)

The Lost Girl, D. H. Lawrence’s forgotten novel, is a passionate tale of longing and sexual defiance, of devastation and destitution.

Alvina Houghton, the daughter of a widowed Midlands draper, comes of age just as her father’s business is failing. In a desperate attempt to regain his fortune and secure his daughter’s... Read more >

Atonement
A Novel
Written by Ian McEwan

Format: Hardcover, 368 pages
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
On Sale: March 12, 2002
Price: $30.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-50395-2 (0-385-50395-4)

Anchor Paperback is Available

2003 LA Times Book Award for Fiction

2003 ALA Notable Book Award for Adults, Fiction

2002 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction

The People's Booker Prize 2001


In each of his novels Ian McEwan has brilliantly drawn his reader into the intimate lives and situations of his characters. But never... Read more >

The Essential Prose of John Milton

Written by John Milton
Edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich and Stephen M. Fallon

Format: Trade Paperback, 592 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: March 12, 2013
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8372-2 (0-8129-8372-6)

Edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon

The legendary author of Paradise Lost and other poems was also a superb and provocative prose writer. Culled from Modern Library’s definitive The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, this indispensable collection, authoritatively annotated and updated for this new volume... Read more >

Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and the Complete Shorter Poems

Written by John Milton
Edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich and Stephen M. Fallon

Format: Trade Paperback, 448 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: December 4, 2012
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8371-5 (0-8129-8371-8)

Derived from the Modern Library’s esteemed The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, this new volume, extensively revised and updated by its editors, contains Milton’s two late masterpieces, the brief epic Paradise Regained and the tragic drama Samson Agonistes. Age after age, these works have inspired new controversy and... Read more >

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
A Novel
Written by David Mitchell

Format: Trade Paperback, 512 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: March 8, 2011
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7636-6 (0-8129-7636-3)

The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay. To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, and costly courtesans comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout young clerk who has five years... Read more >

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
A Novel
Written by David Mitchell

Format: Hardcover, 496 pages
Publisher: Random House
On Sale: June 29, 2010
Price: $26.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6545-5 (1-4000-6545-3)

In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the most influential novelists in the world. He has twice been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. The New York Times Book Review called him simply “a genius.” Now David Mitchell lends fresh credence to The Guardian’s claim that “each of his books... Read more >

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

Written by Brian Moore
Afterword by Mary Gordon

Format: Trade Paperback, 240 pages
Publisher: NYRB Classics
On Sale: June 15, 2010
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-59017-349-7 (1-59017-349-X)

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne is an unflinching and deeply sympathetic portrait of a woman destroyed by self and circumstance. First published in 1955, it marked Brian Moore as a major figure in English literature (he would go on to be short-listed three times for the Booker Prize) and established... Read more >

The Diary of Samuel Pepys

Written by Samuel Pepys
Edited by Richard Le Gallienne
Introduction by Robert Louis Stevenson

Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: September 9, 2003
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7071-5 (0-8129-7071-3)

“The diary which Samuel Pepys kept from January 1660 to May 1669 ...is one of our greatest historical records and... a major work of English literature,” writes the renowned historian Paul Johnson. A witness to the coronation of Charles II, the Great Plague of 1665, and the Great Fire of 1666... Read more >

To Hold the Crown
The Story of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York
Written by Jean Plaidy

Format: Trade Paperback, 416 pages
Publisher: Broadway
On Sale: October 7, 2008
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-34619-3 (0-307-34619-6)

From exile and war to love and loss—every dynasty has a beginning.

Henry Tudor was not born to the throne of England. Having come of age in a time of political turmoil and danger, the man who would become Henry VII spent fourteen years in exile in Brittany before returning triumphantly to... Read more >

Joseph Anton
A Memoir
Written by Salman Rushdie

Format: Hardcover, 656 pages
Publisher: Random House
On Sale: September 18, 2012
Price: $30.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9278-6 (0-8129-9278-4)

On February 14, 1989, Valentine’s Day, Salman Rushdie was telephoned by a BBC journalist and told that he had been “sentenced to death” by the Ayatollah Khomeini. For the first time he heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called The Satanic Verses, which was accused of... Read more >

Antony and Cleopatra

Written by William Shakespeare
Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: April 14, 2009
Price: $5.95
ISBN: 978-0-8129-6918-4 (0-8129-6918-9)

Written at the pinnacle of Shakespeare’s career and featuring his most soaring poetic idiom, Antony and Cleopatra is both an immortal love story and a political drama played out on a global scale.

Under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, two of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, this Modern... Read more >